SAOIRSE32

BN.ie

10/12/2006 - 15:05:23

Six Irish people who stayed in a top London hotel the same time Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned are being sought by officials, it was confirmed today.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it has located four of the six names given by UK officials earlier today and will continue to trace the whereabouts of the remaining two.

Hundreds of guests and customers who were in the Millennium Hotel and its bar on November 1 are being offered tests to determine if they have been contaminated with radiation.

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs stressed that the tests are precautionary, but that those contacted will be urged to call health chiefs in the UK as well as their own GP and local health authority.

The spy fell ill after meeting three Russian men at the hotel on November 1 and died in hospital just over three weeks later. He was buried on Friday in a sealed coffin.

Traces of polonium-210 are reported to have been found in a fourth-floor room at the hotel, as well as on a cup from the hotel’s Pine Bar.

All seven staff working at the bar on the day of Mr Litvinenko’s visit have been contaminated with polonium-210.

Two police officers working on the murder inquiry have also tested positive for polonium-210.

A team of nine Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detectives is currently in Russia to investigate Mr Litvinenko’s poisoning.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it had been contacted by the British Foreign Office in relation to six Irish people were also staying at the hotel around the same time.

“We were in a position today to contact four of the six Irish people listed by the British Foreign Office as having visited or stayed at the Millennium Hotel and the Pine Bar at the hotel on or about November 1, the date on which the late Mr Litvinenko may have received the fatal dose of polonium-210,” said a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs.

“We expect to contact the remaining two people tomorrow and as a precaution we will be asking them to contact the NHS-dedicated number in Britain set up to deal specifically with this tragic event.

“They should, however, also contact their GP and the HSE here in Ireland.

“It must be stressed that this is precautionary, but the Health Protection Agency in the UK have revised its risk assessment to include people who visited the hotel following significant concentrations of polonium-210 being detected in the urine of some staff members of the Millennium Hotel.

“They may have become infected from surfaces and furniture.

“Minister Dermot Ahern is being kept briefed on the situation and has asked that every assistance be provided to the individuals concerned.”

By Cahal Milmo and Andrew Osborn
Belfast Telegraph
Friday 8, December 2006 - 10:52

Five weeks after Alexander Litvinenko suddenly fell ill at the hands of an unknown poisoner, the riddle of his murder and the uneasy diplomatic stand-off that surrounds it grew ever more knotted in intrigue and tragedy.

As the former Russian spy’s radioactive body was laid to rest in a north London cemetery, the authorities in Moscow announced they were investigating the attempted murder of one of his business associates.

Dmitry Kovtun, one of two Russian businessmen who met Mr Litvinenko on several occasions in London prior to his assassination, was reported to be in a coma in a Moscow hospital last night after testing positive for polonium-210.

In a day of further twists, it was revealed that seven workers at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, where the men met on 1 November, had also tested positive for the radioactive isotope. (more…)

Belfast Telegraph

**As the Belfast Telegraph has switched to a layout which I find to be a major pain in the arse, I will try to give you the print version link. After awhile, however, BT archives their articles, so the link won’t work later anyway. :-p

By By David Gordon
[Published: Friday 8, December 2006 - 14:24]

The scale of an education crisis among Protestant working class children in Belfast was today exposed by a powerful Parliamentary body.

And the findings of the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) were swiftly cited by Secretary of State Peter Hain to push the case for major schools reform in Northern Ireland.

In their new report, the MPs rapped faltering efforts to tackle the problem of poor maths and English skills among many pupils across both communities.

But they voiced particular alarm about levels of educational achievement within deprived Protestant areas of Belfast.

The PAC concluded that the issue must be “one of the major challenges” facing Northern Ireland.

It said “significant differences” existed in the GCSE English and Maths results of Protestant and Catholic schools in poorer parts of the city, with Protestant pupils performing “disturbingly less well”.

The MPs also noted that social deprivation levels are higher in Catholic areas.

As part of their investigation, the PAC examined statistics for Glasgow schools and found no marked differences between Catholic and non-denominational schools there.

In addition, Protestant children in deprived Belfast districts were found to be doing “much less well” than their counterparts in non-denominational Glasgow schools.

The committee was particularly shocked that only 4.4% of Protestant children who sat GCSE Maths in secondary schools in disadvantaged Belfast areas had achieved grades between A* and C2.

It was also heavily critical of the disappointing returns from a £40m drive to raise numeracy and literacy standards across the province’s schools system.

