A Dublin teenager, who became the first person in the State to be charged with a newly designated offence for smuggling drugs into a prison, has been remanded in custody pending sentence.

The family of an Ulster man left brain damaged after being attacked with a hammer while he lay in his bed said yesterday they were “disgusted and upset” that his attacker has gone missing after being let out of jail on compassionate leave.

Young prisoners are getting a second chance at education at Hydebank Young Offenders Centre in Belfast. Almost 40% of the inmates at the centre have dyslexia (four times the national average), many have been expelled from school and 70% have poor reading and writing skills.

Lives are being put at risk after mindless thieves callously stole an essential piece of communication equipment from an ambulance. Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) crew members were attending a patient at a house on the Bushmills Road, Coleraine, at about 8pm on Saturday when their vehicle was targeted.

A hospital probe is under way into how an Ulster pensioner received more than 30 fractures to her body after her death. The move comes after Mary McGinley (78), from Orchard Street in Strabane, who died from pneumonia at Altnagelvin Hospital on January 3, was found to have 34 rib fractures before a post mortem was carried out.

Anti-poverty campaigners have slammed the Government’s policies on tackling poverty as a “catalogue of missed targets and opportunities”.

The Oireachtas health committee is meeting this week to discuss new legislation aimed at reforming the way the medical profession is regulated. Under the proposed Medical Practitioners Bill, a majority of members of the Medical Council will be lay people rather than doctors.

A high-profile committee of MPs is to investigate health and education provision at Northern Ireland’s prisons. The move comes after Roseanne Irvine, 34, hanged herself in her Maghaberry cell in March 2004 after failing to see a doctor about mental health problems.

A new suicide prevention programme is being launched today. The initiative at the Cluain Mhuire Clinic in Blackrock, Co Dublin, will have a Suicide Crisis Assessment Nurse that will refer patients to services that best meet their needs.

A teenager has been stabbed in the face in a suspected sectarian attack in Belfast. A gang of five men attacked the 17 year-old and his friend on Shaftesbury Square on Saturday night.