The SDLP has welcomed the Alliance Party's decision to back Sinn Fein's Alex Maskey for Lord Mayor of Belfast and announced it too would be backing him.

UUP leader David Trimble will have to wait until tomorrow to find out if he can be re-elected as the North’s new First Minister after a unionist petition halted the vote today.

Hard-line Democratic Unionists were tonight preparing for new Northern Ireland Assembly elections after predicting that David Trimble’s bid to be restored as First Minister is doomed.

A man whose son was gunned down by the IRA in retaliation for the killing of eight of its members in Loughgall is standing in the local government elections, it emerged today.