26/09/2014 BBC Wales Today

Welcome to Wales Today. Tonight's headlines:

Cocaine worth ?100 million on board thought to be headed

The massive drugs haul seized in a National Crime Agency operation.

Officers suspect a boat here at Pwllheli Marina was set

for a high-seas rendezvous with the drugs yacht.

Friday prayers on the day MPs back air strikes

We speak to members of the Muslim community here for reaction.

They're paying ?700 to get to sixth form.

A warning the rising cost of transport will force people out

UKIP leader Nigel Farage says his party is becoming

the main threat to Labour in Wales at next year's general election.

We topped the poll in Merthyr Tydfil in the European elections, something

I would not believe, so it is a difficult to know where we will be

in seven months time. And in tonight's sport,

loving every minute of his debut It's hugs all round,

as Welshman Jamie Donaldson secures A drugs haul with

an estimated street value of ?100 million may have been heading to

Pwllheli, on the North Wales coast. Earlier this week,

a yacht carrying an estimated tonne of cocaine was intercepted

by the Irish Navy in the Atlantic. National Crime Agency officers are

currently searching a boat seized from Pwllheli Marina

which they believe was involved. Roger Pinney is in the Marina

for us this evening. Yes, National Crime Agency

officers arrived here last night. The motor cruiser was moored on one

of the Marina pontoons behind me. The activity here followed one

of the biggest drug seizures A yacht carrying a tonne of cocaine

was intercepted off Ireland. Under close forensic examination

now, a 25 foot motor cruiser, the Welsh link National Crime Agency

officers suspect in a transatlantic smuggling operation. It was a

complex and detailed multinational intelligence operation which led the

National Crime Agency to this boat, an operation which spanned half a

globe, from Venezuela in central America to Wales. 200 miles

south-west of Cork and the 60 foot yacht is shadowed by an Irish Navy

vessel. It was stormed early Tuesday morning by Eliot forces. On board,

around ?100 million worth of cocaine. It was destined for the

north-east of England. -- elite forces. It is shot a 5% of the

entire UK consumption in any given year, a time, so a very significant

amount. -- it is short. She came from Venezuelan and put briefly into

Trinidad before setting off on her transatlantic crossing. The

intercept came off the coast of Ireland. Had she been allowed to

continue her journey, it is believed the yacht would have one --

rendezvoused with another boat of the marina. The Irish authorities

believe for their part that this has been a textbook operation. We

trained for this quite rigorous league and we evaluate ourselves to

make sure we do this properly, and I think the results are evident in how

successful this operation was. The joint operation between ourselves

and the customs officers. -- quite rigorously. We have a unity of

purpose and effort in all three agencies. This operation is far from

over, with suspects still being questioned in Ireland and here in

the UK. National Crime Agency officers, though, believe they are

close to cracking a major smuggling ring.

Just to bring you right up-to-date, so far five people have been

arrested in connection with this. Three of them were in that yacht

detained by the Irish authorities and two more have been arrested in

Yorkshire. The National Crime Agency says it is hoping to speak to

another man from the Leeds area, so this is still very much a live

investigation. Back to you. Thank you.

A number of Welsh MPs spoke in the House of Commons earlier,

as UK air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq was debated.

In the past hour or so, Members overwhelmingly voted to back

With Parliament recalled for the day, among those to speak was former

In 2003 I backed Tony Blair going into Iraq because I honestly

believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. I was wrong and

we went to war on a lie in the aftermath has been disastrous. This

makes me deeply allergic to anything in the region, certainly anything

hinting of western cowboy intervention. There are disputes

between the Kurds and the Iraqi central government which will have

to be resolved in some way, but I fully support this resolution. It is

a good step in the right direction. We are falling into a vortex of

hatreds that are ancient and deep, and once we start this process it

will be almost impossible in the future to extricate ourselves from

it. Our Parliamentary correspondent

David Cornock is at Westminster. Some powerful statements from our

MPs this afternoon? Yes row, we really get a flavour of the

exchanges in the debate today. -- yes Rob. Even those who are in

favour of air strikes are the asking questions where it will end. Will it

really just be restricted to Iraq? You also heard Peter Hain there say

something I have never heard him say before. He was a member of Tony

Blair's Cabinet that voted to go to war and invade Iraq and decided to

invade in 2003, and there he is admitting he was wrong and that

Britain went to war on a lie. But he is in favour of the military

intervention this time because he thinks it is a start. But he does

think that ultimately it will be for the political forces in the middle

east to come up with a lasting political settlement. Now, when the

vote was called, the Government one it easily -- won it easily. Five

from Wales voted against. Three SPEAKS IN WELSH

MPs also voted against. So what will happen next? It was a very tightly

drawn motion and it now authorises Britain to join in military air

strikes against ex-Linux state targets only in Iraq, not in Syria,

-- Islamic State targets. We do know that there are Tornado aircraft with

missiles waiting in Cyprus, and from now on, they could be in action

very, very soon. There was talk of whether the action could be extended

to Syria but the Government very adamant about that that this would

require another separate vote by MPs and that would be one they might

find rather harder to win. Thank you.

