16/05/2016 BBC Newsline

Good evening, the headlines on BBC Newsline.

The police crackdown on the thousands of fake

prescription drugs being shipped here every week.

The father of the young English rider who died at the North West 200

I have lost my best friend, I've lost my son. But he died doing what

he wanted to do. Martin McGuinness predicts

that we could know who our new Stormont ministers will be

by the start of next week. A local animal charity begins

a campaign against puppy The special treat for Star Wars

fans when Luke Skywalker The Ulster Championship is under

way, and it's Fermanagh heading into the quarterfinals

at the expense of Antrim. And it's farewell high pressure

and hello low pressure, we'll be needing the umbrellas

and raincoats this week Police officers have been carrying

out raids targeting drug dealers Figures show that 10,000 fake

diazepam tranquilliser tablets are being shipped

into Northern Ireland every week. The drugs have been linked

to a number of recent deaths including that of Aaron Strong

who was eighteen and from Aaron Strong was a week away from

celebrating his 19th birthday when he suffered a massive heart attack.

He was in a coma for six days before his family had to make the painful

decision to turn his life support machine. They see he took a powerful

mixture of prescription drugs and alcohol. He went out on a Friday

night. When he came back, I knew, I asked him if he was drinking. I ran

down the stairs, and he started shaking. He was dead. He took

tramadol. He called what is called a Budweiser. And he called a diazepam.

And he had a little drink. My heart broke watching him in intensive

care, those tubes. All I wanted to do is open his little eyes firmly to

say, I you, son. I knew he was dead. Is understood a number of young

people have died in recent weeks from taking a mixture of

prescription drugs and alcohol. The rise in the number of prescription

drugs being sold on the streets of Northern Ireland is of concern to

the authorities. Figures from the PSNI showed that 10,000 fake

diazepam drugs are shipped into Northern Ireland every week. The

drugs are usually bought online and ship information. They are not that

difficult to find. Some drugs are sold for as little as ?1 a tablet.

But these drugs can be extremely dangerous. They are just as it did

as heroin and if taken in uncontrolled circumstances, deadly.

Diazepam, tramadol and others all affect the brain. In doing that,

they affect the way certain organs were, in particular the heart is a

target where often we get fatalities because of the reduction in heart

pumping. In any circumstances, death is something that is very often a

consequence of misuse of prescription drugs. The PSNI say

they are being proactive in trying to tackle the problem. We see the

scale as being significant and we share the concerns being raised by

the community. It is ongoing. The drugs themselves that people are

using prescription drugs. They are dangerous if they are not prescribed

by your GP. The family of Aaron Strong say they don't want another

life to be lost in the same tragic circumstances. Please, kids, stop.

Don't do it. One little tablet, and that is you gone. And I just can't

cope. I can't cope no more. The father of a 20-year-old road

racer who lost his life competing at the North West 200 has paid

tribute to his son. Malachi Mitchell Thomas,

who was from Lancashire, died after crashing in the Supertwins

race on Saturday. Malachi Mitchell Thomas was one of

the brightest prospects in road racing. Viewed as a rising star of

the sport, this latest tragedy has left a father devastated. I've lost

my best friend, I've lost my son. But he died doing what he wanted to

do. He lived for riding. He has raced since he was six years old. We

would take him to the roads, the crowds took to him. Not a bad bone

in his body, nobody had a bad word to say about him. I want to thank

the paramedics for trying to save him at the roadside. We didn't come

here with a big business or bank account. We came here through hard

work, grit and determination, and mostly his desire to win races. I've

never seen desire like he had. Malachi Mitchell Thomas's father

visited the crash site where his son lost his life. Very tough. I went

and gave him a kiss, stroked his hair, talked to him. I have to

remember the positives. And enjoy the memories we had. I preferred to

have the memories we had. He was a star that burned bright. I will be

going to the TT and scattering his ashes on the course, which is what

he wanted me to do. It is a dangerous sport. So is any form of

motorsport, so is horse racing. I've no problem with road racing and I

will continue to support and hopefully be involved with the team

because that is what he would have wanted me to do. He said he will

remember his son as a fantastic young man and a fantastic bike

racer. The rider Ryan Farquhar,

who was injured in a crash at the North West 200 on Thursday,

left the Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital today

and is now in a stable condition. Nico Mawhinney and Paul Gartland,

two other injured riders, The funeral for murder victim

Daniel Murray has taken The 55-year-old takeaway delivery

driver was lured to his death by a hoax phone call just

a week ago. He died from gun wounds

in Lady Street just off A horse-drawn carriage carried the

coffin of Daniel Murray through to the holy Trinity Church. His former

partner carried a banner with his picture. Soon after this footage was

taken, two of the mourners shouted insults and made abusive gestures

towards bystanders. The priest spoke to mourners before they went into

the church. In his eulogy, he criticised those behind the murder.

