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

IRELAND

People walk down O'Connell Street. Sam Boal Sam Boal

• One of the teenagers charged with murdering Anastasia Kriegel will be allowed to spend Christmas Day with his grandparents.
• Leo Varadkar told Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty that “it doesn’t take very long for your balaclava to slip” in a row over the Roscommon eviction.
• It’s unlikely that Irish Ferries will have a Rosslare-France ferry service next year
• The Policing Authority and Garda Síochána Inspectorate are to be replaced
• An inquest heard that 24-year-old student Jastine Valdez died of asphyxia.
• Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation voted to go on strike
• Tomorrow is your last chance to send letters and parcels by Standard Post so they’ll arrive in time for Christmas.

WORLD

Banksy's 'Dream Boat' sculpture is on display in the Help Refugees shop in London, where visitors can enter a competition to win the sculpture. PA Wire / PA Images PA Wire / PA Images / PA Images

#BREXIT: The British Cabinet is to increase its preparations for a no-deal Brexit, including deploying more troops, and stockpiling medicines.

#TRUMP FOUNDATION: US President Donald Trump has agreed to shut down his personal charity, which has been accused of engaging in “persistently illegal conduct”.

#THIS ONE ISN’T OUR FAULT: Saturn is losing its rings at the “worst-case scenario” rate, a new study found.

PARTING SHOT 

Beverly Heritage Center Beverly Heritage Center

Four letters written to Santa over 100 years ago that were found behind a fireplace in a heritage museum in West Virginia have gone on display.

The letters, found a few weeks ago, “are believed to have accidentally fallen between the chimney wall and the fireplace mantelpiece where they remained for 106 years,” according to the Beverly Heritage Center.

The author of one of the letters, written on Christmas Day in 1912, was eight-year-old Page Woodward.

She asked Santa to bring gifts for her parents, her brother, and her three sisters, including a hat for Papa and many things for her brother: “For Reginald a air rifle, a Boy Scout book, a sweater and two magazines, Country Gentleman and Farm Journal.”

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