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William Stobie
William "Billy" Stobie (1950 – 12 December 2001) was an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) quartermaster and RUC Special Branch informer'' Cory Collusion Inquiry Report: Patrick Finucane'' 1 April 2004 who was involved in the shootings of student Adam Lambert in 1987 and solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989. His 1990 admissions to journalist Neil Mulholland provided new information which led, in February 1999, to British Irish Rights Watch submitting a confidential report to the British Government. This in turn would lead to the reopening of the Stevens Enquiry, which uncovered state/paramilitary collusion at a level "way beyond" what Sir John Stevens had originally reported. Early life Stobie was a native of loyalist west Belfast who joined the UDA for the first time around the time of its foundation in 1971.Henry McDonald & Jim Cusack, ''UDA - Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror'', Penguin Ireland, 2004, p. 143 After a short spell, he left and joined the British Army, serving outs ...
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Belfast
Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel. It is the second-largest city in Ireland (after Dublin), with an estimated population of in , and a Belfast metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of 671,559. First chartered as an English settlement in 1613, the town's early growth was driven by an influx of Scottish people, Scottish Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Presbyterians. Their descendants' disaffection with Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland's Protestant Ascendancy, Anglican establishment contributed to the Irish Rebellion of 1798, rebellion of 1798, and to the Acts of Union 1800, union with Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain in 1800—later regarded as a key to the town's industrial transformation. When granted City status in the United Kingdom#Northern Ireland, city s ...
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British Army
The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve personnel and 4,697 "other personnel", for a total of 108,413. The British Army traces back to 1707 and the Acts of Union 1707, formation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain which joined the Kingdoms of Kingdom of England, England and Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland into a Political union, single state and, with that, united the English Army and the Scots Army as the British Army. The Parliament of England, English Bill of Rights 1689 and Convention of the Estates, Scottish Claim of Right Act 1689 require parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain a peacetime standing army. Members of the British Army swear allegiance to the Charles III, monarch as their commander-in-chief. The army is administered by the Ministry of Defence (United Kingd ...
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Illegal Drug Trade
The illegal drug trade, drug trafficking, or narcotrafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drug prohibition, prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibitionism, prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. The think tank Global Financial Integrity's ''Transnational Crime and the Developing World'' report estimates the size of the global illicit drug market between US$426 and US$652billion in 2014, which is equal to the UK's national debt alone. With a Gross world product, world GDP of US$78 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally, and it remains very difficult for local authorities to reduce the rates of drug consumption. History Prior to the 20th century, governments rarely made a major effort to proscribe recreational drug use, though sever ...
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Costa Del Sol
The Costa del Sol (; literally "Coast of the Sun") is a region in the south of Spain in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, comprising the coastal towns and communities along the coastline of the Province of Málaga and the eastern part of Campo de Gibraltar in province of Cádiz, Cádiz. Formerly made up only of a series of small fishing settlements, today the region is a world-renowned tourist destination. The Costa del Sol is situated between two lesser known coastal regions, the Costa de la Luz and the Costa Tropical. The region has no official limit, but it is generally accepted that the Costa del Sol stretches from the municipality of La Línea de la Concepción in the west to Nerja in the east, spanning around 150 kilometers of coastline. The term Costa del Sol was coined at the beginning of the 20th century by Rodolfo Lussnigg to promote the Almería coastline. Until the late 1960s, it was used in reference to the entire Mediterranean ...
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Bail
Bail is a set of pre-trial restrictions that are imposed on a suspect to ensure that they will not hamper the judicial process. Court bail may be offered to secure the conditional release of a defendant with the promise to appear in court when required. In some countries, especially the United States, bail usually implies a bail bond, a deposit of money or some form of property to the court by the suspect in return for the release from pre-trial detention. If the suspect does not return to court, the bail is forfeited and the suspect may be charged with the crime of failure to appear. If the suspect returns to make all their required appearances, bail is returned after the trial is concluded. In other countries, such as the United Kingdom, bail is more likely to consist of a set of restrictions that the suspect will have to abide by for a set period of time. Under this usage, bail can be given both before and after charge. Bail offered before charge is known as pre-charge or p ...
