Michael Spain and Joseph McCarthy jump off Mayor Street Bridge in the IFSC into the River Liffey today

Image: Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland

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

• With three days to go before the deadline, more than one million households have not yet paid the household charge.

• The State has bought Irish Life, the life assurance business of IL&P, for €1.3 billion. The company had originally been put up for sale last year but the planned sale had fallen through, leading the government to take it into state ownership.

• The recession has hit everyone hard – except for the highest earners whose income has actually gone up. Yes, really.

• “Everyone is in good form at the moment. We’re pretty resolute and ready to fight” – Game employees are holding sit-ins in eleven stores around the country in a dispute over redundancy pay.

• Publicity stunt or genuine accident? An elephant escaped from a circus in Cork - and went for a walk in a nearby car park.

• Bars, cars and books are all down, but department stores are up: retail sales in Ireland dropped overall last month.

• The sixth and final member of Fianna Fáil who was due to face expulsion from the party over the Mahon report has formally quit the party today. FF’s National Executive will now turn its attention to the ownership of St. Luke’s, Bertie Ahern’s former constituency office.

(Milliner John Shevlin poses as James Joyce at the Mansion House in Dublin today to launch the Dublin: one City, One Book programme. Joyce’s Dubliners has been chosen as the book for 2012. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire)

• It has been uncharacteristically sunny across Ireland over the past few days – but why is this good weather happening?

• A US man who wore a mask and lived as a recluse has successfully undergone the most extensive face transplant ever performed.

• In this afternoon’s column, Michael Smith writes about what made him take out the ad which was the starting point for the Mahon Tribunal – and how Mahon and the media failed in their task.

• The government is to introduce new legislation for search warrants – after the Supreme Court found previous search warrants were unconstitutional.

• Two people have been arrested over drug finds in Naas and Carlow.

• Don’t panic. San Marino’s entry to the Eurovision has been restored to the competition. Phew. But what was the offending word which had to be removed from the song to allow them back in?

(Igor Galicki free running on Dublin’s Mount Street earlier today. Photo: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)

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