Lieutenant General Dermot Early is to retire from the Defence Forces due to ill health.

LAST WEEK, hawthorn bushes covered in white flowers lined the bye-roads of West Cork, and the woods were bathed in deep purple with very few shafts of sunlight penetrating the thick canopy of the trees. Those beams that broke through spotlighted thick carpets of bluebells and mats of white ramsons on the forest floor.

Two former co-workers of murder accused John Crerar told his trial that they saw him washing out the boot of his car with boiling water days after the disappearance of Kildare woman, Phyllis Murphy, over 22 years ago.

A former member of the defence forces who worked as a security guard with John Crerar on the night Kildare woman Phyllis Murphy disappeared has told a jury he lied to gardai when he provided an alibi for Mr Crerar back in 1980.