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

IRELAND

The Silver Starlets wow the crowds are Laya Healthcare’s City Spectacular Festival. Still Frame Photography Still Frame Photography

• Gardaí based in Dublin have been alerted by former members of the Defence Forces to alleged smuggling taking place at Baldonnel Airfield
• Some members of An Garda Síochána are taking DNA samples despite not receiving training to do so, with officers relying on a how-to video guide
• The Green Party began their annual national convention today
• The Luas Green line was down for most of the day, due to a suspected fault with the overhead power lines
• A man in his 40s was killed in a single-vehicle collision on the M9 this morning
• The PSNI said that yesterday’s Twelfth of July marches “passed without major incident”
• Arts funding that produced the likes of the Luke Kelly statue on Sheriff Street and the giant ball sculpture on the M7 motorway is getting a boost.

WORLD

Simona Halep defeats Serena Williams in under an hour in the women's 2019 Wimbledon Championship final. Dubreuil Corinne / ABACA Dubreuil Corinne / ABACA / ABACA

#NEW ORLEANS: Storm Barry strengthened into a category 1 hurricane as it neared the Louisiana coast, US meteorologists said.

#DIPLOMATIC INCIDENT: The Met Police responded to criticism for warning the media not to publish leaked documents by hinting that the leaked correspondence from British ambassador to the US Kim Darroch wasn’t in the public interest.

#SOMALIA: Twenty-six people were killed, including an election candidate and a prominent journalist, in a 12-hour attack by Al-Shabaab jihadists on a popular hotel in the southern Somali port city of Kismayo.

#CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA: US regulators approved a $5 billion penalty for Facebook to settle a probe into the social network’s privacy and data protection lapses.

PARTING SHOT

This video by NBC is being widely shared. It shows US Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to a detention centre in Texas, where men are kept in over-crowded cages.

he officer tells Pence that they have watchtowers to pull out anyone who acts out, as men in the cages shout “no shower!”

You can read more about Pence’s visit here.