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

IRELAND

Askanagap, Co Wicklow, this morning Metalert Metalert

• TDs debated the Eighth Amendment in Dáil Éireann, with Minister for Health Simon Harris opening by listing the women who had travelled for abortions last year by county.
• The Taoiseach apologised to Joanne Hayes over the Kerry Babies case.
• A solicitor for Nóirín O’Sullivan called the questioning of Maurice McCabe’s credibility ‘political dynamite’.
• A court heard how a music teacher had claimed €175,000 in welfare payments while living in a €3,000 a month penthouse apartment.
• The weather  was forecast to be snowy, icy and generally miserable
• A verdict of accidental death was returned in the case of a boy who died in a sulky accident.
• Leo Varadkar set out Ireland’s Brexit stall in a multi-lingual speech to the EU.
• It emerged that three monkeys escaped their enclosure at Dublin Zoo during Storm Ophelia.
• A blanket of snow and ice covered the country.
• A gangland hit was stopped after two loaded handguns were found in a safehouse beside Hutch family homes.

INTERNATIONAL

Jessica Makholt Twitter / Homeandaway Twitter / Homeandaway / Homeandaway

#ONE KOREA: North and South Korea will compete as together as one at the Winter Olympics.

#NEW YORK: A former CIA agent was arrested in New York while holding top secret information listing the real identities of undercover spies.

#RIP: Home and Away actress Jessica Falkholt died three weeks after being involved in a car crash which killed her sister and parents.

PARTING SHOT

'I am so smart, I am so smart. SMRT. Smart smart smart' DPA / PA Images DPA / PA Images / PA Images

Could you pass the presidential cognitive fitness test that Donald Trump took this week? There’s only one way to find out.