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

IRELAND

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at the Department's staff Christmas choir carol event Leah Farrell Leah Farrell

• An inquest has heard that the Hawe children were all stabbed to death in their beds, while their mother Clodagh died in the sitting room.
• A RTÉ sports producer has pleaded guilty to sex offences after he travelled to England to meet what he thought was a 13-year-old girl.
• A jury has found a teenager guilty of murder for stabbing his best friend to death.
• A man has received a suspended prison sentence of two years for beating his ex-girlfriend.
• The ASAI has upheld a complaint made against Eir over the advertised price of €1 for a sports channel bundle.
• A Kildare father-of-five who admitted assaulting a man who later died has been jailed for two and a half years.
• Gardaí have issued an appeal for the public’s assistance in tracing the whereabouts of Martin Dalton who is missing from Cork City.
• Online tech retailer Click.ie has moved to reassure customers that products will be shipped to them before Christmas following a number of complaints.

INTERNATIONAL

Firefighters at the scene following a fire at a hotel in Loch Lomond in Scotland Andrew Milligan Andrew Milligan

#WASHINGTON: A number of people have been killed after a passenger train derailed onto a busy highway in the US state of Washington.

#SOUTH AFRICA: Deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa has been elected as head of the ruling ANC party.

#SUFFOLK: Shots were fired by US military service personnel and a man was arrested at an incident at an RAF base in the UK.

#JAPAN: The US military has blamed human error after a window from one of its helicopters fell onto a school sports ground in Japan.

PARTING SHOT

The women who star in the upcoming move A Wrinkle in Time have graced the cover of the latest Time magazine.

Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, Storm Reid and Reese Witherspoon were all lined up on the cover looking fierce.

(Click here if you can’t view the tweet)