EVERY WEEKDAY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you the five biggest stories of the day.

1. #THE UK: A NEW STRAIN of coronavirus has been identified in southern England as tougher restrictions were imposed in London.

2. #THE VACCINE: Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said there will be “limited volumes” of Covid-19 vaccine in January and February and that May and June is likely to be the “optimal period” for the vaccine roll-out.

3. #INSURANCE: The Central Bank found that the majority of insurers in the Irish market use the controversial practice of differential pricing, leading to customers with similar risks paying different premiums.

4. #OUT OF OFFICE: YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive and a host of services owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet suffered outages across the world this afternoon.

5. #BREXIT TRADE TALKS: Downing Street has said a no-deal Brexit was a “possible” outcome from the EU trade talks, signalling that there had been some improvement since Boris Johnson said it was the “most likely” scenario yesterday.