Other stories in brief.
New group to seek access to du Plantier file
A new group, the Association for the Truth about the Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier (Assoph) is seeking to persuade the French authorities to apply for an international rogatory commission to the Irish authorities which would allow them access to the Garda file on the murder, writes Barry Roche.
Assoph vice-president Jean Marc Peyron said: "We think the time has come for a new generation to fight against silence and the absence of results and the lack of success in the judicial procedure - the time has also come for the Irish authorities to give more information about what's in the [ police] file," he said.
Mr Peyron said the family were hopeful the application would be successful but he stressed that it was still at an early stage and the family were hopeful of convincing a French magistrate of the merits of their case.
He was speaking yesterday on a visit with Ms Toscan du Plantier's parents, Georges and Marguerite Bouniol, to the holiday cottage at Toormore near Schull where she was murdered on December 23rd, 1996.
Academy honour for Heaney
The Royal Irish Academy will this evening present the internationally celebrated poet, Nobel Laureate Séamus Heaney, with the Cunningham Medal, an award which was established by the academy in 1789, in recognition of outstanding contributions to scholarship by an academy member. Heaney is the first poet so honoured, writes Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent.
The list of recipients includes distinguished antiquarians, mathematicians, physicists, geologists and Celtic scholars.
The late Frank Mitchell, a former president of the Academy, and author of Reading the Irish Landscape, was awarded the medal in 1989.
Murder of boy (10) to be re-examined
The murder of a 10-year-old boy in Belfast over 34 years ago is to be re-examined by the PSNI after the boy's brother, now aged 50, allegedly confessed to the killing, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
In September 1973 some of the remains of Brian McDermott, Well Street, Woodstock, east Belfast, were recovered from the River Lagan. His murder was not related to the Troubles.
In 2004, a 46-year-old man was arrested in England in connection with the murder.
A file was sent to the North's DPP but no charges followed. The PSNI would not say whether the man arrested four years ago was William McDermott.
However, it emerged last week in an English court that Mr McDermott, a long-distance lorry driver who would have been 15 or 16 in 1973, allegedly said that he had killed Brian.