A middle-aged man was viciously assaulted by a younger man armed with a baseball bat as he took a shortcut home through a housing estate after midnight with his wife.

A man threatened to cut his ex-girlfriend’s throat in front of gardaí, it was alleged yesterday.

A middle-aged man who threw a lit tissue through the letterbox of the southern headquarters of the Health Service Executive, causing more than €2m in damage, was today jailed for two years for arson.