Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
The leaders of the U.K. and Ireland went to Belfast Monday to meet Northern Ireland’s newly revived government and bask in a good-news moment after two years of political crisis.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar visited the new administration at Belfast's Stormont Castle as its ministers met for the first time. The ministers wasted no time before pressing London for more money to patch up Northern Ireland’s creaking public services.
Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly appointed a power-sharing government on Saturday after a two-year hiatus sparked when the main British unionist party walked out in February 2022.
The Democratic Unionist Party boycotted the administration to protest post-Brexit trading arrangements that it said undermined Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom. The party was coaxed into returning last week after the U.K. promised to eliminate most checks on goods moving to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.
Under power-sharing rules established as part of Northern Ireland’s peace process, the administration in Belfast must include both British unionists and Irish nationalists. The U.K. and the Republic of Ireland both have roles as guarantors of the peace.
The new administration is led by First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein, the party allied with the Irish Republican Army during Northern Ireland’s decades of violence known as “The Troubles.” Her appointment was historic, marking the first time an Irish nationalist, who aspires to take Northern Ireland out of the U.K. and unite it with the republic, has held the post.
In practice, nationalists and unionists will continue to govern in uneasy balance. The post of deputy first minister – held by Emma Little-Pengelly of the DUP – is officially equal to the first minister, and neither can govern without the other.
O'Neill said on the weekend that she believed a referendum on Irish unity could take place in the next 10 years, after the U.K. government said any such move was decades away. Under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, such a vote can take place if there is evidence a majority of people in Northern Ireland support joining the republic. Polls suggest a majority currently oppose the idea.
Sunak said Monday that “everyone's priority” was getting the government back up and running.
“It is not constitutional change, it is delivering on the day-to-day things that matter to people," he said.
Varadkar, whose government in principle supports a united Ireland, also said the question of reunification was “not for today."
The DUP boycott left Northern Ireland’s 1.9 million people without a functioning administration to make key decisions as the cost of living soared and backlogs strained the creaking public health system.
The U.K. government has agreed to give Northern Ireland more than three billion pounds ($5.9 billion) as part of an incentive to restore the government. Already, the Belfast administration says it’s not enough.
Little-Pengelly said the ministers in Belfast would be “seeking to ensure the U.K. government provides sufficient funding in a package to fulfill its promises on public sector pay.”
Chris Heaton-Harris, the U.K.’s Northern Ireland secretary, said the package was “ample for the time being.”
“I believe the new set of ministers are completely capable of running their public finances perfectly well with the fair and generous funding package we’ve given them,” he told the BBC.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.