Other News In Brief

Police To Patrol Belfast Glider Services

Police are to start patrolling the Belfast Glider buses in a bid to tackle anti-social behaviour, it has emerged.

Recent weeks have seen vandalism of both vehicles and ticket machines as well as verbal and physical attacks on staff.

The west Belfast area appears to be the worst affected by the issue.

Officers are now being posted to ride the buses for hours at a time, with the heaviest patrols to be on Friday and Saturday nights in the hope of combating the ongoing anti-social behaviour.

City Centre Incident Sees Traffic Warden Assaulted By Abusive Males

A traffic warden carrying out his duties in Belfast has been assaulted by a group of men.

Police are appealing for information after the attack at around 9pm on Tuesday 05 February in which a man was approached by a group of intoxicated males while working on Waring Street.

The culprits verbally abused the man, while one also physically assaulted him.

Fortunately the victim escaped injury in the attack.

"This attendant was out trying to earn a living and we take matters like this very seriously," a PSNI spokesperson said.

"We are carrying out a CCTV trawl in the area to identify those responsible."

Anyone who witnessed the incident is urged to contact police on 101, quoting reference number 1245 of 05/02/2019.

"If you woke up this morning with a sore head are reading this now and believe that this was you - we urge you to get in contact with us before we come and knock your door," the spokesperson added.

Alliance Call For New Cervical Screening Campaign

Alliance Health spokesperson Paula Bradshaw MLA has called on the Public Health Agency to launch a new campaign to encourage younger women to go for cervical screening.

The south Belfast MLA's comments follow reports of a drop in women of the ages 25-29 getting tested.

She said: "It is increasingly recognised a public Health Service must be about prevention and, where appropriate, early intervention, and never more so than when it comes to the detection of cancer. Therefore it is concerning there has been a drop in the number of women attending," she said.

"Women of all ages have to put their health first. The tests themselves take only five minutes but can be lifesaving. Since we know the age ranges where a significant number of women are not being screened, a targeted campaign by the Public Health Agency could make a significant and valuable difference.

"It should be emphasised 95% of tests find nothing abnormal, and even where there are abnormalities they can often be managed by monitoring alone. However, nothing beats being absolutely safe and cervical screening prevents 2,000 cases of cervical cancer every year in the UK. We owe it to ourselves and to society to reverse the trend and ensure more younger women attend screening as an easy preventative measure."



(JG/CM)