Here in Wales, the prospect of UK air strikes has been followed

Our reporter Nick Palit has been in Cardiff to speak to people

City Road in Cardiff is probably the most cosmopolitan street

in Wales - all shades of opinion from all parts of the world.

And today, the talk of the Shisha bars

Yusef Aljiborey runs the Baghdad Market on City Road.

He's an Iraqi mechanical engineer-turned-grocer.

His customers come for a taste of home, and all have opinions

on whether or not Britain should be involved in air strikes on Iraq.

Can I ask you what you think about whether Britain should bomb Iraq to

try to get rid of IS? I think yes. A few doors up in this charity shop,

and Dldar Ahmed's He's a Kurdish Iraqi,

now a British citizen. He volunteers here at Islamic Relief

and is angry that IS has hijacked Well, like Britain or America, I

think they can stop them from doing any more of these things. Killing

people for no reason. And what about British air strikes in Iraq? Will

that help? Well, I believe yeah. It's Friday prayers at the

Dar Ul Isra Mosque, just Here, opinion is divided on

whether air strikes on Iraq are the ISIS, I don't agree with them but I

don't think air strikes will help because how many civilians will

be... How many casualties will we have? Civilian casualties? Do we

agree with that? No. I think it will be a good thing if we join because

even the Islamic countries joining, so it will good if we join. I've

been living in Cardiff more than I have anywhere else in my whole life.

As a family and a Muslim, my boys have grown up in Cardiff.

But Dr Amin Barzanji still has relatives in his Kurdish homeland.

He's been following the debate in Parliament today, and though he's in

favour of air strikes, he doesn't want it to go any further than that.

We don't want any foreign foot there. Kurds could deal with it.

They could deal with the problem. All we need is, don't let us down

again. Support us as we deserve and then I think that part of Kurdistan

will be safe from the incursion of ISIL and any affiliates of ISIL.

