Firefighters were called to the scene on Tuesday afternoon

Emergency services have been at the scene of an ongoing blaze in the docks area of Belfast on Tuesday, March 24.

Firefighters were called to reports of a waste site fire in the Duncrue Street area at 4:06pm.

The NIFRS said it mobilised appliances from Whitla Fire Station, Westland Fire Station, Glengormley Fire Station, Central Fire Station, Knock Fire Station and specialist appliances a Turntable Ladder from Springfield Fire Station and Command Support Unit from Lisburn Fire Station.

More than 40 firefighters were in attendance to deal with this incident.

A NIFRS spokesperson said: “The incident was brought under control at 6:59pm and we are scaling back operations at the scene. The cause of the fire has been determined as accidental.

“We would like to thank the public for their patience whilst we dealt with the incident.”

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The official lineup has not been confirmed by the BBC yet, but you might wonder who could be part of it.

Presented by Claudia Winkleman, the celebrity version of the show was a hit with fans following the successful regular version of the show.

Celebrity Traitors’ rumoured lineup for series 2

Fans have shared who they think will be on series two of Celebrity Traitors as well as who they’d love to see on the show.

On Reddit, one said two British actors could be on the show: “I heard that Tom Hiddleston och Hugh Grant have expressed interest about playing.”

This person suggested Benidorm star Steve Pemberton could be a good addition to the cast: “Steve Pemberton is rumoured, and he seems a natural Traitor.

“He’s smart enough that I think he can defend himself enough, and he’s so creative that he’d be so entertaining.

“He’s also smart enough to find the Traitors if he’s a faithful.

How The Traitors TV show works

“The bad thing is, he’s smart enough that others could think that, and if he’s NOT a Traitor, he could be banished early for that reason.”

Adolescence star Stephen Graham is also rumoured to join the lineup, according to the Daily Mail.

The newspaper reports that an insider said the BBC is “absolutely desperate to nail down Stephen for the show” and that he would be a “star signing”.

Oasis singer Liam Gallagher reportedly hinted that he had been considered for the show, replying to a fan on X: “I’ve been asked.”

The Football Factory and EastEnders star Danny Dyer is also rumoured, with The Sun reporting that he is in the lineup after turning the offer down for the first series.

5 iconic moments from series 1 of Celebrity Traitors

According to the newspaper, a source commented: “Danny was always top of The Celebrity Traitors wish list but had zero interest until seeing the fun and games last autumn.

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“As soon as his tune changed, it was all systems go.”

Other celebrities rumoured to take part include Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden, comedian Daisy May Cooper and comedian Bob Mortimer.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We aren’t commenting on speculation and details for The Celebrity Traitors series two will be announced in due course.”

Who would you love to see take part in Celebrity Traitors? Let us know in the comments below.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro received permission Tuesday from a top Brazilian justice to serve his 27-year sentence for a coup attempt at home instead of in prison because of his failing health.

The decision by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes followed Bolsonaro’s hospitalization since March 13 for pneumonia, one of several health problems the former leader has faced since he was stabbed by a man in 2018 before he was elected president.

Bolsonaro recently was put in intensive care for a few days because of kidney problems and other issues. His doctors did not say when he would leave the hospital in Brasilia, but his overall condition has improved.

The family of the right-wing leader had been requesting that the court send him home since he was convicted in November. Bolsonaro was transferred from the local federal police headquarters to a larger cell in January.

On Monday, Brazil’s Attorney General Paulo Gonet paved the way for Bolsonaro to be put in house imprisonment instead of returning to prison.

Bolsonaro governed between 2019 and 2022. One of his sons, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, has said he will run for the presidency in October. Polls show he is in a dead heat with incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Historically, Brazil’s Supreme Court only reverses house arrest only if a detainee’s health improves dramatically or if there’s violation of the established rules, such as not making public statements, posting on social media or giving interviews to the media.

The world is struggling to deal with ever-growing quantities of waste.

A new World Bank Group report, What a Waste 3.0, shows that more than 2.6 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste (which includes rubbish from households, businesses and street cleaning) were generated in 2022. That figure is projected to rise to 3.9 billion tonnes by 2050. The good news is that the share of waste that is mismanaged is expected to fall over that period, from around 30% to around 20%.

That sounds like progress. But percentages can be misleading. The quantity of mismanaged waste, including plastics, is projected to remain almost unchanged, at around 760 million tonnes. This means that by 2050, enormous quantities of waste will still be openly dumped, burned or otherwise unmanaged, with many households and communities left to deal with it themselves.

This new report, which we contributed to, brings together the most recent publicly accessible municipal waste data from 217 countries and economies (such as the Channel Islands) and 262 cities. It highlights that although waste systems are improving in many places, those gains are being undermined by the growth in the amount of waste generated.

