Other NI News In Brief

Up In Smoke

A city centre shopkeeper has been fined £600 for selling cigarettes to persons under the age of 18. John Larkin, of Innisfree at Castle Street, Belfast, was also ordered to pay costs of £69. The prosecution was brought by Belfast City Council following a test purchasing exercise at the shop on December 16, 2010.

Planning Error Costs

A Co Fermanagh woman was recently fined at Enniskillen's magistrates court for failing to comply with a DOE Planning enforcement notice. Myrtle Woodhouse Leonard of Ballydoolagh was fined £7,500 plus £85 costs for failing to comply with an enforcement notice which required her to remove a prefabricated wooden dwelling from land at the same address. The charges were brought under Article 72 of the Planning (NI) Order 1991, as amended (non-compliance with an enforcement notice)

Germany Calling

A University of Ulster lecturer has been awarded an honorary Professorship from the Universities of Applied Sciences, Kempten, in Bavaria, Germany. Dr Frank Owens, who is a senior lecturer in the Engineering Research Institute in Ulster's School of Engineering, received the honour in recognition of his long-standing involvement in the development and directing of collaborative Masters (MEng) degree programmes between the University of Ulster and the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg and Kempten.

Stray Dogs

Three dog owners have been fined in court in Belfast. Kathleen Hinds, from Forthriver Link in west Belfast, was fined a total of £60 for allowing her two dogs to stray and for failing to have a licence for either dog. She was also ordered to pay costs of £66. Michelle Lavery, from Sliabh Dubh View, also in west Belfast, was fined a total of £30 and ordered to pay costs of £69 for allowing her dog to stray and for failing to have a licence for the dog. Martha McBride, from Southwell Street in the north of the city, was fined £20 and ordered to pay costs of £66 for failing to have a licence for her dog. The prosecutions were brought by Belfast City Council.

Litter Is 'Not Fine'

A man has been fined in relation to an alleged littering incident last September. Dean Mitchell, from Queen Street in Ballymena, Co Antrim, was fined £75 and ordered to pay costs of £66 after he failed to respond to a notice for information, issued by Belfast City Council, following reports that litter was dropped from a vehicle at College Square East, Belfast on September 10 and led to the prosecution by Belfast City Council.

(BMcC/GK)