June 11 (UPI) — The Police Service of Northern Ireland announced Wednesday that things are currently quiet in a County Antrim town after violent attacks on police over a two-night stretch left 17 officers injured.
“Calm has been restored in Ballymena following serious disorder in the Clonavon Terrace, North Road and Bridge Street areas last night,” said officials in one of a series of press releases that has documented recent unrest in that community in Northern Ireland. Five people have since been arrested “on suspicion of riotous behavior” with a sixth taken into custody “on suspicion of disorderly behavior.”
Police report that stone and gas bombs were hurled at officers and their vehicles over several hours of riots that also saw residences and businesses attacked. The police also announced there was “public disorder in Ballymena” Monday evening.
Officials also confirmed that rubber bullets and a water cannon were used to try and quell the crowds involved in what Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson described in a Sunday release as a “racially motivated disorder in Ballymena” that followed a protest.
The rioting, which has also been reported in Belfast among other communities in Northern Ireland, has been widely described in the media as related to “anti-immigration protests.”
The uproar allegedly followed the arrest of a 28-year-old man on Monday in connection to the Saturday sexual assault of a teenage girl in Ballymena. That arrest was the third connected to the incident, as police previously announced Sunday that two teenage boys were charged with attempted rape in connection to the assault.
First Minister of Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill posted to X Wednesday that “Those responsible for this violence bring nothing to our communities but hatred, fear, and division.”
Riots broke out in Northern Ireland’s Ballymena after two teenage boys appeared in court accused of attempted rape. Police say the violence, which left homes and vehicles burned and officers injured, was racially motivated, following reports the suspects required a Romanian interpreter in court.
“I think back of when we were successful in 2016 and we were really, really hard to beat.
“We knew what we were good at and I see similarities in this team. There are a lot more legs and more youthfulness now, but there’s a similarity in being really hard to beat.”
As a former Northern Ireland Euro 2016 favourite and Premier League player with Leeds United, Stuart Dallas knows what it takes to be successful.
Now retired, he’s watching Michael O’Neill’s “new era” Northern Ireland gear up for World Cup qualifying, and he likes what he is seeing.
After a 2-1 defeat in Copenhagen to Denmark, O’Neill’s young side had to dig deep to beat Iceland at Windsor Park.
After Isaac Price’s latest moment of brilliance lit up a drab first-half, the game turned when Brodie Spencer was sent off in the 57th minute and Iceland piled on the pressure.
It was a new challenge for his young team and, as Dallas adds, “they had to show a different side to them”.
It was a test they passed with flying colours.
“This team have a strong character and desire when things are going against them to stay in the game,” said O’Neill.
“There’s a lot of things we can do better, but we can’t ask any more in terms of character and defending as a team and a unit.”
Republic of Ireland boss Heimir Hallgrimsson bemoaned his side’s “sloppy” and “boring” performance in their 0-0 friendly draw with Luxembourg.
Despite twice hitting the woodwork, it was a laboured performance from the Boys in Green, who lacked the intensity that was evident against Senegal in Dublin on Friday.
Hallgrimsson was disappointed with their showing against a side ranked 31 places below them by Fifa in their last game before the start of World Cup qualifying in September.
“Let’s be honest, we’re not happy with this performance,” the Icelander told RTE.
“It is good to keep a clean sheet, it’s the first one since I have come in, but we all felt the first half we were sloppy and the game was boring.
“All the good things we did against Senegal were missing, all the quick movements, the press and the ball speed. The effort was so much less than against Senegal.”
Rioters said to target ‘foreigners’ in Northern Ireland town following alleged sexual assault of local teenage girl.
Hundreds of masked rioters have attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in Northern Ireland’s Ballymena in the second night of disorder described as “racially motivated” by police following a protest over an alleged sexual assault in the town.
Police said they were dealing with “serious disorder” on Tuesday night in the town, located about 45km (30 miles) from the capital Belfast, and urged people to avoid the area.
Officers in riot gear and driving armoured vehicles responded with water cannon and firing plastic baton rounds after being attacked with Molotov cocktails, steel scaffolding poles and rocks that rioters gathered by knocking down nearby walls, the Reuters news agency reports.
One house was burned out and rioters attempted to set a second home alight, according to reports, while several cars were set on fire.
The Belfast Telegraph newspaper said that some residents in Ballymena have started to mark their front doors to indicate their nationality to avoid attack, while Irish media outlets report that a call has gone out for protests to be held in other towns and cities in Northern Ireland, currently part of the United Kingdom.
