<HTML><PRE>Subj:	Fwd: News 10/30/97 0612 CST - Taxi Strike Grinds City Centre to Halt
Date:	97-10-30 12:51:23 EST
From:	Buni1957
To:	DeeMcA, Love irela, RedAxe66, Browniette
To:	Connemara7, FenianBoyo


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Forwarded Message: 
Subj:	 News 10/30/97 0612 CST - Taxi Strike Grinds City Centre to Halt
Date:	97-10-30 07:15:28 EST
From:	jdooling@worldnet.att.net (Jay Dooling)
Sender:	owner-ireland_list@email.rutgers.edu
Reply-to:	jdooling@worldnet.att.net
To:	jdooling@worldnet.att.net (Ireland News)


News from the Wire Services Re: Ireland & the Irish

RT 10/30/97 06:23 Mrs Clinton's UK Trip Shows Special Link
AP 10/30/97 06:21 Ireland Votes For New President
RT 10/30/97 06:09 Dublin Taxi Strike Grinds City Centre To Halt
PA 10/30/97 06:01 Leaks Aimed At Peace Process, Says Mowlam
RT 10/30/97 05:54 First Lady To Honour N.Irish Peace Advocate
PA 10/30/97 05:18 Irish Presidential Candidates Vote Early
AP 10/29/97 21:54 Irish Church Unveils Ad Campaign

                 ******************************

		 Mrs Clinton's UK Trip Shows Special Link-Envoy

RTna 10/30/97 06:23   

Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd

    LONDON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - U.S. First Lady Hillary 
Clinton's Anglo-Irish trip this week signals continued strong 
American interest in a Northern Ireland peace settlement and 
the "special relationship" with Britain, the U.S. 
ambassador to Britain said on Thursday.
     Clinton arrives in Dublin on Thursday for a whirlwind 
four-day tour that will also take her to Belfast and London.
     U.S. Ambassador Philip Lader said much of her visit would 
focus on the Northern Ireland peace talks, which 
are seeking a settlement to decades of guerrilla war over the 
future of the British-ruled province.
     "I think this is evidence of President and Mrs Clinton's 
and the American people's very strong commitment to 
the continuing talks as a most significant means of 
accomplishing a just and lasting settlement to the conflict 
there," Lader told BBC radio.
     "There's no question Americans have deep ties of culture 
and history with the United Kingdom and Ireland," 
Lader said.
     "And despite whatever obstacles there are, and we must be 
realistic, the talks offer a very important framework 
for discussions amongst the key leaders of the nationalist and 
unionist communities, as well as the British and 
Irish governments," Lader said.
     Clinton will attend a government reception in Dublin on 
Thursday. In Belfast on Friday she will speak at the 
University of Ulster and attend a youth conference.
     She will then fly to London for a private weekend with 
Blair and his wife Cherie at their country estate, Chequers 
-- a demonstration that the "special relationship" between 
Britain and America thrives, Lader said.
     "I believe and I don't hestiate to use that term that the 
special relationsip is as vibrant today as any time in 
memory," Lader said.
     "There is an enduring friendship between our two nations, 
but I believe this goes much deeper than simply 
matters of family ties or language. National security, vast 
investments, there's a great deal we have in common."
 REUTERS

                 ******************************

			Ireland Votes For New President

APO  10/30/97 06:21   

Copyright 1997 The Associated Press

   By ROBERT BARR
 Associated Press Writer
   DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- Filling an office given new 
prominence by its last occupant, Ireland voted for president 
today in a race dominated by women with little experience of 
politics.
   Polls indicated that the election boiled down to a contest 
between Mary McAleese, a lawyer and academic from 
Northern Ireland, and Mary Banotti, a member of the European 
Parliament and the only career politician in the 
five-way race.
   About 2.7 million people were eligible to vote, and results 
will be counted on Friday.
   A poll published Wednesday in The Irish Times showed that 
McAleese was the first choice of 37 percent while 
Banotti, 58, trailed at 24 percent. Three other candidates, 
including the lone male in the race, were below 10 
percent each.
   Former President Mary Robinson, a popular figure who 
resigned last month to become U.N. commissioner for 
human rights, made no endorsements for a replacement.
   But her lingering influence was clear in the race, following 
her lead of an outsider challenging the monopoly of 
the dominant Fianna Fail party, which had held the office since 
it was created in 1938.
   McAleese, 46, campaigned on a theme of "building bridges," 
including between the Protestant majority and her 
fellow Roman Catholics in British-ruled Northern Ireland.
   In a final campaign stop in Longford on Wednesday, she spoke 
of working for "comfortable, easy, happy 
friendships that people who live next door to each other are 
entitled to."
   Banotti barnstormed Dublin on Wednesday in a double-decker 
bus with a Latin salsa band belting out rhythm 
from the upper deck.
   "The result is still wide open," she said.
   The president of Ireland has no power to be involved in the 
peace talks now under way in Northern Ireland, but 
Robinson deftly used the prestige of the office to nudge the 
peace process ahead.
   She shook hands with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams when his 
IRA-allied party was still shunned by 
mainstream parties, and as the first Irish president to 
officially visit Northern Ireland, she reached out both to 
Protestants and Catholics.
   The winning candidate needs a majority of votes, which is 
likely to require two counts on Friday. Voters mark 
their first and second choices on the ballot; the lowest-ranked 
candidates in the first count are eliminated and the 
second choices are then distributed.
   According to The Irish Times' poll, 20 percent of its sample 
of 1,000 adults hadn't made up their minds when 
they were interviewed Monday. The poll had a margin of error of 
three percentage points.
   Dana Rosemary Scallon, 46, a native of Northern Ireland who 
now lives in the U.S. state of Alabama, was the 
choice of 8 percent; anti-nuclear campaigner Adi Roche, 42, was 
a point behind; and former policeman and 
victims' rights advocate Derek Nally, 61, was at 4 percent.
   Second preferences were decisive in the 1990 election. 
Robinson trailed Brian Lenihan in the first count, but 
was the overwhelming second choice of those who supported the 
third candidate in the race.
   Robinson was the first woman president, and the first 
president who wasn't a member of Fianna Fail, the 
nation's largest party.
   McAleese is able to run for president despite her Northern 
Ireland roots and residence since she holds an Irish 
passport, and she was nominated by a political party. If she 
wins, she will be required to move to the presidential 
mansion in Dublin.
   The president is the head of state, but has few explicit 
powers other than to refer legislation to the Supreme 
Court for a ruling on constitutional issues or to refuse a 
prime minister's request to dissolve Parliament and call a 
national election.

                 ******************************

		 Dublin Taxi Strike Grinds City Centre To Halt

RTw  10/30/97 06:09   

Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd
 
    DUBLIN, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Some 2,000 Dublin taxi drivers 
brought the city centre to a standstill on Thursday 
morning as they blocked roads on Ireland's presidential 
election day as part of a 17-hour strike against the 
escalating cost of licences.
     Police urged commuters to avoid driving anywhere near 
O'Connell Street in the city centre where taxi drivers 
had blocked four traffic lanes.
     Vice President National Taxi Drivers' Union Vincent Kearns 
said some 500 night-time taxi workers had 
gathered in their cabs at about five in the morning.
     From there, they planned to drive in a procession with 
horns blaring to the Dublin Corporation which is 
responsible for issuing and charging for taxi licences and 
protest until around nine o'clock this evening.
     Kearns said the police had broken up the cavalcade and 
brought traffic to a standstill.
     "This is stage one of the protest," Kearns said. "It can 
and will turn nationwide if we do not get a result," he said.
     Offers of support from day-time drivers and cabbies 
outside the capital had been turned down for now, he said, 
adding that, should the strike fail, they would call on their 
services for bigger scale industrial action.
     On Wednesday, Kearns said the price of a taxi licence had 
risen to 15,000 Irish pounds ($22,400) from a 
nominal charge of 100 in 1992 and the bi-annual licence renewal 
fee had risen to 450 Irish pounds from just 
seven five years ago, since the Dublin Corporation and local 
authorities took control of taxis.
     He demanded that control of taxis be taken away from the 
Dublin Corporation, which the union feels is using 
the industry as a money spinner without any concern for the 
drivers.
     The strike, which was originally planned for Tuesday, 
accidentally clashed with voting for the presidential 
election which Northern Irish law professor Mary McAleese is 
tipped to win. ($ - 0.669 Irish Pounds)
  REUTERS

                 ******************************

		   Leaks Aimed At Peace Process, Says Mowlam

PA   10/30/97 06:01   

Copyright 1997 PA News

  By David Cracknell, Political Correspondent, PA News
   Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam believes some civil 
servants in her own department are destabilising the 
Ulster peace process by leaking sensitive information.
   Although she believed that "99% are on-side", the minister 
said the leaks were also damaging relations within 
Whitehall.
   The most damaging came last summer, when a document was 
leaked days after the Drumcree Orange Order 
march, giving the impression that the Government had decided 
allowing the parade to go ahead was the least 
difficult option.
   "The leak was damaging in itself, but it was also damaging 
in terms of relations within the Civil Service," Ms 
Mowlam told New Statesman magazine.
   "You get wary. You've no idea where it's coming from, so it 
could be anyone you are dealing with.
   "The leaks unnerve you because you get to a point when you 
say: `This machine and I are working together. 
We're chugging along.' And then there is another leak."
   More recently a Sunday newspaper reported the decision, 
announced on Monday, to refer back to the Life 
Sentence Review Board the cases of two guardsmen imprisoned for 
murder -- a highly sensitive issue after the 
tensions caused by the case of the paratrooper Private Lee 
Clegg.
   Ms Mowlam said she believed the leaks were aimed at 
destabilising her policies rather than herself, but was 
not certain.
   "I don't know, but even though I am direct, profane and 
difficult, I don't think I am more direct, profane and 
difficult 
than other people," she said.
   "So I'm pretty sure it's over policy. If they wanted to make 
life difficult for me they would go for me.
   "But what's been leaked destabilises the process rather than 
me. But we'll keep going. Ninety-nine per cent are 
on-side."

