15/04/2016 BBC Newsline

A court has heard distressing details of how a mother of two

killed her five-month-old son while she was suffering

The 32-year-old had originally been charged with murder,

but a prosecuting lawyer said all medical and legal experts agreed

that the appropriate charge was one of infanticide.

The woman, who can't be named, wept through most of the proceedings.

The court was told she suffered postnatal depression

after the birth of her first child and how she had become ill again

three months after the birth of her second child.

Psychiatrists for both the prosecution and defence say she

Police received a 999 call from the mother-of-two

She said, "I've just killed my baby."

When police and paramedics arrived at the flat, they found her

Paramedics managed to get the baby to hospital

When police spoke to the woman she said, "I've killed my baby.

She was examined by a doctor and admitted to

The defence said the woman is aware of the gravity of what she had done

and is living with guilt and self-blame.

She will be sentenced later this month.

A Methodist church in South Belfast has been badly smoke damaged

A number of fires were started following an overnight break-in

and they were only discovered when the building was

Cairnshill Methodist Church, off the Saintfield Road.

On the outside, nothing untoward, but inside it's a different story.

This is what greeted people who arrived to open up

A number of fires had apparently burnt themselves out but fire

and smoke damage had affected several of the meeting rooms.

We were very fortunate the building itself hasn't undergone on-farm but

we have extensive smoke damage throughout and it will take a while

to put right and the church activities and different community

things that happened during the week will be inconvenienced. A fire like

this doesn't just affect church services, it also affects group

using the halls. Behind me are leaders of eight youth club which

will not be happened tonight after this attack.

It was left up to the youth leaders to break the bad news

to the young people arriving for their club meeting.

It's totally random. We don't understand why somebody would want

to target this church in this area, good community relations, good

relationships with the other churches and the local community.

The President of the Methodist church in Ireland,

the Rev Brian Anderson, says he utterly condemns such

an unwarranted attack on a church whose only desire is to serve

The use of food banks in Northern Ireland

The Trussell Trust charity says it provided more than 25,000 emergency

Open for business and busier than ever.

The Trussell Trust says demand for emergency everyday food items

like bread and cereal is up by nearly 50% on last year.

Of the 25,000 food packages distributed by the Trussell Trust

across Northern Ireland, 2230 of those are from

here in Newtownards - and half of those go to children.

99% of these donations are made by members of the public.

But why do people find themselves turning to food banks?

The Trust says low income remains the single biggest reason,

followed by benefit delays and unemployment.

But as for a typical user - well, the charity says

Especially with people losing jobs with local businesses closing down

and where people have been working their whole lives

and are coming in and that is what they say,

"I never thought I would see myself in a food bank",

so professional people working full-time and then that stops

That was the case for IT professional Alwyn Van Niekerk,

who used a food bank for six months when he first

moved to Northern Ireland from South Africa after it

took him and his wife longer to find work than expected.

The first time I walked into a food bank, I didn't know

I was ashamed, I really didn't know what to do with myself.

And the lady at the food bank actually took my hand,

looked me in the eye and said, "You've got nothing to worry about,

From the really desperate, destitute, right up to people

walking in with suits that were walking the streets,

pounding the streets looking for work, anybody can walk

into a food bank and say, "You know what, I need help."

In order to meet demand, the Trussell Trust has recently

opened three new food banks in areas of need - two in West Belfast

They say that in order to end food poverty in Northern Ireland,

charities, politicians, businesses and the public

The inquest into the death of an 11-year-old boy who was struck

by an Army rubber bullet in West Belfast in 1972 has heard

a claim that soldiers went to look at him as he lay on the ground,

Frank Rowntree died after suffering serious head and brain injuries.

It's accepted he wasn't rioting when a rubber baton round struck him

on the side of the head in April 1972, causing fatal

The incident was witnessed by a 14-year-old schoolgirl

Now a widow, Bernadette Connolly described what she remembered.

Mrs Connolly told the court she saw an armoured vehicle with rifle

She saw Frances Roundtree Underground. She said two soldiers

got out of the vehicle and appeared to search for something and then

lift something from the ground and drive off. They didn't offer Frances

any help or first aid. A barrister for the Ministry

of Defence pointed out she'd earlier told the Historical Enquiries Team

a slightly different story. She strongly denied lying

at that time. But there have been allegations

that the baton round had contained a used battery,

making it lethal. Medical evidence suggests

Frank Rowntree was shot from a range There's growing speculation that

aerospace firm Bombardier is close to a deal to sell more than 100

of its C Series planes. The company has struggled to find

customers for the new plane, and hundreds of jobs have been lost

in Belfast as a result. But it's reported that Bombardier

is in advanced discussions An American man who was forced

to stay here for ten months awaiting trial has been cleared

of endangering an aircraft. Jeremiah Mathis Thede denied causing

a disturbance on a flight from Rome to Chicago, which was diverted

to Belfast International. A jury at Antrim Crown Court

found him not guilty. Now finally onto the weekend weather

outlook, and here's Geoff Maskell. Our weather today has turned chilly

after the rain that came in through the middle part of the day, we moved

into cooler air which helped us to have a clear evening but tonight

temperatures dropped and there is a chance of a frost in many places

overnight as temperatures dip below freezing. We are into cooler and

clearer air, so tomorrow should be brighter for money. There may be a

few showers, especially in the West, some of those wintry but elsewhere

dry and bright. It's a different story over the water, where the

remains of the front which has brought rain through today will sink

South, meaning it will be grey and wet for many parts of central and

eastern England. It gets drier and brighter further north, but not

between seven and eight. In the between seven and eight. In the

second half of the weekend we get a more westerly flow, isobars quite

tightly packed together, a sign of the breeze picking up a

tightly packed together, a sign of Cool on Sunday and become cloudy

tightly packed together, a sign of we head into next week, so Sunday

has a few Moorish travellers around but the air temperature is improving

a little so what we lose in terms of warmth from the sun we gain in terms

of slightly warmer air mass. The high pressure becomes more

established next week, it will stay cloudy but temperatures recovering a

little. That's it from us

until 5:20pm tomorrow.