
Fury as British soldiers BANNED from flying drones over people in training due to health and safety rules
SOLDIERS have been banned from flying drones over people during training due to health and safety rules.
The strict regulations mean troops may be ill-prepared for modern warfare, experts have warned.
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Soldiers training on
Troops had to file multiple requests just to fly a drone over an empty tank, soldiers told the House of Commons.
Soldiers gearing up for possible conflict with Russia are also barred from using signal jammers or practising other electronic warfare in case they breach data collection rules by intercepting information or set off local residents' devices.
Defence chiefs insist the rules are there to protect people.
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But MPs say the red tape is actually putting lives at risk.
Labour MP Fred Thomas told the Financial Times: 'British soldiers who are deploying as part of a deterrence force to places like Estonia and eastern Europe are going without the kind of training and capability that is completely bog-standard in warfare now, whether it is in the Middle East or Ukraine.'
Ukraine says drones account for up to
The Ministry of Defence admitted there are restrictions, but claimed data rules are not directly stopping training.
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Soldiers have been banned from flying drones over people during training due to health and safety rules
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Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Sarah Harte: The Government cannot continue to pay lip service to atrocities in Gaza
There are many other conflicts in the world, such as the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan. Yet, we find commonalities in our shared history with the Palestinians. This can be linked to what Fintan Drury, in his new book, Catastrophe Nakba II, terms us being 'indelibly marked by the experience of being colonised by Britain'. The folk memory of the famine that transformed Ireland lives on, when entire communities were wiped out, which perhaps heightens our reaction to the current famine in Gaza, including the nightly images of emaciated children and starving babies. As TCD academic Brendan Ciarán Browne has written, blockaded humanitarian aid trucks waiting to get into Gaza should remind us of British colonial ships laden with crops and livestock departing our shores while our ancestors at home starved. So, we, the Irish people, empathise with the Palestinians. Still, as international agencies operating in Gaza have run out of superlatives to describe the hell there, hard questions are being asked of many European governments, including our own. The Germans are struggling with reconciling the genocidal ideology that paved the way for the mass genocide of European Jews, and their response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Many German Jewish writers have objected to the conflation of antisemitism and criticism of Israel (as have scores of intellectual Jewish thinkers), and they have suffered as a result, including being defunded and not awarded literary prizes. Small potatoes, you say, but not if it's your livelihood. In that situation, the moral luxury of commenting becomes costly. Spare a thought for the many Jewish people, who abhor the genocide in Palestine. To ever escape a cycle of violence necessitates acknowledging suffering on 'the other side'. What must that be like, go to bed, turn off the light, and be left trying to square the outsized tragedy of your past, the visceral fear the Hamas attack on October 7 provoked, with knowledge of the massacre and famine in Gaza supposedly carried out in your name? Tide may be turning in Germany The tide may finally be turning in Germany. Last week, its foreign minister Johann Wadephul warned that the fight 'against antisemitism…and full support for….the state of Israel must not be instrumentalised for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip'. He said they are thinking carefully about what 'further steps to take'. They need to hurry up. Of course, many Western countries persist in seeing only what they want to see about the current phase of the Zionist mission. A question that must be posed to the Irish Government is what concrete steps they are going to take to object to the complete annihilation of the Palestinian people? Omar Shaban is the founder of Palthink for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst and development expert with extensive experience in Palestine. Mr Shaban has led humanitarian and emergency programmes for Catholic Relief Services in Gaza for 10 years and worked with UNRWA for another 10. He was born and lives in Gaza. Mr Shaban suggests that the Irish Government request that EU states stop supplying arms to the Israeli military. The Social Democrats in Germany have just called for the German arms exports to Israel to be halted to avoid German complicity in war crimes. Germany is the second-largest weapons supplier to Israel after the US. He asks that the Irish Government work to pressure Israel to open the Rafah crossing with Egypt to allow patients, injured children and their families to be evacuated. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask. He advocates that Ireland works closely with other EU states that share the same position to declare a clear joint statement asking Israel to stop the war immediately and to allow the flow of aid through international organisations such as UNRWA and WFP. This statement should include an ultimatum that if Israel doesn't do this, then the EU will impose trade sanctions. The EU can suspend sections of the EU-Israel Trade Agreement under Article 2. According to European Commission statistics, the EU is Israel's biggest trading partner. Some 34.2% of Israel's imports came from the EU, while 28.8% of the country's exports went to the EU. Of course, practically, that leaves our government with a problem. As reported in The Irish Examiner last week, Ireland is Israel's second-largest trading partner. Israel's exports to Ireland have exploded since 2021. As Patrick Bresnihan and Patrick Brodie exposed, for all our performative statements, meaningful sanctions on the Israeli economy would jeopardise our economic position. As reported, the vast majority of what we are buying are 'electronic integrated circuits and microassemblies,' mainly used in tech and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Ambassador Adel Atieh, who lives in Ramallah, is the director of the European Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Palestine. He suggests that if the EU Council fails to take responsibility for reviewing the EU-Israel association agreement, and if the European Commission continues to neglect its legal obligations regarding agreements with Israel, Ireland should consider asking the European Court of Justice to investigate and provide a legal opinion. Furthermore, Ireland should issue a public warning to settlers holding Irish citizenship, urging them to withdraw immediately from settlements due to their involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Mr Atieh says that this stance could encourage other EU member states to adopt similar positions, potentially leading to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of settlers from the West Bank. This month, the UN General Assembly will vote on granting Palestine full membership status. Even if a US veto blocks Palestinian statehood at the Security Council, the General Assembly retains a critical pathway through the 'Uniting for Peace' resolution. This mechanism allows the Assembly to convene an emergency session when the Council fails to act due to a veto, and to recommend collective measures. Our Government must exert public pressure on other countries to accede to this. Silence of Irish professional bodies Back home on Irish soil, the questions for our government extend to professional medical bodies, including the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA). The management of their relationships with Israeli counterparts and their deafening silence in calling out the genocide, as I've written before, raises serious questions about them. Dr Angela Skuse, a GP working in Inclusion Health in Dublin with homeless people, says none of the Irish medical organisations have issued a statement that includes the words 'genocide' or 'Israel'. Any statements issued have been careful not to 'take sides', and as Dr Skuse said, could equally refer to a natural disaster. 'Why is the medical profession so silent? Doctors are one of the most trusted professions. If we won't speak out and say that it's wrong, that it's a genocide and Israel is committing it — who will?' She adds that hundreds of healthcare workers have been murdered. Trinity College has just ended academic co-operation with Israeli institutions. The medical organisations should follow its lead and expel Israel from the World Health Organization and the World Medical Association. Ultimately, it will never be enough for the Irish Government (or professional bodies) to mouth support for international law from the sidelines. If we do nothing concrete, we engage in a problematic form of empathy or virtue signalling. Just as many Jewish people have the hardest of choices about whether to speak up, we and other Europeans are presented with choices too. The question is, what choices will our Government make in our name?


