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A spokesman said: "It's going to feel really, really muggy.
"We usually have something like this once every four or five years coming up from France.
"It's going to be very hot and very wet - something more akin to the tropics."
USDAW, the union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, has gone on standby for a flurry of calls from members over temperature in the workplace.
Employers have a duty to maintain a "reasonable" temperature,, although no maximum is specified. The union says research shows that over 25C, heat exhaustion starts and workers can suffer loss of concentration, increased accidents and loss of productivity.
Usdaw's general secretary, John Hannett, said: "Every year, Usdaw receives lots of requests for information about workplace temperatures. High temperatures at work can make life a misery and damage workers' health - and it's the same when the workplace is too cold."
A memorial plaque in Joy Street in the Markets area of Belfast where IRA man Joe McCann was shot dead in 1972.
Two former paratroopers charged with murdering an Official IRA man 46 years ago have cleared the first stage in their High Court battle to face trial by jury.
The pair, known only as Soldier A and Soldier C, were granted leave to seek a judicial review of a decision to have their case heard by a judge sitting alone.
Both men are accused of killing Joe McCann in Belfast back in April 1972.
McCann, one of the Official IRA’s most prominent activists, was shot in disputed circumstances near his home in the Market area.
A police investigation conducted at the time resulted in no-one being prosecuted.
But in 2013 a report by the now-defunct Historical Enquiries Team concluded the killing was not justified.
Files were then passed to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), who reviewed the case and decided in 2016 to bring murder charges.
The defendants, now aged in their sixties, have been given anonymity amid fears that identification could put their lives at risk.
According to the prosecution, Soldier A and Soldier C are surviving members of the army patrol involved in the shooting incident. A third member of the unit has since died.
Legal proceedings were issued by the ex-paratroopers after the director of public prosecutions issued a certificate for a non-jury trial.
Their lawyers claim the decision was based on a wrong interpretation of the 2007 Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act.
Trials by judges sitting alone were meant to deal with potential issues of jury tampering in cases involving paramilitary organisations, they contend.
With leave to apply for judicial review granted, proceedings have been put on hold pending the outcome of a similar challenge by another former soldier facing prosecution.
Dennis Hutchings, 77, is charged with offences connected to the death of John Patrick Cunninghman in Co Armagh in 1974.
Mr Cunningham, 27, was shot in the back as he ran away from a British Army patrol near Benburb.
Mr Hutchings, who served in the Life Guards, was charged with attempted murder after the killing was re-examined by police.
It is alleged that he and another soldier both fired their guns, although it is not known who discharged the fatal bullet.
The pensioner, from Cawsand in Cornwall, denies the charges against him and has made the case it was never his intention to kill or injure Mr Cunningham.
He is also mounting a legal bid to have his trial heard in front of a jury, rather than a judge sitting alone.
Mr Hutchings’ challenge was rejected last December, which prompted him to take his case to the Supreme Court in London.
That hearing is due to take place next March, with judgement delivered sometime later.
Soldier A and Solider C’s case have been adjourned until that verdict is delivered.
High school students in the Swiss capital, Bern, demonstrate against the Soviet invasion.
After Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on the night of August 20, 1968 to crush the Prague Spring movement, many Czechs and Slovaks found refuge in Switzerland.
Irena Brežná was in France at an international student camp, “laughing and happy to be able to travel and visit a capitalist country”. Political liberalisation brought about after the election of Alexander Dubček to head the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in January 1968 meant that “people could again read newspap...
But after half a million troops from Soviet-controlled states invaded the country to suppress reforms, killing 137 civilians, the 18-year-old Slovak’s mother called to say that she should not return home and that both parents, like many others, would emigrate.
“It was the greatest shock in my life. We felt betrayed by the system. I couldn’t go back. If I returned, I would be unable to study, as I would be seen as the daughter of the state’s enemies”.
After initial plans to migrate with her mother to Canada, the two instead applied for Swiss asylum, before being joined by her father who had first gone to Germany.
“I felt that everything that I had known before was gone,” says Brežná, a writer and specialist in Slavic Studies. “It was a desperate feeling that there was no way back. It was a shock to be a refugee. I only felt my sadness”.
Adapting to Switzerland was not easy. She found Swiss society conservative and women considered less equal in studies and work than what she had known at home. She also felt “humiliated” for not being able to express herself fully in German but was committed to learning the language.
Her story - the inspiration for her books external link- is just one of many Czechs and Slovaks who migrated to Switzerland could tell.
Jiří Růžička also emigrated to Switzerland in 1968, applying for asylum under an expedited process introduced by Switzerland following the invasion. A musician and composer, he settled in the capital, Bern, and worked at theatres throughout western Switzerland. In a catalogue external linkpublished for an exhibit ...
His story of building a new life was also told in a short filmexternal link (in German and Czech) directed by Fiona Ziegler, a Swiss cinematographer, for the exhibit, with the support of Switzerland.
But after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 brought an end to the communist regime, Růžička returned to Prague. “At the beginning it wasn’t easy at all. It changed a lot since I left, but there were still the same people in the state offices as before the Velvet Revolution.” He said that while he is convinced that emigr...
