What the papers say: Wednesday's front pages

Eva Osborne

Here are the stories making headlines this Wednesday.

The Irish Times reports on the US planning to deploy about 3,000 additional soldiers from its elite 82nd airborne division to the Middle East, even as the Trump administration seeks talks with Iran over ending the war.

More than three times as many packages of illegal or fake medicines were seized in Ireland last year compared to the previous year, including weight-loss drugs, sedatives, and impotence medication, according to the Irish Examiner.

Authorities seized nearly 14,000 individual packages imported by people in Ireland, up from 4,950 the year before.

Cork County has the highest number of vacant homes of any local authority in the country, with more than 6,600 empty, The Echo reports.

The Irish Independent leads with the INMO union writing to the HSE seek­ing the top rates of its motor travel “band­ing sys­tem” until the end of the crisis.

It comes as the Gov­ern­ment has left open the pro­spect of fur­ther cost-of-liv­ing meas­ures if needed, with the Taoiseach say­ing “no one knows” how the war will unfold.

The front page of the Irish Daily Mirror is dominated by the uncle of Edenderry petrol bomb victim Tadgh Farrell dying from a fire in the same house.

A woman left fight­ing for life after being set on fire can walk and talk again — and a major gang enfor­cer has been arres­ted over her attemp­ted murder, according to the Irish Daily Star.

Alexis Lee Cam­pion (44) was left with severe burns and in a coma for weeks after a thug set her on fire at her door in Clon­dalkin, west Dub­lin, last Novem­ber 25th.

The Irish Daily Mail leads with a court hearing Michael Flatley has hired a private detective to invest­ig­ate spiralling loans worth mil­lions of euro on the books of a com­pany he estab­lished to run his Lord Of The Dance tour.

A gang­land enfor­cer pre­vi­ously sus­pec­ted of killing a man is being ques­tioned over the attemp­ted murder of an inno­cent woman who was set on fire at her west Dub­lin home, according to The Herald.

Over 100 gardaí were involved in a search and arrest oper­a­tion yes­ter­day as part of the invest­ig­a­tion into the assault on Alexis Lee Cam­pion (above) last year.