Today's other news stories in brief
Climate change expert to give talk
The Cabinet subcommittee on climate change will today hear a presentation from the British government's climate change expert, in an unusual departure from such government meetings, writes Harry McGee.
John Ashton is the special representative for climate change at the foreign and commonwealth office in London, with the rank of an ambassador, and is responsible for supporting ministers in spearheading Britain's international response to climate change.
He has been invited by Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan to address the subcommittee and will outline the huge challenges posed by climate change and the Government responses that will be required.
PSNI's budget warning
The PSNI chief constable said a £100 million deduction from the policing budget over the next three years had prompted a "reality check", writes John Heaney.
Sir Hugh Orde said his imperative was to "minimise the impact of the budget on the front end of policing" regardless of spending cuts.
The Northern Ireland Policing Board has set the target of ensuring fewer than 100,000 crimes are recorded annually by 2010-2011, a reduction of 8,500.
Building pay freeze 'wrong'
A proposed pay freeze in the construction sector is neither morally justifiable nor economically advisable, Siptu president Jack O'Connor has said, writes Steven Carroll.
Mr O'Connor rejected both a 12-month pay pause in the construction sector and a reduction of entry level pay for workers which were proposed by the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) yesterday.
The CIF said the proposal came amid confirmation of rising costs in the construction sector, against a backdrop of falling tender prices on the contracting side and a likely halving of housing output this year.
CIF director general Tom Parlon said any new pay deal must ensure the viability of the industry in the short term and safeguard jobs.
He said new workers join at a rate of €14.88 per hour and that, reflecting the cost of training for these people, the CIF was seeking to lower the rate to €10.50 per hour, which was "still significantly ahead" of the minimum wage requirements.
Dublin dump poses no risk
There will be no risk to the horticultural industry in north Co Dublin from the development of a 30-year, 9.5 million tonne capacity landfill waste dump near Lusk, it was asserted yesterday, writes Tim O'Brien.
Giving evidence on the second day of a hearing into a proposed decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to grant a licence for the landfill, geologist Shane Herlihy, for developer Fingal County Council, said that the landfill would be lined and a minimum depth of 10 metres of clay would be maintained below it. This would be in order to protect a local aquifer.
Woman dies in Longford car crash
A woman has died following a single-vehicle car crash in Co Longford. The incident took place on the Ballinalee to Longford Road at 8.30am yesterday.
Gardaí in Co Longford have appealed for any witnesses to contact Granard Garda station on (043) 876600.
Dunboy death funeral
The sister of one of the three young men who drowned in west Cork has spoken of the loss that she and her mother suffered with the death of her brother just 18 months after the loss of her father.
At her brother's funeral yesterday, Louise O'Driscoll (23) asked both her brother Fintan (17), who died in the Dunboy tragedy on Saturday, and her father Jerh (48), who drowned in a fishing tragedy near Castletownbere in September 2006, to help her mother and herself cope with the terrible loss.
Fintan's funeral Mass took place at the Sacred Heart church in Castletownbere.
Taxi-access funds sought
The State's taxi commissioner has told an Oireachtas committee that more public money needs to be set aside to increase the numbers of disabled-access taxis. Kathleen Doyle, head of the Commission for Taxi Regulation, said she had asked the Government to increase subsidies for taxis.
There were about 1,500 wheelchair-accessible vehicles across the State, she said, about 10 per cent of the national taxi fleet.
Four arrested over murder
Gardaí yesterday arrested four males in connection with the murder of a 21-year-old man on the banks of the Grand Canal in Dublin last month.
Darren Guerrine, of La Touche Road, Bluebell, Dublin, was found dead along the canal at the back of the Jamestown industrial estate on the morning of February 18th.
Four males, all understood to be teenagers, were arrested during a series of raids carried out in Dublin early on Monday morning in connection with the murder. Two of those being detained are under 18.
They are being held under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act at Kilmainham, Kevin Street and Harcourt Terrace Garda stations.
Mr Guerrine was shot once in the back of the head with a shotgun at point blank range on the banks of the canal two weeks ago. A search of the murder scene was carried out and garda divers searched the canal for a weapon.
Man held over bomb threat
A Co Armagh man is facing the possibility of a long jail sentence in the United States where he was arrested for threatening to blow up a transatlantic flight while saying he was operating for Osama Bin Laden.
Aiden Mackle (44) from Portadown was on a flight from Atlanta, Georgia, to Dublin, when he became unruly and had to be restrained by an off-duty garda who was on the flight.
Mackle was arrested on Saturday by the FBI after the aircraft made an emergency landing at Bangor in Maine.