Police vehicles are parked as flames rise during a second night of riots, in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, on June 10, 2025 [Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters]
During earlier violence on Monday, four houses were damaged by fire and windows and doors were smashed in other homes and businesses, in what police said they are investigating as racially-motivated hate attacks.
“The terrible scenes of civil disorder we have witnessed in Ballymena again this evening have no place in Northern Ireland,” the UK’s Northern Ireland minister, Hilary Been, said in a post on social media.
“There is absolutely no justification for attacks on PSNI [Police Service of Northern Ireland] officers or for vandalism directed at people’s homes or property,” he said.
Unrest first erupted on Monday night after a vigil in a neighbourhood of Ballymena where an alleged sexual assault occurred on Saturday. The trouble began when people in masks “broke away from the vigil and began to build barricades, stockpiling missiles and attacking properties”, police said.
Two teenage boys, charged by police with the attempted rape of a teenage girl, had appeared in court earlier in the day, where they had asked for a Romanian interpreter, local media reports said.
Tensions in the town, which has a large migrant population, remained high throughout Tuesday, with residents describing the scenes as “terrifying” and telling reporters that those involved were targeting “foreigners”.
“This violence was clearly racially motivated and targeted at our minority ethnic community and police,” Northern Ireland Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson said.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was investigating “hate attacks” on homes and businesses and that 15 officers were injured in the rioting on Monday, including some who required hospital treatment.
Cornelia Albu, 52, a Romanian migrant and mother-of-two who lives opposite a house targeted in the attacks, said her family has been “very scared”.
“Last night, it was crazy, because too many people came here and tried to put the house on fire,” Albu, who works in a factory, told the AFP news agency.
She said she would now have to move, but was worried she would not find another place to live because she was Romanian.
As wind turbines on the horizon churn out clean energy, John Smyth bends to stack damp peat – the cheap, smoky fuel he has harvested for half a century.
The painstaking work of “footing turf”, as the process of drying peat for burning is known, is valued by people across rural Ireland as a source of low-cost energy that gives their homes a distinctive smell.
But peat-harvesting has also destroyed precious wildlife habitats, and converted what should be natural stores for carbon dioxide into one of Ireland’s biggest sources of planet-warming gas emissions.
As the European Union seeks to make Dublin enforce the bloc’s environmental law, peat has become a focus for opposition to policies that Smyth and others criticise as designed by wealthy urbanites with little knowledge of rural reality.
“The people that are coming up with plans to stop people from buying turf or from burning turf … They don’t know what it’s like to live in rural Ireland,” Smyth said.
He describes himself as a dinosaur obstructing people who, he says, want to destroy rural Ireland.
“That’s what we are. Dinosaurs. Tormenting them.”
When the peat has dried, Smyth keeps his annual stock in a shed and tosses the sods, one at a time, into a metal stove used for cooking. The stove also heats radiators around his home.
School students Tommy Byrne, Alex Comerford, Aaron Daly, Sean Moran, and James Moran stack freshly cut turf on a raised bog to help the peat dry over the summer months, in Clonbullogue, Ireland. [Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters]
Turf, Smyth says, is for people who cannot afford what he labels “extravagant fuels”, such as gas or electricity.
The average Irish household energy bill is almost double, according to Ireland’s utility regulator, the 800 euros ($906) Smyth pays for turf for a year.
Smyth, nevertheless, acknowledges that digging for peat could cease, regardless of politics, as the younger generation has little interest in keeping the tradition alive.
“They don’t want to go to the bog. I don’t blame them,” Smyth said.
Peat has an ancient history. Over thousands of years, decaying plants in wetland areas formed the bogs.
In drier, lowland parts of Ireland, dome-shaped raised bogs developed as peat accumulated in former glacial lakes. In upland and coastal areas, high rainfall and poor drainage created blanket bogs over large expanses.
In the absence of coal and extensive forests, peat became an important source of fuel.
By the second half of the 20th century, hand-cutting and drying had mostly given way to industrial-scale harvesting that reduced many bogs to barren wastelands.
Ireland has lost more than 70 percent of its blanket bog and over 80 percent of its raised bogs, according to estimates published by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service, respectively.
Following pressure from environmentalists, in the 1990s, an EU directive on habitats listed blanket bogs and raised bogs as priority habitats.
