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

Police escort Melissa Reid, of Britain, front, and Michaella McCollum Connolly, formally charged for drug trafficking, to a hearing, in Lima, Peru. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

IRELAND

• The Central Bank says that it will not make any more reports to authorities in connection with the Anglo Tapes.
• New crime figures have shown a rise in homicides, but a fall in sexual offences and burglaries.
• Dungannon woman Michaella McCollum Connolly has pleaded guilty of drug smuggling in Peru today.
• The man charged with the manslaughter of James Humphries in Tallaght on Sunday has been granted bail.
• A threatened strike by Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors has been suspended indefinitely.
• The Taoiseach told the Dáil that the drop in those being granted discretionary medical cards was not due to a policy change
• The National Ploughing Championships got underway in Stradbally, Co Laois.
• A suspicious device was found near the Harold’s Cross hospice in Dublin.
• A man in his 20s died in Cork after his car collided with a lorry last night.
• An autopsy report of an Irish man who died after being stabbed in Switzerland said that it could not determine if  the death was an accident or murder.

INTERNATIONAL

#CHILD ABUSE The former Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger, says that he never tried to cover up child sexual abuse by Catholic priests.

#AMERICA A former FBI agent is pleading guilty to charges that he leaked details of an Al-Qaeda plot to a journalist. Donald Sachtleben disclosed details of a CIA operation that disrupted a plan to detonate a bomb on an American plane.

#RUSSIA A member of the jailed punk band Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, has told the media that she is on hunger strike over conditions she described as “slave labour”.

#NEW YORK A 50-year-old man has been arrested after a three-year-old girl was killed after being trapped in a sofa bed.

INNOVATION

A third ring of radiation around earth, discovered earlier this year, is governed by “different physics”, scientists at UCLA say. [io9]
Ever wondered how the X-Men’s wild card Wolverine works on a biological level? Well today is your lucky day, because a group of scientists have broken Logan down. [Science Creative Quarterly]

PARTING SHOT

(UpNorthLive/YouTube)

A Michigan family has told how their 4lb daschund saved the lives of two family friends, by standing up to a 400lb black bear. Bradley, or Brad as he was known, was described as “fearless” by his owners, the Force family.

Here’s what happened yesterday.