Five things you need to know today

North Carolina shootings, data blunder at TCD, potential spread of Dublin Bus row

A protester with raised fist confronts riot police officers in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photograph: Caitlin Penna/EPA
A protester with raised fist confronts riot police officers in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photograph: Caitlin Penna/EPA

State of emergency declared in Opens in new window ]

One person was shot and gravely wounded on Wednesday in a second night of unrest in Charlotte, North Carolina, officials said, as riot police dispersed unruly protesters after the fatal police shooting of a black man under disputed circumstances.

North Carolina’s governor later declared a state of emergency amid the disturbances and said the National Guard and state Highway Patrol troopers would be sent in to help police in Charlotte restore and maintain order.

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Denis O’Brien’s Caribbean connections revealed in Opens in new window ]

Irish businessman Denis O'Brien is linked to property on the Caribbean island where Dermot Desmond has been developing an exclusive tourist resort, filings in the Bahamas indicate.

The corporate registry in the Bahamas, which is normally difficult to access but the contents of which have been published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, show associates of O’Brien acting as directors of six companies in the Caribbean tax haven.

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Whoops: Data blunder sees TCD fall out of global rankingsOpens in new window ]

Irish universities have failed to rank in the top-200 for the first time in the latest set of influential global rankings.

Trinity College Dublin (TCD), traditionally Ireland's top-ranking college, has been omitted from the Time Higher Education rankings at short notice, after it emerged it supplied incorrect data.

The error is understood to have been spotted when the college – which ranked in 160th place last year – fell even further in this year’s rankings.

The data error – which sources insist was an innocent mistake – is likely to have adversely affected its ranking position both this year and last.

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Collapse in Irish property prices more severe than thoughtOpens in new window ]

Ireland’s property market crash was more severe than previously thought while cash buyers are paying significantly less for property than other buyers, according to the new Residential Property Price Index.

The revamped index, launched on Wednesday by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), is based on stamp duty returns rather than mortgage drawdown data and includes for the first time cash transactions, which are said to account for 50 per cent of property sales.

The figures reveal that the peak to trough fall in residential property prices from 2007 to 2013 was 54.4 per cent, not 50.9 per cent as recorded previously.

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5. Dublin Bus row may spread across all State transport firms

Disruption at Dublin Bus is set to continue but the potential for industrial action at its sister companies, Bus Éireann and Iarnród Éireann, in the weeks ahead has become a more distinct possibility.

About 400,000 Dublin Bus passengers will again face inconvenience tomorrow and Saturday as staff stage the fifth and sixth days of strikes in a dispute over pay.

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