LAST UPDATE | 28 Dec 2018

EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.iebrings you all the news you need to know as you start the day.

1. #STATE PAPERS: Newly released state papers show that a meeting was arranged between family members of the Gibraltar Three and then-Tánaiste Brian Lenihan.

2. #SELL OFF: Leo Varadkar has defended vulture funds and said he doesn’t like to use that term to describe firms that buy up Irish mortgages. 

3.#SHUT DOWN: The US government partial shutdown is set to stretch deep into next week after legislators failed to make a breakthrough in the row over President Donald Trump’s demand for a US-Mexico border wall.

4. #COMPO: A fast food worker has been awarded €2k after their boss ‘walked around shop with raw sausage hanging from trousers’.

5. #NEW YORK: The New York Police Department has confirmed there is “no evidence of extraterrestrial activity” after a blown transformer at a power plant turned the sky blue. 

6. #STATE PAPERS: Former Taoiseach Charles Haughey suggested to the then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that a priest suspected of IRA crimes could be put behind bars in Ireland rather than extraditing him to the UK.

7. #VOTING: There is no prospect of e-voting machines ever returning, according to Minister of State for Local Government and Electoral Reform John Paul Phelan.

8. #ELECTION 2019: If Fine Gael win over 60 seats in the next general election, it will turn to smaller political parties such as Labour and the Greens to form a government. 

9. #JOB HUNT: Ireland’s Naval Service has launched a new recruitment campaign to encourage “young people” to sign up and “serve their country”.