Sports centres free for soldiers in Derbyshire borough

Members of the Mercian Regiment and their families are to be given free access to sport and leisure centres in a Derbyshire borough.

Amber Valley Borough Council is to grant the Freedom of the Borough to the regiment at a ceremony later.
The regiment will exercise its new rights by holding a march through Ripley on 15 March.
Councillors said they decided to add on the free use of council leisure centres to show the forces they are "valued".
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A soldier who has served in Iraq has been officially crowned Miss England after the original winner relinquished the title last year to clear her name. L/Cpl Katrina Hodge, 22, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, was drafted in when Rachel Christie stepped down following her arrest over an alleged nightclub brawl. L/Cpl Hodge said she wants to use her title to promote the British Army and military charities. She was presented with her crown at the Manor House Hotel in Guildford, Surrey. ...

The British Government has accepted the recommendations of the Hunt committee on policing in Northern Ireland which include the abolition of the Ulster Special Constabulary, known as the 'B Specials'.

The Home Secretary, Jim Callaghan, ordered a commission, headed by Lord Hunt, in response to this summer's violence in the Bogside area of Londonderry.

The subsequent report recommends a complete reorganisation and disarming of ...

A former soldier has run into the record books by smashing a world treadmill record. Mike Buss now has the record for the longest distance covered on a treadmill in seven days - 517.25 miles - breaking the previous record of 468 miles. Mr Buss, 35, ran the equivalent of three marathons a day at Swindon's Brunel Shopping Centre, with only two hours' sleep a day and brief food and massage breaks. The former Army physical training instructor burned 11,000 calories a day and lost 8lb during the week, as well as two toenails. ...

Two people were killed and 63 injured when a suspected IRA bomb exploded in the lobby of the Hilton hotel in central London.

A warning stating a device would detonate at the Park Lane hotel within 10 minutes was received by the Daily Mail newspaper at 1155 BST.

The newspaper notified Scotland Yard which immediately sen...

When paratrooper Alistair Hodgson was blown up by terrorists he begged a friend to put him out of his misery.

“One leg was gone, the other was just mashed up bone held together with nerves and veins,” he says.

“When the first guy got to me I said, ‘Just shoot me. You can’t leave me like this’.

“He told me to f*** off and thank God he did. He fetched a paramedic for me, put on tourniquets and saved my life.”That was 17 years ago on the streets of Northern Ireland. Today Alistair is the British National Freestyle ...

The British armed forces could be forced to shrink by up to a fifth because of a lack of money, a military think tank has predicted.

The Royal United Services Institute said the number of trained military personnel could fall from 175,000 to little more than 140,000 by 2016.
Its report said the cost of troops and equipment was rising, and major cuts were "inevitable".
The Ministry of Defence said budgets would not be cut at all next year.
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Three soldiers returning from Afghanistan were ordered off a train and threatened with arrest by a 'jobsworth' ticket inspector. The men from the Intelligence Corps were on their way home from Helmand for a fortnight's rest and recuperation when he challenged them, claiming their rail warrants were not valid. ...

Relations between Peter Robinson (left) and Martin McGuinness have soured

Just as the people of Northern Ireland are catching their breath after the extraordinary revelations about the marital difficulties of Peter and Iris Robinson, another relationship crisis is about to hit the headlines.
The Stormont coalition between Sinn Fein and the DUP is heading towards breaking point, and looks increasingly unlikely to survive.
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The British Government has sent troops into Northern Ireland in what it says is a "limited operation" to restore law and order.

The British Government has sent troops into Northern Ireland in what it says is a "limited operation" to restore law and order.
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A police officer injured in a dissident republican bomb attack in County Antrim remains critically ill in hospital. Constable Peadar Heffron was injured when a bomb exploded under his car on the Milltown Road in Randalstown at about 0630 GMT on Friday. The 33-year-old is an Irish language specialist for the PSNI and captain of the PSNI GAA team. Mr Heffron has been in the police for 10 years and recently married. He is related to a senior Sinn Fein member. He had been on his way to wo...

From all the NIVA Administrators, welcome. Well, it's finally happened and we've taken the plunge to update the site with new software which will be more secure, easier to administer and better supported. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to take you through a few things you might find useful, we've tried to keep the overall experience familiar and recognisable, whilst offering new and improved features for our members. The first thing you'll notice of course is this new CMS (or Community Management System) that takes over these ...