5 stories you need to know today

1. EgyptAir plane crash ‘most likely caused by terrorism’

French and Egyptian officials believe terrorism was the most likely cause of the downing of EgyptAir flight MS804 over the Mediterranean yesterday, as confusion emerged last night over whether wreckage discovered southeast of the Greek island of Crete was from the stricken aircraft. "We have a duty to know everything," French president François Hollande said. "Once we know the truth, we will draw conclusions, whether it's an accident or another hypothesis that is in all our minds, perhaps a terrorist hypothesis. As Egypt launched an official investigation into the disappearance of theAirbus A320, EgyptAir announced that debris from the jet had been found. However, the head of Greece's air accident and aviation safety board, Athanassios Binis, later contradicted that claim, saying the debris did not belong to an aircraft.

Editorital: Tragedy in the Mediterranean

2. Government faces rows with teachers, doctors and nurses

The Government is facing the prospect of conflict with secondary teachers as well as a major row in the health service after the Health Service Executive moved to suspend the recruitment of doctors and nurses. The country's biggest secondary teachers union voted yesterday to cease working additional hours, a move which may result in teachers facing steep pay cuts and a wave of school closures this autumn. Meanwhile, the new Minister for Education Richard Bruton has been warned by civil servants that schools could be "obliged to close" as a result of reduced funding, and the inadequacy of capitation funding for schools, intended to cover day-to-day running costs, is now a "critical issue". The Irish National Teachers Organisation has called on the Government to immediately address the funding "crisis"

Analysis: Teachers go to war over Croke Park hours

3. Speed limits to be reduced to 30km/h across Dublin

Speed limits are to be reduced to 30km/h throughout Dublin city and suburbs under proposed new bylaws from Dublin City Council's traffic department. Ten years ago the council lowered speed limits in the shopping and central business area of the city from 50km/h to 30km/h. From 2011 the zone was extended as far as Bolton Street on the north side to St Stephen's Green on the south side, and from Church Street in the west to Gardiner Street and Dawson Street to the east. Following an 18-month review of traffic conditions throughout the city and suburbs, and following submissions from city councillors and the public, the council plans a radical expansion of the speed limit to almost all roads and streets as far as its boundary with the four other Dublin local authorities.

4. Independent TD got funds for runway in government deal

An Independent TD who has also been appointed a Minister of State secured millions in extra funding to extend a runway at his local airport as part of the government deal with Fine Gael. Waterford's John Halligan, the Minister of State for Training and Skills, said the money would develop the runway at Waterford Airport to allow larger aircraft to land and increase tourism in the area. Meanwhile, Sinn Féin will force Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to vote together next week when they table a motion calling for the abolition of Irish Water. The party will use its Private Members' time to call for water charges to be immediately suspended and for the water utility to be scrapped.

5. Connemara Irish speakers hanged

Three Irish speakers were condemned to death – in a language they did not understand – for the murder of a family in Maamtrasna in 1882 in a miscarriage of justice that resonates to this day. The handwriting was impeccable but written in a language the correspondent did not speak. "Sir, I beg to state through the columns of your influential journal that my husband, Myles Joyce, now a convict in Galway jail, is not guilty of the crime," a heavily pregnant Brighid Joyce said in her appeal to the editor of the Freeman's Journal on December 11th, 1882. "Does not everyone easily imagine a man going before his Almighty God will tell the thruth [sic], in telling the thruth they must confess that he never shared in it," she continued."I earnestly beg and implore his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant to examine and consider this hard case of an innocent man, which leaves a widow and five orphans to be before long a dhrift [sic] in the world,"she concluded, signing off as "the wife of Myles Joyce that is to be executed on the 15th inst . . ." A response to prison governor George Mason from the viceroy, Lord Spencer, coldly stated that the "Law must take its course". Five days later, even as Brighid had given birth to a daughter, The Irish Times was at the Galway scaffold.