SAOIRSE32

Agence France Presse
04 August 2008

BELFAST (AFP) - A deal on policing and justice in Northern Ireland, one of the most contentious issues dogging self-government here, hit a stumbling block Monday when one of the key parties rejected the job of minister.

The Democratic Unionists under First Minister Peter Robinson and Sinn Fein, whose Martin McGuinness is his deputy, agreed Monday there should be one Minister for Policing and Justice in the devolved power-sharing government formed last year.

But the plan hung in the balance after the leader of the Alliance Party, which it had been hoped would supply the minister, said he wanted no part of it.

Under the terms of the agreement, the minister would not have come from either the DUP, which is Protestant and wants to keep Northern Ireland part of Britain, or Sinn Fein — the Catholic party and former political wing of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army (IRA) — which wants a united Ireland.

Both sides are wary of taking charge of what is one of the most sensitive and divisive issues in Northern Ireland politics.

The terms of their agreement instead suggested that the minister would come from the non-sectarian Alliance Party, but its leader David Ford said he had no intention of helping “an incoherent and incompetent executive”.

“They (the DUP and Sinn Fein) really ought to consult with us before they spin about us,” Ford said.

“I think there is this idea that they can rely on us to ride to the rescue. Well, they can’t expect that when they haven’t spoken to us (on the issue) for the last 16 months.”

Policing and justice issues are currently controlled from London.

The issue is particularly sensitive because during the three decades of unrest known as the Troubles, policing was dominated by Protestants.

Sinn Fein and the IRA harboured deep animosity towards officers, who were often targeted in attacks.

Northern Ireland’s police force has since been shaken up, changing its name from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2001 and recruiting more Catholics, who make up around 25 percent of the new force.

The Troubles were largely ended by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and devolved government resumed last year after breaking down in 2002.

Telegraph.co.uk
04 August 2006

Samuel Wasser, of the University of Washington, said the elephant death rate from poaching was currently 8 per cent, higher than the 7.4 per cent rate which led to the international ivory trade ban in 1989.

African elephants face extinction by 2020, conservationists warn.

Recent reports have shown that demand for ivory is growing in places such as China, Japan and the US

Writing in the journal Conservation Biology, Dr Wasser and fellow researchers warned that without public pressure to ensure a strengthening of anti-poaching measures, most remaining large groups of elephants will be extinct by the end of next decade.

The population in the 1980s was around 1 million, with around 70,000 elephants being killed a year. The total African elephant population is now less than 470,000.

Dr Wasser said the loss of the animals will have a negative impact on their ecosystem and other wildlife that depend on it - as well as on the cashflow they generate from tourists.

“If the trend continues, there won’t be any elephants except in fenced areas with a lot of enforcement to protect them,” he said.

“The situation is worse than ever before and the public is unaware. It’s very serious because elephants are an incredibly important species. (more…)

By CLAIRE GARDNER
Scotsman
04 August 2008

RUSSIAN writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin’s prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, died last night aged 89.

The author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, who returned to Russia in 1994, died of either a stroke or heart failure.

The Nobel laureate had suffered from high blood pressure in recent years.

Last night a Kremlin spokesman said: “President Dmitry Medvedev expressed his condolences to Solzhenitsyn’s family.”

Solzhenitsyn’s son, Stepan, told Russian news agencies that his father died of heart failure late last night.

However, other literary sources said the author had suffered a stroke.

The writer died in his home in the Moscow area, where he had lived with his wife Natalya, at 11:45pm local time (7:45pm GMT).

For more than 20 years, the Second World War veteran, who spent eight years in Stalin’s labour camps for criticising the Soviet dictator, became a symbol of intellectual resistance to the Communist Party’s rule.

The Gulag Archipelago, which was written in secret in the Soviet Union and published in Paris in three volumes between 1973 and 1978, is seen as the definitive work on Stalin’s forced labour camps, where tens of millions of Russians perished. It was based upon Solzhenitsyn’s own experience, the testimony of former prisoners and Solzhenitsyn’s research.

A short-lived policy of de-Stalinisation by the then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made possible the publication in 1962 of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which described the horrifying routine of labour camp life.