It said progress had been “manifestly unsatisfactory” and the Department of Education had “failed to show sufficient leadership in driving things forward”.

PAC chairman Conservative MP Edward Leigh said today that, although the committee recognised the achievements of many children in the province compared favourably with the brightest in the rest of the UK, the school system in Ulster had tolerated, for too long, a situation where a significant proportion of children were underachieving.

The Secretary of State today told the Belfast Telegraph: “This is a very serious and important report from the PAC and we must consider it carefully and provide a full response in due course.

“However, it does appear to vividly demonstrate the point that I have been seeking to make over many months, that while Northern Ireland’s education system does very well for some pupils, too many are being failed by it.

“The setting of a young person’s life chances by a couple of exams cannot be the right way to proceed and that’s why ending the 11-plus is so crucial.”

Mr Hain said “far more” than abolishing the 11-plus was required and highlighted other current education initiatives including investment in before and after school activities.

“Northern Ireland can and should be world class, but it can only thrive in a harsh global climate if we don’t waste the talent of any of our young people,” he said.

In its evidence to the PAC, the department suggested that the “considerable time” devoted in P6 and P7 to preparing for the 11-plus was “narrowing” the curriculum and having a negative effect on the 60% of pupils who do not go to grammar schools.

The PAC, meanwhile, cautioned against “a simplistic view” that “structural change” was the answer to the problems.

“The differences which we have highlighted between Catholic and Protestant children in socially deprived areas suggest that there are much more profound difficulties at work than the system of selection,” it said.

The Commons report was today welcomed by Ulster peer Baroness Blood who has had a long association with skills training in Belfast’s Shankill area.

Baroness Blood said education had been undervalued historically in Protestant working class areas. She also stated that some “tremendous work” was currently being done but more was needed and funding had to be better targeted.

“We still have a huge problem in numeracy and literacy, there’s no doubt about that,” she said.

Sunday Life

10 December 2006

Conservationists have won the battle to save 16 Moore Street.

The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has announced that the historic building is to be declared a National Monument, because it served as the headquarters of the 1916 leaders after they retreated from the GPO.

Campaigner Matt Doyle, from the National Graves Association, said it was about time the building was given the recognition it deserves.

Belfast Telegraph

[Published: Saturday 9, December 2006 - 09:16]

A painting by notorious loyalist Michael Stone has been withdrawn from an internet auction site.

The oil painting, titled, Kneeling Nude on a Red Background, had appeared on eBay with an asking price of almost £10,000.

Four offers were made for the painting since it was put up for sale on November 29, but the “buy now” price of £9,995 had not been met before it was pulled 20 hours before the auction was due to close.

A spokesperson for eBay could not tell the Belfast Telegraph if the painting had sold or had simply been removed.

Stone is currently in custody charged with attempting to murder five people, including Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in a one- man attack on the Assembly building at Stormont during a debate last month.

Images of the 51-year-old were flashed around the world as cameras captured him trapped in a revolving door while being held by security staff.

He was later charged with five attempted murders, possession of pipe bomb-style explosives, knives and a replica firearm.

Stone had previously been sentenced to almost 700 years in jail for six murders, three of which were committed during a lone gun and grenade attack on an IRA funeral in Belfast in 1988.

Stone learned to paint during his time in the Maze prison.

He was released on licence in 2000 as part of the Good Friday Agreement after serving 12 years in prison.

His early-release licence has since been suspended by Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain.

The eBay text describes the 37in x 29in painting as “an original signed masterpiece from Michael Stone’s collection complete with a signed photoset dated 2006.

“His paintings are vivid and not so much political as topical, but masterpieces of history.”

I would just like to say that as I cannot possibly keep up every day with all the significant and interesting news from the North due to various reasons, that two excellent all-around sources for you to check each day are:

NEWSHOUND

News Now: Northern Ireland

In addition, you can find many links to other news sources on my list: micheailin’s links

NEWSHOUND

(Irish News)

The conviction of Jim Fulton for a litany of paramilitary offences has given a chilling insight into a campaign of violence and crime and waged by a band of LVF members in the mid-Ulster area in the 1990s.

The son of a Co Armagh woman murdered in a pipe-bomb attack on her home has welcomed the conviction of LVF leader Jim Fulton for his role in the attack.

Fulton has been told that he will serve a life sentence for a catalogue of offences including his admission to undercover police officers of his involvement in the 1999 murder of Portadown grandmother Elizabeth O’Neill.

