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

IRELAND

Some of the PPE equipment sourced from China on display today. RollingNews.ie RollingNews.ie

• The Department of Health confirmed that 21 more people have died from Covid-19 in Ireland, bringing the death toll here to 158.
• Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has rejoined the medical register as a doctor to offer his services to the HSE during the Covid-19 pandemic. 
• A Dublin criminal who was shot dead in Belfast yesterday was a suspect in the murder of teenager Keane Mulready Woods. Robbie Lawlor was shot a number of times at close range outside a house in north Belfast yesterday morning. 
• There are now 50 clusters of coronavirus cases in nursing homes around the country, according to a new report from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre. 
• The public has urged by gardaí to continue social distancing ahead of the expected coronavirus peak.
• A man who coughed on gardaí and said that he coronavirus has appeared in court charged over the incident. 
• Gardaí in Cork have begun an investigation after a fatal crash involving a scrambler bike in Blarney yesterday evening.
• The Irish Cancer Society has urged people to contact their GPs as normal if they notice cancer symptoms during this time. 

INTERNATIONAL

A handful of people were allowed to attend the Palm Sunday celebrations in St Peter's Basilica. Alberto Pizzoli / AP/Press Association Images Alberto Pizzoli / AP/Press Association Images / AP/Press Association Images

#SCOTLAND: Scotland’s Chief Medical officer is facing pressure, after it emerged that she had visited her family’s second home in Fife during the coronavirus pandemic, against her own advice that all Scots should stay home.

#SPAIN: The country saw its third consecutive daily decline in the number of people dying from the coronavirus pandemic, recording another 674 deaths today.

#TRUMP: The US is heading into what could be its “toughest” week as coronavirus cases swell nationwide, Donald Trump has said.

PARTING SHOT

Some good news for Toy Story fans. The Pixar staff, Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan, who brought the animated classic to life, have received the Turing Prize – basically the Nobel Prize of computer science. 

This BBC piece has a lovely opening that captures the achievement:

In the opening scene of Toy Story, released in 1995, a cluster of boxes is scattered across a child’s bedroom. The sun streams into the room as a Mr Potato Head doll demands money from a seemingly stricken cast of plastic and plush toys outside a cardboard bank.Into the picture arrives the hero – a cowboy sheriff made of plastic and fabric with a pull-string to make him speak. The sheriff casts a shadow over the villainous potato who flees from the law.It’s a scene plucked from a child’s imagination. It was also the culmination of decades of development in computer animation. 

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