NEED TO CATCH up? TheJournal.ie brings you a round-up of today’s news.

IRELAND

Pictured are children from Piccolo Lasso children's choir sheltering themselves from the weather at the launch of the ESB Great Christmas Concert 2018 at the National Concert Hall. Photocall Ireland Photocall Ireland

• Permanent TSB has transferred thousands of mortgages in its second major loan sale, which amounts to a gross value of €1.3 billion.
• Arrangements have been made to open a hotel at the centre of a High Court dispute, between a company that wants to buy it and its owner, as accommodation for asylum seekers in early January.
• Sinn Féin has called on the government to introduce a cold weather payment in times of severe weather events.  
• The number of homeless adults living in emergency accommodation in Ireland rose last month by 130. Emergency accommodation figures for October show that there are now 9,724 people living in homeless accommodation across the country. 
• A Dublin man has gone on trial for an alleged sexual assault on a sleeping woman he met earlier in a nightclub.
• A 34-year-old man has appeared in court charged with dangerous driving causing the death of Stephen Marron in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan on Tuesday night.
• Tayto Park is to lodge a planning application for its biggest attraction to date, an “iconic” €14 million steel roller-coaster ride in the coming days.
• Members of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland have voted to reject the government’s pay proposals for teachers recruited since 2011. 

WORLD

Michael Cohen walks out of federal court, in New York, after pleading guilty to lying to Congress about work he did on an aborted project to build a Trump Tower in Russia. Julie Jacobson via PA Images Julie Jacobson via PA Images

#GUILTY: US President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has made  a surprise appearance before a federal judge in New York City and pleaded guilty to lying to congress over a Russian business deal.

#IT’S ON: Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have agreed to debate each other on Brexit just two days before MPs vote on Britain’s EU withdrawal agreement.

#HOT IN HERE: Global temperatures in 2018 are set to be the fourth highest on record, the UN said today, stressing the urgent need for action to rein in runaway warming of the planet.

PARTING SHOT 

New research has shown that Australia’ platypus population is shrinking under pressure from agriculture and pollution, putting the egg-laying mammals’ future in doubt.

The semi-aquatic platypus, which along with four species of echidna are the only mammals that lay eggs, is one of the world’s strangest animals, with the bill of a duck, tail of a beaver, otter-like feet and a venomous spur on its hind leg.

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