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

IRELAND

Oireachtas members launch week-long clothing and fundraising drive for Dress for Success, a week-long fundraising drive. Marc O'Sullivan Marc O'Sullivan

• The Department of Health was evacuated after the discovery of what turned out to be a non-hazardous white powder
• The Data Protection Commissioner said that it “categorically” had never been lobbied by the former Taoiseach amid claims about Facebook
• Boris Johnson defended Bloody Sunday soldiers, and asked why the IRA “got away with” Troubles crimes
• A “compounding” of events, including snowfall, caused long delays on a number of roads, while passengers slept on Dublin Airport’s floor
• Over 90% of homes for rent in Ireland fall outside State housing benefit limits
• Former SDLP leader Mark Durkan is to run as a Fine Gael candidate in the European elections – alongside former Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald.
• Another measles outbreak was confirmed, this one in north Dublin.

WORLD

PA Wire / PA Images PA Wire / PA Images / PA Images

#RIP: Tributes were paid to Prodigy frontman Keith Flint who died aged 49. 

#BEVERLY HILLS: American actor Luke Perry died at the age of 52 after suffering a stroke.

#VENEZUELA: Crowds met Juan Guaido at Caracas airport after his 10-day exile, as ordered by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

PARTING SHOT

They call him “Failing Grayling.”

While the trials, tribulations and humiliations of Prime Minister Theresa May have occupied centre stage in the carnival of British politics, Chris Grayling has starred in a black comedy sideshow of his own. He has bumbled his way from one government post to another, accused of making a hash of each, and becoming a byword for haplessness in a golden age of political blundering in Britain. 

So begins this cutting New York Times piece on the British Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, whom the British media have been desperately trying to locate today, as he was due to answer questions in the House of Commons but pulled out last minute.

In the NYT piece, it quotes a Labour Party stat that Grayling’s various misadventures – 12 in all – had cost British taxpayers £2.7 billion, or €3.1 billion. Ouch.