Now 77 years old, Růžička - like some of an estimated 6,000 others who returned - describes his life in separate phases, before emigration, life in Switzerland, and his return.
According to the United Nations, a migrant on average spends approximately 30 years away before returning home.
The filmmaker, Fiona Ziegler, admits that the exhibit was intended to show the public that while Czechoslovakia had been a source of migration, the two separate countries that emerged after 1991 have welcomed hardly any refugees. Even those who had left years earlier were not welcome back.
But migration policies in the West have also shifted.
In 1968, when Switzerland opened its borders to Czech migrants, the world was at the height of the Cold War.
“We had a black and white vision of the world, of communism versus democracy, where we felt in the West that people living under communism were victims that had to be supported to allow them to have a free and idealistic life. It was very idealistic,” the Swiss filmmaker says.
But that approach she says is much more pronounced now in today’s Czech Republic and Slovakia. “They do not accept anyone from outside and don’t realize that after Czechs needed help in the past from others, now they should help those in need from elsewhere”.
“The immigration policies toward Czechoslovakians were simply based on humanitarian grounds,” says Rolf Ott, deputy head of mission at the Swiss embassy in Prague, commenting on Switzerland’s migration policies at the time of the invasion.
He added that given the economic boom at the time, “Switzerland needed skilled labour”.
Like Jiří Dvořák. The neurology professor at the University of Zurich, senior consultant at the Schulthess Clinic and a former FIFA medical chief, was a second-year medical student when he came to Switzerland.
He told swissinfo.ch how on August 21, 1968, together with his parents whom he was visiting in Cuba, they were captured by Cuban and Russian officials, and loaded onto a plane without being told where it was going. The plane brought them back to Prague.
“It was a perfectly masterminded plan by the organization,” Dvořák remembers. “They were afraid that the Czechoslovakian citizens could cause trouble in Cuba”.
Three months later, after the last protests to the invasion were organised in the Czechoslovak capital, Dvořák realized there was no hope left for returning to earlier political reforms. He decided to leave on his own, with his parents’ approval, “even though they knew they would be heavily under pressure”.
He worked as a construction worker and gardener – which helped him learn German – before resuming his studies in medicine in Zurich.
Frantisek Pojdl had already been working in Zurich as part of an exchange programme between public broadcasters when he requested asylum after the Soviet invasion.
Pojdl’s son Pavel, a commodities trader and a former professional ice hockey player for Geneva Servette who was 12 when he came to Switzerland, explained how his mother joined the family by escaping in a moving truck, wrapped in a carpet.
“I am grateful to my parents to have gone through the painful decision of leaving and of coming to Switzerland”.
In “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, Czech author Milan Kundera who migrated to France in 1975, recounts the moral and existential conflicts of a fictional couple that leaves Czechoslovakia to move to Geneva.
Kundera’s romantic depiction of migrants has been supplanted in recent years by the refugee crisis involving hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in a less-than-welcoming Europe. However, the inability to return for fear of persecution is a common thread.
Dvořák, who has worked regularly for humanitarian missions in Africa, says that with much of migration now motivated by economic reasons more should be done to stimulate development at home.
For Brežná’s part, she is critical of the unwillingness of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other former Soviet bloc countries to welcome refugees.
According to the International Organization for Migrationexternal link (IOM), more than 40 million people are estimated to be internally displaced within their own countries while more than 22 million have sought refuge abroad. The IOM says this “global displacement” is at a record high.
Why Switzerland welcomed Prague Spring refugees Paula Dupraz-Dobias Aug 21, 2018 - 08:00 After Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on the night of August 20, 1968 to crush the Prague Spring movement, many Czechs and Slovaks found refuge in Switzerland. Irena Brežná was in France at an international student c...
Havel’s moral authority "is a thing of the past"
Police are appealing for help to identify the man pictured in this image in connection with fraud.
A woman was approached by a man as she was entering Morrsions in Skegness. The man asked the victim to change a £20 note, which the woman did. The woman then tried to use the £20 in Morrisions but it was rejected and found to be fake.
This happened at around 4.45pm on March 12.
If you know who this man is or can assist us with the enquiries, please call police on 101, quoting crime number 19000127580, or email control@lincs.pnn.police.uk, quoting the reference number in the subject line.
Going early is an admission they failed to address homelessness or hospital overcrowding.
Last winter, Leo Varadkar promised to solve the crisis in hospital emergency departments. Last Christmas, Alan Kelly huffed and puffed about how he was going to tackle homelessness.Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin.
Such is the Government’s capacity for self-delusion that it presumes it can fool the rest of us. Enda Kenny ducked and dived several times this week trying not to answer questions about whether there will be an election before Christmas.
When pressed by journalists he reminded them the decision was his alone and then said he would “make that decision in the best interest of the country”. The first is a statement of the bleeding obvious, the second is pure nonsense.
If he were genuinely to pick the date of the election on the basis of the national interest, Kenny would be the first Taoiseach to do so. The power to name the election date is one of the most important political weapons any taoiseach holds. It is always a purely political decision.
