The Royal Gibraltar Regiment on Tuesday began Operation Bayside Warrior in conjunction with Bayside Comprehensive School, an initiative designed to enhance student prospects and strengthen community ties. It follows the recent success of Operation Prior Park Warrior programme.Operation Bayside Warrior will run for eight consecutive weeks, with lessons being held every Wednesday for students aged between 12 and 16 years old. This programme aims to provide students with an immersive military experience, focusing on developing leadership skills, teamwork and an understanding of military operations. The programme will offer Bayside students a range of valuable skills and experiences throughout the Royal Gibraltar Regiment, including explosive ordnance disposal [bomb disposal]; map reading; DCCT Range, or virtual shooting; stealth movement; live range training; battlefield causality drills [First Aid]; and communication skills. The students will learn to foster leadership qualities through challenging activities as well as gaining an introduction to military skills. Students will...

Authorities in Gibraltar are working with counterparts in Spain to investigate who is flying unauthorised drones close to Gibraltar’s airfield and disrupting commercial flights over safety concerns. The Royal Gibraltar Police launched an investigation after an unauthorised drone forced a commercial flight to divert to a Spanish airport on Saturday, the second such incident in under 10 days. The drone was spotted on the Spanish side of the border, the Chronicle understands. Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said early information suggested the drones were not being flown by licensed operators in Spain or by Spanish law enforcement. “We’re working with the Spanish authorities and our local authorities to identify who is flying these drones, whether or not there is ill intent towards Gibraltar or the airport or whether it’s carelessness,” he said. “We need to identify and understand that as quickly as possible in order to be able to resolve the...

Spain’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jose Manuel Albares, said on Monday he was “certain” a UK/EU treaty on Gibraltar would be agreed, although he said there was no deadline for that goal. Mr Albares was speaking during a wide-ranging interview on foreign policy with Onda Cero radio. “We’ve brought our positions a lot closer,” he… Source link

Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday, January 27, local students have shared their experience of visiting Auschwitz concentration camp. The students attended a five-day trip to Poland as part of the ‘Learning From Auschwitz’ last year and have penned their feelings, memories and thoughts on the experience.A journey through memory: a personal experience at Auschwitz By Chelsea Alecio and Jamal El Bakali On this Holocaust Memorial Day, we reflect on our experience at Auschwitz, not just as mere visitors, but as witnesses to a legacy of pain, resilience and the unbreakable human spirit. The Krakow Ghetto, established by the Nazis during World War II, stands as a haunting reminder of the cruelty endured by Jewish communities under occupation. A distinct symbol of oppression, the ghetto was small, overcrowded and confining, forcing thousands of Jews into a space of mere survival. Its walls, shaped ominously like Jewish gravestones, carried a...

The Royal Gibraltar Police has launched an investigation after an unauthorised drone forced a commercial flight to divert to a Spanish airport, the second such incident in under 10 days. The evening easyJet flight from Manchester was diverted to Seville and landed in Gibraltar just before midnight after the approach to the runway was declared safe. Earlier this month, passengers on an easyJet flight to Bristol faced serious delays after their plane was held back when unauthorised drones were seen flying near the runway. On both occasions, the presence of the drones prompted airfield operators to delay departure amid safety concerns. “At around 2036 last night [Saturday], the RGP Control Room received a report from the GDP that there was drone activity in the area of the airfield, which was preventing a passenger jet from landing at Gibraltar International Airport,” a spokesperson for the RGP said. “RGP were deployed to...

The Gibraltar Government said claims made by Unite the Union about understaffing in the GHA’s nursing complement and its impact on patient safety were “misleading” and “alarmist” and did not reflect the facts. The Government was responding after Unite this week urged the GHA to address “dangerously low” nursing staff levels in the GHA which it said impacted resilience and posed “a serious risk” to patients. “The suggestion by Unite that nursing staff levels are ‘dangerously low’ is factually incorrect and designed only to be alarmist,” No.6 Convent Place said in a statement. The Government said the GHA employs 398 full-time nurses, excluding nursing assistants, with a further 85 full time nursing assistants employed by the GHA. There are currently 46 vacancies, but these were “offset” by 38 supernumerary nurses and 22 locum staff, resulting in a net complement that exceeded the approved establishment by 14 nurses, No.6 said. It...

New legislation requiring the Government to invest in culture commenced on Thursday, with the Gibraltar Arts Advisory Council, which the legislation established, meeting for the first time earlier this week.  The new law means that any government in office must invest in culture by law, although Governments previously invested in culture as a matter of… Source link

A “fresh” Coroner’s inquest will be held in May into the deaths at sea of two Spanish nationals in a collision between a Royal Gibraltar Police vessel and a rigid-hulled inflatable boat in Spanish waters in March 2020. The deaths had already been the subject of an earlier inquest in November 2021, in which a jury found the two men – Mohamed Abdeslam Ahmed, 40, and Mustafa Dris Mohamed, 49, from Ceuta – were unlawfully killed. But that verdict was quashed by the Court of Appeal in April last year after it was challenged by two RGP officers involved in the incident. In delivering its ruling, the Court of Appeal said the interests of justice required that a new Coroner’s inquest be heard into the incident. That process is now under way and on Friday, at a pre-inquest hearing, lawyers for the various parties involved in the case agreed a...

Early analysis in the relaunched Childhood Measurement Programme has shown that 35% of children are at an unhealthy weight by the time they leave upper primary school, with excess weight becoming more prevalent as they age. With the programme in its second year, Public Health Gibraltar is finding the number of overweight children almost doubles between the time they start in primary school and the time they leave. The programme measures children entering primary school in reception and when they leave in Year 6 and has been restarted in a bid to understand trends and target any concerns. The data gathered has shown that some 19% of children in Reception are overweight and obese and this increases to 35% by the time children are in Year 6. The Director of Public Health, Dr Helen Carter, said the trend in Gibraltar mirrors the UK. The programme assesses children’s BMI and aids...

A man accused of defrauding another of £50,000 denied the allegations before him at the Magistrates’ Court on Thursday. Steven Knight, 65, of Europort Road, denied one count of fraud by dishonestly making a false representation to another of an investment opportunity, receiving £50,000 which he then allegedly used for other purposes. He also denied… Source link