Danion Welcome, the driver of the truck that crushed seven-year-old Ciarra Benjamin to death three months ago on the Agricola Public Road, was granted bail when he appeared before Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court yesterday.

It is alleged that the 39-year-old father of four, on June 1st at the Agricola Public Road, drove motor lorry GWW 962 in a manner dangerous to the public thereby causing the death of Benjamin. Welcome pleaded not guilty to the charge.Facts presented to the court by police prosecutor Gordon Mansfield indicated that on the day in question, at about 16:10 hours, the defendant was driving the lorry which was heading north on the eastern driveway of the western carriageway. At the time, the prosecutor said, Welcome was travelling at a fast rate and while in the vicinity of the Agricola Public Road, he lost control of the lorry which swerved and collided with Benjamin. The girl was crushed by the vehicle.(Stabroek News)…[+]

A Belgian air force F-16 fighter plane has crashed in north-western France, leaving one pilot caught on a high-voltage electricity line. Both pilots were lightly wounded after they ejected from the plane near Pluvigner in Brittany.

The plane had clipped the roof of at least one house before crashing in a nearby field. The man was eventually retrieved from the power line after a two-hour rescue operation by French emergency services. The cable was high voltage at 250,000 volts, local media reported. The plane had been flying at 500m (1,500ft), said the commander of the Belgian air force, Frederik Vansina.

The aeroplane was on a practice flight from Florennes in the Belgian province of Namur to a French airbase at Lorient, some 30km (19 miles) from the crash site, according to Belgian reports.(BBC)…[+]

Former Prime Minister David Cameron was asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether he had any regrets about calling the 2016 referendum and whether he did it for “party management reasons”? Mr Cameron said “every party was under pressure on this issue… every single political party in Britain fought an election between 2005 and 2015 with a pledge to hold a referendum.” Is he right?

Not every party consistently argued for a straightforward in/out referendum, with the option of leaving the EU altogether, in that time. But it’s true to say that membership of the EU as an issue for political parties pre-dated 2014. That was the year that the UK Independence Party (UKIP) won the most votes in the European Parliamentary elections, sweeping away their far more established competitors.

“I’ve read so many times… that the referendum came about because the Tories got whacked by UKIP in the 2014 elections,” Mr Cameron said. But he denied this, saying that support for a referendum “wasn’t a flash in the pan”. The Liberal Democrats, although staunchly opposed to the UK leaving the EU, were the first major political party to call for an in/out referendum.

Current leader of the party Jo Swinson said in Parliament in 2008 that the Liberal Democrats “would like to have a referendum on the major issue of whether we are in or out of Europe”.(BBC)…[+]