If, as is to be assumed, the Taoiseach thinks the current Government is good for the country, then there is no reason “in the interest of the country” why this Coalition should not serve its full term.
Both Government parties tell us repeatedly how good relations are between them. Even after defections, they still hold the largest majority in the history of the State.
Many commitments in the Programme for Government remain unfulfilled even after the numerous press conferences announcing or re-announcing future plans which have been held in the last few weeks. If the Coalition parties stay in Government for the next few months, there is at least a possibility some of these outstandin...
Charlie Flanagan, who should be focused on the Northern talks for the next couple of months, suggested to The Irish Times on Monday the election should not take place until next spring.
Calling an election in the coming weeks would contradict everything Kenny has been saying for months about how the election wouldn’t be until 2016. It would also put him at odds with Joan Burton and the Labour Party and undermine their harmonious front.
The only reason Kenny would disregard all those factors and go to the polls in November would be because he felt it would save more Fine Gael seats than going in February or March.
Those Fine Gael Ministers and minders who have been quoted off the record as favouring an early election talk about how it would enable them to avoid the political impact of problems that might flare up over the winter months. They speak in particular about the political risks from a worsening of the housing and homele...
There are two things, however, which threaten to undermine their chances of re-election. The first has been their inability to tackle some serious social problems and implement large-scale projects. The other is hubris. Going for an early election will bring both of those to the fore.
Do they not see how bad it looks? Do they really think calling an early election so they don’t get punished for a winter peak in homelessness and hospital overcrowding would not be seen for the cynical ploy it is?
Do they not realise that a decision to cut and run because of their failure to solve these problems undermines their pitch? They claim they should be re-elected because of their competent management of the country, yet by going early they would be admitting to fear of a backlash for their incompetence on these two issu...
Last winter, Leo Varadkar promised to solve the crisis in hospital emergency departments. Last Christmas, Alan Kelly huffed and puffed about how he was going to tackle homelessness. They have not done so. Instead of focusing on solving these problems this November, it seems they may be spending three or fours weeks ele...
Some in Fine Gael have convinced themselves they need an early election so they are safely beyond the reach of electoral accountability when homelessness and the hospital crisis become even worse. Surely someone in Fine Gael can appreciate the electorate will see through this ruse.
Whether or not we will have a November election is still unclear. One thing is for sure, however: if it does happen, it certainly won’t be because it is “in the best interest of the country”.
If there is an early election it will be because Enda Kenny has persuaded himself that it is in Fine Gael’s interest.
CLEVELAND, OH -- The Republican National Convention is now underway in Cleveland and Patti Adair, from Sisters, is there. This is her second GOP convention; four years ago, she was in Tampa, Florida. But, she tells KBND News, this time, her family is nervous for her safety. "I don't want anything to happen - my mom is ...
On Friday, Donald Trump announced he has chosen Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate. Adair is a Trump delegate and is looking forward to hearing all of the primetime speeches. "I think it should be a fascinating week. I really love the media center. Last time I went, I met Marsha Blackburn, she's a Congress...
The theme of the first day of the convention is "Make America Safe Again" and Donald Trump's wife Melania is scheduled to speak. On Tuesday, it's "Make America Work Again," with Donald Trump, Jr and former GOP Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson expected to speak. It's "Make America First Again," on Wednesday, with f...
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has told the Afghan Taliban leadership to prepare a team for peace negotiations, a Taliban leader familiar with the development confirmed to Daily Times on Sunday.
Pakistani officials conveyed the message to the Taliban leaders in a recent interaction. However, the Taliban leaders have not yet responded to the call.
Taliban had earlier refused to accept Pakistan’s call to join the political dialogue when a similar message was conveyed to them in a face-to-face meeting between several senior Taliban leaders and Pakistani officials in March.
Weeks later, Taliban launched their annual Spring Offensive codenamed ‘Omari Operations’ named after Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed by a US spy aircraft in May last year.
“Although Taliban have yet not responded to Pakistan’s appeal, this time Pakistan could go tough on the Taliban if they refuse to come to the negotiation table,” a former Taliban minister told Daily Times, requesting anonymity. “There is a possibility that some Taliban members are arrested, expelled or even handed over...
Daily Times has learnt most of the Taliban military commanders, including military chief Ibrahim Sadr, are in southern Afghanistan to lead the war from there. All Taliban leaders, who are considered in Akhtar Mansour’s camp, have already left Pakistan and now are in Helmand, Kandahar and Urozgan.
A Taliban official, who had joined fighting in eastern part during Spring Offensive, told Daily Times that Taliban now freely move from one of their stronghold to other and even from the south to the relatively peaceful north where the Taliban have many areas under their control.
Pakistan has pressed the Taliban to join the peace talks amid diplomatic efforts to find out a peaceful solution to the Afghan problem.
Senior Afghan, Chinese, Pakistani and US officials are scheduled to meet in Muscat, Oman, on Monday at the Quadrilateral Coordination Group’s meeting, which will be their first sitting after they met in Islamabad in May last year.

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