Irish Daily Mirror

Airport staff seize €44k tobacco haul

Couple look ahead to better days after both survive health scares It is the silver lining after the last year

- BY JOE O’SHEA BY ELAINE KEOGH news@irishmirro­r.ie

Smuggled tobacco

CUSTOMS officials have seized €44,000 worth of smuggled tobacco at Cork airport.

Detector dog Eva, the scourge of smugglers at the terminal, helped her handlers sniff out more than 75kg of tobacco leaf during routine profiling of passengers arriving in from Spain on Sunday.

The illicit haul was discovered in the checked baggage of three Irish nationals who had disembarke­d from a flight from Alicante.

The Amber Leaf branded tobacco had an estimated retail value of approximat­ely €44,260 – representi­ng a potential loss to the Exchequer of €36,735.

Investigat­ions ongoing.

are

Fatherhood for Joseph couple got the news that the cause of excruciati­ng pains Joseph was having was cancer.

He began chemothera­py for non-hodgkin’s Lymphoma in February and last month it was confirmed he is in remission.

Joseph, 31, who loves GAA, has resumed training on his own to try and build up his fitness again so he can hopefully return to playing later in the year.

Katie said: “Our first year of marriage wasn’t really what we had expected but we are looking on the bright side and staying positive about the future.

“At the end of the day, we are both here, alive and kicking and as bad as our situation is, it could always be worse. “Finding out we were having a baby has given Joseph such a lift and it gave him something really special to fight for throughout his treatment.”

Joseph is due to Katie and Joseph

finish his final round of chemothera­py at the end of this month, just days after their first wedding anniversar­y.

He is urging anyone – in particular men who avoid going to the doctor – with an unexplaine­d pain to get it checked.

He said: “Please, if you ever get a pain that you don’t usually have, do not ignore it. You never know what it could be.

“Make sure you get it checked out. You’re better to be safe than sorry.”

A YOUNG couple who between them have overcome a stroke and fought cancer in their first year of marriage said they “always look on the bright side”.

Katie and Joseph Woods, from Co Louth, are now delighted to be expecting their first child.

Katie, 27, said: “We are very excited and can’t wait to welcome baby Woods into the world in October. It is definitely the silver lining after what we have experience­d.”

The couple married on July 19 last year and exactly one month later, the day Katie was due to return to work, she suffered a stroke.

She said: “Only I knew about the F.A.S.T [Face, Arms, Speech, Time] adverts from the television I would not have known what was happening to me.”

Katie later found out that her stroke was caused by “a little blood clot that travelled through my body and lodged in an artery in my brain”.

Katie never smoked, rarely drank and stayed as fit as possible. The reason for the stroke is still not known.

She later found out she had a hole in her heart which had not closed.

Katie was told everyone is born with a hole in their heart but for 1 in 4 people it does not heal.

She was recovering when the

KATIE WOODS

CO LOUTH YESTERDAY

 ??  ?? HAPPY DAYS Katie and Joseph last summer
DAD’S
THE WORD
BRAVE
HAPPY DAYS Katie and Joseph last summer DAD’S THE WORD BRAVE
 ??  ?? FIND
FIND

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