EVERY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you a round-up of the day’s biggest news stories, as well as the bits and pieces you may have missed.

• Senator David Norris has withdrawn from a guest presenting spot on TV3′s Tonight With Vincent Browne in the wake of the controversy surrounding his plea for clemency for his friend and former partner Ezra Yizhak Nawi.  Five of the 14 TDs and senators who pledged their support to Norris’ presidential campaign are continuing to support him, while several others are either considering their position or are uncontactable.
• Earlier both Israel and the Labour party were forced to deny a plot to end the senator’s campaign. The Israeli embassy denied that it was behind the emergence of the clemency letter, while Labour party presidential hopeful Michael D. Higgins denied that he, or anyone else in his campaign leaked the information.
• The EU has imposed more sanctions on Syrian officials as at least four more people are killed in Hama. Asset freezes and travel bans have been imposed on five military and government personnel. The city of Hama has come under attack for the second time in as many days.
• A post mortem examination is being carried out on the body of a man which was found in an apartment block in Salthill in Galway last night. Meanwhile a man in his thirties was stabbed to death following an attack in the Sarsfield Road area of Ballyfermot last night.
• A women in her thirties is in a critical condition in University Hospital Galway after getting into difficulty while swimming off Lahinch Beach. She was pulled from the water and airlifted to hospital. Meanwhile a search for a sailor is continuing in the Irish Sea after he set off in his boat from the Isle of Man yesterday and failed to show up at his destination in Co. Down.
• The US Congress is gearing up to vote on a deal struck between the White House and party leaders to avoid debt default in the US.
• It’s reported that the Trinity Mirror group is facing legal action amid claims it hacked the phones of several high-profile people. The group publishes the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and The People. Trinity Mirror has dismissed the claims as unfounded, reports The Telegraph. Meanwhile The Guardian reports today that a technology firm has said that it knew of a request by News International to undertake a mass deletion of emails between April 2010 and July 2011, but that it knew of nothing untoward behind the request.
• The house of the ‘Wise Woman of Clare’ Biddy Early has been put up for sale for €75,000. Early was a 19th century herbalist healer who was accused of witchcraft. The owner is hoping that the derelict property can be renovated.
• The president of DCU has said that lecturers spend the first year of college ‘deprogramming’ students who have just finished school and their Leaving Cert. Brian McCraith said that Irish schools fail to prepare young people properly for university.
• Check out these amazing pictures of a jet which broke in two as it crash landed in Guyana. All of the 163 passengers escaped with their lives.
• OK Go – the Chicago band who have racked up almost 8.5 million YouTube views for their treadmill dance music video – have made a new promo for their latest song. The HTML5 video was produced in conjunction with Google and allows users to insert their own message. Click here for a look at TheJournal.ie’s own special message.
• And finally, Naughty by Nature, Coldplay, and a competition to see how many people you can fit on a small stage in Tullamore…

Thanks to Cathal Furey for the video

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