As the EU regulation added to the pressure for change, in 2015, semi-state peat harvesting firm Bord na Mona said it planned to end peat extraction and shift to renewable energy.
Freshly cut turf is stacked into a pyramid shape, known locally as a foot, to help with the drying process, and wooden posts are used to mark the beginning point of each person’s plot of turf. [Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters]
In 2022, the sale of peat for burning was banned.
An exception was made, however, for “turbary rights”, allowing people to dig turf for their personal use.
Added to that, weak enforcement of complex regulations meant commercial-scale harvesting has continued across the country.
The agency also said 350,000 tonnes of peat were exported, mostly for horticulture, in 2023. Data for 2024 has not yet been published.
The European Commission, which lists more than 100 Irish bogs as Special Areas of Conservation, last year referred Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to protect them and taking insufficient action to restore the sites.
The country also faces fines of billions of euros if it misses its 2030 carbon reduction target, according to Ireland’s fiscal watchdog and climate groups.
Degraded peatlands in Ireland emit 21.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, according to a 2022 United Nations report. Ireland’s transport sector, by comparison, emitted 21.4 million tonnes in 2023, government statistics show.
The Irish government says turf-cutting has ended on almost 80 percent of the raised bog special areas of conservation since 2011.
It has tasked Bord na Mona with “rewetting” the bogs, allowing natural ecosystems to recover, and eventually making the bogs once again carbon sinks.
So far, Bord na Mona says it has restored approximately 20,000 hectares (49,421 acres) of its 80,000-hectare target.
Crystal Palace’s Justin Devenny said he relished the challenge of playing a new position for Northern Ireland in their 2-1 friendly defeat by Denmark on Saturday.
The game in Copenhagen saw manager Michael O’Neill pick the 21-year-old to start at wing-back for the first time at international level.
Devenny, who won the FA Cup with Oliver Glasner’s side this season, performed admirably throughout, creating Northern Ireland’s early goal while also managing the threat posed by Lazio’s Gustav Isaksen.
“It was a new position for me but I enjoyed it and wherever I play for the team I’m willing to do a shift,” he said of what was his fourth cap.
“Michael had told me he was thinking of playing me there and we did a few bits and bobs in training. To be fair, I’m familiar with it from Palace as well.
“I know the roles and responsibilities of it and it’s just putting that into place.”
O’Neill has previously played the right-footed Brodie Spencer on the left side of his backline with the Huddersfield Town man performing well in recent internationals.
The manager thought that Devenny’s comfort on the ball gave his side a “nice outlet” at Parken Stadium.
“I thought he did really well,” O’Neill said.
“He’s got his hands full against a winger that obviously causes you a lot of problems. Justin’s a midfield player but he’s left-sided and I thought he dealt with it very, very well.
“He gave us a nice outlet on the left-hand side as well in terms of his use of the ball, so he was a big, big positive.”
Northern Ireland defender Trai Hume says he hopes the success players have had with their clubs will translate on to the international stage.
Hume and Ballard won promotion to the Premier League with Sunderland, Conor Bradley helped Liverpool to the league title and Justin Devenny won the FA Cup with Crystal Palace.
Northern Ireland face Denmark and Iceland in a double-header of friendlies over the next week in the final matches before the start of 2026 World Cup qualifying in September.
“There are four players there who won a lot this season and hopefully we can bring that winning mentality,” said defender Hume.
“It definitely helps the team. Hopefully that can push the squad on further, we can keep pushing and get where we want to be as a nation.”
Plans to hold a European T20 franchise tournament this summer are to be shelved until 2026 because three potential owners are instead focusing on completing deals to buy team stakes in The Hundred.
The European T20 Premier League (ETPL), part owned by Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan, and involving city-based franchises from Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands, was set to start next month.
The six-team tournament was slated to take place from 15 July to 3 August but multiple sources have told BBC Sport the event will definitely not happen this year.
The project is being led by Cricket Ireland in collaboration with the boards of Scotland and the Netherlands.
Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the designated venues for the ETPL, which promised to “elevate local talent, draw global superstars, and ignite a wave of cricketing enthusiasm across Europe”.
Deals for at least three of the six city-based franchises are understood to be very close to being signed off, and it was initially hoped that once they were wrapped up, the remaining three would soon follow.
However, three of those potential ETPL franchise owners are also acquiring stakes in The Hundred and are said to have prioritised those deals.
