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

Gardaí at the scene in Ardclough, Co Kildare, where a man's dismembered body was found in a suitcase in the Grand Canal Eamonn Farrell / Rollingnews.ie Eamonn Farrell / Rollingnews.ie / Rollingnews.ie

IRELAND

• Gardaí have appealed for information from the public after a man’s dismembered body was found in a suitcase on the Grand Canal in Co Kildare.
• Transport minister Paschal Donohoe has defended FAI chief executive John Delaney after a picture emerged of Delaney apparently taken on a canvass with Labour deputy leader Alan Kelly in Co Tipperary.
• A 20-year-old man has been killed in a workplace accident in Co Meath.
• After both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael released election posters this week, Sinn Féin have released an ad of their own that takes square aim at the other two parties.
• Gardaí have appealed for help in locating 59-year-old Christina Lavin who has been missing from Dublin since yesterday.
• A number of men have been seriously injured, and two men have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, following a disturbance at a house in north Belfast.
• A 37-year-old man was killed, and four others injured, in a two-car collision at Roscrea, Co Tipperary.
• Aisling Brady McCarthy, the Irish nanny once accused of killing a baby in her charge in Boston, plans to take legal action against her accusers.
• An Irish man, whose wife disappeared in mysterious circumstances in 2007, has been ordered to ‘self-deport’ by a US judge.

WORLD 

Bill Cosby, pictured arriving at court, 30 December 2015 AP / Press Association Images AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images

#MANCHESTER: A 34-year-old woman was arrested in connection with the murder of a 60-year-old company director who was found stabbed to death in her luxury country home.

#FRANCE: A man has died after being left ‘brain-dead’ by a clinical drug trial.

#COSBY: The case against the American comedian, accused of multiple sexual assaults, may be about to fall apart. 

#ISLAMIC STATE: At least 400 people have been kidnapped by the extremist group following an attack on a Syrian city that is reported to have left 300 people dead.

#IRAN: The gulf state can sell oil again after having sanctions lifted in the wake of abandoning its nuclear weapons programme.

INNOVATION

• Wondering what to do with your old smartphone? Don’t throw it out – some good may come of it yet. (TheJournal.ie)
• Many of us have probably never dealt personally with Bitcoin, but has the digital currency experiment failed? (Engadget)

PARTING SHOT

Ever wondered what people did to find useless information before Google came along? It seems they asked their public library.

The New York Public Library has unearthed a file full of the questions that a bemused populace used to submit to them before anyone had even dreamt of an information superhighway.

The answers probably didn’t come back quite as quickly mind you.

h/t i100