From saying the Chinese capital was horrible to unusual outbursts the public deemed racist - the Queen's husband is often mired in controversy. 

1. "Ghastly." Prince Philip's opinion of Beijing, during a 1986 tour of China.

2. "Ghastly." Prince Philip's opinion of Stoke-on-Trent, as offered to the city's Labour MP Joan Walley at Buckingham Palace in 1997.

3. "Deaf? If you're near there, no wonder you are deaf." Said to a group of deaf children standing near a Caribbean steel drum band in 2000.

4. "If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes." To 21-year-old British student Simon Kerby during a visit to China in 1986.

5. "You managed not to get eaten then?" To a British student who had trekked in Papua New Guinea, during an official visit in 1998.

6. "You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly." To a British tourist during a tour of Budapest in Hungary. 1993.

Fears for Royal's health: Buckingham Palace staff called to emergency meeting.

Fears for Royal's health: Buckingham Palace staff called to emergency meeting.

7. "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?" Asked of a Scottish driving instructor in 1995.

8. "Damn fool question!" To BBC journalist Caroline Wyatt at a banquet at the Elysée Palace after she asked Queen Elizabeth if she was enjoying her stay in Paris in 2006.

9. "It looks as though it was put in by an Indian." The Prince's verdict of a fuse box during a tour of a Scottish factory in August 1999. He later clarified his comment: "I meant to say cowboys. "I just got my cowboys and Indians mixed up."

10. "People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still drying out Windsor Castle." To survivors of the Lockerbie bombings in 1993.

11. "We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves." During a trip to Canada in 1976.

12. "A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone's working too much. Now that everybody's got more leisure time they are complaining they are unemployed. People don't seem to make up their minds what they want." A man of the people shares insight into the recession that gripped Britain in 1981.

13. "British women can't cook." Winning the hearts of the Scottish Women's Institute in 1961.

14. "It was part of the fortunes of war. We didn't have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking 'Are you all right - are you sure you don't have a ghastly problem?' You just got on with it!" On the issue of stress counselling for servicemen in a TV documentary marking the 50th Anniversary of V-J Day in 1995.

15. "What do you gargle with - pebbles?" To Tom Jones, after the Royal Variety Performance, 1969. He added the following day: "It is very difficult at all to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are the most hideous songs."

16. "It's a vast waste of space." Philip entertained guests in 2000 at the reception of a new £18m British Embassy in Berlin, which the Queen had just opened.

17. "There's a lot of your family in tonight." After glancing at business chief Atul Patel's name badge during a 2009 Buckingham Palace reception for 400 influential British Indians to meet the Royal couple.

18. "If it has four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." Said to a World Wildlife Fund meeting in 1986.

19. "You ARE a woman, aren't you?" To a woman in Kenya in 1984, after accepting a gift.

20. "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?" To a wheelchair-bound Susan Edwards, and her guide dog Natalie in 2002.

21. "Get me a beer. I don't care what kind it is, just get me a beer!" On being offered the finest Italian wines by PM Giuliano Amato at a dinner in Rome in 2000.

22. "I would like to go to Russia very much - although the bastards murdered half my family." In 1967, asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union.

23. "If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" In a Radio 4 interview shortly after the Dunblane shootings in 1996. He said to the interviewer off-air afterwards: "That will really set the cat among the pigeons, won't it?"

24. "Oh, it's you that owns that ghastly car is it? We often see it when driving to Windsor Castle." To neighbour Elton John after hearing he had sold his Watford FC-themed Aston Martin in 2001.

25. "The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion." At the opening of City Hall in 2002.

26. "A pissometer?" The Prince sees the renames the piezometer water gauge demonstrated by Australian farmer Steve Filelti in 2000.

27. "Don't feed your rabbits pawpaw fruit - it acts as a contraceptive. Then again, it might not work on rabbits." Giving advice to a Caribbean rabbit breeder in Anguilla in 1994.

28. "You must be out of your minds." To Solomon Islanders, on being told that their population growth was 5 per cent a year, in 1982.

