17/01/2016 BBC Newsline

School friends of the teenager who died in a house fire

in County Down have attended a service in her memory.

As Maggie Taggart reports, pupils at Assumption Grammar have

A fire in the flat above her father's butcher's shop

in Castlewellan led to the death of 19-year-old Ellen Finnegan.

She has been described as a lively, humorous, charismatic

person, and her friends at Assumption Grammar

in Ballynahinch are shocked at her death.

Today around 200 pupils, staff and local people gathered

Paramedics had taken Ellen from her smoke-filled

bedroom but efforts to revive her failed and she died

there in the early hours of Saturday.

Today her young friends were offered counselling and many of them wept

We're not going to find solutions for why she was taken at such a

young age and in such a tragic way, but we can be with one another and

we can support one another as we journey through this grief and shock

together. We are very close-knit, and everyone has come together and

people have been very focal in terms of the heartbreak. Everyone is

devastated. Ellen was said to

light up every class The school and community has

lost a warm, loving, generous

young woman who was also She was so bubbly and so friendly to

everyone and she will be so missed. She was a great friend to everyone

and it even if you only met her once, he felt that you'd on forever.

She had repeated a year here, so at 19, she was about to sit her final

exams. She had been offered a place at university in Liverpool, so a

life of ambition cut short. Two men have been arrested

on suspicion of attempted murder after an incident in

North Belfast this morning. The police were called to Woodvale

Drive around half-past seven. A number of men were taken

to hospital with serious injuries, The police say they are trying

to establish what happened. The funeral has taken

place of James McDonagh, who died after an assault outside

a bar near Toomebridge last weekend. Hundreds of mourners gathered

at Holy Family Church in Coalisland. One man has appeared in court,

charged with murdering Father Paul Byrne told

the congregation that Mr McDonagh's

life had ended too soon. Today, we gather in complete this

may and silence, still in their state of shock and anger that he was

taken from us. His young life was cut so short.

A murder investigation is underway after the body of a man was found

in a holdall in a canal in County Kildare.

It was discovered yesterday afternoon, by people out walking

Gardai say they believe the body was there for no more than a few

days and are appealing for information.

The vice-chancellors of Queen's and Ulster University say decisions

need to be taken over the future funding of higher education here.

The head of Queen's - Professor Patrick Johnston -

told the BBC's Inside Business programme that a rise in tuition

fees, or a return to public funding

was required to bridge a ?100 million gap.

We have some very critical decisions as a society to make very quickly,

because we are already in trouble. We're bringing corporation tax and

2018. We actually today don't have the graduates to fill those jobs. We

have to come up with a number of solutions, one of which might be the

public purse begins to fund the full investment in higher education that

is needed. Either we do it with fees of a get back to public funding.

The 2016 Bank of Ireland McKenna Cup final will be between

This afternoon Tyrone defeated Fermanagh by seven points to book

In the other semifinal, Cavan travelled to Armagh

After a strong first half from Damien Barton's side,

this Danny Haevron point extended Derry's lead.

Despite conceding a goal, Derry finished strongly

and eventually won by seven points booking a spot

A look ahead now to one of the stories we have coming up

this week on BBC Newsline - here's our political correspondent,

It's another big year in politics. By three out of the five main party

leaders, it'll be the first time that lead their party into Stormont

election. Later this week, I'll be assessing the state of play in the

unionist and nationalist battle grounds.

A look now at the weather for the start of a new week,

Ever be wet weather for a while tonight, heavier and more persistent

rain edges in from the south-west, the breeze freshening up, but by the

end of the night, it will turn more drizzly. Drizzly and damp weather

will continue for a while. It would be raining all the time and

hopefully, by Wednesday, most of us will have dry weather with some

sunshine. More unsettled weather will return towards the end of the

week, pushing in from the Atlantic, so it will be my order. This is the

weather front bringing tonight's rain. It becomes slow-moving because

it is pushing up against this area of high pressure. Several areas of

low pressure ganging up in the Atlantic. Tomorrow, we have rain and

Isil around to begin with, lots of mist and low cloud, so go before the

over high ground. But there would be ice frost and not much lying snow

left. There will be snowfall in Scotland and it will be icy in

Scotland. Across England and Wales, not as cold, but damp and drizzly in

the south-west. Most of the rain edges will edge away tomorrow, so

many places drying up at times. Temperatures close to the average

for this time of year. On Tuesday, there will be some rain in the east,

but it should be dry elsewhere. It will become more unsettled but my

daughter wants end of the week. Our next BBC Newsline bulletin

is at a quarter past Until then you can keep up to date

with local news on BBC Radio Ulster