15/09/2016 BBC Newsline

and on BBC One we now join the BBC's news teams where you are.

An MLA calls for the Attorney General

to resign over his interventions in abortion law.

It seems to me that this is a question of abuse of the office of

Attorney General. I think that Mr Larkin ought to resign.

A man has been jailed after stabbing an asylum seeker

Three men have appeared in court in connection with the murder

Questions over the money Stormont has spent

to save the Belfast to New York air route.

It may or may not be a good deal but frankly it doesn't sound like a good

deal. And have you spotted

the latest addition We'll be revealing all

later in the programme. Unprecedented success in the pool

for para- Olympian Beverley fret. Two goals. It's been another warm

day with temperatures in the 20s. Something a little fresher to come

tomorrow. First tonight, police searching

for missing Castlederg teenager Arlene Arkinson have

brought in specialist teams They sealed of an area

in a field yesterday Enda McClafferty is at

the scene and joins us live. It was found by a farmer who then

alerted police. It is about a mile from the place she was last seen

alive in a car with Robert Howard, the main suspect in her killing. The

family of the 15-year-olds have been informed of the development and we

will have more on this breaking story shortly.

The People Before Profit MLA Eamonn McCann has called

for the Attorney General John Larkin to consider his position.

It comes after paediatric pathologist Dr Caroline Gannon

resigned over interventions by Mr Larkin on abortion

laws surrounding fatal foetal abnormality.

When John Larkin first stepped into the job of Attorney General six

years ago, he was determined to do things his way. I think it's very

important and I am committed to try to explain law and explain the

process of justice. As often as I can and I look forward to working

with you in that process. That promise to help the public

understand the better has landed him in trouble. Not least this week when

a paediatric pathologist resigned over his interventions around fatal

fatal abnormality. The eternal general, his rulings have made my

professional life your untenable and I do not consider that I can work

under those guidelines and those rulings any longer. So what were

those interventions? In 2012, he offered to assist an investigation

into a Belfast abortion clinic. Three years later, he appealed a

High Court judgment that Northern Ireland's abortion ban breaches

human rights law. And earlier this year, in a response to a letter from

the TUV Jim Allister, he questioned whether the move to allow abortion

in the cases of fatal fatal abnormality was compatible with

international human rights law. Today, this MLA said it was trying

for John Larkin to consider his condition. This is a questionable

use of the office of Attorney General. I think that Mr Larkin

ought to resign and if Mr Larkin does not resign, I think the people

who appointed him, the first and Deputy First Ministers, should say

publicly whether they approve of his interventions which have resulted,

for example, the resignation of Doctor Gannon. I'm sure he will hear

those calls and react in the way he finds appropriate. It is a matter

for the Attorney General. We appropriate him to do a job. He

should make his complaint to the Attorney General. So was John Larkin

right to speak out when he did? This barrister thinks he was. He had a

duty to intervene. Even if he was pro-abortion, he would have to

intervene in this case. The reason being that the case was a complex

one, the law was not clear. You needed certainty and the judges'

initial judgment did not grant that certainty, so it was right and

proper for this case to go through the Court of Appeal. He had a duty

to do that. The lark in cases of fatal abnormalities in foetuses is

currently being considered by the Court of Appeal. As yet there is no

indication as to when that ruling will be delivered.

A man has been jailed for at least six years for what's been described

as the barbaric killing of one of his friends.

Ahmed Noor, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia,

claimed he was "Allah's assassin" after he killed a man from Pakistan

This man was originally from Pakistan. He came to Belfast seeking

asylum. He lived in a flat off this busy street and died on the street.

Today, relatives from Pakistan came to court to listen to graphic

details about the killing. Ahmed Noor broke into his friend's home

and chased his victim down this street. He was armed with two knives

and he start his friends repeatedly in the chest, on the back, in the

neck and in the abdomen. It was 5am and the victim managed to dial 999,

asking for the police. He was screaming down the phone but it was

too late. Shortly afterwards, he was dead. The Ahmed Noor, originally

from Somalia, later told police that Allah sent him to kill his friend.

He described himself as Alaa's assassin. The court heard today he

has paranoid schizophrenia and used drugs. Ahmed Noor has a long history

of cannabis abuse including on the day before and the morning of the

killing. In court today, a judge described the killing as a truly

horrific, unprovoked and brutal attack on a vulnerable man. The

judge considered a victim impact report from the victim's family and

friends and said his killer had to go to jail. Madame Justice McBride

said she is satisfied that Ahmed Noor is a dangerous man. She said he

should serve six years in prison and should only be released then when

Burrell Commissioners are satisfied that he is no longer a risk to the

safety of the public. Kevin Sharkey at the Crown Court in Belfast.

