EVERY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you a round-up of the day’s biggest news stories, as well as the bits and pieces you may have missed.

• In the aftermath of yesterday’s stress tests, Ireland’s credit rating has been downgraded by the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, which have dragged us down to BBB+. That might sound a bit rubbish, but it’s still three notches above ‘junk’. In better news, though, we’ve been taken off a negative ‘watchlist’ by S&P – so they don’t reckon we’re headed for anything worse.
• If you own bank shares, it may be a good or a bad day. Coming back out of suspension, AIB and Bank of Ireland both saw their shares rise – but shares in Irish Life & Permanent, which is set to be split up, sank by a whopping 58 per cent. The boss of Anglo, meanwhile, says his bank won’t need anything more than the €29bn it’s already gotten from the taxpayer. You’re welcome.
• Are you from Cork? A mixed day for you too. The county council is considering banning photography – even by parents – in playgrounds, in a move geared at guaranteeing child safety, while it’s been confirmed that the Queen will include a trip to Leeside in her jaunt over here next month.
• Jackie Healy-Rae is thinking about running for President – and no, it’s not a joke. JHR, 80, outlined his plans on Radio Kerry this morning, leading many to think the story was an April Fool’s gag. Radio Kerry insist, however, that they weren’t joking.
• Here, by the way, is our pick of some of the better April Fool’s Day gags.
• The missing cobra that had escaped from the New York Zoo has been found and returned to captivity. The snake was found in a “non-public area” – though the fact the snake had a Twitter account may have given the search party a clue.
• In a sentence we never thought we’d ever find ourselves typing, India has banned a book that reckons Mahatma Gandhi left the country for South Africa just so he could be with his gay German body-building partner.
• Brian (formerly Bryan) McFadden and Delta Goodrem have split up. We have nothing else to add – except to suggest that they might have been struck by the Twitter variant of the Curse of Hello.
• The Not Primate of All-Ireland, Cardinal Brady, has been telling us about a friend who had a nasty experience – getting stuck in a confessional box.
• Finally, you might remember the young identical twin boys we featured having a less-than-coherent babble with each other earlier this week. Well, CollegeHumor reckons it’s deciphered the exact nature of the lads’ conversation – and it turns out to have been much more highbrow than we may have anticipated.

More: the week that was, in photos >