Back here on city road, there are mixed views on whether these are the

right course of action. But for many here, it is their religious country

that will have to live with the consequences. Some fear many

innocents will lose their lives. Others say it is the only to tackle

IS. Staying with politics, the leader

of the UK Independence Party says his party is emerging as the main

opposition to Labour in Wales. Nigel Farage said UKIP is filling

a hole left by the Conservatives. He's been speaking to our reporter

Carl Roberts at his party's annual Politics is changing very, very

quickly. Just look at the search for the yes vote in Scotland over the

last few months. I also think in Wales, people look at the education

system, they look equally at the health service, and they ask

themselves, why are we getting the worst deal out of anybody in the

whole of the United Kingdom? And the figures are perfectly clear in both

of those vital parts of people's lives that things aren't working. So

it is a question of who can provide opposition to the Labour Party. Now,

historically, that has been the Conservatives in Wales, but the

evidence is now that we are beginning to feel that role. We

topped the poll in Merthyr Tydfil in the European elections, something I

would never have believed! So it is very difficult to see where we will

be in seven months time. Carwyn Jones said he wanted an offer to

Wales of the same powers being offered to Scotland. And a revision

of the Barnett formula, something you have called for. Is this

something you would like to see? Well, Wales gets a rotten deal! They

haven't been doing fighting as effectively as the Scots over the

last 40 years. Arguably, Wales is a long way behind Scotland in terms of

the funding formula. Honestly, I think to get a fair constitutional

settlement, everything has to be on the table. You mentioned you don't

think there is an appetite for tax. 49% in a poll this week wanted to

see more power and some tax powers are on the way to the Assembly. A

few years ago, your party wanted to scrap the Assembly. Would you like

it to get more power? There is reticence about powers but they are

coming anyway. The genie is out of the bottle and in the end we are all

going to have to get used the fact that this is the way the UK will be

run, because I certainly sense in England now, which, you know, is a

very big population, I certainly sent a strong desire for

English-only debates and English Parliament on English issues, and

that obviously has knock-on consequences for Wales. That was

Nick for Raj speaking to our correspondent. -- that was Nigel

Farage. A vulnerable man who was allegedly

forced to work for 13 years at a Newport farm without pay has

told Cardiff Crown Court he was free Darrell Simester, who's 44,

agreed under cross-examination that the defendants had never done

anything to keep him there, but, he said, when his family found him,

he was glad to get out. Daniel Doran and his son,

also called Daniel, deny requiring Mr Simester, from Kidderminster, to

perform forced or compulsory labour. Researchers at Cardiff University

say nearly one in seven antibiotic treatments given out by GPs

for common infections over Their study assessed

around 11 million prescriptions There's a warning tonight some

pupils from the most deprived backgrounds could be forced to give

up education altogether because it's It comes as research from BBC Wales

shows a third of councils now charge over 16s for school transport,

and the cost for some families has What did you do in school? Kerry is

a single mum who works full-time on minimum wage. She used to pay ?45 a

year for the school bus for her son Jordan. But Newport council has now

increased that to ?347 a year. And with Jordan and her daughter

Charlotte now in sixth form, she has to find the best part of ?700 a

year. The week before they went back to school, I still hadn't decided

they were going back. I had bought no uniforms. I had literally just

left it. I think it was the Friday I decided, yes, they will go back, and

they went back on the Monday. I didn't sleep for three weeks,

couldn't eat. I was so stressed because I knew the impact of them

not being able to go back to school would be... Horrible. Newport

council says the new system is fairer and means everybody pays the

same. A third of Welsh councils now charge pupils who was 16 and over

for transport and a further eight say they are considering changes

which could involve fees. The charges range from ?60 to ?418 a

year. And that is a cost that some say could push young people out of

education. For families on a two-week benefits psycho who are

struggling to keep the home warm in the winter and food on the table --

cycle, with extra support, the extra ten or ?20 a week could be the straw

that breaks the camel's back. Jordan and Charlotte wrote to officials to

protest the charges but they still have to pay. It is a stupid amount

of money. It is not something anybody can pull out of their bank

and go, OK. Some individuals can and that is fine for them but for the

majority of us it is not something we have lying around the backs of

our sofas or something like that. But tough decisions must be laid and

the axe has to. Web. Local authorities are said to be bearing

the brunt of austerity and as the cuts begin to bite even deep in the

future, it could get worse. -- the axe has two fall somewhere.

Cocaine worth ?100 million on board thought to be headed

The massive drugs haul seized in a National Crime Agency operation.

And still to come, the man behind some of the most

memorable moments on TV is retiring after six decades at the BBC.

First, here's the sport, with Claire.

He says he's been waiting for it his whole career, and this

afternoon Wales' Jamie Donaldson made his debut in the Ryder Cup.

The 38-year-old got off to the perfect start, winning his match

and a valuable point for Europe alongside partner Lee Westwood.

Live to Gleneagles now, let's hear from Catrin Heledd.

Indeed. What a debut, as you say. It is not easy walking on to that first

tee with thousands of expectant fans cheering your name. But Jamie

Donaldson seemed to take it all in his stride this afternoon. He and

Lee Westwood were one down after the third but they won the match by two

holes, and he was, as you can imagine, delighted. The talk here

has been about how comfortable he looked out on the course, making up

for lost time as a repeat, really showing emotion, pumping the air,

and his message to the media after the victory was clear. There is more

to come. Let's hope so. Europe in the lead overnight. What can we

expect tomorrow? Yes, as you say, Europe now 5-3 up after winning

three of this afternoon's matches, but tomorrow morning, the four balls

will continue and the guessing has already started as to be who will be

paired with whom. The captains have not submitted their choices yet.

They have up to an hour after the end of play to do so. But don't be

surprised if you see Jamie Donaldson and Lee Westwood back on that

course. That pairing really worked today, and when you consider what

happened to the mighty Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia, really

