METRO Friday, October 16, 2009 D TODAY: Dry, fresh and breezy with sunny spells. Max: 15C TOMORROW: Dry and bright with sunny intervals. Max: 14C METRO Weather Economic outlook is improvingTHE economys prognosis is looking better and better. Goodbody Stockbrokers has once again revised its economic forecast with a more optimistic outlook. The economists claim the GDP will only shrink by 1.1 per cent next year, compared with its previous prediction of a 3.7 per cent contraction. Meanwhile, it also expects the economy to expand in 2011 by 2.4 per cent, twice as good as the 1.2 per cent it formerly forecast. Economist Dermot OLeary said they are more confident that a recovery is indeed on the way, which will be led by an improvement in exports. Despite household debt levels increasing further over the past few years to 175 per cent of disposable income, Mr OLeary said Irish households are better able to sustain higher debt levels owing to a younger population and low interest rates. Big Money winner gets NY proposal ONE lucky scratchcard winner got even luckier than she expected on a prize trip to New York this week when her boyfriend grabbed his chance to propose to her. Janice Flood, from ODevaney Gardens in Dublin, had won the dream holiday on RTs Big Money Gameshow and brought her partner, Derek OBrien, with her. Ms Flood said: I proposed to him in the Leap Year. But we never got around to getting an engagement ring. Then on Saturday he just asked me and I said yes. I had planned to propose. I bought the ring two weeks ago, said Mr OBrien, who is un- employed. I was shocked, really shocked, said Ms Flood, a post office worker who has two daughters, aged 19 and 20. When I get home it will hit me then. We were friends for years and years and then we started going out together. We got to- gether in a local pub. The show, hosted by Derek Mooney, brought 39 winners, plus one guest each, to the Big Apple and gave them 2,500 spend- ing money. One winner, Pauline Abbey, from Elm Park, Dublin, was badly hurt in a car crash last year. I was six months laid up because I had to learn to walk again, said the 67-year-old. Her daughter, Teresa, also came to NewYork. She was driving when the accident happened, but she took it handy when she drove her mother all the way from Wexford to Abbey Street to make the deadline for getting her tickets in. Pauline recalled: She parked outside where the bus stops and I said: Youre parking in the bus lane and she said: Mammy just get in quick with the ticket and then get out. I got in the ticket and she started singing New York, New York and I said: You should be so lucky. Pauline Abbey and daughter Teresa at the Rockefeller Center, top; right, Janice Flood and Derek OBrien in Times Square Picture: Mac Innes Champagne fizz has bubble burst ENJOYING a glass of bubbly may depend on our taste cells rather than the bursting of bubbles on the tongue. Charles Zuker, of Columbia University, found that taste-receptor cells respond to carbon dioxide, the gas that puts the fizz into drinks. The work showed that the tongues fizz- sensing cells are the same taste- receptor cells that detect sourness. MENU THE Home Digest 4 Guilty Pleasures Celebrity gossip 6 World Digest 10 Letters 12 MetroLife Arts and entertainment 14-15 60 Second Interview Musician Fionn Regan 16 TV 16-17 Classifieds 19-20 Sport 21-24 Help keep Dublin clean and tidy for everyone by taking your Metro with you and recycling it IRA shot and buried manDISAPPEARED IRA victim Danny McIlhone was shot a number of times before being buried in a secret grave on a remote mountainside, an inquest heard yesterday. Nearly three decades after the then 21-year- old west Belfast man was abducted and killed in May 1981, a jury took just minutes to return a verdict of unlawful killing. Geoff Knupfer, an investigative scientist leading the search for the bodies of the disappeared, told the hearing the IRA admitted details of the shooting to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains. Im absolutely satisfied from information we received from direct sources in the Republican movement that he was shot, he said. The partial remains of Mr McIlhone were uncovered last November in bogland at Ballynultagh, near the village of Lacken in the Wicklow Mountains. Detective Inspector Jody Crowe said a cowboy boot found during an excavation of the site was a breakthrough for investigators. The dead mans brother was shown the boot and said he remembered Danny wearing them when he last saw him. Mr Knupfer said DNA analysis, the identification of the boot and evidence from the IRA left him absolutely satisfied the remains were that of Mr McIlhone. 5 years for drug mule smuggler A wOMAn who pleaded guilty to attempting to smuggle a heavy suitcase containing more than 100,000 of cannabis through Dublin Airport in an effort to pay off her debts has been jailed for five years. The final three years of the sentence were suspended on condition she does not return to Ireland for ten years after her release. Johanna Brits, 27, of Silverpine Randburgh, Johannesburg, in South Africa, arrived in Dublin on a flight from Paris. She was to receive 1,000 for making the delivery. But she was caught after her suitcase was X- rayed by customs and excise officers who discovered cannabis herb with a street value of 124,218. Brits, who has no previous convictions, told garda she had debts because of medical expenses and was to be paid for delivering the drug. 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