Other works, including a series of historical novels and political pamphlets, were banned from publication in the Soviet Union, and their distribution was made a criminal offence.

Major works including The First Circle and Cancer Ward brought Solzhenitsyn world acclaim and the Nobel Prize For Literature in 1970.

Four years later, he was stripped of his citizenship and put on a plane to West Germany for refusing to keep silent about his country’s past. He moved to America and became an icon of resistance to communism. He lived in Vermont until his return to Russia in 1994.

Russia’s post-Soviet leadership paid respect to Solzhenitsyn, who lived in seclusion outside Moscow after his return.

Solzhenitsyn remained critical of what he saw as the decadence of post-Soviet Russia and had little time for Western-style democracy, which he felt was not a solution for his homeland.

“The main achievement is that Russia has revived its influence in the world,” Solzhenitsyn said in a TV interview last year.

“But morally we are too far from what is needed. This cannot be achieved by the state, through parliamentarianism … As far as the state, the public mind and the economy is concerned, Russia is still far away from the country of which I dreamed.”

In 2007, he received the Russian State Prize, the highest Russian government award, for his work.

In announcing the prize last year, Yury Osipov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called Solzhenitsyn “the author of works without which the history of the 20th century is unthinkable”.

TIMELINE

• 1918: Solzhenitsyn born in Kislovodsk, Russia.

• 1945: Convicted of criticising Stalin’s leadership during the Second World War. He spent the next decade in prison camps and internal exile.

• 1962: Came to literary prominence with One Day on the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

• 1970: Received the Nobel Prize for Literature for a body of work including The First Circle (1968), and Cancer Ward (1968).

• 1974: Exiled from Russia.

• 1994: Received a hero’s welcome on his return from exile.

• 2006: Became the oldest living Nobel laureate in literature.

BBC

Threats made by dissident republicans against traffic wardens in west Belfast have been condemned by public service union NIPSA.

Services in the area have now been withdrawn and the PSNI will meet this week with the operating company NCP to review the situation.

John Corey from NIPSA said the threat should be withdrawn immediately.

“No workers should be subjected to any threat no matter what job they undertake,” he said.

“The traffic wardens do perform a very important function and I think most people, in the public in Northern Ireland recognise that, they contribute to road safety and they have a job to do.”

Speaking on Friday, Simon Richardson of the Roads Service said it was hoped the situation would be resolved as soon as possible.

“Our work is solely focused on traffic management and keeping traffic flowing in busy areas - having no parking enforcement will only have a negative impact in the area.”

Parties agree a single minister will run department of justice

By Chris Thornton
Belfast Telegraph
4 August 2008

The DUP and Sinn Fein took a major step today towards the transfer of justice powers to Stormont.

The main Executive parties revealed that they have agreed that there will be a single Justice Ministry run by a lone Minister — who won’t come from the DUP or Sinn Fein.

That agreement removes a major obstacle to the devolution of justice — which would see a local Minister take charge of policng and the courts — but a final deal could still be months away.

The parties have yet to agree when the powers will actually be transferred from London, and a number of further details still need to be addressed.

Disagreements over the devolution of policing and justice powers have disrupted Executive business for weeks. Executive meetings have been repeatedly postponed, pushing decisions back into the calendar.

Sinn Fein and the Government wanted the powers handed over from Westminister in May, but the DUP have resisted. Among their concerns was sensitivity about how DUP supporters would react to a Sinn Fein minister being put in charge of the police.

That concern appears to have been addressed by today’s agreement, w hich will see the Justice Minister elected on a cross-community basis.

That makes it possible that the first Justice Minister will come from the Alliance Party.

First Ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness have written to the Assembly’s Executive Review Committee, asking them to issue a new report on the devolution of justice powers.

“We believe that your consideration should be based on a single department in which policing and justice powers would reside with a single Minister elected at all times from the Assembly in a way which would ensure cross-community support,” said the letter, which was released today.

“We have agreed that initially neither of our parties will nominate one of our members for the post of Justice Minister.

“Within this broad framework there are still a considerable number of issues to be determined. We would be grateful if your committee would consider producing a report within this framework.”