Firefighters tackling huge Belfast Harbour estate blaze

At least 50 firefighters are still dealing with a blaze in the Belfast Harbour estate area.

Crews arrived at the Clearway Disposal scrap metal recycling business on East Twin Road at 13:02 GMT on Tuesday.

Thick black smoke has been billowing from it since then and two aerial appliances and a number of specialist appliances remain at scene.

“We are looking at a number of days to extinguish this significant fire,” group commander Paul Rodgers said.

Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle on Wednesday, Mr Rodgers said firefighters are “working tirelessly to move product from the site and then move it to another area to get into the pile itself”.

“It is approximately 10,000 tonnes of metal and waste product and we are just still working through that at the moment,” he said.

IMAGE SOURCE,PACEMAKER

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The fire is at a scrap metal recycling plant

IMAGE SOURCE,PACEMAKER

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Fire crews arrived at the scene shortly after 13:00 GMT

The group commander said the fire “may not look as visually intense” as it did on Tuesday, but it “is still as bad as it was yesterday”.

“It is approximately 80 to 100m long and about 40m wide, and we are still at the minute working around the periphery to try and get into the most intense part of the fire itself,” he said.

Local residents are being asked to stay at home and keep windows closed.

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IMAGE SOURCE,PACEMAKER

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Thick black smoke was seen billowing from the site

IMAGE SOURCE,PACEMAKER

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The clear day made the fire even more visible

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China: Public shaming returns amid Covid fears

Police in southern China have been captured on camera parading four alleged offenders through the streets in a public shaming exercise.

The four men paraded through the streets of Jingxi city in Guangxi province were accused of people trafficking.

China’s borders are largely closed due to the pandemic, as it attempts to tackle a new Covid wave.

The shaming drew mixed reactions online, including in state-owned media.

Images and video of the incident, which took place on 28 December, show four men in hazmat suits and face shields being walked through an area of the city by police.

They were carrying placards displaying their names and photos. Some people could be seen watching the event unfold.

State-run Guangxi Daily said the disciplinary action deterred border-related crimes and encouraged compliance with epidemic prevention and control.

State media have described the current Covid situation in the border area as “severe and complex”.

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The shaming parade met with a mixed reception on social media site Weibo where a hashtag about the public shaming was the top trending topic.

Some people said the exercise reminded them of public shamings from hundreds of years ago, while others empathised with the efforts needed to control the virus near the border.

“What is more terrifying than parading the street is the many comments that support this approach,” one user wrote.

The State-owned Beijing News said that “the measure seriously violates the spirit of the rule of law and cannot be allowed to happen again”.

The Jingxi City Public Security Bureau and local government defended the exercise, however, claiming it was an “on-site disciplinary warning activity” and that there was no “inappropriateness“, according to local media.

In 2007, a notice from authorities in China banned the parading of prisoners who had been given the death penalty.

Public shamings were common during the cultural revolution and are fairly rare now. In 2006, about 100 sex workers and some of their clients were dressed in yellow prison tunics and paraded through the streets.

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African leaders must reciprocate travel restrictions on UAE nationals

The Member of Parliament for the North Tongu constituency who doubles as the Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the house, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has charged African presidents to send an unambiguous warning to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities to register their displeasure over travel restrictions imposed on some African countries.

Ablakwa’s call comes on the back of a travel ban imposed on some African countries, announced in a statement shared on the website of Emirates Airlines.

The statement indicated that, passengers originating from Luanda, Conakry, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Entebbe, Harare, Lusaka, Accra, Abidjan and Addis Ababa to Dubai will not be allowed entry or transit effective December 28, 2021.

“Restrictions on entry and transit through Dubai on customers originating from the following destinations will not be accepted for travel to or through Dubai with effect from 28 December 2021 until further notice”.

The restrictions affect countries including the Republic of Angola, Republic of Guinea, Republic of Kenya, United Republic of Tanzania, Republic of Uganda, Republic of Ghana, Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

The statement added that, customers originating from Conakry to Dakar will not be accepted for travel.

This action, according to the North Tongu MP, is retrogressive and must not be allowed to extend beyond unreasonable limits at the cost of innocent travellers from African countries.

“The World Health Organization, WHO, has stated clearly that, travel bans are counterproductive to the spread of COVID-19 and the new Omicron variant. The UAE is being discriminatory, racial and senseless towards Africans”.

