EVERY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you a roundup of the day’s main news – plus any bits and pieces you may have missed…

• France is set to lose its coveted AAA rating from the agency Standard & Poor’s later this evening. The downgrade will mean that the EU bailout fund is also likely to lose its AAA rating – which in turn will make it more expensive to raise cash for our bailout.
• There’s also bad news emerging from Greece, where talks between the government and private bondholders are said to have broken down. Greece needs to get a 50 per cent ‘haircut’ on its bonds as part of its second bailout.
• The European Commission has insisted that Ireland will not face fines next month if it doesn’t have septic tank laws in place by then – after the government said it needed to rush laws through the Dáil in order to avoid fines kicking in on February 3.
• The High Court has appointed a ‘special manager’ to a credit union in Newbridge, after a number of issues arose in compiling its financial statements for 2011. The Central Bank insists members should not worry about their cash.
• Good news for the staff at La Senza – although they’re facing into the weekend without jobs, they have secured the wages and overtime they were seeking for work in December and January.
• A 40-year-old man is appearing in Naas District Court this evening in connection with the attempted abduction of a family in Kilmeade last April.
• Dubliners beware: the city council will introduce new fees for calling its fire brigades from next Monday. The charges start at €500.
• A better day on the jobs front: a call centre in Waterford which was set up only six months ago is to recruit 250 new staff.

Dublin-based Nigerians protest outside their country’s embassy in Leeson Park, Dublin, in solidarity with #OccupyNigeria protests takign place in their homeland. Nigerians are protesting about the scrapping of a fuel subsidy, though protests have spread to include anger at political corruption. (Thanks to the reader who sent this in.)