Danny's death was horrific, where his life was snuffed out in a blink

of an eye. His killers set themselves up as judge, jury and

executioner. Those who carried out the murder of Danny are those that

have brought murder to the city of Belfast and the country of Ireland.

They may or may not stand before the courts and the land of the judgment

passed on them. But they will... They will have to stand before God,

and he will be there just judge as they give an account of their lives

and what they have done. After the funeral, members of his family

carried his cough and past the church. Two men arrested following

the murder were released after questioning.

It's understood the mother of man shot in Londonderry at the weekend

was slightly injured by the attackers when

The 30-year-old man was shot in the ankles early yesterday

morning in Yeats Court in the Ballymagroarty area.

The Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness expects the political

parties will be in a position at the beginning of next week

to run the allocation of the Stormont departments,

under what's known as the D'Hondt proportional system.

The Ulster Unionist Party announced last week that it would not

be taking a ministry, but instead would be forming

the Assembly's first official opposition.

Our political editor Mark Devenport has obtained

new details of the draft programme for government.

An early copy of the programme for government framework

the politicians are now looking at contains 33 aims, or,

as the document puts it, indicators of where our power

sharing coalition wants us to be heading.

They include improving citizen safety from crime, increasing

healthy life expectancy, increasing the number of people

working in good jobs, and increasing the perception

Critics say that as it stands the document is a bit bland,

in favour like everyone of motherhood and apple pie.

The document has a long way to go. It is weak and we are trying to

address some of the gaps on the issues that we lead on in the

elections and that other parties did as well but are not in the programme

of the government and also trying to put some actual deliverables in that

at the moment. It is a lot of aspirational language that won't

hold any future government to account.

The SDLP is still negotiating on the programme for government,

but of course the Ulster Unionists have already rejected it claiming

that the DUP and Sinn Fein haven't kept to the timetable

they set themselves in last year's Fresh Start deal.

But Martin McGuinness rejects the criticism arguing

that the current document is deliberately broad

brush so the public can have their own input into it

If it takes the rest of this week to agree a final outcome to that is to

be put before the people in the three-month consultation, we will

take that. And I expect that the D'Hondt mechanism will run at the

beginning of next week. D'Hondt of course is the jargon term

for dividing out Stormont's By next week, we should be wiser

about whether the next coalition will just include the DUP

and Sinn Fein, or whether the SDLP and Alliance will also take

a ministerial role. You're watching BBC

Newsline, and still ahead: On the home ground, we get an early

look at the visitors centre dedicated to Seamus Heaney.

The animal charity the USPCA has started a major campaign

Tonight the BBC's Panorama programme investigates the trade in what are

BBC Scotland's investigation follows puppies trafficked across the Irish

Sea. It is just after 2:30am. I am about 4.5 miles north of the port of

Cairnryan. The port where boats coming from Belfast. It is the dog

dealers route. It is a rich thousands of puppies are taken on

every year. Ireland is the warehouse area for a lot of these, somewhere

between 40,000 - 50,000 poppies are brought over every year. That is in

the boots of cars, small vans, it is animals spending 24 hours, maybe, in

transit along the way. It is a big money business. One dog will produce

May be 50-60 puppies in its life. At about ?500 a puppy, that is give or

take ?30,000. And that is one dog. If you build it up to 500 dogs per

farm, that is ?15 million. One local man discovered this the hard way

when he bought a Pomeranian puppy as a present. I'm sorry to tell you,

the Fed said, it is five weeks old, it should be with its mother, it

shouldn't have been taken away. You have no vet certificate for it. She

says it has been from a puppy farm. The new campaign includes advice for

anyone looking to buy a puppy. Please, please ensure you go to the

home of the praetor, that you see the relevant documentation, that you

see the mother, and that you are happy that puppy has come from that

home and has been bred there. And do contact us for any advice we can

give you. The charity is working with authorities in Ireland and

Scotland to try to stop the transportation of illegally farmed

puppies and bring an end to suffering like this.

And that programme is shown here on BBC One Northern Ireland

We are interested in getting your views on this story and our other

main reports on the BBC Newsline Facebook page.

