NEED TO CATCH up? The Journal brings you a roundup of today’s news.

IRELAND

• Santa and Mrs Claus arriving at Cobh earlier today, where they were welcomed by local children and their families. The event was in association with the Port of Cork and Cork Chamber. Gerard McCarthy Gerard McCarthy

  The government said schools and public transport will continue to operate as normal as the cold snap remained across the country.

• A light helicopter crashed near Kilcullen in Kildare.
• A woman was arrested after the discovery of a man’s body in a residential property in Navan, Co Meath.
• In a separate incident in Meath, gardaí appealed for information as they ramped up their investigation into the discovery of body of a man wrapped in materials in a field.
• A man in his 30s died after a crash involving a truck on the N25 in Waterford. 
• One homelessness charity said it housed an extra 100 people a night in Dublin last year compared with the previous year.
• Unionists would not be “bullied or cajoled” into returning to powersharing, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson told the Northern Ireland Secretary.
• Planning was lodged for the redevelopment of the former St Teresa’s Gardens Lands in Dublin 8 to provide over 540 social and cost rental homes.

WORLD

Firefighters were called to the building in Jeresey hours before the blast after residents reported smelling gas (Aaron Chown/PA)

#JERSEY: Hopes faded at finding more survivors after at least three people were killed in an explosion in a block of flats on the island of Jersey.

#LOCKERBIE: The man accused of being the bombmaker in the Lockerbie terrorist attack is now in US custody, it emerged.

#KOSOVO Explosions, shootings and road blocks were reported in the north of the country, where the population is mostly ethnic Serb, according to police and local media. 

#ENGLAND Several people who fell through ice into a lake in the West Midlands were rushed to hospital for treatment.

PARTING SHOT

The Fifa World Cup had been dominating sporting schedules as of late, but with the tournament now taking a brief break before it enters its final stages, why not use the time to catch up on some very good reads? 

The Journal’s Aoife Barry has a roundup here, including a Grey’s Anatomy writer’s telling how her life came apart after lies about a cancer diagnosis, to a look at when The Cure played the RDS in 1989. They’re all here.

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