He added that “if all African leaders solidarize and unanimously boycott the flagship Dubai Expo that’s currently ongoing, it will send a clear signal to the UAE authorities to rescind this draconian decision”.

“I will call on the president of Ghana and leader of ECOWAS to send a message to the UAE government and if possible decline an invite to attend a conference organized in his honour in the Dubai Expo. It’s time African leaders flex their muscles in equal measure to send a clear signal to the western world that, they can’t always treat Africa countries the way it pleases them without repercussions”.

Ablakwa also said, “there’s absolutely no excuse to hide behind vaccine hesitancy to impose senseless restrictions. I’m yet to hear or see any African country stage a demonstration against the vaccines like it happens in other western countries”.

“Vaccine hesitancy is not a new phenomenon, and it’s not peculiar to Africa. There’s no justification for travel restrictions when the daily covid infection records in Dubai itself, India, UK and other countries far exceed the countries banned in Africa”.

Emirates Airlines in its statement however noted that “outbound passenger operations from Dubai to these destinations remain unaffected”.

“Affected customers do not need to call us immediately for rebooking. Customers can simply hold on to their Emirates ticket and, when flights resume, get in touch with their travel agent or booking office to make new travel plans”.

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Sabine Weiss: Legend of street photography dies at 97

Pioneering photographer Sabine Weiss, who was the last surviving member of France’s celebrated humanist school, has died aged 97 at her home in Paris.

Although she had stopped taking pictures, Weiss was actively involved in her archive until her death. Born in Switzerland, she learned her art in Geneva, moving to Paris after World War Two. She became renowned particularly for her images captured on the streets of Paris, and for 70 years remained at the heart of French photography.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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Sabine Weiss opened a Paris studio in 1950. Man lighting a cigarette, Paris 1950, was from that period, four years after she arrived in the French capital.

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She immortalised day-to-day life in Paris and much of her work captured the lives of children. This image from 1953 depicts children chained to a barge.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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Weiss began taking pictures when she was 18. This self-portrait is from 1953. Weiss said last year she went to morgues and factories for her pictures, photographing the rich and covering the fashion world. Everything else she did for herself spontaneously, she said.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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In 1952, she met the photographers Robert Doisneau and Edward Steichen and joined their Rapho photo agency. This picture is from Porte de Vanves in Paris.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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In this picture, Weiss captured artist and sculptor Alberto Giacometti as he drew his wife Annette in 1954

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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She began to travel widely around Europe, the Middle East and the US. On this trip to Portugal she captured this image from the modern fishing village of Olhau.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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She would tour Paris by night with her painter husband Hugh Weiss, capturing street scenes – and here an exit from the Metro in 1955.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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Weiss said once that her aim was to capture “snotty-nosed kids… beggars… and the little piss-takers”.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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During the 1950s and early 1960s she worked widely for international publications. Among her clients were Newsweek, Time, Life, Esquire and Paris Match. She captured this image in New York in 1955.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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Brigitte Bardot featured in one of Weiss’s portraits for the Rapho agency, here trying on a Vichy skirt in 1959. Weiss was also well known for her portraits of Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky and cellist Pablo Casals.

IMAGE SOURCE,SABINE WEISS

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Robert Doisneau brought her on to the books at Vogue magazine where she worked for nine years. This picture was taken in Berlin in 1962.

IMAGE SOURCE,LOIC VENANCE/AFP

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Pictured here in 2020, Sabine Weiss was awarded the Women In Motion prize in honour of a lifetime of work. She donated her archive in 2017 to the Elysée museum in Lausanne in Switzerland.

Sabine Weiss’s pictures are all reproduced by kind permission of her family and long-time assistant Laure Augustins.

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M602 death: Man killed on motorway in Salford was ‘loved by many’

A man who died after he was hit by a vehicle on a motorway was “a beautiful son” and “great dad to four”, his family have said.

Benjamin Connor, 30, was struck at 02:30 GMT on Tuesday on the M602 motorway close to the Regent Road roundabout in Salford.

He died a short time later in hospital, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said.

His family said he was a “beautiful, loyal” man who was “loved by so many” and his “legacy will live on”.

Their statement said: “As a family we are all deeply heartbroken by the loss of our Ben.

“He was a beautiful son, loyal brother, a great dad to four and a loving brother-in-law and uncle.

“He was loved by so many… Gone but never forgotten his legacy will live on. RIP angel sleep tight.”

GMP said the driver stopped at the scene and there had been no arrests.

The force appealed for witnesses or people with dashcam footage to come forward.

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