An oil company behind a controversial exploratory well

in County Antrim says it has begun drilling at the site.

Opponents have protested against the development at Woodburn

forest near Carrickfergus because it's close

Northern Ireland Water, which has leased out the well site,

says there's no risk to the water supply.

Commercial exploitation of any oil discovered would need full

Manchester United football club is to refund tickets for yesterday's

cancelled match against Bournemouth but that's little compensation

for the fans that spent money travelling over to England.

The match was called off because of a security alert.

It later emerged that a fake bomb had been accidentally left

in a toilet after a security training exercise last week.

BBC Newsline's Mark Simpson has been talking to local fans.

As the crowd started to fill out... Ollie and his dad went to Old

Trafford for the first time yesterday. They saw the stadium but

they didn't see any football. They were among the tens of thousands of

fans caught up in the security alert which turned out to be a fake bomb

left behind during a security training exercise earlier in the

week. So, how did they feel when they found out the real reason the

match was called off? Disbelief. Just disbelief. Every person that is

professional has accountability and somebody to leave something like

that behind, it isn't like leaving your notebook behind in the meeting.

It is a fake bomb and I can't believe the level of stupidity. I

will remember it as a lucky day because it wasn't an actual bomb or

an actual attack. It was just someone being quite stupid. Among

the crowd were 50 members of a carried off supporters club. As they

made their way home today by coach, they sent us a video message. Very

angry about what happened, very disappointed for the kids in our

trip who didn't get to see their team play in this theatre of dreams.

Maybe it is a theatre of nightmares now. Our fans have paid ?200 to go

away for the weekend. Maybe as a family it has cost them ?800. They

have been offered refunds for their tickets and readmission for the

rearranged match tomorrow night but very few fans from Belfast will be

able to make it. A Service of Thanksgiving has taken

place in Enniskillen for the Earl The Duke of Kent represented

the Queen at the service Henry George Victor John Crichton

was the sixth Earl of Erne and the title has now passed

to his son John. First Minister Arlene Foster

and Dame Mary Peters were among A new visitor centre dedicated

to the late Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney aims to attract 35,000

visitors a year. The ?4 million centre is called

HomePlace and will open in Bellaghy Our arts correspondent

Robbie Meredith joined the poet's family and friends today to take

a look. Our unfenced country is bogged that

keeps crusting between the sides of the sun... He brought his homeland

to life and poetry. Seamus Heaney's family have been closely involved in

deciding what goes into this new visitors centre and they came today

to see its progress. It has been sensitively done in terms of trying

to get a sense of his life. So, they have artefacts from the personal...

We will be donating some of the books from his library just to give

an idea of the range of reading, so there is obviously some poetry books

but there is also fiction, there is biography. The outside of the

centre, built on the site of a former police station, is almost

complete. By the time the inside is finished, it will contain a theatre,

cafe, and exhibitions full of Seamus Heaney's words, books and

belongings. The centre's manager is the poet's nephew. We have set

ourselves a target of 35,000 visitors a year, and we feel that is

attainable. We are obviously positioned well. We are halfway

between Belfast and Derry, three miles off that main route. How would

Seamus Heaney have felt about being tourist attraction? He'd be very

proud, I'm sure. It is an amazing thing. That is also part of him that

he would have found this quite scary, in the most positive way.

Homeplace opens in September. We have been sharing with the excite

and in the latest instalment of the Star Wars series.

The area has been a magnet for fans over the past week,

and as our north-west reporter Keiron Tourish can tell us, some got

It isn't every day a Holywood superstar drops by. That's what

happened at this pub in Donegal last night as Mark Hamill, who plays Luke

Skywalker in Star Wars, paid a visit. Love it, it's all just. Good

time? Fantastic, part of the family. Will you come back again? Yes, in my

own time, so I don't have to work. Unbelievable. We have been

starstruck, and looking for stars all day, so when the main character

walks into your bar, it is fantastic. Part of the next Star

Wars movie was being shot here, and filming centred on the famous

millennium Falcon spaceship, built on the edge of the Atlantic next

week. It brought fans in huge numbers to try to get a glimpse of

their heroes. For one family, it was a week and they will never forget.

He was a gem of a person, so laid back and cool. They say you should

never meet your heroes but if your hero happens to be Mark Hamill, I'd

say there is an exception there to be made because it was so, so nice.

