A young man who stabbed his best friend ten times in the neck was today found guilty of murder and jailed for life.

A JUDGE yesterday ruled that sexual abuse perpetrated on an eight-year-old girl by a neighbour was the cause of her suicide 18 years later.

YOU quote Michael McDowell (Irish Examiner, April 5) accusing Enda Kenny in the Dáil of having a “bad hair day”.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell, on the Late Late Show last Friday night, tried to deflect attention from his and his Government’s failure to tackle gun crime. He blamed the judges and ended his diatribe by having a go at his former allies in Fine Gael. With friends like this, who needs enemies?

AS someone living below the average industrial wage, I am amused at this new term ‘dig-out’ which we are hearing from Fianna Fáil Ministers and spokesmen.

ANY chance that Zinedine Zidane might come to live in Ireland? Here the victim is always wrong.

AS someone who gets by on what Bertie spends weekly on make-up, I am appalled at the disproportionately high salaries paid to our President and Taoiseach — the highest in the EU.

IN his letter (Irish Examiner, June 6), Nick Folley seems to have totally missed the point of my letter speculating that Home Rule might have been better than what ensued after 1916 (Irish Examiner, May 17).

BRIAN McCAFFREY (Irish Examiner letters, May 17) speculates that Home Rule “might have been as good — if not better — than what ensued from 1916”.

WHILE I have not seen Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley, I can bet that, like similar films previously, it is aimed at a certain audience mostly of the nationalist Irish/American type.

FOR the third time in a month, the men of 1916 were honoured recently.

A Wexford man who raped and sexually assaulted his sister over a five-year period in his early teens has been jailed for five years by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court.

The director of the Central Mental Hospital (CMH) is to come to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court next Thursday concerning a "very sick chronic schizophrenic" who the court heard is a danger to society and his own family.

THE publicity-conscious Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, tells us that the murder of Donna Cleary will be a "watershed".

I READ with amusement Brian McCaffrey’s letter (Irish Examiner, March 1). I don’t think Mr McCaffrey is getting the point of the objection raised by the GRA and AGSI.

THE Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has quite rightly announced the setting up of a garda reserve force in the face of opposition from the garda staff associations.

IT is clear from the responses to President McAleese’s defence of the moral and political status of the Easter Rebellion of 1916, such as that you published by Brian McCaffrey (‘President’s speech under fire,’ Irish Examiner letters, February 7) ...

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese, in her speech on 1916 in Cork on January 30, seems to have undone her own good work on cross-community relations in recent years.

NOW that junior transport minister Ivor Callely is no longer in the driving seat, isn’t it a wonder that the traffic is still moving during this holiday period?

REGARDING the resumed 1916 military commemoration announced by Bertie Ahern to his own party faithful at their recent árd fheis:

MUCH has been made of the excellent findings of the two Morris reports.

LOCAL authority officials have been asked to investigate how waste from their county ended up being dumped illegally in the North.

HEALTH Minister Micheál Martin has been told to keep his nose out of a cross-border row on a new hospital.

A 30 year-old woman was today found guilty but insane of the murder of her eight year-old son by a unanimous jury verdict at the Central Criminal Court

A woman on trial for the murder of her eight-year-old son was a "misdiagnosed schizophrenic" and could have recovered "if she had been listened to", a murder trial jury heard today.

A teenager who choked a Cork girl to death has begun a life sentence after being found guilty of murder at the Central Criminal Court.