EVERY EVENING,  TheJournal.ie brings you a roundup of the day’s main stories – plus any bits and pieces you may have missed.

• Almost 70 per cent of Irish people are worried they won’t have enough money to live comfortably next year, according to a new survey. The study also found that just under half are worried about losing their jobs or not being able to find work.
• In better news for Ireland, the number of overseas visitors who came here rose this year -for the first time in four years.
• The parents of Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old schoolgirl who took her own life in Massachusetts almost two years ago, have received $225,000 in a settlement with their daughter’s school district.
• Good news for hens: Small, cramped cages are set to be banned across the EU from this weekend.
• Over 26,000 cigarettes were seized at Dublin Airport today after three people, believed to be part of an Eastern European cigarette smuggling gang, were stopped and searched.
• The man accused of killing two Northern Ireland women in Turkey was due to appear in court today charged with their murder.
• Over 1 million Kindles were sold each week during December, Amazon has said. Christmas Day was the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads, apparently.
• “I would have won the presidency that time but it is just a job that didn’t appeal to me” – who said it? Take a go at our Quotes Quiz of 2011 and find out.
• This video has been around for a little while but it’s still amazing. And by amazing, we mean surreal. Have you ever wanted a Riverdance massage? Or even to know exactly what on earth it is? Then check out this video from TV3 – it gets good/surreal from about 2 minutes in:

• Time travel exists! Well, kind of. The tiny Pacific island of Samoa is going to skip an entire day tomorrow – and they won’t even need a flux capacitor to do it.
• The Syrian government has released 755 prisoners who had been detained for protesting – at the exact same time that observers from the Arab League arrived to monitor the country.
• The man who was found unconscious outside a hotel on Dublin’s Dame Street in mid-December died on Christmas Eve. The Garda Ombudsman is investigating the incident and has asked for assistance from the public in identifying the man.
• Looking for a new job? Good at technical things? Interested in theoretical physics? Then this could be for you: Stephen Hawking is looking for an assistant.
• Despite positive sales this Christmas, retailers are pessimistic about the year ahead according to Retail Ireland, which describes their overall mood as “grim”.
• An armed ship was called in to protect five of the yachts in this year’s Volvo Ocean Race from…. pirates. The move was part of a plan to avoid any pirates operating in the Indian Ocean.
• OMG: A Norwegian news programme which displayed an eye test chart on screen during a segment failed to notice that the chart contained well-known internet slang phrases, including WTF, STFU and OMG. Pwn3d.

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