29. "Young people are the same as they always were. They are just as ignorant." At the 50th anniversary of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme.

30. "Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species." Accepting a conservation award in Thailand in 1991.

31. "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" In the Cayman Islands, 1994.

32. "You bloody silly fool!" To an elderly car park attendant who made the mistake of not recognising him at Cambridge University in 1997.

33. "Oh! You are the people ruining the rivers and the environment." To three young employees of a Scottish fish farm at Holyrood Palace in 1999.

34. "If you travel as much as we do you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort - provided you don't travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly." To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002.

35. "The French don't know how to cook breakfast." After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, kedgeree, croissants and pain au chocolat - from Gallic chef Regis Crépy - in 2002.

36. "And what exotic part of the world do you come from?" Asked in 1999 of Tory politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, whose parents are Jamaican. He replied: "Birmingham."

37. "Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease." On a visit to Australia in 1992, when asked if he wanted to stroke a koala bear.

38. "It doesn't look like much work goes on at this University." Overheard at Bristol University's engineering facility. It had been closed so that he and the Queen could officially open it in 2005.

39. "I wish he'd turn the microphone off!" The Prince expresses his opinion of Elton John's performance at the 73rd Royal Variety Show, 2001.

40. "Do you still throw spears at each other?" Prince Philip shocks Aboriginal leader William Brin at the Aboriginal Cultural Park in Queensland, 2002.

41. "Where's the Southern Comfort?" On being presented with a hamper of southern goods by the American ambassador in London in 1999.

42. "Were you here in the bad old days? ... That's why you can't read and write then!" To parents during a visit to Fir Vale Comprehensive School in Sheffield, which had suffered poor academic reputation.

43. "Ah you're the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then? Ha, ha! Well done." Meeting 14-year old George Barlow, whose invited to the Queen to visit Romford, Essex, in 2003.

44. "So who's on drugs here?... HE looks as if he's on drugs." To a 14-year-old member of a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002.

45. "You could do with losing a little bit of weight." To hopeful astronaut, 13-year-old Andrew Adams.

46. "You have mosquitoes. I have the Press." To the matron of a hospital in the Caribbean in 1966.

47. "The man who invented the red carpet needed his head examined." While hosts made effort to greet a state visit to Brazil, 1968.

48. "During the Blitz a lot of shops had their windows blown in and sometimes they put up notices saying, 'More open than usual.' I now declare this place more open than usual." Unveiling a plaque at the University of Hertfordshire's new Hatfield campus in November 2003.

49 . Philip: "Who are you?"

Simon Kelner: "I'm the editor-in-chief of The Independent, Sir."

Philip: "What are you doing here?"

Kelner: "You invited me."

Philip: "Well, you didn't have to come!"

An exchange at a press reception to mark the Golden Jubilee in 2002.

50. "No, I would probably end up spitting it out over everybody." Prince Philip declines the offer of some fish from Rick Stein's seafood deli in 2000.

51. "Any bloody fool can lay a wreath at the thingamy." Discussing his role in an interview with Jeremy Paxman.

52. "Holidays are curious things, aren't they? You send children to school to get them out of your hair. Then they come back and make life difficult for parents. That is why holidays are set so they are just about the limit of your endurance." At the opening of a school in 2000.

53. "People think there's a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans." In 2000.

54. "Can you tell the difference between them?" On being told by President Obama that he'd had breakfast with the leaders of the UK, China and Russia.

55. "I don't know how they are going to integrate in places like Glasgow and Sheffield." After meeting students from Brunei coming to Britain to study in 1998.

56. "Do people trip over you?" Meeting a wheelchair-bound nursing-home resident in 2002.

57. "That's a nice tie... Do you have any knickers in that material?" Discussing the tartan designed for the Papal visit with then-Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie last year.

58. "I have never been noticeably reticent about talking on subjects about which I know nothing." Addressing a group of industrialists in 1961.

59. "It's not a very big one, but at least it's dead and it took an awful lot of killing!" Speaking about a crocodile he shot in Gambia in 1957.

