Bus Eireann is urging unions involved in the bus strike to return to the talks table.

Over a million people were affected yesterday after drivers at Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann walked off the job in a row over plans to privatise a tenth of all routes.

Pickets have been placed at bus depots again today and there are five more days of strikes planned this month - that's despite a legal bid by the transport companies to get back million in lost earnings.

234 women and children have been rescued from Boko Haram militants in Nigeria.

The operation took place in the vast Sambisa forest in the north-east of the country.

It is not yet clear if any of the 200 girls abducted from a school in Chibok in April 2014 were among those freed.

The search is continuing in the North for a convicted murderer who escaped from prison staff during a hospital visit in County Down.

The public are being warned not to approach 27 year-old Thomas Valliday.

He's serving a jail term of at least 17 years for battering a man to death in Belfast in 2008.

Officials in the US city of Baltimore are preparing for more potential unrest - with a major rally planned later against police brutality.

It follows the death of 25 year-old Freddie Gray - a black man injured in custody.

Yesterday, prosecutors announced he shouldn't have been arrested in the first place - and that he'd been murdered.

The National Organisation for Reform of Marijuana Laws are holding a demonstration in Dublin this afternoon calling for the drug to be decriminalised.

The group says it would benefit to the Irish economy if cannabis were legalised and sold through reputable outlets.

The rally will begin in the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square and making its way towards Leinster House.