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

IRELAND

Fianna Fail party leader Micheál Martin at Rathfarnham Shopping Centre in Dublin. Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie / RollingNews.ie

• Three Irish citizens evacuated on from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China have been quarantined in a UK hospital.
• Andrew McGinley paid tribute to his ‘creative, funny, unique children’ at their funeral in Rathcoole in Dublin. 
• Gardaí seized €1.6 million in drugs, €700,000 in cash and ‘a number of gold bars’ in a number of searches. 
• Six guns were also recovered in a separate search. 
• A rent freeze, affordable housing and greater public investment in childcare are among the proposals in the Social Democrats’ election manifesto. 
• Gardaí in Limerick have arrested two men suspected of extortion at a building site in the city.
• Tánaiste Simon Coveney has said that he is sick of talking about Brexit but that it will ill ‘dominate Irish politics’.
  
• Two schools in south Dublin have been closed for a number of days after electricity failed, leaving their classrooms without light or heat.
• Gardaí in Dundalk have arrested three people in connection with burglaries carried out in Blackrock in south Dublin.

WORLD

Yui Mok / PA Images Yui Mok / PA Images / PA Images

#BREXIT: The British flag has been removed from its flagpole outside the European Parliament ahead of the UK’s departure from the EU at 11pm. 

#CORONAVIRUS: The first cases of the coronavirus have been diagnosed in the UK, with two people from the same family being treated at a specialist centre.

#IMPEACHMENT: US President Donald Trump’s hopes hopes for a speedy acquittal by the Senate received a boost yesterday as Democrats suffered a setback in their efforts to introduce new witnesses at his impeachment trial.

PARTING SHOT

The Explainer / SoundCloud

On this week’s The Explainer podcast, we answer the question of how worried we should be about the coronavirus in Ireland. How does a virus work? What exactly is a coronavirus? How does it spread? And is Ireland prepared?