Theresa Villiers: “I’m extremely pleased that we were able to answer the Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill’s request for a military helicopter…”

Following a request yesterday from the Northern Ireland Agriculture Minister, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, to the Secretary of State, Theresa Villiers, for “urgent access to helicopter support“, an RAF Chinook flew from its Hampshire base today to airlift supplies in order “to get food on the ground for stranded animals“.  [It’s just “a transport helicopter“! – Ed]  And the NI Agriculture Minister explained to UTV that the request was made “for helicopter support from the MOD” because it was “becoming very …

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Red Arrows Perform Olympic Flypasts Across UK

The RAF Red Arrows are performing formation flypasts across the UK to mark the start of the London 2012 Olympic games.  Starting in Edinburgh at 12.23pm, Belfast was the second stop at 1.01pm, followed by Cardiff at 4.21pm with the Olympic stadium in London scheduled for 8.12pm.  The BBC video from Belfast is not embeddable, but here is some eyewitness video from Belfast. And another one [Loving the red, white and blue smoke trails over City Hall – Ed]  Don’t tell Máirtín… Pete …

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