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

IRELAND

The Knights Templar Room in Freemasons Hall was transformed into the setting of a Bram Stoker style soiree for the Bram Stoker Festival. Rolling News Rolling News

• A receptionist at a child services company was for visiting hardcore porn websites.
• The masters of two Irish maternity hospitals spokes before the Eighth Amendment Committee.
• Some senior gardaí and a senior HSE officer may be called for evidence to the Charleton tribunal following the discovery of previously unknown contact between gardaí and the HSE/Tusla.
• A man was found dead in a cell at Cloverhill Prison this morning.
• Gardaí arrested 42 people and seized drugs and a number of vehicles in Kilkenny and Carlow.
• It was revealed that former Taoiseach Enda Kenny is to receive an honorary doctorate from NUI Galway.
• A construction worker with Irish parents who was shot dead in New York by a man who he had fired just two days earlier was laid to rest.
• Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has accused Fianna Fáil of acting as though a hard border with Northern Ireland is inevitable, during tense exchanges in the Dáil.

WORLD

First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon addresses delegates at the Scottish National Party conference, Strepsils in hand. Jane Barlow Jane Barlow

#SPAIN: The Spanish Prime Minister has given Catalonia’s separatist leader five days to clarify his position on whether or not he was declaring independence.

#WILDFIRE: 15 people died as wildfires torched California’s wine region.

#LAS VEGAS: The hotel where Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock stayed said that the police’s timeline of events “may not be accurate.”

#TRUMP: US President Donald Trump threatened to “challenge” the licence of NBC after the news outlet released a critical report about his views on nuclear weapons.

PARTING SHOT

It’s International Day of the Girl.

To mark the day, a video from director MJ Delaney featuring Freedom by Beyoncé was released and calls for action on some of the biggest challenges girls face like access to education, child marriage and violence.

(Click here if you can’t see the video.)