He posed for a lot of photographs and he was laughing and joking the

whole way through. Daisy Ridley, who played Ray in the force awakens,

listen to a local band in another pub. Mark Hamill had no time for a

pint but he obviously made this a very happy hour for excited fans who

were in the right place at the right time. Brilliant, thank you!

The force was certainly with them. Nice one!

Some more sports news, and the start of the Ulster senior

football championship at the weekend.

Thomas Niblock was at Brewster Park in Enniskillen where

Yes, the Ulster championship started this weekend

with the preliminary round game, and it's Pete McGraths side

who will now play Donegal in the quarterfinals.

Fermanagh winning comfortably by six points.

The story of this game is fairly simple. Fermanagh started

brilliantly but by the time and from scored their first point after 23

minutes, the game was over. In comparison, Fermanagh were a team

inspired, specifically this man. He finished up with nine points, three

quarters of Fermanagh's score in a man of the match performance. And

from close the gap after the break, but it is the other side going into

the final. We got ahead. And for long periods of the second half, we

were walking away with the game. We're loud and from back in, they

came within three points with six minutes to go. It was a nervous

time. Thankfully, we got a point to make it four, and then we secured

the game. Our second-half performance would be a concern for

me. The first half was the most pleasing. We targeted a big first

ten minutes and we said we would keep going after the first ten

minutes. That is what we did. Very disappointed with our second-half

performance, lots to work on. As for Antrim, they know the game was lost

during the first half. Yes, we basically didn't have our shooting

boots and Fermanagh did. There was lots of opportunities, 14. They took

their scoring chances and we didn't. The first after the damage. My boys

reacted well but we were here to win and we were very disappointed. And

from going to the qualifiers. As for Fermanagh, it is a small matter of a

trip to Donegal on June the 12th. Ballyclare's Jonathan Rea has

extended his lead at the top of the World Super Bikes standings

to 42 points. The reigning world champion took

second place during Saturday's opening race behind his team-mate

Tom Sykes, and backed it up Rea is the only rider to be

on the podium in all The next round takes place

at Donnington Park in England A closing round of 69,

three under par, lifted Graeme McDowell into a tie for ninth

place at the Players' It meant McDowell ended up a shot

ahead of Rory McIlroy whose fourth round of 70 left him on seven under

for the tournament and in 12th place, that was eight

shots behind the winner, Bethany Firth's place in the GB

Paralympics swimming team for the Rio Games was confirmed

today in Manchester Firth, from Seaforde in County Down,

won gold in London four years ago Now she's looking forward,

hopefully, to adding to her medal Finally, Leinster have confirmed

that Friday night's Pro12 semifinal against Ulster

is already a sell-out. All 19,100 seats were sold by ten

o'clock this morning, with Ulster Rugby taking

their full allocation. And if you didn't get a ticket,

don't worry, you can see the game The weather forecast

is next with Cecilia Daly. We have had some amazing weather

recently. Our gardens have loved it. It is going to change this week.

There will be some rain at times but I'm sure our gardens went minded.

Once we get past a night, the next few nights will be much milder. The

next couple of nights, some frost in places with the breeze picking up

but it is all about where the wind is coming from. And it'll be coming

from the Atlantic. It'll carry in areas of low pressure and some other

fronts from time to time and that mean of course that there will be

some rain. It won't be raining all the time. Tonight it'll stay dry

with lovely sunshine, probably some barbecues on the go as well. Towards

the end of the night, some cloud moving into the West, getting quite

chilly across the night tonight. Possibly a touch of frost on the

grass. Tomorrow, to begin with, there is some drier weather at a

webby too long before the rain makes way eastwards. We see that rain

around breakfast time over Fermanagh, Tyrone, and up into the

north-west. Not a cold start, either, by 9am, nine or 10 degrees.

Some dry weather in the east. Some sunshine, as well. You'll get into

work or school dry but you'll need the umbrella later because the rain

will arrive around lunchtime. It'll ease off that times and brighten up

as well so splashes of rain on and off, breezy at times, too, but not

cold with temperatures up to 15 or 16. Tomorrow evening, some rain, but

drying up by the end of the night and it shouldn't be too cold

tomorrow night, either. It went be raining every day this week. On

Wednesday, a lot of dry weather with sunshine, with temperatures up to

16-17. Thursday will be wet for some time and some of the rain will be

heavy, drying up on Friday. Our late summary

is at half past ten. You can also keep in contact with us

via Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for watching. Whatever

you're doing this evening, goodbye and take care.