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

IRELAND

The Irish Kennel Club crowned their Golden Paw Hero Dogs of 2025 today - Pop the Greyhound scooped the top prize at the awards. Pop and his owner Joe Rigby make weekly visits to the ICU in Tallaght hospital, bringing smiles to both staff and patients. Irish Kennel Club Irish Kennel Club

• Ireland survived a nervy, chaotic battle in Cardiff as they came from behind to beat Wales and secure the Triple Crown.
• The dissolution of the Dáil last November may have signalled last orders for the 33rd Government – but the pints kept flowing in the Oireachtas bars while the 34th settled into place with 150 rounds ordered on the day that TDs failed to elect the Taoiseach. 
• Status Yellow wind and rain warnings have been issued for 15 counties tomorrow.
• A man has been hospitalised after a shooting incident in Dublin last night.
• Gardaí have renewed their appeal for information regarding missing woman Esra Uyrun ahead of the fourteenth anniversary of her disappearance.
• Sinn Féin’s White House boycott is a “manoeuvre” to set First Minister Michelle O’Neill up for an Irish presidential bid, the leader of the DUP has suggested.
• Around 50 parents from Dublin are to hold a 24-hour sleep-out at the Department of Education over difficulty accessing special education school places.

INTERNATIONAL

Bundee Aki applauds the fans following the Guinness Men's Six Nations match at the Principality Stadium, Cardiff. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

#FRANCE: One person has died and two police officers were seriously injured today in a knife attack in eastern France that President Emmanuel Macron said was an “Islamist terror act”.

#BERLIN: While the war in Gaza has been an important issue to many in Ireland, leading the Irish government to recognising Palestine as a state, the issue has been “flipped on its head” in Germany according to campaigners in the country.

#CEASEFIRE: Hamas handed over six Israeli hostages due to be freed today under the Gaza ceasefire deal to the Red Cross.

#THE VATICAN: Pope Francis’s condition “continues to be critical”, the Vatican said today, explaining that he was alert and in his armchair but also required “high-flow oxygen” and blood transfusions.

PARTING SHOT

BISHOP WILLIE WALSH – or Willie, as we normally referred to him – was the most unclerical of bishops, Fr Tony Flannery writes. 

After his ordination in 1962 he studied Canon Law, something which hardly suited his flexible nature. The study of Church law can often have a substantial effect on a person, making them legalistic and somewhat rigid.

That certainly didn’t happen to Willie, I suspect, because his basic humanity was so much a part of him that it trumped all the laws.

Fr Tony Flannery remembers the former bishop, who died this week aged 90.