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

IRELAND

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• Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has said in a speech that Irish women will never have autonomy until the Eighth Amendment is repealed.
• The EU has told the UK the ‘onus is on you’ to find solutions for post-Brexit Northern Ireland border.
• Two major developers are teaming up to give Cork’s quayside a €160m facelift.
• The number of homeless families in Ireland increased by almost 300 in the past year.
• Davy Fitzgerald has agreed to stay on as Wexford hurling manager in 2018.
• Fine Gael condemned one of its councillors for claiming that Sharia law is in operation in Ireland.
• Gardaí are searching for a second suspect who fled the scene of a foiled gangland hit in Dublin.
• The state pathologist has concluded that remains found in Dundalk are historical.

WORLD

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#SNUB: UK Prime Minister Theresa May has rejected an invitation to address the European parliament in public, reportedly causing further ill will in Brussels.

#MEDICAL MYSTERY: Italian prosecutors have opened a manslaughter inquiry after a four-year-old girl, who had not left the country, contracted malaria.

#AIRSTRIKE: Israeli warplanes killed two Syrian army soldiers when they struck a military position near the Mediterranean earlier today.

PARTING SHOT

Britain’s Alice Barnes may have won the second stage of the An Post Rás na mBan but the show was stolen by Gráinne the fox who climbed on a man’s shoulders to watch the race go by.

Pat Gibbons with Gráinne the fox watching the An Post Rás na mBan. Lorraine O'Sullivan Lorraine O'Sullivan

The man in question is Patsy Gibbons from Thomastown in Co Kilkenny and he and Gráinne turned out to watch the race as it passed on the way to Castlecomer.

Patsy found the vixen abandoned and malnourished in 2007 when she was just three-weeks-old and he has cared for her ever since.

Gráinne has become extremely attached to her rescuer in the intervening years and thinks nothing of perching on his shoulder as the pair go about their day.

Patsy told photographer Lorraine O’Sullivan that he also has two other pet foxes at home.

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