The 38-year-old – a brother of former LVF leader Mark ‘Swinger’ Fulton who was found dead in his prison cell in 2002 – could also face two further life terms on charges of conspiring to murder Sinn Féin office workers in Newry and another man.

Instead of reading his 226-page judgment in full at Belfast Crown Court yesterday (Thursday) Mr Justice Hart went through the indictment, telling Fulton he was guilty of 48 charges but acquitting him of 14 others.

He was convicted of aiding and abetting the murder of Mrs O’Neill, two counts of conspiring to murder, seven of attempted murder, nine explosive charges, 12 woundings and attempted woundings, and seven firearm offences – including possessing the gun which hitman Clifford McKeown used to murder Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick at the height of the Drumcree dispute in 1996.

The charge list also included one attempted robbery, one of perverting the course of justice, two false imprisonments, two hijackings, two drug-dealing offences, being a member of the LVF and directing its activities.

Among the judge’s acquittals were one charge of attempted murder, two attempted woundings, two explosive charges, one firearms offence, two drug-dealing offences, three robberies, two false imprisonments and an attempted robbery.

Mr Justice Hart acquitted Fulton’s co-accused Muriel Gibson (56) of involvement in the murder of Catholic council worker Adrian Lamph but convicted her of impeding the arrest and prosecution of his killers.

Gibson, with an address at Clos Trevithick in Cornwall, was also found guilty of withholding information about a shooting, two charges of possessing firearms, two of having explosives and LVF membership. She was acquitted on three explosives charges.

The convictions come after both Fulton and Gibson confessed to undercover surveillance police about their activities with the LVF between 1991 and 1999.

Their trial, the longest in Northern Ireland’s legal history, had run from September last year until June.

They will be sentenced in January but Fulton was told that he would receive a life term.

Fulton, from Queen’s Walk, Portadown, is the second person to be jailed for involvement in the murder of Mrs O’Neill who was married to a Catholic.

She died when she picked up a pipe bomb which had been thrown at her house in the loyalist Corcrain estate in June 1999.

Fulton confessed to the undercover police that although he was not present he had planned how attacks would be carried out, instructing that one man throw a brick through a window and another throw a bomb through the hole.

Mrs O’Neill’s son Martin last night said his family were happy with the conviction.

“That was the guy who gave the go-ahead for the attack which killed my mother to take place,” he said.

Mr O’Neill also said the family would not lose hope that the other men involved would be pursued.

“There are men out there who have never been charged or brought to justice,” he said.

“I have two wee children, Reese (9) and Sophie (4). Our mother never got to know them because of these cowards.

“They didn’t get anything out of [killing her]. I don’t know what excuse they could have.”

Among Fulton’s litany of other convictions are four attempted murders in July 1998 when a blast bomb was thrown at security forces during the Drumcree stand-off, wounding four officers and leaving three unable to return to duty.

On the transcript Fulton can be heard describing the weapons as “just like grenades… that’s the ones we were throwing at the peelers at Drumcree”, and that he threw one so hard it “very nearly took my shoulder out”.

There were also so-called punishment attacks on three men who had fallen foul of the loyalist paramilitaries, a gun attack on the home of a retired prison officer and the hijacking of a Post Office van which was then loaded with a hoax bomb and the driver ordered to take it to police lines at Shillingtons Bridge in Portadown.

Initially the Crown had contended that Gibson had “pre-knowledge” of the murder of 29-year-old Adrian Lamph, gunned down in Portadown on April 21 1998 but Mr Justice Hart convicted her instead of impeding the arrest and prosecution of Mr Lamph’s killers and of possessing the gun which killed him.

He said although she had no “prior knowledge” of what was to happen, “she did everything she could to ensure that all evidence would be destroyed or removed” and confessed to the police about taking the “still hot” gun away.

December 9, 2006
________________

This article appeared first in the December 8, 2006 edition of the Irish News.

Sunday Times

Liam Clarke
10 December 2006

DISSIDENT republicans are organising meetings to protest against Sinn Fein’s proposed support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Angry unionists are also rallying in opposition to the Democratic Unionist party’s (DUP) plan to share power with Sinn Fein. Both sets of meetings are being seen as an attempt to derail the Irish and British governments’ efforts to secure a power sharing agreement by March 26 next year.

