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

Grafton Street in Dublin busy with shoppers this evening. Rollingnews Rollingnews

IRELAND

• The Fianna Fáil report on the party’s disastrous presidential campaign showed that Taoiseach Micheál Martin told candidate Jim Gavin to withdraw from the race.
• Flu cases were soaring ahead of the expected peak next week. 
• The M50 motorway was heavily congested this evening due to a bin lorry fire. 
• A woman who set fire to a bus on O’Connell Bridge during the 2023 Dublin riot was jailed for six years. 
• Drug-related deaths fell by 8% in 2022 but the proportion involving cocaine rose. 
• Minister for Children Norma Foley presented cabinet with phase one of the long-awaited childcare plan.
• Gardaí arrested another person in the Midlands Prison in connection with an alleged assault suspected to be associated with the Edenderry double-murder investigation.
• The omission of the planned Wexford-Waterford train line from the government’s spending plan was met with angry reactions.
• An Garda Síochána got a new surveillance plane.
• The government’s new private jet arrived in Baldonnel.

INTERNATIONAL

Christmas lights decorate a street in Jakarta, Indonesia. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

#AUSTRALIA: Dashcam footage showed a man and a woman intervening in the Bondi Beach mass shooting before being killed. 

#UK: The man who drove a car into a crowd at the Liverpool Premier League parade was jailed to 21 years and six months.

#USA: Donald Trump filed a $10bn lawsuit against the BBC in response to an edit in a documentary. 

PARTING SHOT

IN CASE YOU hadn’t noticed, Christmas is coming. There is no chance of that if you’re passing this house in Laois though… 

A house in Laois festooned with Christmas lights Rollingnews Rollingnews