Latest news with #PadraicHalpin
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Legacy of past hangs over anti-immigrant violence in Northern Ireland
By Padraic Halpin BELFAST (Reuters) -Bullets and bombs were a part of life in the Belfast that Raied al-Wazzan moved to from Iraq in 1990, but he never felt threatened as a member of one of the divided region's tiny ethnic minorities. But after a week when masked anti-immigrant rioters attacked police and set the homes of migrants on fire, fear has set in. "There are certain areas I cannot go by myself or even drive through," said Al-Wazzan, the vice-chair of the Northern Ireland Council for Racial Equality, an umbrella group for a number of organisations representing ethnic minorities. "I used to live in some of these areas, but today it's not safe for me or (my) family or people who have a different colour of skin." The eruption of what police described as mob-led "racist thuggery" is particularly dangerous in Northern Ireland due to its legacy of sectarian violence and lingering role of paramilitary groups with a history of stoking street disorder. More than 3,600 people were killed between 1968 and 1998 in a conflict between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists seeking Irish unity, predominantly Protestant pro-British "loyalists" wanting to stay in the United Kingdom and the British military. But while segregation along sectarian lines remains common, particularly in housing and education, the number of recorded race hate crimes is now double that of sectarian offences, which they surpassed almost a decade ago, police data shows. "The last week's events have not come out of nowhere," said Patrick Corrigan, the local director of Amnesty International, who knew of women and children fleeing to their attic to breathe through a skylight when rioters lit fires downstairs. "We have a serious problem of endemic racist violence, at times fuelled by paramilitary organisations, a particularly sinister element in this part of the world where you have masked men who have recourse to violence to try to tell people where they're allowed to live or where they're not," Corrigan said. While the 1998 Good Friday Agreement led to the disarming of the main Irish Republican and loyalist militant groups, splinter factions endure. Such groups continue to exert control over some communities through intimidation, financial extortion and drug dealing, and have been involved in racially motivated attacks, the body that monitors paramilitary activity said earlier this year. Corrigan said migrants within WhatsApp groups he is part of were "clearly terrified", reluctant to leave their homes to go to work and their children afraid to walk to school. That sentiment is shared by Nathalie Donnelly, who runs a weekly English class as part of the UNISON trade union's migrant worker project. Half her students were now too scared to attend, she said. "I think we are just one petrol bomb away from a serious loss of life," Corrigan said. 'CLEARLY TERRIFIED' The violence flared first and was most intense in Ballymena after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court, accused of a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the town. The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the boys, whose lawyer told the court that they denied them. Ballymena, 45 kilometres (28 miles) from Belfast, is a mainly Protestant working-class town that was once the powerbase of Ian Paisley, the fiercely pro-British preacher-politician who died in 2014. Most of the other areas where anti-immigrant violence spread last week - Larne, Newtownabbey, Portadown and Coleraine - were similar, mostly Protestant towns. At the outset of the "Troubles", some Catholics and Protestants were violently forced from their homes in areas where they were in the minority, and sectarian attacks remained common through three decades of violence and the imperfect peace that followed. "Sectarianism and racism have never been very different from each other," said Dominic Bryan, a professor at Queens University Belfast who researches group identity and political violence. "It doesn't totally surprise me that as society changes and Northern Ireland has become a very different society than it was even 30 years ago, that some of this 'out grouping' shifts," Bryan said, adding that such prejudices could also be seen among Irish nationalists. Immigration has historically been low in Northern Ireland, where the years of conflict bred an insular society unused to assimilating outsiders. There are other factors at play too, said Bryan. The towns involved all have big economic problems, sub-standard housing and rely on healthcare and industries such as meat packing and manufacturing that need an increasing migrant workforce. "The people around here, they're literally at a boiling point," said Ballymena resident Neil Brammeld. The town's diverse culture was welcomed and everybody got along, he said, but for problems with "a select few". "The people have been complaining for months and months leading up to this and the police are nowhere to be seen." While around 6% of people in the province were born abroad, with those belonging to ethnic minority groups about half that, the foreign-born population in Ballymena is now much higher, in line with the UK average of 16%. Northern Ireland does not have specific hate crime legislation, although some race-related incidents can be prosecuted as part of wider laws. Justice Minister Naomi Long pledged last year to boost those existing provisions but said the power-sharing government would not have enough time to introduce a standalone hate crime bill before the next election in 2027. While five successive nights of violence mostly came to an end on Saturday, the effects are still being felt. "I'm determined that I'm not going to be chased away from my home," said Ivanka Antova, an organiser of an anti-racism rally in Belfast on Saturday, who moved to Belfast from Bulgaria 15 years ago. "Racism will not win."
