EVERY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you the day’s biggest news stories, as well as the bits and pieces you may have missed.

• Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has proposed new sick pay measures under which employers would be responsible for the first month of a worker’s sick pay. Employers’ groups have reacted with a warning.
• Minister for Tourism Leo Varadkar says that the Chinese vice-president’s visit to Ireland could help boost Chinese tourism to Ireland. Ealier, the Tánaiste said that human rights issues were raised during meetings with Xi Jinping – though not specific cases.
• President Higgins welcomed Xi Jinping to the Áras today, while the vice-president also had what appears to have been an awkward date with Eamon Gilmore and Enda Kenny…
• Israel’s supreme court has brought the appeal hearing of a hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner forward to tomorrow. Khader Adnan has been on hunger strike for 65 days over Israel’s policy of ‘administrative detention’ under which prisoners can be held without charge or trial for up to six months.
• “I was as ignorant about cancer as you could be.” In this morning’s column, former trader Nick Leeson describes being diagnosed with cancer after ignoring a plethora of warning signs.

Peekaboo! Four-year-old giant panda Hua Ao plays in a tree at Nanshan Zoo, China. (Shi Liguo/ChinaFotoPress/PA Images)

• Senator Catherine Noone says the government could save €10 million over five years just by switching its email system.
• More than four in ten parents binge drink at least once a month, and of those, two-thirds said they most often drink at home, according to a new survey being carried by RTÉ’s Prime Time tomorrow.
• The Red Cross says it is in talks with Syrian authorities and opposition groups in an effort to broker a ceasefire.
• British health secretary Andrew Lansley was confronted by one particularly irate protester as he headed to Number 10 Downing Street today.
• The Transgender Equality Network has called on Paddy Power to withdraw these Cheltenham ads it says are “deeply hurtful”.
• There’s a $5 million-worth sliver of Moon rock lying somewhere in a dump in Finglas.
• Are self-service checkouts evil?
• We can’t work out which is the better trained in this video: the bird for feeding the dog, or the dog for not eating the bird:

(Video via xxImmortalDreamerxx)

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