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

IRELAND

PAUL SHARP PAUL SHARP

• Noonan says the budget cuts could be ‘significantly less’ but don’t get too excited just yet.
• Ireland has a €12.5 billion mortgage problem of long term arrears.
• The number of complaints made to the Ombudsman for Children was up 16% last year.
• Another college for international students has closed.
• An elderly woman was killed in a crash in Roscommon.
• Greyhound workers will attend talks at the LRC tomorrow after union members vote. 
• A brave minister took on the Ice Bucket Challenge today and smiled the whole way through.

INTERNATIONAL

YouTube YouTube

#SYRIA: An internet video is claiming to show the beheading of US journalist Steven Sotloff by the Islamic State group. It comes after the death of his fellow American journalist James Foley – Sotloff was threatened in the video of the beheading of Foley.

#SPAIN: The arrest warrant against the parents of Ashya King is to be dropped. It comes as the parents of the 5-year-old with a brain tumour were held in custody in Spain while Ashya received treatment after they fled from the UK last week.

#USA: The FBI and Apple are urgently investigating after a massive hack of cloud data leaked intimate pictures of dozens of celebrities across the internet.

INNOVATION

• Better than a mood ring? A Google Glass app analyses facial expressions to determine the mood a person is in , as well as gender and age.
• Five geckos sent into orbit to test the effect of weightlessness on the small lizards’ sex lives have all died.

PARTING SHOT

Have you heard that sitting is the new smoking? This article in Time magazine looks into the report that sitting is killing us.

It warns that ‘you might want to stand up for this’.