Hardline republicans say they intend to hold a public debate in Toomebridge on Thursday to discuss policing and that more will follow. A 12-strong steering group will meet today to organise the meetings in an attempt to highlight what they regard as a Sinn Fein sell-out. The steering group includes members of Sinn Fein unhappy with their leadership’s strategy, as well as representatives of the Irish Republican Socialist party (IRSP) and 32-County Sovereignty Movement, the political counterparts of the INLA and the Real IRA.

Willie Gallagher, an IRSP representative on the group, said the working title for the organisers was Concerned Republicans. The group held a policing debate at Conway Street Mill in Belfast last week. It was attended by 300 people, including a leading member of the IRA in north Armagh.

“Afterwards we were approached by a lot of people, including Sinn Fein members, demanding similar debates around the country,” Gallagher said. “We were told Sinn Fein is having private meetings on policing, but they are geared towards the yes men. It is a closed shop.”

The Concerned Republicans group is considering mounting political opposition to Sinn Fein, such as supporting independent candidates in marginal constituencies if assembly elections are called on March 7.

Gallagher condemned any threats against Sinn Fein leaders. Last week Gerry Kelly, the party’s spokesman on policing, showed journalists a letter from the PSNI saying dissidents were planning to attack him.

“It is hard to either prove or discount such warnings, but I would be sceptical of it,” Gallagher said.

“There is no way we would get into bed with people who are conspiring to use violence against the Sinn Fein leadership. If there was even a hint of that we wouldn’t take part in it.”

Security sources are still concerned about dissident attacks and believe the Real IRA has recruited significant figures from the Provisionals’ north Armagh, east Tyrone and south Derry brigades. According to Danny Kennedy, an Ulster Unionist MLA, “security contacts are expressing particular concern about north Armagh and the Lurgan/Craigavon area”.

In April police discovered a car bomb in Lurgan and in August they defused a bomb in a taxi.

Hardline unionists are planning strategies to put the DUP off the idea of sharing power with Sinn Fein and to exploit the divisions opening in the party.

Robert McCartney, leader of the UK Unionist party, said he was aware that meetings critical of the DUP’s drift towards power sharing will be held in Ballymena and Coleraine.

Guardian

Beatle was so incensed by Bloody Sunday in 1972 that he met leading Belfast Provo in New York

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday December 10, 2006
The Observer

John Lennon met the IRA and offered to sing at a fundraising concert for republicans after Bloody Sunday, according to a new book about the murdered Beatle out next month.

The pacifist singer was so incensed about the British army’s killing of 13 unarmed demonstrators in Derry in 1972 that he agreed to hold talks with an IRA representative in New York shortly afterwards. But such was Lennon’s confused thinking about Ireland that during his talks with a leading Belfast Provo he also suggested doing a gig for working-class Northern Ireland Protestants.

Lennon’s relationship with the IRA is confirmed by the Provos’ former ‘Belfast Brigade’ press officer, Gerry O’Hare, in an interview with rock n’roll biographer Johnny Rogan. O’Hare, who later left the Provisional IRA and pursued a career in Irish journalism, said the Provos’ high command sent him over to New York on a speaking tour shortly after Bloody Sunday. Through republican contact in the city, O’Hare linked up with Lennon.

Website: Remembering Bloody Sunday

‘You see in New York there were Irish Americans who kept him [Lennon] briefed. I was over on a speaking tour and a guy said to me, “would you like to meet John Lennon?” Within two days I was in his presence,’ O’Hare said.

Lennon had recorded political agitprop songs such as ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ‘Luck Of The Irish’, donated royalties to the Civil Rights Movement and had joined anti-internment marches the previous year. O’Hare, who in the early Seventies operated under the nom de guerre of ‘S O’Neil’, said the IRA leadership regarded Lennon as a useful ally.

‘He was taken very seriously because he offered to do two concerts - one in Dublin and one in Belfast. When I was in New York I met him briefly through a contact whose name I do not want to divulge. I went up to the apartment and I asked Lennon was he serious about all this. He said he was, but his problem was that if he left America he might not be able to get back in again and he was frightened about this.

‘So I came back and told the people on our side, “he wants to do it, but this is his big problem.” And then, of course, it faded from our priorities. But I did speak to him myself. He knew who I was and where I was coming from. He said he’d do it all right.’

O’Hare tells Rogan he was convinced that Lennon was dedicated to the Irish republican cause even if he appeared confused about the conflict.

‘You have to think of the time. There was nobody bigger than the Beatles, and John Lennon was espousing his working-class values. We [the IRA] were thinking, “This is brilliant, how did he get away with it?”… Whether he [Lennon] was [just] caught up in the emotion, I don’t know.”

