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

IRELAND

The comet that will be at its closest to Earth tonight PA PA

• Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said that the “State didn’t have a leg to stand on” following a decision not to pay disability allowances to 12,000 vulnerable people in residential care.
• Gardaí attached to the Special Detective Unit this morning carried out an arrest of a prominent anti-refugee agitator ahead of a planned protest in Finglas, Dublin tonight.  
• A rare green comet, that has not been seen for 50,000 years, is about to make its closest pass by Earth, becoming visible in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
• The National Transport Authority has allocated funding of €290 million to local authorities for walking and cycling infrastructure this year. 
•  A man was arrested in Dublin city centre last night over an incident involving an attempt to steal a vehicle outside The George nightclub that caused alarm to patrons.
• A man has been arrested and vehicles have been seized as part of investigations into burglaries in mid-Leinster.  
• The government’s planned redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes is an insult and “pits survivors against each other”, members of the opposition have said.

INTERNATIONAL

US President Joe Biden Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

#BIDEN A search by US law enforcement of President Joe Biden’s Delaware beach house turned up no classified documents, the president’s lawyer has said.

#USA Hundreds of people have gathered in a Memphis church to bid farewell to Tyre Nichols, a black man who died after being brutally beaten by police.

#WESTMINSTER A UK Labour MP condemned for describing the Israeli government as “fascist” has apologised for her “intemperate” language.

#AFRICA Pope Francis has  slammed “brutal atrocities, which bring shame upon all humanity” in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, after hearing testimony from victims of the conflict in the capital Kinshasa.

PARTING SHOT

Chris Bellew / Fennell Photography Chris Bellew / Fennell Photography / Fennell Photography

To mark St Brigid’s Day, Trinity College Dublin has installed four new sculptures in its Old Library to honour the scholarship of four trailblazing women. 

The women represented are the scientist Rosalind Franklin, the folklorist, dramatist and theatre-founder Augusta Gregory, the mathematician Ada Lovelace and the pioneering women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft. 

The new sculptures, the first to be commissioned in more than a century, will be displayed among the 40 marble sculpture-busts that line Trinity’s historic Long Room, which were hitherto all of men.

The current artworks represent men throughout history, from Homer and Shakespeare to Dean Jonathan Swift, Sir Rowan Hamilton and Wolfe Tone.