A former Cork solicitor has been returned for trial on a single charge of arson at a solicitor’s office and pub, five charges of theft and four charges relating to fraud offences.

Charges against a man relating to possession of 5,000 ecstasy tablets were struck out yesterday, a move understood to be a result of a recent loophole which had temporarily decriminalised certain drugs.

The grieving widow of a 42-year-old cyclist killed in a hit and run a year ago said the driver who left her husband to die at the side of the road had a “heart of stone”.

Two sets of sisters involved in an “all-girlie” violent attack on another woman in a street fight in Kinsale, Co Cork, were yesterday remanded in custody for sentencing next week.

BALLYBRACK VIEW, the villain of the peace when colliding with her Whites Cross, Cork, owner Eva Lewis after a gallop last year and breaking her leg in four places, turned heroine when winning the Oaks Trial Stake at Charleville yesterday.