‘He gave me the impression he was genuine. I said, “that’s fine”.’ The upshot of it was that he said he would love to do a concert, but if he did it he insisted on doing one in Belfast too. I got the impression that he was very anxious to do one for the Protestant community as well.

‘In the end he just explained to me, “I have a difficulty, my lawyers are fighting this. There’s a lot of things I want to do and I badly want to go back home”.’ He kept saying “back home” and I presumed he meant London or Liverpool or whatever. Finally, he said, “until such time as that, this will have to be put on the long finger.” So it was left to the guy who introduced me to him, that if it were ever going to happen then he would be the contact and we would do what we had to do on this side. But nothing ever happened.’

Rogan has also uncovered still classified FBI files on Lennon, which, he claims confirms MI5 whistleblower David Shayler’s allegation that the British security services spied on Lennon because of the star’s support for Irish republicanism.

‘Lennon: The Albums’ by Johnny Rogan is published next month by Calidore-Music Sales; £12.99.

BN.ie

09/12/2006 - 13:51:37

It is getting increasingly hard to believe that Sinn Féin can meet its commitment under the St Andrews Plan for power-sharing at Stormont, a senior Democratic Unionist MP claimed today.

North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds cast doubt on Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s and British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s timetable for devolution by March 26.

And he also moved to scotch suggestions that the Democratic Unionist Party was divided over the party’s handling of the St Andrews Plan.

“The DUP has a clear united policy which is the resolution that was passed by our executive on November 9,” he said.

“It says there can only be agreement when there is delivery by the republican movement on a host of issues. Those are a commitment to uphold the rule of law, support the police and the courts, a commitment to purely democratic means and an end to paramilitary and criminal activity.”

Mr Blair and Mr Ahern are hoping that fresh Assembly elections will take place in early March in preparation for a new devolved Government on March 26.

However major stumbling blocks remain, primarily over policing.

Sinn Féin is the only party of the four parties who would qualify for devolved ministries which does not support the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The Reverend Ian Paisley’s DUP wants Sinn Féin to publicly endorse the PSNI before a power-sharing government will be formed.

BN.ie

10/12/2006 - 10:44:09

The families of victims killed in the Dublin Monaghan bombings have criticised delays in a Government-commissioned investigation as it passes its sixth deadline.

Justice for the Forgotten said it is concerned and disappointed that the Commission of Investigation into the 1974 tragedy is to ask for its seventh extension.

The report, headed by barrister Patrick MacEntee SC, was due to be completed tomorrow and handed over to the Oireachtas for approval.

However, a request for an extension will now go before the Cabinet either this Tuesday or next Tuesday.

“Obviously, at this stage, this is a disappointment,” said Margaret Urwin, of Justice for the Forgotten.

“While we were perfectly happy to accept that Mr MacEntee needed extensions in order to complete the investigation, it stated in the last interim report that he had finished the investigation and was in the process of checking evidence with persons who added to the report.

“Now we are very concerned.

“We knew the report was never going to be published next week, but it was meant to be going to government.

“Even at that stage it wouldn’t be made public until February, but with the Dail and Seanad about to rise for Christmas we don’t know when it will be published.

“It will also have to be cleared by the Attorney General to ensure it does not interfere with human rights of those who gave evidence or that there are any legal issues.”

More than 300 people were injured and 33 killed when four car bombs exploded in Dublin and Monaghan on May 17, 1974. No organisation claimed responsibility but loyalist paramilitaries were widely blamed.

The campaign group was formed in January 1996 with the aim of getting truth and justice for the victims.

The commission, which is being held in private, was established more than 18 months ago and has already sought six extensions to get more material from security sources about the bombings.

The Government agreed to its last extension to December 11 in October.

“This is the seventh time an extension has been sought since it started on May 13 last year,” Ms Urwin continued.

“It was due to last six months, but now it is running more and more behind schedule.

“There are no concessions given to us over this time.

“We get no information to pass on to the families and even on the day when the report is finally published we won’t have any concessions, we might just get it a couple of hours before it is made public.”

The terms of reference of the commission were to report on why the garda investigation was wound down in 1974, why gardai did not follow up on information that a white van with an English registration was parked on Portland Row and was later seen parked in Dublin’s ferry port, and the subsequent contact with a British army officer on a ferry boat leaving Dublin.