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A woman walks her dogs in Red House Park, Birmingham, where temperatures exceeded 20°C today on the hottest day of the year so far. David Jones/PA Wire
Daily Fix

The Daily Fix: Wednesday

Our usual wrap-up of the day’s news, and some bits you may have missed from the last 24 hours.

EVERY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you a round-up of the latest news stories, as well as the bits and pieces you may have missed.

  • Portugal’s finance minister has acknowledged that his country is going to need a bailout – becoming the third Eurozone nation, after Ireland and Greece, to find itself in receipt of emergency financial assistance.
  • The leak of radiation from the Fukushima power plant is now showing up in Irish milk supplies, according to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland – though the presence of iodine-131 is only a tiny fraction of the EU limit, which in turn is only a fraction of the quantity that would pose a risk to human health.
  • The introduction of domestic water charges could still be years away, a Fine Gael junior minister has admitted. Fergus O’Dowd says an independent agency will first have to decide if the scheme is viable before the State starts fitting water meters on every house in the country – which itself could take up to three years.
  • MEP Nessa Childers says she’s disappointed that the European Parliament voted to defeat her objection to what she says is a bogus claim by a baby milk manufacturer about its product’s health benefits.
  • Prison guards working at a facility on Dublin’s northside were so confused when a Romanian man handed them an unlicenced pistol that they handed it straight back to him. Dublin District Criminal Court heard today that Sandor Hideg was delivering a skip to St Patrick’s Institution when he was asked to hand over his mobile, as per usual protocol. He handed over his gun – leaving the guards so stunned that they returned it.
  • A lawyer in Turkey has uncovered a formula that predicts the correct answer to the national equivalent of the Leaving Cert. Prosecutors claim it might have been part of a scam to ensure that pro-government students scored higher.
  • Police near Glasgow in Scotland are investigating a burglary – at their own police station. The station at Uddingston was broken into early on Tuesday, with the crafty burglars stealing uniforms and radio equipment.
  • A New York pilot has faced a tough talking-to from police after he successfully badgered air traffic control into letting him land on a beach – lying to them about an on-board ‘emergency’.
  • Pretty much the entire nation of Armenia went offline last month – all because a woman in neighbouring Georgia cut a single cable. The 75-year-old woman was scavenging for scrap metal when she cut through a fibre-optic cable – which happened to carry pretty much the entire Armenian internet supply. She could now face three years’ jail.
  • Finally today, the person singing Justin Bieber’s Baby in this video –  the person who looks like Justin Bieber, and has exactly the same haircut as Justin Bieber – isn’t Justin Bieber. It’s Dani Shay, who said she was so sick of being mistaken for the Canadian teen star that she recorded a parody of Bieber’s hit about it. Her tune – which, to many ears, will seem better than the original – is picking up steam: