Pills Haul Recovered

Around £500,000 worth of pills have been seized in Co Antrim. One hundred thousand of the pills, known as BZPs or legal highs, replicate the effects of drugs like ecstasy. The drug is legal but the Home Office announced last week it would be banned by the end of the year. The haul of pills was found in a storage facility in Ballymena, close to the town's Showgrounds. A PSNI spokeswoman said no arrests were made during the seizure, which was the result of an intelligence operation. Last month, the SDLP South Belfast MP Alasdair McDonnell welcomed the impending reclassification and said young people are putting themselves at risk by easily obtaining the drugs. See: SDLP Welcomes 'Legal Highs' Ban

Carrick Motorbiker Dies

A woman from Co Antrim has been killed and her husband injured in a motorcycle accident in Germany. Angela and Laurence Armour, from Carrickfergus were in the Black Forest region of Baden-Württemberg when they crashed. The accident happened on Saturday and Mrs Armour died in hospital on Monday night.

Cancer Specialists Meet

More than 200 of the world's top cancer specialists will be in Belfast this week to share their knowledge at an international cancer symposium being organised by Queen's University. The event, being hosted by the Centre for Cell Biology and Cancer Research on Wednesday and Thursday, will be attended by leading academics from across America, Australia and Europe, including those from Harvard Medical School in Boston and from Oxford and Cambridge universities.

Trailing Success

Invest Northern Ireland has helped a Dungannon company to save £500,000 through a cost reduction programme. Chieftain Trailers - which designs and manufactures a range of trailers, low-loaders and forklift machinery for various sectors including agriculture, commercial transport, materials handling and rail freight - employed a Business Improvement Agent (BIA) for a three year period, with support from Invest NI, part financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The BIA assessed a variety of processes throughout the business and identified a number of areas for improvement. The agent then introduced new procedures, and as a result, the level of savings achieved during the programme was significantly higher than the target of over three times his total salary for the duration of the project.

Skills In Focus

NI Skills Minister, Sir Reg Empey, has joined other UK Skills Ministers at the WorldSkills competition in Calgary, Canada to cheer on Team UK. Sir Reg will be spending three days at the competition before visiting Bombardier in Montreal as part of his North American trip. The WorldSkills competition is the biggest international skills competition in the world. It involves around 900 competitors, aged 22 years old or under, from 51 countries taking part in 40 official skill categories.

Ploughing Celebrated

The Stormont Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew has announced details of her department's exhibition at the National Ploughing Championships in Athy, Co Kildare. DARD's exhibition will include a dedicated pavilion to showcase diversified businesses recently established by local farm families. The National Ploughing Championships 2009 will take place at Athy from Tuesday 22 to Thursday 24 September 2009. "The National Ploughing Championships are always at the peak of the Irish farming calendar, and present agricultural and rural businesses with a unique opportunity to put their wares on show to a very large audience," she commented, yesterday.

£230k Ards Water Scheme Complete

Water and sewerage infrastructure works on North Road in Newtownards has been completed ahead of schedule, NI Water had said. The work, which represents an investment of £230,000 by the body, involved upgrading the existing water main and laying a new sewer.

(BMcC/KMcA)