Irish football fans won’t have had too much trouble coming up with a comparison for 24 hours which saw World Cup challengers Spain come close to total meltdown just two days before their opening Group B game against Portugal in Sochi.

THE Vatican should break its silence and come clean on what it knew about systemic clerical child abuse in Ireland, Labour foreign affairs spokesman Micheal D Higgins has demanded.

SPANISH TV yesterday broadcast chilling security-camera footage of the Madrid train bombings in which 191 people died. It showed at least one bomb exploding inside a train at Atocha station.