This matters because when waste is not managed properly, the consequences affect human health, the environment and the economy. Poor waste management contributes to air and water pollution, damages ecosystems, increases greenhouse gas emissions and makes cities harder and less pleasant to live in.

One of the clearest examples is open burning. In many developing countries, where formal waste collection remains incomplete or absent, open burning is one of the main ways households and communities “self-manage” their waste. These fires burn at low and uneven temperatures. Combined with a mixed waste stream that can include plastics, organics and other materials, they release a complex cocktail of pollutants that can threaten the health of people living and working nearby.

With new data on self-management, this report shows how waste is actually managed across large parts of the world, especially where formal systems remain weak. Forms of self-management of waste include open dumping, open burning, burying waste in informal pits, dumping into waterways and coastal waters, and some forms of informal recovery such as recycling or composting.

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Health crisis: up to a billion tonnes of waste potentially burned in the open every year

So if the harms of poor waste management are well known, why does the problem persist?

One reason is cost. Municipal waste management is resource intensive. Many countries are still spending far less than is needed to provide universal and reliable services. Our analysis suggests that even basic systems involving collection, transport and disposal tend to cost at least US$40 (£30) to US$45 per tonne in low-income countries. In middle-income countries, basic systems cost roughly US$70 to US$80 per tonne, while in high-income countries costs can exceed US$200 per tonne.

At those cost levels, low-income countries would have needed around 0.78% of their combined GDP in 2022 to achieve universal waste management coverage. Middle-income countries would have needed roughly 0.31% to 0.46% of GDP. Yet reported public spending on solid waste management is less than 0.15% of GDP in about three-quarters of low- and middle-income countries and 0.31% in high income countries.

That financing gap helps explain why waste collection is not comprehensively provided, why open dumping is still common and why so many people are left to manage waste themselves.

The total financial costs are also rising fast. Globally, municipal waste management cost more than US$250 billion in 2022. Under a business-as-usual scenario, that annual cost is projected to reach US$426 billion by 2050.

Shifting the costs

The cost of inaction is higher than these service costs alone suggest. Poor waste management brings wider economic losses, for example through ill health, reduced land values, damaged ecosystems, lost materials and harm to sectors such as tourism, agriculture and fisheries.

The world may not be saving money by underinvesting in waste management. It is shifting the costs elsewhere – onto public health, the environment and future generations.

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Plastic pollution hotspots pinpointed in new research – India ranks top due to high levels of uncollected waste

This is especially important in low- and lower-middle-income countries, where waste generation is rising rapidly, but service coverage and infrastructure are often far below sufficient levels. This report estimates that these countries will require hundreds of billions of dollars in investment over the next 25 years just to expand and improve municipal waste systems. Without faster investment, existing service gaps will widen and the costs of inaction will grow.

The world’s waste crisis cannot be understood only as an environmental problem. It is also a financing, public health, governance and development problem. Better data helps us see that more clearly.

Waste management is improving, but not fast enough. Unless investment and performance accelerate, the amount of mismanaged waste worldwide is unlikely to change, causing harm to public health.

“Signed from AS Roma in the summer of 2017, the No.11 has firmly established himself as one of the greatest players in Liverpool’s history, helping the club to two Premier League titles, the Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup, FA Cup and two League Cups, as well as an FA Community Shield.

Barry Hearn says the decision for the World Snooker Championship to stay at the Crucible until 2045 was uniquely sentimental in his career and did come with a dissenting voice.

The tournament has been held at the Sheffield theatre since 1977 and the previous contract was due to expire in 2027, until a huge new agreement was reached between World Snooker Tour and Sheffield City Council.

There will now be £45m spent on the Crucible, which will see the venue renovated and expanded to around 1,500 seats, from its current capacity of just under 1,000.

The work will take around 18 months and start in the summer of 2028, meaning the 2029 and possibly 2030 editions will be held elsewhere, before returning to a revamped Crucible until 2045, with an option to extend to 2050.

While negotiations were ongoing, Matchroom Sport president Hearn talked up the possibilities of moving abroad to vast arenas, with the potential of huge investment from the Middle East or China.

Instead the tournament remains in the iconic, historic venue, which will be bigger and better than ever when the work is complete.

The 77-year-old admits feelings, and not just cold hard cash, played a part in the decision-making, having made his great career breakthrough in the venue as Steve Davis’ manager when the Nugget won the 1981 World Championship.

Asked if sentiment had ever played such a part in a big deal before, he said: ‘No, never, never.

‘The reason for that being my life changed in 1981 when [Steve] Davis won the world title. Matchroom was a £100 company. It was formed in 1982 on the back of a Crucible win. Suddenly I had someone to promote. He was a world champion.

