Donie's all Ireland news update Tuesday

Glenveagh National Park where Jesus has come to Donegal… in a rock ‘Pat Vaughan park manager’

  

You know you’ve got little to be doing when you spend your time exploring a national park looking for images of Jesus appearing naturally. That’s exactly what the guys up in Donegal have done.                           
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The staff at Glenveagh National Park say they’ve found Jesus… in a rock. The discovery was found in recent weeks and is now the talk of the county.

In times like this we need some guidance, but this might be going a little too far. The stone which apparently shows Jesus’s face, while on the cross, even features a crown of thorns.

The stone was found by the park manager, Pat Vaughan, while out for a bit of a ramble. He told Donegaldaily.com: “I just happened to be doing bits and pieces when it caught my eye. The more I looked at it the more I seen the face of what looks like Jesus”.

Sensible Pat said he didn’t want to get carried away in the religious frenzy. “I brought [pictures] in to some of the staff and showed them the pictures without mentioning what I thought it looked like.

“The reaction has been amazing and everyone said the same thing – that it was a picture of Our Lord. No matter how many times I look at it I see the same thing.”

The location of the rock in the park is being kept a secret, which is probably a good idea considering this country’s history with weeping/bleeding statues and the like.

Prosecutors in the U.K. have charged the former head of News International Rebekah Brooks

Brooks was charged with conspiring to obstruct justice, marking the first charges filed in a wide-ranging criminal investigation into wrongdoing at the U.S. media company’s British tabloids.

          

Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks leaving the High Court in London on May 11th.

Rebekah Brooks, who served as editor of the News of the World and the Sun tabloids before running all of News Corp.’s newspapers in the U.K., was charged by the Crown Prosecution Service with perverting the course of justice. Prosecutors also charged her husband, Charles Brooks; her former assistant; her chauffeur; and two men who provided security for Ms. Brooks.

The obstruction charges relate to the continuing police investigation into phone hacking and the alleged corruption of public officials by News Corp. titles, the News of the World and the Sun newspapers, according to prosecutors. Rebekah Brooks has also been previously arrested on suspicion of corruption and conspiring to intercept communications, but she wasn’t charged Tuesday in relation to either of those allegations. She remains on bail for those allegations.

The charges spelled out by prosecutors date to a period from July 6-19 of last year, when the long-simmering phone-hacking scandal—the subject of a police probe since January 2011—boiled over publicly following a July 5 article in the Guardian newspaper alleging that the News of the World had hacked the phone of a missing teenage girl, who was later found dead. Days later, News Corp. closed the 168-year old News of the World.

Rebekah Brooks, a longtime protégé of News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, faces three charges. Prosecutors said she conspired with her husband, Charles Brooks; Cheryl Carter, her former assistant; her chauffeur, Paul Edwards; and two individuals employed by the company that provided security for her, Mark Hanna and Daryl Jorsling. Messrs. Hanna and Edwards remain employees of News Corp.

Prosecutors said she also allegedly conspired with her former assistant, Cheryl Carter, “permanently to remove seven boxes of material from the archive of News International.”

And Rebekah Brooks, her husband and several of the others allegedly conspired “to conceal documents, computers and other electronic equipment” from police officers, prosecutors said.

Rebekah Brooks and her husband said in a statement, “We deplore this weak and unjust decision” and said they would respond later Tuesday to what they described as “the further unprecedented posturing” of the prosecution service.

A lawyer for Ms. Carter said in a statement that “she vigorously denies” the charges. The three others charged couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.

Rebekah Brooks, 43 years old, is a central figure in the scandal over illegal voice-mail interception and alleged bribery at News Corp.’s tabloids. She was the editor of The News of the World when many of the alleged phone-hacking incidents occurred.

The charges will also serve as an embarrassment for Prime Minister David Cameron, who is a longtime friend of Charlie Brooks and had become close to Ms. Brooks too.

A spokeswoman for News International, News Corp.’s U.K. newspaper unit said she didn’t have any immediate comment.

‘The Sun newspaper’ paid Leonard Watters to make Louis Walsh sex claim – A court hears

    

Leonard Watters: jailed for false sex assault claim against Louis Walsh

A BRITISH tabloid tried to “take out Louis Walsh as a public person” by paying a man to make a false sex assault allegation, it was claimed in court.