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fanduel owner cuts US profit forecast on gamblers' winning streak
DUBLIN (Reuters) -Fanduel-owner Flutter cut its forecast for full-year U.S. profit growth on Wednesday after a winning streak for gamblers hit earnings at the world's largest online betting company for the second quarter in a row. Bookmakers tend to suffer when favourites win and Flutter expects U.S. core profit to be $180 million lower this year at $1.13 billion due to an unprecedented run of bettor-friendly results during the March Madness college basketball tournament. Flutter nudged up its group-wide profit forecast to $3.18 billion from $3.16 billion in March following a $100 million positive foreign currency impact and a $120 million acquisition contribution not included previously. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Chris Reese)
Reuters
07-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Fanduel owner cuts US profit forecast on gamblers' winning streak
Flutter's logo is pictured on a smartphone in this illustration taken, December 4, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab DUBLIN, May 7 (Reuters) - Fanduel-owner Flutter cut its forecast for full-year U.S. profit growth on Wednesday after a winning streak for gamblers hit earnings at the world's largest online betting company for the second quarter in a row. Bookmakers tend to suffer when favourites win and Flutter expects U.S. core profit to be $180 million lower this year at $1.13 billion due to an unprecedented run of bettor-friendly results during the March Madness college basketball tournament. The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Sign up here. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Flutter nudged up its group-wide profit forecast to $3.18 billion from $3.16 billion in March following a $100 million positive foreign currency impact and a $120 million acquisition contribution not included previously. Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Chris Reese Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab Share X Facebook Linkedin Email Link Purchase Licensing Rights
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Abuse victims say they saw progress under Pope Francis, just not enough
By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) - When Pope Francis sat with his head in his hands and listened to accounts of clerical sexual abuse for an hour longer than scheduled during a trip to Dublin in 2018, many of those present were deeply moved. But not all were convinced that Francis, who died on Monday, was doing enough with his papacy to heal the damage done by decades of stark failures by the Church. "I don't think anyone can do enough," said Rev. Paddy McCafferty, who was sexually abused as a young adult in the 1980s by a fellow member of the clergy and was one of eight victims to recount their stories that day. "I think he did his best," he said. Francis took over a Church whose authority was shattered in many parts of the world by abuse scandals and he made addressing the issue a priority as further historical revelations from Chile to New Zealand pockmarked his 12-year papacy. But, while he showed a deeper understanding of the toll decades of clerical sexual abuse took on victims, measures to make the Catholic Church more accountable did not live up to the expectations he set, survivors and advocacy groups said. "The damage is so extensive and massive that it's going to take a long, long time for the Church to go any way towards repairing the hurt and the harm to the Church's mission," McCafferty said. Francis created the Vatican's first anti-abuse commission, became the first pope to expel a cardinal from the priesthood for sexual abuse and installed a global system for Catholics to report suspicions of abuse or cover-ups by bishops. Campaigners said more action was needed, however, on things such as naming offending priests and Church officials who protected them. "He gave survivors a lot of hope when he came into office, promising transparency and change," said Marie Collins, another of the eight who spoke at the 2018 Dublin meeting and was abused by a priest at the age of 13 in 1960s Ireland. "We did get some but I don't think it has gone any way far enough. Things are not as bad as they were, that is for sure but they also are not as good as they could be." 'TREMENDOUS DISAPPOINTMENT' Collins was one of the original members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors that was founded in 2014. She quit in frustration in 2017, saying it was hobbled by internal resistance, while another founding member, Rev. Hans Zollner, resigned unexpectedly in 2023, citing concerns over the way it was operating. For some, the commission stands as a stark illustration of what some campaigners say were the shortcomings of Francis' reforms. It issued an annual report for the first time last year, with recommendations including advocating for more effective punishment of offending clergy, but also highlighting how it struggled to engage some local Catholic communities in the course of its work. Some changes won wider approval, including two major pieces of legislation enacted in 2019 following an unprecedented four-day meeting on child sex abuse. The first instituted new reporting procedures and broadened the definition of sexual crimes to include vulnerable adults. The second removed strict confidentiality rules, known as "pontifical secrecy", which Church officials admitted had hindered sharing of information with police in some countries. Still, criticism remained over the Church's continued insularity on the issue and lack of external oversight. Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the Bishop Accountability abuse tracking group, said Francis' inability to deliver on his promises was "a tremendous disappointment" that would forever tarnish the legacy of an otherwise remarkable man. "He wanted to quell the outrage, and he did make some modest improvements, but kids around the world are still in danger of sexual assault by Catholic clergy because of what Pope Francis failed to do," said Boston native Doyle, who began her work after a succession of devastating stories in 2002 revealed the city's archdiocese had covered up sexual misconduct for decades. Juan Carlos Cruz was abused as a teenager in his native Chile by a notorious paedophile priest. He was invited to join the commission in 2018 and remains a member. He also became a close friend of Pope Francis, who after initially dismissing claims of a cover-up of abuse in the Chilean church as "slander", apologised to Cruz in a tearful, three-hour meeting before dismissing all of Chile's bishops. Cruz said while he understood other victims' decisions to leave the commission, he wanted to fight from inside the tent. He highlighted the commission's work in creating safe spaces for abuse victims, and broaching the thorny topic of "economic, spiritual and psychological reparations". "I remain very hopeful," he said. "Whatever the new pope decides to do is fine, but as a human being I'm going to honour the memory of Francis and keep fighting." 'LIFE CHANGING' For abuse survivors, Francis' legacy on the issue is a mixed one of powerful words and at times underwhelming deeds. To many, the words did matter. A third member at the Dublin meeting - which was held during the first papal visit in almost four decades to a country rocked by a series of abuse scandals - described the experience as "life-changing". Clodagh Malone, one of tens of thousands of babies born in Church-run homes for unmarried mothers and their offspring that a 2021 inquiry found had an "appalling" mortality rate, said it allowed her to share for the first time that she had also been abused by a priest when she was younger. After the Dublin engagement, Francis met similar groups of survivors during trips to Canada, Belgium and Portugal. Some victims expressed frustration on those visits at a lack of concrete actions. Bishop Accountability chief Doyle said what was required from Francis' successor was action to permanently remove abusers from ministry, decisively punish enablers and follow through on long-promised transparency by releasing names of offending clergy and complicit bishops. "I'd like to see the next pope institute real policies with real teeth," Collins said.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fanduel owner expects to ride US gambling boom for 34% profit jump in 2025
By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) -Flutter, the world's largest online betting company, said on Tuesday it expects to increase its core profit by around 34% this year following growth of 26% in 2024, driven again by its fast-growing and market-leading U.S. brand FanDuel. The Irish-founded company's growth has been transformed by a gambling boom in the nascent U.S. market. CEO Peter Jackson expects gamblers there to be resilient to any knock on consumer impact from President Donald Trump's imposition on Tuesday of 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. "Historically our business has been very strong in the face of challenges from a consumer economics perspective so we've always been quite defensive from that perspective," Jackson told Reuters in an interview. "We're a growth business. I think that even in the face of these sort of macro and global challenges, the business will continue to progress." Flutter, which said 2025 had started well including a record number of bets wagered at the Super Bowl, expects adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of between $2.94 billion and $3.38 billion compared to the record $2.36 billion posted in 2024. It expects $1.28 billion to $1.52 billion of that to come from the U.S., up 176% at the midpoint of the range. Flutter forecast in September that its U.S. EBITDA would reach $2.5 billion in 2027. FanDuel nudged up its leading share of the U.S. sports betting market to 43% and the iGaming market to 26% in the fourth quarter when a previously flagged run of customer-friendly NFL results cut quarterly profit by 3% year-on-year. It expects 2025 core profit of $1.75 billion to $1.95 billion in its other markets, including the Paddy Power, Betfair and Sportsbet brands. While that is in line with 2024 at the midpoint, it would be 10% higher if foreign currency headwinds and the impact of bookmaker friendly sports results in 2024 are excluded, Flutter said. Jackson also said Flutter will be putting forward a bid to run Italy's national lottery game, hoping to add the licence to its growing portfolio of businesses in the country. Sign in to access your portfolio