60. "Well, you didn't design your beard too well, did you? You really must try better with your beard." To a young fashion designer at a Buckingham Palace in 2009.

61. "So you're responsible for the kind of crap Channel Four produces!" Speaking to then chairman of the channel, Michael Bishop, in 1962.

62. "Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practiced for a good many years." Address to the General Dental Council, quoted in Time in 1960.

63. "Tolerance is the one essential ingredient ... You can take it from me that the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance." Advice for a successful marriage in 1997.

64. "I never see any home cooking - all I get is fancy stuff." Commiserating about the standard of Buckingham Palace cuisine in 1962.

65. "I suppose I would get in a lot of trouble if I were to melt them down." On being shown Nottingham Forest FC's trophy collection in 1999.

66. "It makes you all look like Dracula's daughters!" To pupils at Queen Anne's School in Reading, who wear blood-red uniforms, in 1998.

67. "I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing." Dismissing claims that those who sell slaughtered meat have greater moral authority than those who participate in blood sports, in 1988.

68. "Ah, so this is feminist corner then." Joining a group of female Labour MPs, who were wearing name badges reading "Ms", at a Buckingham Palace drinks party in 2000.

69. "Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don't you have a slogan: 'Kill a cat and save a bird?'" On being told of a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965.

70. "All money nowadays seems to be produced with a natural homing instinct for the Treasury." Bemoaning the rate of British tax in 1963.

71. "It is my invariable custom to say something flattering to begin with so that I shall be excused if by any chance I put my foot in it later on." Full marks for honesty, from a speech in 1956.

72. "Why don't you go and live in a hostel to save cash?" Asked of a penniless student.

73. "In education, if in nothing else, the Scotsman knows what is best for him. Indeed, only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education." Said when he was made Chancellor of Edinburgh University in November 1953.

74. "If it doesn't fart or eat hay, she isn't interested." Of his daughter, Princess Anne.

75. "They're not mating are they?" Spotting two robots bumping in to one another at the Science Museum in 2000.

76. "I must be in the only person in Britain glad to see the back of that plane." Philip did not approve of the noise Concorde made while flying over the Buckingham Palace.

77. "The only active sport, which I follow, is polo - and most of the work's done by the pony!" 1965

78. "It looks like a tart's bedroom." On seeing plans for the Duke and then Duchess of York's house at Sunninghill Park.

79. "Reichskanzler." Prince Philip used Hitler's title to address German chancellor Helmut Kohl during a speech in Hanover in 1997.

80. "We go into the red next year... I shall probably have to give up polo." Comment on US television in 1969 about the Royal Family's finances.

81. "Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!" Showing his impatience to be fed at a dinner party in 2004.

82. "I thought it was against the law these days for a woman to solicit." Said to a woman solicitor.

83. "You're just a silly little Whitehall twit: you don't trust me and I don't trust you." Said to Sir Rennie Maudslay, Keeper of the Privy Purse, in the 1970s.

84. "What about Tom Jones? He's made a million and he's a bloody awful singer." Response to a comment at a small-business lunch about how difficult it is in Britain to get rich.

85. "This could only happen in a technical college." On getting stuck in a lift between two floors at the Heriot Watt University, 1958.

86. "I'd much rather have stayed in the Navy, frankly." When asked what he felt about his life in 1992.

87. "It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from her school art lessons" On being shown "primitive" Ethiopian art in 1965.

88. "You're not wearing mink knickers, are you?" Philip charms fashion writer Serena French at a World Wildlife Fund gathering in 1993.

89. "My son...er...owns them." On being asked on a Canadian tour whether he knew the Scilly Isles.

90. "Well, that's more than you know about anything else then." Speaking, a touch condescendingly, to Michael Buerk, after being told by the BBC newsreader that he did know about the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Awards in 2004.

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La stratégie actuelle 2020-2023 de la promotion économique met un accent particulier sur les technologies d’avenir et s’adresse aux entreprises innovantes. (Photo d’illustration)

KEYSTONE/Christian Beutler

Deux cent vingt entreprises étrangères ont choisi de s’implanter en Suisse en 2020, créant 1168 emplois lors de leur première année d’activité. Au total, ces sociétés ont prévu de créer environ 3600 emplois d’ici trois ans, un chiffre en hausse de 21% par rapport à 2019.