The High Court heard that Leonard Watters allegedly met ‘The Sun’ journalist Joanne McElgunn for dinner where she offered to pay him if he made a complaint to gardai “about being assaulted” in a nightclub toilet.

Watters (24), from Navan, Co Meath, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment last January after pleading guilty to making two false reports to gardai that Mr Walsh sexually assaulted him in a toilet in Dublin’s Krystle nightclub on April 9 last year.

‘X Factor’ judge Mr Walsh is suing Newsgroup Newspapers, publishers of ‘The Sun’, for defamation over an article it published on June 23 last.

The paper accepted the accusation was false but denied defamation and said it acted fairly and reasonably in relation to the publication.

Mr Walsh is now seeking access to documents which will allegedly show that ‘The Sun’ offered to pay Watters to make the complaint which turned out to be false.

The documents, it was also claimed in the High Court yesterday, will show ‘The Sun’ paid €700 to Watters and promised to make more payments to him before a journalist accompanied him to a garda station where he made his false complaint against Mr Walsh

Senior counsel Jim O’Callaghan, for Mr Walsh, told the court that ‘The Sun’ had “directed the operation to take out Louis Walsh as a public person”.

It was claimed that Ms McElgunn met Watters, then travelled to Pearse Street garda station in Dublin so that the complaint could be made.

It was alleged that Watters met up again with Ms McElgunn five days later and he was “encouraged and enticed by her, on behalf of the defendant, to repeat the false statements to her” for publication in ‘The Sun’.

Mr Walsh claimed Ms McElgunn, on behalf of the paper, paid Watters €700 and promised further payments after the story was printed.

On a subsequent unknown date, Ms McElgunn booked him into a hotel in Dublin in order to secure further false statements about Mr Walsh and to ensure he did not take his false story to rival publications, he claimed.

Yesterday, Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O’Neill reserved judgment on an application by Mr Walsh’s lawyers for disclosure of documents in the possession of ‘The Sun’, including those in relation to the false allegations.

The documents include anything suggesting payments or offers of payments made to Watters, the booking of a hotel room, expenses claimed by Ms McElgunn between June 15 and December 15, 2011, and cash withdrawals from her bank account of more than €200 between those dates.

The court heard that the deputy editor of the ‘Irish Sun’, Paul Clarkson, had sworn an affidavit arguing that disclosing these documents would jeopardise the important function of protecting journalistic sources and confidential information.

Mr Clarkson pointed out that Watters was not named in their original story and also said the documents in question may tend to identify other people in relation to other articles.

Mr O’Callaghan argued there could be no question in this case of protecting a source because Mr Watters had already been publicly named.

In the lead-up to the publication of the story, Mr Walsh’s personal representative was told by ‘Sun’ journalists that the information they had in relation to the false accusation had come from the gardai. If that was true, it would have meant the gardai were committing a criminal offence and if not, it was a serious matter for a newspaper, Mr O’Callaghan said.

Gary Compton, for the newspaper, said it was essential for press freedom that people could come forward to journalists with information which they knew would be treated in confidence.

Donegal Fire Service says Hoax fire calls are up 64% since 2007

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The number of hoax calls to the Fire Service in Donegal has risen by 64 per cent since 2007 and a senior fire officer is warning that lives could be lost if the problem continues.

Acting Chief Fire Officer Joe McTaggart said yesterday that the number of ‘malicious, hoax’ calls to the Fire Service in the county rose by 64% between 2007 and 2011. In 2007, the number of hoax calls was 14 but that rose 23 in 2011.

“The fear is that someone will lose their life, whether in a traffic accident or a fire, because a crew has been sent out on a hoax call and is unable to respond to a genuine emergency,” he told the Donegal Democrat/People’s Press.

“What people have to understand is that we have no way of knowing when a call comes in whether it’s genuine or false. We have to respond as if lives are in danger and, once we have left the station, we aren’t in a position to deal with any other calls.

“A brigade will be sent from the nearest station, but the added delay, of up to half an hour, could mean the difference between life and death.