MORNING BULLETIN: Opening shots fired in Fine Gael leadership battle; North Korea criticises China

Here's your morning news bulletin.

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IRELAND: The opening salvo has been fired in the Fine Gael leadership battle after Leo Varadkar called for a TV debate and took a swipe at rival Simon Coveney about when the upcoming contest will begin.

IRELAND: Dozens of Central Bank staffers have been paid almost half a million euro in sweeteners to agree a longer notice period in the event of them resigning.

IRELAND: The former head of Beamish and Crawford has called for the controversial Cork event centre project to be scrapped and retendered.

BUSINESS: British pub group JD Wetherspoon is to focus its medium-term Irish growth plans on the Dublin area.

WORLD: North Korea has issued a rare direct criticism of China through a commentary saying its "reckless remarks" on Pyongyang's nuclear programme are testing its patience and could trigger unspecified "grave" consequences.

WORLD: The family of Madeleine McCann have said they "miss her every second" as they reflect on 10 years of "stolen time" without her.

ANALYSIS: Self-appointed Scribes and Pharisees rubbish the life’s work of hundreds of hard-working women, writes Victoria White.

SPORT: Galway manager Micheál Donoghue has defended the decision to hold a mini-homecoming celebration after their Allianz Hurling League final win.

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FEATURES: After taking a chance, a West Cork teenager takes on the world at a top hairdressing competition today, but Ciarán O’Sullivan has not forgotten his roots, writes Louise McCarthy.

ARTS: Ed Byrne and Dara O Briain take in Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar for their new travel series, writes Jeananne Craig.

VIRAL: Messaging service WhatsApp has returned after suffering an outage that cut off millions of users around the world.