RTÉ News
3 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Hopes of significant UK funding allocation for Casement Park
The UK's Chanceller of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is to set out her spending review in the House of Commons later today. Many are hoping that a significant allocation towards the construction of Casement Park in west Belfast will be included. The stadium, the home of Antrim GAA, has been derelict for over a decade. It is estimated that the project will cost £260 million (€296.9 million), less than half of which is already in place. The Irish Government has pledged around £43 million (€51 million), the Stormont Executive £62.5 million (€74.2 million) and the GAA £15 million (€17.8 million). A shortfall of £140 million remains. It was hoped that the stadium could have been redeveloped for Euro 2028 but this did not come to pass. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said afterwards that he wanted an "alternative proposition". Many, including in the GAA, are quietly hopeful that a significant sum will be provided later today. However, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is facing huge spending demands from across Whitehall. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, has been among cabinet members pushing for increased funding for his department, including money for Casement Park. However, Mr Benn has previously stated too that the UK government cannot plug the full £140 million gap. The Stormont Executive committed to redeveloping Casement Park in 2011 as part of a strategy to revamp football's Windsor Park and the rugby ground at Ravenhill. While the two other Belfast-based projects went ahead, the redevelopment of Casement was delayed. Intense lobbying efforts have been underway in recent times, with Ulster GAA visiting Westminster last week, to press politicians on the need to include a significant allocation in today's spending review. Last week Northern Ireland's First Minister Michelle O'Neill also called on the British government to provide substantial funding to help rebuild Casement Park. Taoiseach Micheál Martin stated last September that he would not rule out further money being provided by the Irish Government. The 34,500 capacity stadium has planning permission until July 2026 so it is hoped construction can start before then. This afternoon's Spending Review will be a pivotal moment for the UK government, as it maps out its day-to-day spending and investment plans for much of the remainder of the parliament. Defence, health and infrastructure are likely to be prioritised, in what is otherwise a constrained spending package.


Agriland
7 hours ago
- Agriland
NI beef and lamb export markets ‘more critical than ever'
Beef and lamb exports are of major significance to Northern Ireland's overall economy. according to Livestock and Meat Commission (LMC) chief executive, Colin Smith. And he considers the scale of this enterprise even more significant. The LMC representative pointed out that Northern Ireland – with a population of approximately two million people – produces enough food to feed five times that number, underscoring the vital importance of export markets to the region's agri-food economy. Smith said: 'At the core of this output is the production of Farm Quality Assured beef and lamb. 'Identifying and securing high-value markets for red meat is more critical than ever, especially in light of significant political and economic developments over the past three years.' 'These include a change of UK government and the negotiation of key trade agreements with major global players such as the US, EU, Australia, New Zealand, and India. 'The evolving international trade landscape, combined with fluctuating global tariffs, presents increasing complexity for red meat exporters.' According to Smith, the navigation of these challenges will be essential to ensuring long-term profitability and sustainability for Northern Ireland's red meat sector. He fully recognises the need for Northern Ireland's beef and lamb sectors to be fully cognisant of all these factors. But there is also a political dimension to all of this, which could be of an even more fundamentally significant. Reflecting on the evolving political landscape, Smith commented on the impact of recent UK government decisions. 'The new Labour government has now been in office for a year. And during that time, it appears to have prioritised food security over food self-sufficiency. 'This shift in focus has raised concerns within the farming community.' Smith claimed that support for Labour among farmers 'is clearly waning', which he said was down to 'the government's recent handling of agricultural issues'. 'Inheritance tax reforms are just one example and many within the sector feel farming has been sacrificed at the expense of other interests – particularly in trade negotiations such as those with the US,' he said. Beef and lamb export markets In the view of the LMC CEO, these developments underscore growing tensions between policy direction and the needs of UK agriculture at a time when global competitiveness is more vital than ever. The aforementioned agreements follow on from free trade deals with Australia and New Zealand arrived at by the previous Conservative governments. When fully operational, these arrangements could provide beef export quotas of 170,000t and 60,000t annually for the respective countries. Smith said: 'But that's not the end of the story. The EU continues to progress a trade deal with the Mercosur block which could see almost 100,000t of beef from South American countries coming into Europe on an annual basis. 'This may not impact directly on the UK beef market. But it could have a very significant indirect effect.' So the question then arises: what happens to the significant tonnages of UK beef that are currently exported to the EU in the wake of the Mercosur deal's full implementation? 'The prospect of significantly reduced beef export trading levels from the UK to Europe is a very real one in these circumstances,' said Smith. But even in the here and now the commission's chief executive is concerned about imported beef making its way on to UK supermarket shelves. He explained: 'UK supermarkets are the most significant purchasers of farm quality beef and lamb produced in Northern Ireland. 'It is crucially important that this commitment to Northern Ireland's red meat sector is maintained into the future.'