In April, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) extended the deadline to complete sales of the Hundred franchises that were agreed earlier this year.
The knock-on effect of the delay in those sales is the postponement of the ETPL, with a formal announcement to confirm it has been rescheduled to be made within the next 48 hours.
Bollywood actor and film produce Bachchan was announced as part-owner of the ETPL in conjunction with Rules Sport Tech when it was launched in January.
Rules Sport Tech are a private Indian company who “promote and create high quality sports initiatives, tournaments and events”.
Mumbai-born Bachchan, 49, travelled to Dublin in March to promote the tournament via a series of media interviews and Instagram posts.
It is not the first time a European T20 franchise tournament involving the Dutch, Irish and Scottish cricket boards has struggled to get off the ground.
That came after team names were announced, a draft held and marquee players including Eoin Morgan were allocated to franchises.
The tournament was then postponed several times over subsequent years and never took place.
Organisers are buoyant about the ETPL’s prospects, even though no franchises have yet been sold, and are confident it will not be plagued by the same issues as the Euro T20 Slam.
Cricket Ireland, Cricket Scotland and the Royal Dutch Cricket Association all declined to comment.
Northern Ireland boss Tanya Oxtoby believes their 1-1 draw with Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Nations League in Zenica shows the “growth” of her side.
Captain Simone Magill’s composed finish was cancelled out by Sofija Krajsumovic’s equaliser for Bosnia, but NI saw out the draw which secured second place in the group and a promotion play-off.
That is an improvement on their third-place finish in the last edition of the Nations League, and despite the nervy nature of the draw, Oxtoby praised the application of her players to grind out a result.
“It’s always a difficult place to come with the travel, I thought we should have scored a few more in the first half and we conceded a sloppy one, but to show the character to see the game out that’s all that matters at this point,” she said.
“In international football there are no easy games, I said all along every game was going to be competitive in this group and you have to show the character and resilience.
“You have to win when it’s not pretty and get results when it’s not pretty and we’ve certainly done that when there have been times previously when we haven’t, so for me, that is growth.”
Jury found that the BBC had not acted in good faith and awarded Adams 100,000 euros ($113,000) in damages.
Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has won a libel case against the BBC over a report alleging he sanctioned the killing of an informant in the Irish republican movement.
A jury at Ireland’s High Court on Friday found that the BBC had not acted in good faith and in a “fair and reasonable” way and awarded Adams 100,000 euros ($113,000) in damages.
Adams brought the lawsuit over a claim in a 2016 documentary and online article that he sanctioned the killing of Denis Donaldson, a long-serving Sinn Fein official who acknowledged in 2005 that he had worked for British intelligence. He was shot dead at his cottage in rural Ireland four months later.
The BBC “Spotlight” investigation included an anonymous allegation that the murder was sanctioned by the political and military leadership of the Irish Republican Army and that Adams gave “the final say”.
Adams denies any involvement.
Speaking outside court, Adams, 76, said the case was “about putting manners on the British Broadcasting Corporation”. His solicitors said Adams was “very pleased with this resounding verdict”.
Adams, 76, is one of the most influential figures of Northern Ireland’s decades of conflict, and its peace process. He led Sinn Fein, the party linked to the IRA, between 1983 and 2018. He has always denied being an IRA member, but former colleagues have said he was one of its leaders.
The BBC argued that it acted in “good faith”, that its programme was “fair and reasonable” and in the public interest, and that the allegation made in the documentary was supported by five other sources.
Speaking outside Dublin High Court alongside Spotlight reporter Jennifer O’Leary, BBC Northern Ireland director Adam Smyth told reporters they were disappointed with the verdict.
“We believe we supplied extensive evidence to the court of the careful editorial process and journalistic diligence applied to this programme and accompanying online article,” Smyth said.
“Moreover, it was accepted by the court, and conceded by Gerry Adams’ legal team, that the Spotlight broadcast and publication were of the highest public interest.”
Adams brought the case in Dublin as the Spotlight programme could be watched in Ireland, where it was seen by about 16,000 people.
An online article also had about 700 hits in Ireland during a 14-month period after its publication in September 2016.
McIlroy joined 18-time major champion Nicklaus as part of an elite group of six players who have completed a career grand slam of all four major tournaments by winning The Masters at Augusta in April.
The world number two subsequently tied for 47th place at the US PGA Championship at Quail Hollow and is set to return to competitive action at the Canadian Open on 5 June as he prepares for the season’s third major, the US Open at Oakmont in Pennsylvania, from 12-15 June.