‘Matchroom is now the biggest sports promotion company in the world. It all started with the Crucible, really.

‘So that’s where sentiment – mind you, I’m still a hard-nosed bastard. I want my pound of flesh out of everybody – but there’s certain things where you’d hate yourself for doing it.’

He added: ‘The Crucible has grown with us as Matchroom has become a global force, we did so on the back of the Crucible roots and we would have felt like we’d lost an arm had we not stayed here.’

There were lengthy negotiations over the extension of the tournament’s stay in Sheffield, with the significant investment in redevelopment coming from local and national government funding, along with money from the private sector

‘It was a good fight. At the end of the 12 rounds, the judges said it was a draw,’ Hearn said of the discussions. ‘And that’s not a bad result. We gave each other a hug: snooker, Sheffield Council, even the government. I never say anything nice about politicians, but well done to them.

‘They put their money where their mouth is, and they’ve managed to make this place fit for purpose.’

Tuesday’s announcement felt like a tremendously positive one for snooker and for Sheffield, but Hearn admits not everyone was in agreement to stay at the Crucible, notably his son Eddie, who is now chairman of Matchroom Sport.

Asked if there was anyone fighting against his sentiment, he said: ‘Oh yeah, there are. I wouldn’t say it was unanimous.

‘Eddie’s not a snooker fan. He likes the business of sport. So therefore he likes snooker because it’s a good company for us. But he doesn’t have the same passion. He wasn’t there.

‘That’s why he’s so passionate about boxing, because a lot of these big memories have made his career where he is. Whether it’s A.J. against Klitschko. That changed his life.

‘Eddie likes snooker, but he’s from a generation that moves at more speed than snooker does. That’s a good way to describe it.

‘He doesn’t actually appreciate the Agatha Christie side. Where you don’t find who does it until the final chapter. It builds to that moment.

‘Until you’ve actually experienced the building of that, you’re not really qualified to say, and he hasn’t experienced that.’

Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah has announced he will leave the club at the end of the season.

The 33-year-old Egypt international, who joined Liverpool from Roma in June 2017, confirmed the news via a video message on his social media accounts.

“Unfortunately the day has come. This is the first part of my farewell,” Salah said.

“I will be leaving Liverpool at the end of the season.”

We associate New Year with deep mid-winter and the tidy date of January 1, but for 600 years between 1155 until 1752 in England and Wales the new year began on 25 March. This day was one of the quarter days that divided the year historically and on which rents and debts were settled. March 25 became the quarter day where annual accounts were finalised. So, around about now, we’d have been preparing to welcome in a new year alongside the warmer weather and spring blooms.

Celebrations were double as the legal and ecclesiastical calendar worked in harmony as March 25 is also Lady Day or the Feast of the Annunciation. Falling exactly nine months before Christmas Day, for Christians it marks when the archangel Gabriel informed Mary that she was shortly to bear a son.

Feast days are normally days of indulgence and merrymaking, but Lady Day normally falls in Lent, a time of abstinence. This meant, for some, Lady Day was a temporary lightening of Lenten restrictions.

Also known as Annunciation Day, Lady Day has sometimes fallen on Good Friday, as it did in 1608. This day is the opposite of a feast day, marking the crucifixion and death of Christ, which is observed through fasting and abstinence. The poet John Donne reflected on this crossover in 1608 in Upon the Annunciation where he saw it as an opportunity to be extra pious:

“Tamely, frail body, abstain today;
today My soul eats twice,
Christ hither and away”

So for Donne, this was a day of fasting and reflection to commemorate both the coming of Christ and his death.

Superstitions

Lady Day has many associated superstitions. An anonymous pamphlet printed in 1721 called When my Lord Falls in my Lady’s Lap, England Beware of a Great Mishap takes its title from an old saying that means that it is unlucky when Lady Day falls on or near Easter Sunday. The author proceeds to run through the many calamities that have happened on such inauspicious occasions.

For instance, it tells of how in 1117 the heir to Henry I, William Adelin was drowned in the sinking of the White Ship along with 300 other souls. The author hasn’t got their facts quite straight here as this disaster happened in November 1120. By Victorian times, this superstition about Lady’s day falling near Easter Sunday was considered old fashioned with The Hampshire Advertiser describing it as a “former ill omen” in its 21 March 1846 edition.

Customs

Lady’s Day is still celebrated in some parts of the UK. In Hampshire, The Tichborne Dole on Lady’s Day dates back to around 1150. Mabella (or Isabella), Lady de Tichborne of Alresford, made a deathbed request that an annual donation of bread, baked with grains from her lands, be made in her memory to the parish poor.

