A round-up of today's Irish news stories in brief
US coast guard suspends search for missing Irish Google worker
The US coast guard has suspended its search for an Irish man who is missing and feared drowned having fallen from a sailboat near New York, writes Steven Carroll.
Eoin Curran (30) from Templeogue, Dublin, fell into the Long Island Sound, near Larchmont, Westchester County, on Sunday. He was travelling on a seven metre (23 foot) training boat, with an instructor and two other passengers, when a storm blew up, knocking Mr Curran and the instructor overboard. He was not wearing a life jacket at the time.
The New York coast guard said the instructor managed to get back aboard and threw a flotation device to Mr Curran, but he was swept away. Twelve searches were conducted but Mr Curran was not found. The search was suspended yesterday pending further developments.
Mr Curran was working for Google in New York. The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was providing consular assistance to the Curran family.
Man jailed for stabbing boy (14)
A man who stabbed a 14-year-old boy following a domestic dispute has been jailed for three years at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Paul Chambers (44) of Rathdown Road, Phibsboro, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm at a house in Clondalkin on September 15th, 2007.
Seán Guerin defending, told the court that his client had entered a plea of guilty on the basis that he used “excessive force” in self-defence when he stabbed the teenager.
Judge Frank O’Donnell rejected Chambers’s argument as being “devoid of any substance or merit”.
Father-of-two gets jail for knife attack
A Dublin man who left a knife embedded in a man’s back has received a five-year sentence with one year suspended.
Derek Devoy (21) later told gardaí he thought a group of youths he had been fighting with at a Halloween bonfire were attacking his father, so he got a knife and stabbed Christopher Reid (26).
Devoy, a father-of-two of Palmerstown Square, Palmerstown, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting Mr Reid causing him serious harm outside his former home at Whitestown Avenue, Blanchardstown, on November 1st, 2008.
Ballot to be held in lifts dispute
Proposals to end the month-long Otis Lifts strike by members of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union will be discussed over the next two days and put to a ballot on Friday morning. The proposals have not been made public.