A Cavan bachelor who developed "a distorted conception" of his then five to 15-years-old niece as his "life's partner" has been jailed for 12 years by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court.

The concluding stages have been reached in the trial of a Meath man who is accused by a now 29-year-old woman of raping and sexually assaulting her in Cavan when she was eight or nine years old.

A garda has told a rape trial at the Central Criminal Court that he didn’t know who interfered with a statement of medical evidence in the book of evidence.

Murdered German journalist Bettina Poeschel may have been killed and later dumped and hidden in dense undergrowth, a murder trial jury heard at the Central Criminal court today.