Back to our top story. Lee is looking for Arlene Arkinson have

brought in specialist teams to examine a new site. They sealed off

an area in a field yesterday near Castlederg. Edson MacLaverty has

just sent this report from the scene.

As you can see, police remain at the scene. They have cordoned off part

of if you'll just be on us with this new site has been discovered. It is

outside Kinlen which is a short distance from Castlederg. The police

were alerted to this site by a farmer who noticed a start. He was

concerned and cold in the PS and I. The police decided they wanted

specialist teams from England to have a look at the ground here to

understand they flew into Northern this morning and are heading towards

this particular site. The interesting thing about this

development is that this site is about one mile from the house where

Arlene Arkinson was last seen alive. It is also along the same road where

she was spotted in a car with the man suspected of killing her, Robert

Howard. The police have been in contact with her family. They have

been kept up-to-date with this latest development, but they also

say that that is purely as a precautionary measure because the

last thing they want to do is raise expectation of the family. They plan

to carry out some tests at this site and the police say there could take

some time before they are ready to establish exactly what they have

here. But for that it from Killen, Castlederg.

Two Belfast men and another from Ayrshire in Scotland have been

in court on charges linked to the murder of leading loyalist

John Boreland in the north of the city last month.

All three were charged with perverting the

John borderlands was a leading easy a figure in North Belfast. He

survived a previous attempt on his life two years ago and in recent

months had been warned by the police about his safety. Last month, as the

46-year-old loyalist was getting out of a car in his flat he was shot

dead. The victim's plus friend and prominent loyalist Andre Shipperley

was in the public gallery today for the brief hearing at Belfast Crown

Court. Three men appeared on charges list with the Boreland murder. Two

were from the city and a third was from Scotland. In the dock, flanked

by security officers, were 33-year-old and a 61-year-old in the

city. They were there along with 2023 -year-old from Kilbirnie in

Ayrshire. They were all charged with perverting the course of justice by

destroying a Renault car being sought by detectives investigating

the killing. They spoke only to confirm their dates of birth before

being remanded in custody to appear in court again via video link next

month. Stormont Ministers have defended

going ahead with a multi-million pound rescue package

to save the Belfast flight to New York, in spite of concerns

raised by a senior civil servant. They say it's good value for money,

but a member of the Assembly's Public Accounts Committee has

described the deal as "madness." The flight from Belfast to New York

has been saved, at least for the next three years. But not everyone

is happy about how the deal was done. United have operated that

airline correctly for ten years and all of a sudden, in a matter of

weeks, they threatened to close it down unless they received a very

handsome subsidy and it was rushed through without proper scrutiny. I

believe that the permanent Secretary to the department was not happy

about it. Between the Minister for the economy and others, the decision

was made to give the money. It may or may not be a good deal, but

frankly, it does not have a good deal. So what is the deal? Well, to

keep the fight going over the next two years, the executive will

contribute ?6 million and the International Airport will pay 3

million. The direct flight to New York is good for the airport. It's

good for the economic reputation of Northern Ireland. But for the

Stormont executive, is it a price worth paying? A senior civil servant

was not convinced, but Stormont ministers made up their own minds. I

took on board what was said and we looked at the recommendation of the

economy minister. I listen to what businesspeople had to say to me and

what travellers had to say to me. Officials advise, politicians

decide. And another decision may have made is to give money to the

city of Derry airport which is about to lose flights to London. The

agreement has been reached that a multi-million pound project. It is

about saving the airport. But not receiving the airport, we believe

that with what we are trying to do and of course, we have not disclosed

for plans for the airport and the plans are greater than just getting

air links to London. A lot of public money is being invested. Politicians

from all parties will be watching closely to see whether it is worth

it. A Sinn Fein councillor who resigned

from the party over how its former MLA Daithi McKay was

treated claims others He also claims Mr McKay was forced

by the party to stand down from Stormont after it emerged

he had been coaching the loyalist Jamie Bryson on how to give evidence

to a Stormont committee. The Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams

has told the BBC the party intends engaging with the former members

in the hope they will return. Here's our political

correspondent Gareth Gordon. The Mackay affair has a consequence

for Stormont and especially for Sinn Fein. 18 members of the party left

in protest at the way he was treated. One of them is Paul

Maguire, an elected councillor and for three years chairman of the

party in North Antrim. In his first interview podcast since the split,

he claims that more members are considering their position. They

know that 18 people who resigned were significant in North Antrim and

there are people left, that there would be more card carrying members

and activists and I know that there have been one further resignation

and from what I can hear, or frauds I'm told, there will be more to

follow. This affair has undoubtedly been damaging for Sinn Fein. In

North Antrim especially. But now the party president has appeared to hold

as an olive branch to those who have left. It is always an agony when

people leave the party. We are going to engage with every single one of

those former members. We hope that they will reflect and that they will

come back into the party. At least one has already done so. I hope

others will do so. What Mr Mackay did was wrong. The fact that he

resigned and did the right thing was his acknowledgement of that. Paul

Maguire says Sinn Fein forced Mr Mackay to resign as an MLA and claim

that Sinn Fein denies. I'm aware of communication between the party and

Mr Mackay since and it has not been at all pleasant. Mr Mackay has not

commented since resigning from Stormont.

