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

IRELAND

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe at a media doorstep. Leah Farrell Leah Farrell

• Leo Varadkar was not happy with the news that Fine Gael found themselves 12 points behind Fianna Fáil in the latest opinion poll.
• A woman was charged after €75k worth of cannabis was seized in Athlone, Westmeath.
• Two men arrested over a double shooting in north Dublin were released without charge.
• Fine Gael was accused of trying to “buy the election” after an advert from the Government appeared on a Sunday newspaper’s front page.
• It emerged how prices at the petrol pumps shot up in the New Year.
• A pedestrian was seriously injured after being struck by a car in Cork.
• New diaries revealed how an Irish diplomat helped James Joyce’s family flee Nazi-occupied France.

INTERNATIONAL

An anti-government protester is sprayed by a water canon during ongoing protests against the political elites who have ruled the country since decades, in Beirut, Lebanon. Hassan Ammar Hassan Ammar

#CHINA: Seventeen more people in central China have been diagnosed with the new form of viral pneumonia that has killed two patients.

#USA: Trump’s legal team has presented its line of defence for his upcoming impeachment trial, a process they dismissed as unconstitutional and “dangerous”.

#AUSTRALIA: Scientists said that the Australian landscape is being permanently altered by the nation’s wildfire crisis as a warming climate brings profound changes to the island continent.

PARTING SHOT

Commercial space travel got one step closer today after SpaceX completed the last big test of its crew capsule before launching astronauts in as little as two months, mimicking an emergency escape shortly after lift-off today.

Soon, you could be holidaying on the International Space Station (if you’re loaded). 

Check out the today’s lift-off below.