Noel Scanlon, from Sixmilebridge spoke to Gavin Grace on today’s edition of The Today Show about his personal story of the impact of the recession, emigration on his and his family’s life.  Noel has returned from Afghanistan where he was working as Construction Manager for a Danish company, which works to support the forces within NATO/ISAF military bases in the war torn country. Noel worked in the region of Kandahar, Uruzghan and Helmand province.  His role was to oversee construction on the military bases such as Camp Bastion. He spoke about experiencing explosions and the loss of life of those on the ground. Noel is married to Laura and father to two sons, Daithi and Oisin, he’s a businessman and now a blogger. He took up an appointment in Afghanistan in July 2011 as a result of the challenging economic conditions at home and tells his story in his regular blog http://longwaytogoforasuntan.blogspot.com/

David Moore, Chairman of Astronomy Ireland discussed how some of the world's top astronomers believe that life on Earth is likely to suffer a huge catastrophe following a massive impact by an asteroid on March 16th, 2880, the day before St Patrick's Days, leaving "only" 867 of the Irish holidays left! They expect this disaster will be caused by asteroid 1950AD, a 1.1km asteroid, which will impact with an energy of 100 million tons of TNT