Cette évolution positive est intervenue malgré les conditions difficiles du marché, souligne vendredi la Conférence des chefs des départements cantonaux de l’économie publique (CDEP). Celle-ci recense chaque année les implantations qui ont pu se concrétiser grâce au travail des organismes cantonaux, régionaux et nationaux de promotion économique.

Même si les 220 entreprises qui se sont implantées en Suisse en 2020 sont 23 (-9%) de moins que l’année précédente, le total de 1168 nouveaux emplois au cours de la première année d’activité dépasse de 119 (+11%) le résultat des implantations en 2019.

Avec un total de 3583 nouveaux emplois prévus pour les trois prochaines années, le niveau de l’année précédente (2970) a également été dépassé (+21%).

Technologies d’avenir

À l’image de 2019, la plupart des entreprises venues s’implanter en Suisse sont actives dans les secteurs des technologies de l’information et de la communication ou des sciences du vivant. La majeure partie des sociétés concernées proviennent de France, des États-Unis et de Chine.

La stratégie actuelle 2020-2023 de la promotion économique met un accent particulier sur les technologies d’avenir et s’adresse aux entreprises innovantes et à forte valeur ajoutée. L’objectif est de contribuer à la prospérité du pays en attirant de telles entreprises. Grâce à leur savoir-faire innovant, ces entreprises contribuent à une valeur ajoutée locale pour l’économie et la société, estime la CDEP.

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But in fact, as recently released secret service documents show, this potentially dangerous trio under covert surveillance were actually female poets. And what’s more, there were just two of them: lesbian lovers Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner.

A new biography of Ackland, out next month, is to reveal the level of secret service confusion about this unconventional pair of writers at the beginning of the long period during which they were both objects of state scrutiny. All their correspondence was stopped and read by MI5 officers without their knowledge, and Ackland’s later attempts to enlist for significant war work were blocked.

“There are all these hand-copied versions of their letters, which must have been made in longhand by bureaucrats sitting around in tweed jackets, as I imagine it,” said the biographer Frances Bingham, author of the first major study of the cross-dressing poet and activist. Her book Valentine Ackland, A Transgressive Life will be published on 20 May by Handheld Press to mark 115 years since Ackland’s birth.

“I researched this part of the couple’s lives in the Public Record Office at Kew and I could see the government had searched in vain for some definite evidence against them,” said Bingham this weekend.

Frances Bingham’s biography is published on 20 May 2021, 115 years to the day since Ackland was born.

“The authorities first heard about Ackland in 1935 when she wrote to the British Communist party. She offered them the use of her car and was prepared to become a driver. MI5 presumed she was a man and wrote to their local police force saying they should check up on them.”

Ackland, born Mary Kathleen in London in 1906 and known as Molly in her youth, had been taught to drive and to shoot by her father, who had no sons. Her lover, Townsend Warner, was a writer who is still acclaimed for her novels and short stories, including a debut bestseller, Lolly Willowes. The couple lived together in intermittent harmony for 30 years until Ackland’s death in 1969.

“MI5 told the police they wanted to know if there was anything ‘abnormal’ about Ackland,” said Bingham, who has previously edited a collection of Ackland’s poetry. “While this question and the mistakes about their gender, including the fact they initially thought Townsend Warner was two people, did make me laugh at first, a moment later it struck a chill through me. It was clear that being homosexual and being a threat to society were one and the same thing in their minds. These people were communists and they were queer, and both of these things were very bad.”

At the age of 19, Ackland had married a man, Richard Turpin. But the union was a mistake from the first. And so, in 1925, already sporting a boyish Eton crop and men’s clothes, the reluctant wife moved down to the Dorset village of Chaldon to escape. She met Townsend Warner, 12 years her senior, soon afterwards.

