Page 29 - Stephen Walker News Today

The DUP leadership contender tells colleagues he wants to "restore the party's fortunes".

HarperCollins, 512pp, £20 When Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space 60 years ago, the KGB wanted to send a bomb with him. The point of the bomb was not that it could be dropped on the US but that, in the event that his Vostok craft came down on foreign soil, Gagarin and his ship could be remotely destroyed. The bomb idea was eventually overruled but, had Gagarin not survived his flight, the world might never have known his name. The same applied to the man who put him in space, Sergei...

BBC News By Stephen Walker Published image copyrightPA Media Changes to Northern Irelands licensing laws could cost police £7m in overtime, a Stormont committee has been told. The figure is contained in a letter sent to politicians examining a bill for reforming licensing laws. The changes would extend late-night opening hours and are contained in proposed new legislation which is at committee stage at the Northern Ireland Assembly. Police said changes to shift patterns would have to meet EU w...

William Collins, pp.512, 20 To an observant outsider, the Soviets might have appeared to have developed an oddly intolerant attitude towards stray dogs. Every so often throughout the late 1950s, a fresh pack of homeless mongrel bitches was picked off the streets of Moscow and transported to a remote region of Kazakhstan, where they were promptly strapped into the nose of a ballistic missile and fired into space. If they survived till re-entry, they would likely be blown up by a remotely detonat...

DUP criticised over north-south meeting absence By Stephen Walker Published Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Alliance Party have criticised the DUP for failing to take part in a meeting of ministers from Belfast and Dublin. The DUP is boycotting some North-South Ministerial Council (NSMC) meetings due to their opposition to post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland. On Friday, a meeting involving the Irish Transport Minister Eamon Ryan did not take place. First Minister Arlene Foster said no-on...

CEO activism in the US Some of the most powerful names in American business have teamed up to oppose any change in US law that would make it harder for people to vote. Former US diplomat Lew Lukens tells us why it might be a hard sell. 8 minutes

The final countdown In the third instalment of our series marking the 60th anniversary of the first manned flight into space, author and documentary filmmaker Stephen Walker walks us through the final countdown to the historic flight. 8 minutes

Former Stormont speaker Lord Hay says he was told he must apply for citizenship to get a passport.

It’s been 60 years, to the day, since Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel to space in a tiny capsule attached to an R-7 ballistic missile, a powerful rocket originally designed to carry a 3-5 megaton nuclear warhead. In this new episode marking the 60th anniversary of this historic space flight—the first of its kind—Scientific American talks to Stephen Walker, award-winning filmmaker, director and book author, about the daring launch that ch...

A combination of Russian bureaucracy, military secrecy and a state-dominated economy have failed to foster private space enterprises of the kind driving innovation in the U.S.