Her rather less charitably minded husband, Sir Roger, agreed on condition that his benevolence was limited to crops from just the land that she could walk around while carrying a single burning log from the fire. According to the legend, the dying Mabella crawled her way around some 23 acres before the flame went out. This area is still known as “The Crawls”.

It’s said Mabella left a curse on the house that if ever the dole was stopped the family line would die out. Specifically, she vowed that a generation of seven sons would be followed by a generation of seven daughters. The dole continued uninterrupted until 1794 and it would seem that Mabella’s curse came to pass when the last male Tichborne had a family of seven daughters. And so, the custom was reinstated.

A film, The Tichborne Curse, was released in 1947. The reinstated Dole is still taking place today. Adults from the parishes of Tichborne and Cheriton are entitled to claim one gallon (2kg) of flour, and children half a gallon each.

Always in April

The dating system in the US, Britain and Ireland changed in 1752 when these countries adopted the Gregorian calendar. Then the legal New Year in these countries became the same as it had been in Scotland for the last century and a half: January 1.

However, it wasn’t just the year start that needed adjusting, as the new calendar was now out by several days. This meant that in England, 11 days were “lost” as Wednesday September 2 1752 was followed by Thursday September 14 1752 in order to right things. The jump must have been very disconcerting if we consider how much the clocks going forward an hour throws us out for a while.

In Britain, the legacy of the old-style dating system lives on in our tax system. Where the new tax year was March 25 (the old New Year) it was moved to April 5, and later to April 6, due to the leapfrog in dates 1752.

This day became Old Lady Day. April 6 day now stood in for the financial aspects of the quarter day, which meant this was the date in which new leases on farms and land began and often farm labouring families moved into new tied housing on that day as they signed new year long contracts. Author Thomas Hardy includes this in his 1891 novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Tess is hired on a farm upon “her agreeing to remain till Old Lady-Day”.

So March 25 may be a day that for most goes by with little notice now but it was once a major holiday that marked the beginning of the new year.

Arsenal are unbeaten in both Women’s Super League matches against the Blues this season, though this is the first time in the history of UEFA women’s club competition that two teams from the same city will face off. Follow the game LIVE below with our dedicated match blog, featuring expert insight and analysis from Arthur Ferridge at the Emirates Stadium.

Bookings are up as holidaymakers continue to plan summer getaways

A leading local travel agent says Easter marks the start of a busy holiday booking season, with demand for spring getaways remaining strong despite wider global uncertainties.

At present, rising fuel prices have not had an impact on the cost of holidays, with many holidaymakers booking now while availability and choice remain high. Selected suppliers have also introduced extra promotional savings, including attractive offers such as free child places on key school holiday dates, helping families secure excellent value.

Barrhead Travel reports that Northern Ireland holidaymakers are continuing to book their summer holidays, with many customers keen to secure something they can look forward to.

READ MORE: Consumer Council issues important advice for those travelling from Northern Ireland this EasterREAD MORE: Everything you need to know on your travel rights amid Middle East flight chaos

Short-haul European breaks remain a firm favourite for their great weather and convenient travel times, with firm favourites including Turkey; Majorca; Tenerife; Portugal and Benidorm performing particularly well.

Many holidaymakers are choosing package holidays, which offer additional protection and peace of mind when booking their trips.

Cruising is also maintaining strong momentum, with healthy demand for fly-Mediterranean and river cruises, alongside growing popularity for UK sailings. Long-haul destinations such as the Caribbean, Canada and Florida are selling really well – Japan and Hong Kong are amongst the fastest growing destinations.

Lisa Hammill, Regional Sales Manager at Barrhead Travel said: “While there has been some short-term disruption to certain flight routes, the vast majority of holidays for customers here in Northern Ireland are continuing as planned. Airlines are simply adjusting routes where needed, and for most people, it really is business as usual.

“We encourage everyone to trust your travel agent. Our expertise ensures you are fully supported, and we are committed to keeping you fully informed with accurate, up-to-date and factual advice at all times. Staying in touch with your agent and remaining flexible are key to enjoying your holiday stress-free. Only rely on official and verified sources for guidance.”

Lisa says Northern Ireland customers are showing strong demand for a mix of holidays: “European destinations remain popular, with Spain, Greece, Portugal and the Canaries performing particularly well.

“Cruising is also growing, with both flights from the UK and sailings departing directly from UK ports providing choice and convenience for our local travellers. Long-haul travel continues to attract interest too, with destinations such as the Caribbean, Canada, Florida seeing lots of bookings.

“Ultimately, the travel industry is very strong and resilient. Time and again, we’ve seen destinations bounce back quickly after periods of uncertainty. The message for Northern Ireland is positive – people are still booking, travelling and prioritising their holidays, and we are here to ensure every customer feels confident, informed and fully supported every step of the way.”

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