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Good Friday Agreement
The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) or Belfast Agreement ( or ; or ) is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April (Good Friday) 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland since the late 1960s. It was a major development in the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s. It is made up of the Multi-Party Agreement between most of Northern Ireland's political parties, and the BritishIrish Agreement between the British and Irish governments. Northern Ireland's present devolved system of government is based on the agreement. Issues relating to sovereignty, governance, discrimination, military and paramilitary groups, justice and policing were central to the agreement. It restored self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of " power sharing" and it included acceptance of the principle of consent, commitment to civil and political rights, cultural parity of esteem, police reform, paramilitary disarmament and e ...
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Irish News
Irish commonly refers to: * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the island and the sovereign state *** Erse (other), Scots language name for the Irish language or Irish people ** Republic of Ireland, a sovereign state ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland * Irish language, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family spoken in Ireland * Irish English, set of dialects of the English language native to Ireland * Irish people, people of Irish ethnicity Irish may also refer to: Places * Irish Creek (Kansas), a stream in Kansas * Irish Creek (South Dakota), a stream in South Dakota * Irish Lake, Watonwan County, Minnesota * Irish Sea, the body of water which separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain People * Irish (surname), a list of people * William Irish, pse ...
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Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.Gerald O'Collins, O'Collins, p. v (preface). The church consists of 24 Catholic particular churches and liturgical rites#Churches, ''sui iuris'' (autonomous) churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and Eparchy, eparchies List of Catholic dioceses (structured view), around the world, each overseen by one or more Bishops in the Catholic Church, bishops. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the Papal supremacy, chief pastor of the church. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The ...
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Protestantism
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divine grace, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The five solae, five ''solae'' summarize the basic theological beliefs of mainstream Protestantism. Protestants follow the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began in the 16th century with the goal of reforming the Catholic Church from perceived Criticism of the Catholic Church, errors, abuses, and discrepancies. The Reformation began in the Holy Roman Empire in 1517, when Martin Luther published his ''Ninety-five Theses'' as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, which purported to offer the remission of the Purgatory, temporal ...
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Court (District Electoral Area)
Court is one of the ten district electoral areas (DEA) in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Located in the north and west of the city, the district elects six members to Belfast City Council and contains the wards of Ballygomartin, Clonard, Falls, Forth River, Shankill, and Woodvale. Court is split between the Belfast North and Belfast West constituencies for the Northern Ireland Assembly and UK Parliament. History The DEA was created for the 1985 local elections. It initially contained six wards, three of which came from the abolished Area E, with the remainder from Area G. From the 1993 through 2011 local elections, it contained five wards, namely Crumlin, Glencairn, Highfield, Shankill and Woodvale, following the abolition of the Saint Anne's ward. For the 2014 local elections, the Crumlin ward was abolished, the Glencairn ward was replaced by Forth River ward and the Highfield ward was replaced by Ballygomartin ward. These four wards were joined by the Falls and Clonard wards, ...
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Gordon Wilson (peace Campaigner)
Gordon Wilson (25 September 1927 – 27 June 1995) was a draper in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, who became known internationally as a peace campaigner during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. On 8 November 1987 a bomb planted by the Provisional IRA exploded during Enniskillen's Remembrance Day parade, injuring Wilson and fatally injuring his daughter Marie, a nurse. In an emotional television interview with the BBC only hours after the bombing, Wilson described his final conversation with his dying daughter as they both lay buried in rubble and his hand held tightly to his daughter. His words "I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge" were reported worldwide, becoming among the most-remembered quotations from the Troubles. Whereas IRA attacks in Northern Ireland often resulted in reprisals by loyalists, Wilson's calls for forgiveness and reconciliation came to be called the ''Spirit of Enniskillen''. As a peace campaigner, Wilson held many meetings with members of Sinn Féin. He a ...
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Bomb At The Enniskillen Remembrance Sunday Ceremony
The Remembrance Day bombing (also known as the Enniskillen bombing or Poppy Day massacre) took place on 8 November 1987 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb exploded near the town's war memorial (cenotaph) during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony, which was being held to commemorate British military war dead. Eleven people (10 civilians and a police officer) were initially killed, many of them elderly. A twelfth man was fatally wounded, entering a coma from which he would later die, and 63 were injured. The IRA said it had made a mistake and that its target had been the British soldiers parading to the memorial. The bombing was strongly condemned by all sides and undermined support for the IRA and Sinn Féin. It also facilitated the passing of the Extradition Act, which made it easier to extradite IRA suspects from the Republic of Ireland to the United Kingdom. Ulster loyalism, Loyalist paramilitaries responded to the bo ...
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