Armoured & Luxury
Chauffeur Driven Cars

Two former soldiers are to be prosecuted for murder in relation to the fatal shooting of an Official IRA man in Belfast in 1972.

The defendants, known as Soldier A and Soldier C, are the surviving members of the Army patrol which shot Joe McCann. They are aged 65 and 67, and were in the Parachute Regiment. They are from England, but are expected to appear in court in Northern Ireland in the next few months.

Joe McCann was a prominent member of the Official IRA. He was 25 when he was shot near his home in the Markets area of Belfast.

The original police investigation was conducted in the early 1970s and no-one was prosecuted.

Prosecutors have reviewed the case after the Northern Ireland Attorney General, John Larkin, referred it to the Director of Public Prosecutions in March 2014. This followed a report in 2012 by a police team which investigated alleged crimes from the Troubles.

A spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service said the decision to prosecute the men for murder was reached “following an objective and impartial application of the test for prosecution”.

The US has said it will limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia amid concerns over civilian casualties linked to air strikes in Yemen.

Precision-guided weapons will no longer be delivered, a Pentagon official said. President Barack Obama’s administration said it was concerned over “flaws” in the way air strikes are targeted in Yemen.

In October, more than 140 people were killed in a strike on a funeral in the country.

A Saudi-led coalition, which is attempting to support the elected government against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, was blamed for the attack.

White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price later warned Saudi Arabia that US security co-operation was “not a blank cheque”.

But while some sales are being scaled back, the US said it will continue to provide Saudi Arabia with intelligence focused on border security. It will also provide training for pilots involved in the Saudi-led air campaign, to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible, the official said.

Other contracts are expected to go ahead such as a deal worth more than $3bn (£2.4bn) to supply military helicopters.

The Saudi-led coalition is fighting the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen. Thousands of civilians have been killed and nearly three million people have been displaced in the country, one of the region’s poorest, since the war began in 2014.

The Houthis took the capital Sanaa, forcing Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi’s government to flee. Some ministers have since returned to the city of Aden. Saudi Arabia has denied causing large-scale civilian deaths, saying it is making every effort to avoid hitting civilian targets.

A deal to evacuate rebel fighters and civilians from eastern Aleppo has stalled, with heavy shelling reported in the Syrian city.

A ceasefire was declared in Aleppo on Tuesday and buses brought in to ferry people out of the devastated enclave. But fighting resumed on Wednesday. Syrian activists also say air strikes over rebel-held territory have resumed.

The breakdown of the deal, brokered by Russia and Turkey, is being attributed to demands from the government side. It is said to be seeking the evacuation of injured fighters and civilians from nearby towns encircled by opposition forces.

Eastern Aleppo has been held by the rebels since 2012. But they have been squeezed into ever-smaller areas in recent months by a major government offensive, backed by Russian air power.

Read More

Crime involving mopeds has gone up by more than 600% in London in the past two years.

Met Police figures for 2016 show more than 7,500 offences, including attacks, robberies and thefts, recorded to date – about 22 per day. The Met said the rise, which was mainly due to teenagers stealing mopeds and using them to commit crimes, was a “huge concern”. It has, however, denied the problem is “out of control”.

Moped-enabled crime has affected other big cities in the UK but the problem is by far and away biggest in London.

The large number of tourists with mobile phones and concentration of high-end shops makes it an attractive target for criminals.

Internal Scotland Yard statistics show there have been 7,668 crimes involving mopeds to date in 2016 – up from 1,053 in the whole of 2014 and 4,647 in the whole of 2015. Supt Mark Payne, who runs Operation Venice which was set up two years ago to tackle the problem, said: “I think it’s a huge concern because it is a change in criminal behaviour. “The fact of the matter is it’s much more difficult to deal with people on mopeds than it was people who were committing those sorts of crimes before on foot or on bicycles.”

Read More

Syrian pro-government forces in eastern Aleppo have been killing people, including women and children, on the spot in their homes and on the street, the United Nations says.

The UN’s human rights office said streets were full of bodies. Meanwhile, the UN children’s agency cited a doctor as saying a building housing as many as 100 unaccompanied children was under heavy attack. Rebels, who have held east Aleppo for four years, are on the brink of defeat.

Thousands of people are reportedly trapped in the last remaining neighbourhoods still in rebel hands, facing intense bombardment as pro-government troops advance.

The Syrian government’s ally Russia, which has rejected calls for a humanitarian truce, earlier said any atrocities were “actually being committed by terrorist groups”, meaning rebel forces. The UN Security Council will discuss the situation in Aleppo later on Tuesday.

Read More