Valentine (on the right, dressed in men’s clothes) and Sylvia Townsend Warner (left, wearing glasses). Photograph: Warner-Ackland Estate

In 1934 the writers jointly published a sensational collection of erotic love poems, Whether a Dove or Seagull. The verses appeared anonymously, blurring the identities of the poets.

That year they also both joined the Communist party.

Ackland, who had begun to experiment with a simpler writing style, started to be widely published in the leftwing press. Together, the couple volunteered for the British Red Cross in Barcelona during the Spanish civil war, where they were delegates to an anti-fascist writers’ conference in Madrid and visited the front lines at Guadalajara. Ackland’s articles (from “our worker correspondent”) captured the idealism and chaos of republican Spain, but she also wrote what Bingham describes as “melancholy poems” that lamented the victory of fascism.

After Spain, the couple moved inland in Dorset, to a riverside house in Frome Vauchurch, where they stayed for the rest of their lives. As the war against Germany played out, Ackland felt imprisoned in the west country, with repeated applications to use her driving skills for the allied campaign mysteriously turned down.

“She was a communist in the sense that she was always on the side of the underdog,” said Bingham. “Although she was from a wealthy background, she felt an outsider. She was very anti-Nazi, but despite the fact she was the right age, she didn’t get an interesting wartime job.

“This was because, without her knowledge, she was blacklisted. All she could get was minor clerical work, and she was eventually moved over to civil defence, and even there her superiors were warned not to let her see or overhear anything. She had no idea.”

Ackland’s poem Teaching to Shoot, from this period, describes the disturbing process of instructing Townsend Warner how to use a gun, in expectation of a Nazi invasion.

Ackland died of cancer at 63. Townsend Warner survived the woman she called “my light and my gravity” by almost nine years and spent much of that time editing a posthumous collection of Ackland’s poetry, The Nature of the Moment, and preparing their letters for publication.

“I see Ackland as a pioneer forerunner of modern lesbian writing and I want to celebrate her determination to live as herself,” said Bingham, who runs Potters’ Yard Arts in London with her partner, Liz Mathews. “I find her story very inspiring.”

Whether it be trade in chocolate bars, electric bicycles or malt whisky distilled in Scotland, the reality for exporters, importers and customers infuriated by orders being delayed is mostly negative.

“Three months on, two out of three companies experience a negative impact of Brexit. They are struggling with increased costs [71%], red tape [63%] and delayed shipments [59%],” said Lyne Biewinga, executive director of membership at the Netherlands British Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) which conducted the survey among its members. “These problems have led to sleepless nights for many businesses.”

Chacun s’accorde à parler d’un loupé, d’une bourde diplomatique, d’une erreur de la Turquie avec ce traitement humiliant réservé à U.Von der Leyen, présidente de la Commission européenne, remisée par le dictateur islamiste au rang de potiche en train d’épousseter le canapé, déjà bien heureuse qu’on ne lui demande pas d’aller préparer des pâtisseries à la cuisine, pendant que les messieurs parlent d’on ne sait quoi en étalant leurs jambes bien relâchés du slip et le visage non masqué.
Cette image est en fait le parfait reflet de la réalité, elle est donc le contraire d’un loupé. Elle manifeste tout ce qui est haissable et méprisable dans la situation actuelle :
La veulerie de l’Union européenne face à l’islam politique et à la brutalité turque.
L’absence de professionnalisme dans la préparation protocolaire de cette rencontre de la part des Européens.
La goujaterie pathétique et vulgaire de Charles Michel, président du Conseil européen, sorte d’inutile grande saucisse technocratique incapable de faire fonctionner ses quelques neurones ou son éducation afin de se lever et céder son fauteuil à la présidente.
La soumission également d’Ursula Von der Leyen qui, constatant la situation, aurait dû quitter les lieux sur le champ ou se lever et exiger qu’on modifie la configuration de la rencontre.
Bref, tout ceci est parfaitement représentatif de la situation réelle ainsi que, accessoirement, de la conception des femmes en territoire islamiste.
Cette visite ressemblait déjà à quelque reptation larvaire, elle a trouvé dans cette mise en scène sa parfaite incarnation.
L’Union européenne, qui subit et accepte les chantages du tyran islamiste, entre autres nullités, ne mérite rien de mieux.