You can see more on that story on The View tonight just

The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, has been meeting opposition leaders

to discuss what form an enquiry into Nama should take.

Nama is the Irish state agency set up take control of bad loans

north and south that were damaging the banks.

Yesterday, a report from a public spending watchdog body that said

more money could have been made from the sale

of Nama's Northern Ireland property portfilio.

Our Dublin correspondent Shane Harrison has been

Shane, what do we know about the meeting?

Well, this afternoon and Cagney and the opposition leaders met and

discussed how an enquiry might work into the sale of Project Eagle which

was once valued at about ?4.5 billion but which was sold two years

ago for 1.2 billion. Other than agreeing that there was a need for a

statutory diary, a commission of investigation, nothing else was

agreed and now ideas will fall between politicians as to the terms

of reference for the enquiry and the Dail will ultimately decide. There

will be problems, not least the ongoing criminal investigation in

the United States and the United Kingdom into whether there was

corruption and insider information used in the sale. Then there is the

trouble of two jurisdictions, two sets of laws and of course the

compatibility of witnesses. The chairman of the Dail has suggested

that one committee and Stormont committee should share information

and maybe suggest questions to potential witnesses. Nama is due

before his committee this month. Is the desire for some form

of investigation being fed Yes, the report yesterday was by the

controller and auditor general whose sole job is to make sure that

taxpayers get value for money and he found that Nama could have made as

much of ?190 million more from the sale ban is dead and also found that

Nama was slow to act once it became aware that its Northern Ireland or

former Northern Ireland adviser was going to receive money from the

sale. Nama has categorically denied any wrongdoing and says that it

finds those findings are unstable and unsound and it also says that

those findings cannot go unchallenged. Chain in Dublin. Thank

you. Fermanagh's Marble Arch Caves

is an unusual setting for a cinema. But that's the venue chosen

by Northern Ireland Screen Our south west reporter

Julian Fowler headed A strange and beautiful world of

ancient rock formations and underground rivers. The marble Arch

Caves provide an atmospheric backdrop to a showcase of films. We

wanted to celebrate the Royal archives in Northern Ireland as part

of BSI Britain on film projects and one of the things I found, because I

work with the archive, going through attics and Museum store rooms, what

we found was beautiful and bizarre footage and we thought, where better

than the marble arch Caves to show that? It has been a challenging

location to set up a cinema in. The caves were flooded after a weekend

of heavy rain. Two complements the footage, musician Phil will perform

a newly commissioned piece called Till They Came Into A Cave. It's

similar to singing in a church, except better. The acoustics are

unbelievable. In each space you move through, the sound changes so you

get lots of Eckel, to a much more intimate feel, and it is just very

very special. Northern Ireland screen's free online archive

contains more than 100 hours of footage of local life and make the

venue, some of the films are rather quirky. It ranges from someone

making a home movie of the Ulster Grand Prix. We have great footage of

rats racing where people are in a pub is surrounded by drainpipes and

people are cheating by racing durables against rats, things like

that. The underground's cinematic and musical journey takes place

tomorrow. A new sculpture more than 35 feet

high has been unveiled in the hills It's called Origin and portrays

a huge raindrop at the source of the River Farset which flows

right through the city. Built with a ?100,000

of lottery money, it will be lit up at night,

making it visible across Belfast. Close up on a misty morning, it

makes its mark. When the sun comes out, the new sculpture called

Origin, starts to come into its own. Wherever you stand, it changes

colour. The artist who conceived the raindrop, all 12 metres of it,

placed it at this mouth of the River that gave Belfast its name. They

wanted to float at night, eliminated in the sky. From the sky as water

and we thought it very much described the origin of the source

of the River Farset. We have stainless steel as the structural

shape of the raindrop and inside, nestled inside that, we have a fine

film of glass, a specific class to give an ethereal effect and then on

the outline of the drop, we have a fine LED light which will eliminate

the peace and night. Built with ?100,000 of lottery money, it is the

work of Belfast City Council and the arts Council and local communities.

