A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Staff at two Dublin restaurants still in dark about reopening
Staff at Dublin restaurants Mermaid Café and Gruel, which both ceased trading over Christmas, have not yet been told whether the restaurants will reopen in the weeks ahead.
The restaurants, located on Dame Street next door to the Olympia Theatre, have not reopened since Christmas and staff were told on December 23rd that both would be closed for an extended period.
The owners could not be contacted yesterday.
Staff said that while they had recognised things had been difficult for both restaurants in recent months – trading conditions for the Mermaid Café in particular were said to be very tough in 2010 – the news had still come as a shock.
The Mermaid Café was opened by two young chefs, Ben Gorman and Mark Harrell, in the mid 1990s and was pitched at the higher end of the market. It became one of a new breed of restaurants which flourished in Dublin at the beginning of the boom, winning a whole host of food awards.
Its sister cafe Gruel opened three years later and adopted a simple approach to lunchtimes, which proved very popular.
Report on Ryanair flight 'near miss'
An Air France aircraft almost collided with a Ryanair jet after a trainee air traffic controller cleared the French aircraft to descend through the path of the Ryanair flight in Switzerland.
The "near collision" on June 8th, 2009 near Zurich was only avoided because automated warning systems on both aircraft alerted the pilots and instructed them on what action to take by issuing resolution advisories.
Yesterday, releasing its final report into the "serious incident", the Swiss Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau stated a "high risk of a collision existed", and the separation between the aircraft had been reduced to 1.4 nautical miles laterally and 725ft vertically. The minimum separation should have been 5nm laterally and 1,000ft vertically.
Gardaí treat hotel fire as suspicious
Gardaí yesterday confirmed that they are treating as suspicious a fire which caused hundreds of thousands worth of damage to a former hotel in the centre of Mallow town in north Cork.
Supt Pat McCarthy of Mallow Garda station confirmed that gardaí were treating the fire at the former Central Hotel on Davis Street as suspicious following the completion of a forensic examination of the gutted building.
Supt McCarthy told
The Irish Timesthat the Garda technical team who had carried out the forensic examination had found three separate fires in the building, leading gardaí to suspect that the fire was not accidental.
The fire at the former hotel, which has been closed for the past four years, started before 1.45am yesterday.