It came as police used water cannon against nationalist youths in west Belfast, as unrest stirred again on the streets on Thursday evening, with reports that officers later warned they could use “impact rounds” – also known as plastic bullets.

In a statement, the US president’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said: “We are concerned by the violence in Northern Ireland” and that Biden remained “steadfast” in his support for a “secure and prosperous Northern Ireland in which all communities have a voice and enjoy the gains of the hard-won peace”.

She spoke as the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, called on political leaders across the spectrum to tone down their language to ease tensions.

Biden, who has Irish roots, has repeatedly expressed support for the peace process and last year waded into a row over UK plans to override parts of the Brexit deal, warning Boris Johnson that any trade deal was “contingent upon respect for the [peace] agreement and preventing the return of a hard border”.

Police said as many as 600 people had been involved in disturbances in Belfast on Wednesday, when a bus was petrol-bombed, plastic bullets were fired and missiles were hurled over a “peace wall”.

[embedded content]

Protesters in Belfast hijack bus and set it on fire – video

With parts of Belfast scarred and a political crisis brewing, the Northern Ireland assembly united in its condemnation of the rioting and agreed a motion calling for an end to the “deplorable” violence and support for the rule of law.

Boris Johnson and the Irish prime minister, Micheál Martin, spoke by phone on Thursday, called for calm, and agreed that “the way forward is through dialogue and working the institutions of the Good Friday agreement”.

Northern Ireland was plunged into crisis after violence escalated at the intersection between loyalist and nationalist communities in the Shankill and Springfield areas.

Police said rioters had thrown petrol bombs, bottles, masonry and fireworks, and a Belfast Telegraph photographer was attacked. Police fired six plastic bullets known as attenuating energy projectiles (AEPs) on Wednesday night. Eight officers were injured in the unrest and two men aged 28 and 18 were arrested on suspicion of riotous behaviour.

Riot police gather at the Springfield Road/Lanark Way intersection Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

The Police Service of Northern Ireland assistant chief constable Jonathan Roberts said Wednesday’s mayhem “was at a scale we have not seen in recent years” and it was lucky that no one had been seriously hurt or killed.

Stones and fireworks were thrown at police by gangs of youths gathered on the nationalist Springfield Road on Thursday evening, close to where Wednesday night’s riots took place. Police deployed water cannon after protesters failed to disperse. Later in the evening, there were reports that police warned crowds “impact rounds will be fired”. The plastic bullets are not used as a means of crowd control in any part of the UK apart from Northern Ireland, and their use has been condemned by human rights groups.

Lewis was due to hold virtual meetings with leaders of all five parties in the Northern Ireland executive, including the Democratic Unionist party, Sinn Féin and the Alliance party, on Friday morning.

After touching down in Belfast, he said he had encouraged politicians to “think very carefully” about the language they used. He added: “Not just unionists, but if you look at the tweets and messages from politicians from all parties, they have put out messages that can be interpreted in a particular way as having a bit of spite to them.

“I don’t think there is any place for that. I have spoken to people across parties about that.”

He named no names, but public positions have become polarised over both the Brexit protocols for Northern Ireland and recent decision not to prosecute Sinn Féin leaders who attended a funeral in contravention of health restrictions. “I think we all have to be very clear about the fact that what politicians here say matters,” Lewis said.

There had been hopes that tensions could ease on Thursday as the Ulster Political Research Group, which is linked to the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association, called for an end to the violence, saying “street disturbances will not solve our issues”. The Loyalist Communities Council, which represents loyalist paramilitary groups, reportedly met on Thursday afternoon, but failed to reach agreement on a statement condemning the violence.

After calls for calm this week, violence again flared up on the streets of west Belfast on Thursday. Stones and fireworks were thrown at police by gangs of youths gathered on the nationalist Springfield Road, close to where riots took place on Wednesday night.

