The Front Pages
A sample of today’s front page stories include a Green Party member’s apology after announcing a colleague’s death on Twitter, figures have been released on last year’s mortgage repayment strugglers and Facebook are almost ready to introduce new privacy settings on the social network website.
Here’s the most notable headlines on some of the broadsheets this morning:
“Facebook to ensure its privacy rules are made for sharing” – The Irish Times.
“Home arrears ‘biggest legacy’ of crisis” – The Irish Examiner.
“Boyle apologises over death tweet” – The Irish Independent.
Facebook, the social network site with over 400 million users, is to introduce new privacy settings regarding the access to account holders information. The Irish Times tells us that the site has come under strong criticism from users, regulators and privacy advocacy groups who raised issues over the complex nature of the current privacy settings.
The report provides a list of new measures which will be taken by site founder Mark Zuckerberg to counteract the privacy problems. The changes will not affect the manner in which a user can search for another but the limitations on viewing access of other users’ profiles will be dramatically altered.
Just fewer than four in every 100 mortgage holders were unable to meet repayments at the end of last year in a report released by the Central Bank, and its details published in The Irish Examiner.
The Financial Regualtor, Matthew Elderfield, claims that mortgage arrears will be the “biggest legacy†of the financial crisis in the country.
Mr Elderfield has called for “realism†from homeowners who have not been keeping up with repayments and that excessive borrowing will not solve their problems. He continued by saying “his office was working on a number of recommendations to tackle the problem of mortgage arrears†but that effectively, it was up to borrowers to start “gritting their teeth and meeting their obligationsâ€.
How controversial the instant communication world can be. The Irish Independent reports on the public apology which has been issued by Green Party senator Dan Boyle (pictured above) for using Twitter to announce the death of a senate colleague.
The buffoon-type mistake came from Mr Boyle’s tweet yesterday morning when he revealed the death of Fianna Fail senator Kieran Phelan before it was officially announced.
RTE presenter Miriam O’Callaghan ended up in similar hot water last month when she made the same error of announcing the death of her colleague, Gerry Ryan, through the social network site.
According to the report Senator Phelan died of a massive heart attack after he collapsed at breakfast in the Grand Canal Hotel in Dublin yesterday morning.