The PGA Tour’s final signature event of the season, the Travelers Championship, will be staged in Connecticut the following week.
“I know he likes to play so many in a row. He likes to play the week before a US Open. And so that’s what he’s doing. So, you know, I really don’t have a comment on it,” added Nicklaus.
“It’s very difficult, very difficult. I mean, I’m a big Rory fan, I always have been. I’m sure that I will remain that way. I just, I was a little surprised, yes.”
British police say Mo Chara displayed a flag of Lebanon’s Hezbollah at a concert.
A member of the Irish rap band Kneecap has been charged with a “terrorism” offence in the United Kingdom for waving a flag of the armed Lebanese group Hezbollah at a concert in November 2024 in London.
Liam O’Hanna, whose stage name is Mo Chara, is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on June 18, charged under the Terrorism Act, British police said on Wednesday.
Kneecap has been vocal in its support for the Palestinian cause since the October 7, 2023-led Hamas attacks and Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, equating the struggles of the Irish under British colonial rule to that of Palestinians under that of Israel.
Pro-Palestinian chants are a regular fixture in their gigs. The band says they have been targets of a smear campaign for calling out Israel’s genocidal war.
KNEECAP STATEMENT:
Since our statements at Coachella — exposing the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people — we have faced a coordinated smear campaign.
For over a year, we have used our shows to call out the British and Irish governments’ complicity in war crimes.… pic.twitter.com/mBojb5QBOP
The Belfast trio is also well known for its political and satirical lyrics and use of symbolism associated with the Irish Republican movement, which seeks to unite Northern Ireland, currently part of the UK, with the Republic of Ireland.
More than 3,600 people were killed during three decades of violence in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles” involving the Irish Republican Army (IRA), pro-British Loyalist militias and the UK security forces.
Kneecap takes its name from a brutal punishment, which involved being shot in the kneecaps, that was meted out by paramilitary groups to informers and drug dealers.
The band has been praised for invigorating the Irish-language cultural scene in Northern Ireland, where the status of the language remains a contested political issue in a society still split between Protestant British Unionists and Catholic Irish Nationalist communities.
It has also been criticised for lyrics laden with expletives and drug references.
Kneecap came under intense scrutiny and criticism last month during their performance at the music festival Coachella in California when they projected the words “F*** Israel. Free Palestine.” on stage.
“The Irish not so long ago were persecuted by the Brits, but we were never bombed from the f****** skies with nowhere to go! The Palestinians have nowhere to go – it’s their f****** home and they’re bombing them from the sky. If you’re not calling it a genocide what the f*** are you calling it?” read the words projected by Mo Chara.
Kneecap came under renewed scrutiny at the start of this month when UK intelligence said they would investigate comments made by the rap group about UK and Middle East politics.
They were reported to police over footage from a 2024 concert in which a band member appeared to say: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.” Footage from another concert, in 2023, appears to show a member of the trio shouting “Up Hamas, Up Hezbollah” – the UK considers both to be “terrorist” organisations.
In response, Kneecap said it had “never supported Hamas or Hezbollah,” and accused “establishment figures” of taking comments out of context to “manufacture moral hysteria” because of the band’s criticism of Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.
Several Kneecap gigs have been cancelled as a result of the controversy, and some British lawmakers have called on organisers of June’s Glastonbury Festival to scrap a planned performance by the group.
Ireland lost the toss and were asked to bat first, but through the fruitful pairing of Balbirnie and Stirling they moved to 109 before the latter was dismissed by Gudakesh Motie.
Cade Carmichael, who was making his debut alongside Tom Mayes and Liam McCarthy, was out for 16, but Harry Tector managed 56 with Lorcan Tucker also adding 30 to help Ireland set a high target.
Mayes claimed his first wicket for Ireland as he dismissed West Indies captain Shai Hope in the powerplay and the difficulties continued as West Indies slipped to 31-5 in the powerplay before Roston Chase (55) and Matthew Forde (38) steadied their innings.
McCarthy removed Brandon King, Keacy Carty, Amir Jangoo and Forde as the West Indies were bowled out for 179 with 15.5 overs remaining, falling to a 124-run defeat.
“We want to win this series of course, but you have to enjoy these sorts of results. It is a huge win for us, and I think the confidence is going to be high going into the weekend,” said Balbirnie.
