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

Cruise boat life on the River Shannon today at Carrick on Shannon in County Leitrim Eamonn Farrell Eamonn Farrell

IRELAND

• Gardaí believe the chief suspect in the murder of US woman Jamey Carney in Killarney, Co Kerry fled the country in the hours after the killing before the victim’s body was discovered.
• Media minister Patrick O’Donovan was “under close medical observation” in a hospital in Brussels after becoming unwell. 
• A Status Yellow high temperature warning was issued for 12 counties as the weekend looked set to be a scorcher. 
• A man was arrested in relation to a controversial loyalist bonfire in Co Tyrone which has been topped with a replica mosque.
• Conditions in Irish prisons are a “national disgrace”, the sector’s watchdog said in its annual report today.
• A Hungarian court sentenced an Irishman to 14 years in prison for brutally killing an American tourist during sex before dumping her body in the woods.

INTERNATIONAL

Crowds of mourners surround the convoy carrying the coffins of Iran's slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei and members of his family during a funeral procession Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

#WAR: The US and Iran continued to exchange strikes today as the ceasefire between the two countries collapsed further. 

#HASHTAG: Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, best known for her hits Total Eclipse of the Heart and Holding Out for a Hero, died aged 75. 

PARTING SHOT

Politics by Numbers is a new series for The Journal where broadcaster, author and spreadsheet stan Gavan Reilly takes a data deep dive into a political point of the week. 

THE FUNNY THING about the energy credits that existed almost every year until last Christmas is that they weren’t originally intended as a cost-of-living measure at all.

Their original genesis was a noble way of returning cash that the country couldn’t spend during the Covid-19 pandemic. Unable to use carbon taxes to pay for measures like home retrofittings due to the public health restrictions, Eamon Ryan simply suggested returning it to households by putting €100 credit on every electricity bill.

You can read the full Voices article here.