                 ******************************

		 US First Lady To Honour N.Irish Peace Advocate

RTna 10/30/97 05:54   

Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd
 
    By Martin Cowley
     BELFAST, Oct 30 (Reuters) - U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham 
Clinton returns to Belfast on Friday to 
commemorate a community activist who won her heart during an 
edgy peace two years ago.
     Making a whirlwind Anglo-Irish trip, she arrives in the 
Irish capital Dublin on Thursday and crosses into 
troubled British Northern Ireland on Friday, from where she 
flies on to London.
     Scarred by decades of guerrilla war, the province is in an 
uneasy calm as politicians search for a settlement 
after Irish Republican Army guerrillas halted anti-British 
hostilities in July.
     In Dublin she will attend a government reception and in 
Britain she will take part in a seminar hosted by Prime 
Minister Tony Blair at Chequers, his official country residence 
outside London.
     The Belfast visit comes almost two years after she and 
President Bill Clinton made a triumphant visit that 
fuelled a short-lived peace euphoria.
     Then the First Lady sipped tea in a cramped street corner 
cafe in a run-down Catholic nationalist quarter with 
Joyce McCartan, a doughty Catholic grandmother who had lost 17 
relatives in the guerrilla strife and yet still 
campaigned for an end to the troubles.
     Within three months peace hopes had crashed in the debris 
of a fresh IRA bombing campaign in England, and 
McCartan had died after a short illness.
     But women's groups say McCartan's spirit and a cross-
community yearning for calm lives on.
     On Friday Clinton will pay tribute to her in a special 
"Joyce McCartan Memorial Lecture" at the University of 
Ulster near Belfast. Later she will attend a youth conference.
     Development worker May Blood describes McCartan as a 
visionary. She said she tried to improve the lot of 
families of all religions and sought to steer wayward youths 
from being swept into militias by campaigning for 
jobs, inward investment and better educational opportunities.
     McCartan helped form the very active Belfast Women's 
Information Group and opened the cafe that Clinton 
visited as a meeting place for women.
     Seated around the table with Protestant and Catholic women 
listening to accounts of their struggles to make 
ends meet, the First Lady was clearly impressed, eye-witnesses 
said.
     "I think what you've done in the last years is very 
important not only for Northern Ireland but the world... No 
matter what our background, we all want to make the world a 
better place for our children," she told the women.
     Blood, who is based in the Shankill, a pro-British working 
class Belfast Protestant enclave, said McCartan was 
a tough fighter on "family feminist" issues in a land where 
male politicians have traditionally ruled the roost.
     "She was a very very strong voice and when she had the 
opportunity to speak to people in power, they seemed 
to sit up and listen to her," Blood told Reuters.
     The period since the last visit by the Clintons has 
witnessed see-sawing political fortunes for the province, 
along with a gut thankfulness that lives are no longer being 
squandered wholesale on its streets.
     Clinton, according to a White House statement, is making 
the visit "to focus attention on the role of women and 
youth in democracy and the (Northern Ireland) peace process."
     Women's groups say they are now making their voice heard 
as never before in the daily life of Northern Ireland.
     "Women have become stronger," said Pearl Sagar, a leader 
of the Women's Coalition, a new party that won 
enough votes to give it seats in current all-party negotiations 
aimed at cementing peace.
     "Before, when women spoke out, there was always somebody 
there to say -- 'silly women, let's just ignore 
them'. I think that has stopped," she told Reuters.
     Nancy Gracey, a long-time battler against guerrilla 
vigilante "punishment squads," said it was right that her 
friend McCartan should be honoured.
     But though most of the guns are silent she says 
underground groups still wield sinister power.
     She intends handing the First Lady a letter asking her to 
highlight the plight of many "exiles," people who she 
says have been forced under guerrilla threat, for alleged 
misdemeanours, to live outside Northern Ireland.
     "These people cannot be forgotten. They should be allowed 
to come in as free men women and children and 
walk the streets of the country where they were born."
 REUTERS

                 ******************************

		Irish Presidential Candidates Vote Early

PA   10/30/97 05:18   

Copyright 1997 PA News

  By Chris Parkin, PA News
   All but one of the five candidates in Ireland's presidential 
election were out voting early today.
   Ironically, the exception was Government candidate Mary 
McAleese, the runaway favourite to be the new Irish 
head of state.
   As a resident of Northern Ireland, Ms McAleese, while 
eminently qualified to contest the election, is not entitled to 
vote for herself.
   The other non-Irish-based contestant, singer Dana, who has 
lived in Birmingham, in the American state of 
Alabama, for the past six years, had ensured that she was 
registered as an Irish voter.
   The one-time Eurovision Song contest winner, listed on the 
ballot paper as Dana Rosemary Scallon, wife, 
mother, entertainer, went with her husband and children to a 
polling station near the centre of Dublin within 
minutes of the start of voting at 9am.
   The other candidates were all voting closer to their homes.
   Fine Gael opposition party nominee Mary Banotti cast her 
vote in Dublin, left-wing-backed Adi Roche in Cork, 
and sole male contestant Derek Nally in County Wexford.
   As her rivals voted, Ms McAleese took time off for a coffee 
break in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.
   The pair discussed Ms McAleese's  bright prospects for 
success during a brief encounter in Grafton Street, in 
the city centre.
   The ballot is a two-tone polling event for Ireland's 2.7 
million voters.
   White ballot papers were being used for the presidential 
race and green for the referendum on Irish cabinet 
confidentiality, which is also being held today.
   Though the referendum has taken a back seat to the 
presidential tussle, it has been a focus for controversy, with 
a number of leading political figures and most Irish newspapers 
urging a No vote, in defiance of a 
recommendation from all the main government and parliamentary 
opposition parties.
   The counting of both sets of votes will not get under way 
until tomorrow, with the presidency taking priority.
   All the last-minute signals today confirmed that Ms McAleese 
was expected to win easily, though at least two 
counts of votes cast under the proportional representation 
polling system were expected to be necessary before 
the Belfast law professor could be named as president-elect.
   As voting started, Dublin bookies rated Ms McAleese a 
prohibitive 16-1 on to become the first Irish head of state 
to have been born in Northern Ireland.
   :: Mr Ahern -- who was also out voting early today -- will 
tonight host a reception at Dublin Castle for Hillary 
Clinton, wife of the United States President.
   Mrs Clinton is making a short overnight visit to Dublin en 
route to an engagement in Belfast tomorrow.
   The trip marks the first to Dublin by Mrs Clinton since she 
accompanied her husband to Ireland for an historic 
cross-border occasion a little short of two years ago.
   Mrs Clinton and Mr Ahern were set to assess the progress 
currently being made in advancing the Northern 
Ireland peace process.

                 ******************************

			Irish Church Unveils Ad Campaign

APO  10/29/97 21:54   

Copyright 1997 The Associated Press
  
   DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- Stung by sex abuse charges against 
priests and a TV series that pokes fun at the 
church, Dublin's Roman Catholic archdiocese said Wednesday it 
is launching an advertising campaign to boost 
its image.
   "Who are the men in black?" is an advertising campaign aimed 
at showing the variety and type of work done by 
the diocese's 600 priests.
   Priests felt "voiceless" and were asking who would speak up 
for them, said a diocesan spokesman, the Rev. 
John Dardis. "There are all these priests doing very hard work, 
very dedicated and they never get talked about at 
all."
   The $14,000 campaign begins Saturday when 200,000 leaflets 
will be distributed in 200 parishes in the capital. 
The following day, the diocese starts a poster campaign on 
Dublin's bus shelters and suburban rail lines.
   Dardis said Dublin priests deal with a wide range of modern 
traumas, ranging from drug abuse to suicide to 
broken marriages.
   "We are there all the time and we never see ourselves 
represented and we never talk about ourselves even," 
said Dardis.
   "It is very hard for a young person to be attracted to a 
career choice if the main portrayal is a faintly ridiculous 
character on TV," Dardis said, referring to "Father Ted," a 
popular comedy series set around the lives of a group of 
Catholic priests in Ireland.
   In 1994, the head of Ireland's Roman Catholic Church, 
Cardinal Cahal Daly, said he felt betrayed by 
child-molesting priests after a series of scandals involving 
priests.
   The Rev. Brendan Smyth, who died in August, was sentenced in 
July on 74 offenses of sexually abusing 20 
boys and girls between 1958 and 1993.
   
-------
Jay Dooling (jdooling@worldnet.att.net)
Irish Aires - 90.1FM KPFT in Houston
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Irish_Aires/homepage.htm
Dooling & Mabe, CPA 
http://www.doolingmabe-cpa.com/
-------------
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