struggling, some of your's top players, well, don't be surprised if

the captain Paul McGinley might give the Welsh rookie another opportunity

to shine. We will know within the next hour whether Jamie Donaldson

will be back on that course tomorrow afternoon or morning. Thank you. I

can hardly wait! And catch up with highlights

of the day's play on the red button at 8.05pm, and again

on BBC Two Wales at 11.05pm. Football,

and Cardiff City caretaker managers Scott Young and Danny Gabbidon say

they're hopeful prospective new boss Russell Slade can be the man to turn

the Bluebirds' fortunes around. Cardiff plays Sheffield Wednesday

tomorrow, as legal discussions continue

between Cardiff and Leyton Orient. In a week of dramatic developments,

for a while it looked as if Cardiff might have a manager in place

for this morning's weekly press But when the journalists took

their seats, it was the caretaker duo of Young and

Gabbidon who again faced the cameras Russell Slade seems destined to take

over as soon as a compensation deal He'll be in the stands

for tomorrow's game against Sheffield Wednesday as

the current coaches wait to find out Obviously he has a lot of experience

and has been in the game a long time, done a good job with Leyton

Orient, so, who knows? With football you hope if he comes in, you can get

to where you want to be. We feel a loss of passion for this club. We

take the team tomorrow and then we will sit down again and see where it

takes us. -- a locked of passion. In the Premier League, Swansea

are away at Sunderland tomorrow. Manager Garry Monk has

a difficult selection to make after Jefferson Montero and Marvin

Emnes both impressed in the League Cup win over Everton in positions

where Swansea are already strong. It is a competition between all of

the squads to contribute to scoring goals for us, and it is nice at the

moment that it is spread out. I am not naive to think they don't want

to school but as long as we are winning and performing well, that is

the thing. In League 2 tomorrow, Newport County

host Wimbledon, while Wrexham are at In cycling, Commonwealth Champion

Geraint Thomas says he's not a contender for Sunday's World

Championship Road Race in Spain. Thomas says the effects

of a busy summer, when he rode the Tour de France and took gold

in Glasgow, mean he's likely to His job will be to help British

team-mate Ben Swift to try to win I've had a bit of a... Not the best

run into this. I had a crush couple of weeks ago and I missed quite a

lot of training and things. -- a crash. But I'm still motivated to

help out Swift and the boys and I'm looking forward to it.

Rugby, and two regions are in Pro 12 action tonight.

The Blues travel to Leinster and the Scarlets are away at Edinburgh.

Scarlets Captain and Wales hooker Ken Owens has been ruled out of

action for up to 12 weeks, meaning he'll miss the autumn Tests.

You can watch his team-mates in action.

Scrum V Live is on BBC Two Wales from 7.30pm.

Talking of sport on television, we can thank one man for bringing us

some of the most memorable sporting events of the last 60 years.

The pioneering broadcaster Dewi Griffiths.

But of course he's best known for his career in radio.

For nearly three decades, he's presented A String Of Pearls

This Sunday's programme will be his last,

Our arts and media correspondent Huw Thomas has been speaking to him.

Dewi Griffiths at work for the last time. A String Of Pearls has been

one of the most popular programmes on radio Wales for the last 30

years, but this weekend, the presenter will play his final

record, calling time on six decades at the BBC. It has connected me to

people my age, people who have grown up in the 30s and 40s, people who

knew about the depression and the war years, who knew about the golden

age of Hollywood, who knew about the BBC Dance Bag years and the big band

in Iraq. It is the music of yesteryear which has made his show a

listeners' favourite. The likes of Gracie Fields and Glenn Miller are

regular on his playlist. But much of his pioneering career was spent

behind-the-scenes at the sports department, where he produced and

directed some of the most memorable moments on TV, like here at

Wimbledon in 1967, where he oversaw a piece of history, the first piece

of colour television coverage. There have been celebrations this week to

mark his retirement, and a dilemma for a radio station that is losing

one of its most popular presenters. He has been a huge asset to BBC

Radio Wales over the last 26 years and the BBC as a whole. -- 60 years.

We are going to miss him greatly. He felt he was right to bring his

career to a close and it really will be the end. Will I be back for the

odd occasion? I don't think so. 60 years and four months. That will be

on my plaque at my house when I put up the reach of roses to say, I am

not dead, just retired! -- wreath of roses. There will be thanks from the

listeners who have enjoyed his company for so many years.

Now for the weekend weather. Here's Sue Charles.

Not looking bad at all for the weekend. Mostly dry with sunny

spells but it will also stay on the warm side for late September. A fine

evening to come, largely dry with patchy low cloud developing, but

clear skies for most of us overnight, so turning cold overnight

with mist and fog patches. Cooler than this in the countryside and

milder along the south coast. The pressure chart shows this weather

front making some inroads tomorrow, but fairly weak, so not too much

activity with this. Early mist and fog around in the morning but that

will clear to leave a cloudy morning with the odd spot of drizzle, then

generally turning drier with sunny spells becoming more widespread

later on. A change in the wind direction, so feeling warmer as it

comes from the South. Tomorrow night, more cloud around with mist

and fog forming with the odd spot of drizzle, so milder than tonight with

temperatures in double figures across Wales. Similar on Sunday.

Often cloudy with the odd spot of rain, but for most of us, staying

dry with sunny spells, light winds and very mild again. And it is

thanks to high pressure keeping things settled through the weekend

and early next week, although these could turn things more and settled

later next week, but still some uncertainty about the track. One to

watch. Cloud around but mostly dry and fine for the weekend and the

start of next week, and staying warm for late September. Three or 4

degrees above average. Today's picture is from Mandy. Cloud

breaking to leave sunny spells over the beach in Pembrokeshire. Not

always blue skies this weekend but certainly sunshine at times.

A reminder now of our top stories tonight.

A drugs haul with an estimated street value of ?100

million may have been heading to Pwllheli on the North Wales coast.

Earlier this week, a yacht carrying an estimated tonne

of cocaine was intercepted by the Irish Navy in the Atlantic.

That is it from us. We will have a quick update at 8pm and more News at

10pm. From us, have a lovely weekend.