Archive
Reuters blog archive
from Photographers Blog:
The writing’s on the wall
Belfast, Northern Ireland
By Cathal McNaughton
A five meter high mural of a gunman dressed in army fatigues and a balaclava, clutching an AK-47 painted on the gable end of a wall of a house in a residential street – people walk by and don’t even notice it.
In other parts of the UK and Ireland there would probably be outrage - but not in Northern Ireland, where young children happily play on streets with a backdrop of politically charged murals commemorating the violence and bloodshed of the Troubles.
These murals have become street wallpaper for the people living in this small corner of Europe who barely bat an eyelid at a gory depiction of a skeleton crawling over dead bodies that adorns the end wall of a house on their street.
GALLERY: NORTHERN IRELAND'S MURALS
Most of the hundreds of murals across Northern Ireland, which are not only found in major cities like Belfast and Londonderry but in small towns and villages, promote either Republican or Loyalist political beliefs, often glorifying paramilitary groups such as the IRA or the Ulster Volunteer Force with a roll call of the dead written large ‘lest we forget’.
from Photographers Blog:
A barrier to peace
Belfast, Northern Ireland
By Cathal McNaughton
“Sure, why would they want to pull down these walls?” asks William Boyd mildly as he offers me a cup of tea in his home at Cluan Place, a predominantly Loyalist area of east Belfast.
He pulls back his net curtains to show me the towering 20-foot-high wall topped with a fence that looms over his home blocking out much of the natural light.
from Photographers Blog:
Living without electricity for 29 years
By Cathal McNaughton
John McCarter is 77 years old and has been living without mains electricity at his home at Downhill, Londonderry county, for 29 years.
It seems incredible that a pensioner who lives so close to the prosperous Causeway Coast tourist area in Northern Ireland is allowed to live in such basic conditions.
from Photographers Blog:
The trouble with Northern Ireland
Tradition is something that is celebrated, enjoyed and handed down to the next generation, but in the small corner of western Europe where I was born, it has led to shootings and bombings and the loss of thousands of lives.
For 16 years I’ve worked as a photographer covering ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and in this time I’ve come to realize that what one side of the political and religious divide sees as celebration, the other sees as triumphalism.
from FaithWorld:
Catholic area riots after Protestant marches in Northern Ireland
(Nationalist youths and police in riot gear clash in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast July 12, 2011/Cathal McNaughton)
Police fired plastic bullets and water cannon at Catholic youths in Northern Ireland's provincial capital Belfast on Tuesday after rioting erupted when a Protestant parade passed their estate. Sporadic violence erupted across the British-ruled province on the culmination of a season of parades by pro-British Protestants to mark a 17th-century military victory, a tradition many Catholics say is provocative.
from Reuters Soccer Blog:
Soccer Break Friday
It’s gone quiet on the football news front though the sun’s still out in Europe as we await another weekend of unrelenting on-pitch drama in the Euro 2012 qualifiers.
Anyone out there lucky enough to be attending the Serbia v Northern Ireland match? 240 fans got the nod.
from Left field:
Don’t discount Ireland for the Six Nations
By James Illingworth
The 2011 Six Nations kicks off shortly in Cardiff with much of the pre-tournament hype suggesting a two-horse race between France and England.
England's favourites tag among English bookmakers looks unjustified if it is based on one decent performance in November against Australia, with the 2010 grand slam winners France surely still the team to beat.
from FaithWorld:
Catholic Church and UK colluded in Northern Ireland bomb cover-up: report
(Photo: Nationalist youths set a car alight in Belfast on July 13, 2010/Cathal McNaughton)
The British government and the Roman Catholic Church colluded to protect a priest suspected of involvement in a 1972 bombing in Northern Ireland that killed 9 people, an official report said on Tuesday.
The Police Ombudsman's report revealed that an Irish cardinal was involved in transferring Father James Chesney out of British-ruled Northern Ireland, highlighting again the role of the Church hierarchy in protecting priests against allegations of criminal activity.
from UK News:
Closer ties, but different political colours
Second only to body language, the colour of a politician's tie can speak volumes.
Northern Ireland's political leaders are particularly careful about the message they send out in a community in which green represents the mostly Roman Catholic aspiration for a united Ireland and orange symbolises centuries of Protestant affinity to British rule.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Bombs and tipping points: Pakistan and Northern Ireland
When Northern Ireland's Omagh bomb exploded, killing 29 people, I was in England, by cruel coincidence attending the wedding of a young man who had been badly injured in another attack in the town of Enniskillen more than a decade earlier.
I had just switched my phone on after leaving the church on a glorious, sunny Saturday afternoon when my news editor called. "There's been a bomb. It sounds bad. We're trying to get you on a flight."
