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

IRELAND

John Treacy (CEO, Sport Ireland) speaking this afternoon in Sport Ireland Institute, Sport Ireland Campus, Blanchardstown. Sam Boal Sam Boal

• Sport Ireland suspended future funding from the Football Association of Ireland.
• Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney dismissed claims that Germany could be open to a five-year time-limit on the Brexit backstop.
• A report has found a “series of weaknessess” in the execution of the National Children’s Hospital project. 
• Permanent TSB boss Jeremy Masding said the bank has 500 vacant properties on its books. 
• A solicitor avoided jail after giving a mobile phone to an incarcerated notorious rapist after he threatened to rape her child.
• Gardaí are investigating dissident links to a spate of ATM robbries across the border region. 
• A paramedic who assaulted two female first aid students when he placed them in a choke hold was described as ‘timid’ by a retired Garda.
• Cliftonville FC footballer Jay Donnelly will serve three months imprisonment for sharing a photo of him having sex with a 16-year-old girl on a WhatsApp group.
• The Gardaí insisted that there was “no security incident” involving the Commissioner Drew Harris’s vehicle at its Phoenix Park HQ last month.

INTERNATIONAL

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu casts his ballot at a polling station in Jerusalem as Israel holds a general election. Xinhua News Agency / PA Images Xinhua News Agency / PA Images / PA Images

#BREXIT: EU Council President Donald Tusk urged the bloc’s leaders to allow Britain to delay Brexit for up to a year. 

#NXIVM: US Actress Allison Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering after allegedly recruiting women to a cult-like secret society that coerced followers into having sex.

#SUDAN: Thousands of demonstrators spent a fourth day camped outside army headquarters in Khartoum in a protest against Omar al-Bashir’s rule.

PARTING SHOT

Journal Media launched a new website which funds in-depth investigative journalism based on suggestions from the public today. 

Noteworthy works by crowdfunding and reporting on stories suggested by people around Ireland. Ken Foxe, one of Ireland’s leading investigative journalists, has been appointed as editor.

On its first day up and running the site already managed to attract enough funds to pay for three different investigations.