If there is one thing we have learned from the banking disaster and the horrors of the Magdalen Laundries, it is that we should no longer place passive trust in authorities and regulators.

ANTI-SMOKING campaigners yesterday warned that plans by one of the world’s largest tobacco companies to launch so-called “safer” cigarettes in Britain could cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

The owners of six sex shops in Belfast city centre are threatening legal action after the city council refused to grant them licences.