This piece of art can be seen across the city, the East and the West. It

is also a combination of work between many different community

centres so I love the kind of collectivity of it. When the sun

shines on Origin, this huge raindrop, the idea is that it will

look very striking from here or from here or from locations across

Belfast. Look for it, fully lit up, tomorrow as part of culture night.

Bethany Firth continues to add to her impressive medal haul

The Northern Ireland swimmer has had an outstanding Paralympic games

As of today, the 20-year-old from Seaforde is top of Team GB's

She has two golds, one silver and counting.

Bethany Firth coming up now... It was considered the weakest of her

four categories and she had referred to this race as her fun event. Yet

it is a measure of how far she has come that in a field of 100 metres

breaststroke specialists, she was right there at the turn. When

uprating her performance in the pool, it is difficult to reconcile

the effortless dialling race with the fact that because of the fear of

water in her formative years, she only took up swimming as a teenager.

It has been an absolute pleasure watching Bethany race. Every time

she gets in the pool, she does something very special. Winning gold

in a world record time and then gold again with a Brits just behind her

as well and then a silver, is silver in the 100 meter breaststroke, it

has been a memorable games. She has become one of the most decorated

swimmers on the team already with a race still to come, which she is

favourite in. When she gets in that role, she is in tremendous form.

Anything can happen and I think that is credited to the work she has been

doing at all. The support she has been getting. She came here hungry

for medals and she has been rewarded. Category four with

learning difficulties is ultracompetitive. Just taken a

category on her own and decided, I'm going to push this ever done ever

before and has left the other athletes behind. She is doing it on

her own and I think she loves that. She is comfortable being in France,

leading the pack and being on top of that podium. One more pics bash on

Saturday and the homecoming should be fun. -- one more big splash.

Staying in Rio, Ballymena athlete Katie Morrow was part of the Team GB

women's basketball squad which was chasing a first Paralympic

medal of any colour today but Team GB lost out to gold medal favourites

USA going down 89-78 in todays semifinal.

But all is not yet lost and Team GB will be back in third versus fourth

play off action tomorrow with a bronze medal up for grabs

against the losers of Germany and the Netherlands,

Irish international Paddy Jackson will make his first appearance

of the season for Ulster in tomorrows Pro12 game

Craig Gilroy is back after missing Saturday's victory over Treviso

in Italy and also returns in the back line

I think it showed towards the end of last season when we just had to push

an forgetting 24 points at the last 25. We did not even make the

play-offs or have we can rack up the points now, it does not matter when

you get them. To get them now and have them in the bank, that's always

helpful coming into the six Nations where we lose a lot of players and

you don't know what injuries will happen, so it's good to have points

now and hopefully secure that early. The game tomorrow night is live on

BBC Two from 7pm. Finally in the latest Fifa world

football rankings released today, Michael O'Neill's Northern Ireland

are down two places to 30th overall, Let's get the weather now and Jeff

is here. What's in store for the rest of the week? It has been a

really warm and muggy day today. Again, temperatures above 20

degrees. As we go over 90 nights, we start the transition towards

something a little bit fresher. That France that has brought all the

cloud and rain today will gradually move out to the east and once it

does, we are into clearer and cooler conditions as we go through this

evening. That will drop down to single figures in some places

tonight and it sets us up a day which is going to feel rather

different tomorrow. A mix of sunshine and showers but something

altogether a bit fresher so this is the picture as we go into tomorrow.

The showers, I don't think, will amount to very much. Plenty of

brightness in between them. The temperatures are going to be down

five or 6 degrees on today's values so high is at best of 17 or 18

degrees. Still pleasant, especially if you can be in some sunshine and

out of the breeze. Certainly not bad for the middle of September. Showers

fizzling out which is good news for the middle of September. Showers

you are heading out for culture night ought to the rugby tomorrow

night. It big evening but wrap up because it will be getting a little

cool overnight. What's happening is this ridge of high pressure is

building in and that is going to settle down our weather certainly

through the first-half of the weekend before this next weather

front arrives and dampens things down on Sunday. Bad news coming up

for half marathon competitors. Saturday is not looking like a bad

day. More clout than we will see tomorrow but temperatures holding up

quite well. Well it is more cloudy, it is dry as well so a perfectly

usable date with temperature stuck in the middle teens. The picture on

Sunday though is not nearly so pretty. That rain is moving very

slowly across Northern Ireland. It will be pretty heavy for a time to

sell if you are taking part in the half marathon or more particularly

if you are a watching it, I'm very sorry. Those threatening clouds are

on the way and the rain is coming down. Make the most of Saturday for

any outside jobs because Sunday will be a day to be inside.

Our late summary is at half past ten.

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