Those involved were warned by police to “disperse immediately or the water cannon will be used”. However, those present continued to fire missiles at police, and after several warnings, the water cannon was deployed. Some of those present jeered before fleeing as the water jet came closer.

Later in the evening, there were reports that police warned crowds “impact rounds will be fired”. Impact rounds, also known as AEPs or plastic bullets, are not used as a means of crowd control in any part of the UK apart from Northern Ireland, and their use has been condemned by human rights groups. Six plastic bullets were fired by police during Wednesday night’s events.

The justice minister, Naomi Long, issued a fresh call for an end to the violence after what she called “depressing and reckless” scenes on Thursday. She tweeted: “More attacks on police, this time from nationalist youths. Utterly reckless and depressing to see more violence at interface areas tonight.

“My heart goes out to those living in the area who are living with this fear and disturbance. This needs to stop now, before lives are lost.”

Wednesday night’s violence saw clashes along the peace wall that separates the unionist Shankill Road from the nationalist Springfield Road. But Thursday night’s unrest appeared to be confined to nationalists. Groups of community activists were seen attempting to prevent access to the gate of the peace line where clashes took place the previous night.

A heavy police presence was in operation on Thursday night, with water cannon, police dogs and the riot squad in place in a bid to quell another night of unrest. PSNI officers were seen holding riot shields and being pelted with missiles before charging the youths with dogs in order to drive them off.

Earlier, the UK prime minister and Irish premier made a joint appeal for calm after days of unrest in Northern Ireland. Boris Johnson and taoiseach Micheál Martin had spoken over the phone on Thursday about the violent clashes in mainly loyalist areas.

In a statement, the Irish government said the two leaders stressed that violence was unacceptable. “The way forward is through dialogue and working the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement,” the statement said. “[The leaders] agreed that the two governments would continue to stay in contact.”

The Biden administration in the US also appealed for calm in Northern Ireland and voiced its support for the Brexit protocol.

After calls for calm this week, violence again flared up on the streets of west Belfast on Thursday. Stones and fireworks were thrown at police by gangs of youths gathered on the nationalist Springfield Road, close to where riots took place on Wednesday night.

Those involved were warned by police to “disperse immediately or the water cannon will be used”. However, those present continued to fire missiles at police, and after several warnings, the water cannon was deployed. Some of those present jeered before fleeing as the water jet came closer.

Later in the evening, there were reports that police warned crowds “impact rounds will be fired”. Impact rounds, also known as AEPs or plastic bullets, are not used as a means of crowd control in any part of the UK apart from Northern Ireland, and their use has been condemned by human rights groups. Six plastic bullets were fired by police during Wednesday night’s events. 

The justice minister, Naomi Long, issued a fresh call for an end to the violence after what she called “depressing and reckless” scenes on Thursday. She tweeted: “More attacks on police, this time from nationalist youths. Utterly reckless and depressing to see more violence at interface areas tonight.

“My heart goes out to those living in the area who are living with this fear and disturbance. This needs to stop now, before lives are lost.”

Wednesday night’s violence saw clashes along the peace wall that separates the unionist Shankill Road from the nationalist Springfield Road. But Thursday night’s unrest appeared to be confined to nationalists. Groups of community activists were seen attempting to prevent access to the gate of the peace line where clashes took place the previous night.

A heavy police presence was in operation on Thursday night, with water cannon, police dogs and the riot squad in place in a bid to quell another night of unrest. PSNI officers were seen holding riot shields and being pelted with missiles before charging the youths with dogs in order to drive them off.

Earlier, the UK prime minister and Irish premier made a joint appeal for calm after days of unrest in Northern Ireland. Boris Johnson and taoiseach Micheál Martin had spoken over the phone on Thursday about the violent clashes in mainly loyalist areas.

In a statement, the Irish government said the two leaders stressed that violence was unacceptable. “The way forward is through dialogue and working the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement,” the statement said. “[The leaders] agreed that the two governments would continue to stay in contact.”

The Biden administration in the US also appealed for calm in Northern Ireland and voiced its support for the Brexit protocol.