HUMAN rights campaigners planning to picket the Israeli ambassador when he comes to Cardiff tomorrow have attacked a university debating society’s decision not to invite any Palestinian representative to an event they have branded a “PR initiative”.
Cardiff Stop the War Coalition have indicated they will be staging a protest when the Israeli ambassador visits the city tomorrow evening to give a speech at Cardiff University Debating Society.

WHEN most people hear the words unlicensed boxing they think of illegal, underground, bare-knuckle bouts like those seen in Snatch or Fight Club.

But on Saturday, 1000 fight fans will descend on the Cardiff City Stadium for the ground’s first boxing event. Like professional boxing, unlicensed boxing has all the same regulations; there is a referee, a round system, gloves and Queensbury rules, the only difference is that it is not covered by the British Boxing Board of Control.

The traditional day of rest could be a thing of the past for a group of Cardiff residents, following an application by their local supermarket to receive deliveries on Sundays.

Lidl in Maindy Road has applied to Cardiff Council to increase its deliveries from six days a week to seven. This could see articulated lorries turning up to the site, which is on a residential road, from eight in the morning until 10pm.

THERE is no smoke without fire for a local historian looking to brush up on his family tree.
Genealogy enthusiast and former steam train fireman Graham Williams, 63, is appealing to the descendants of a family of chimney sweeps to come forward and help him with his research.
Mr Williams, chair of the Canton Historical Society, thinks he may have distant relatives in Roath who are descended from his great-great-grandparents, who were Charles Elliott’s family of chimney sweeps.
He said: ”There’s lots of Elliotts in Roath and they are all descendants of these …

PROPERTY investors who have benefited from a 50 per cent council tax discount have targeted Butetown and Grangetown as prime locations for purchasing second homes in Cardiff.

The two districts south of the city centre have more than a quarter of the capital’s unoccupied furnished properties. Butetown has 553 and Grangetown 295. At the other end of the scale, St Mellons and St Fagans have only 11 and six second homes.

Up to now these second homes and those properties unoccupied between lets have been eligible for a 50 per cent reduction in their council tax. But from next month the city’s 2,795 unoccupied furnished properties will be liable for the full amount.

Lilo Grill House
City Road, Cardiff
*****
A smoky haze hangs, heavily laden with the aromas of garlic and the chargrill stove in the Cardiff’s Lilo Grill House. The Lebanese restaurant on City Road has a reputation for its delicious, tender shish and friendly atmosphere. Lebanese food pretty much coins everything from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and can be a winner due to its simplistic approach of skewered meats, flatbread and fresh flavours of lemon juice and cracked black pepper.
Perhaps one of the most enticing smells around is that of meat, …

A CARDIFF shop owner’s new alcohol delivery service has drawn criticism from charities and local residents.
Arjuna Gunesekera, 23, will launch the Bargain Booze delivery service on Friday with the aim of selling alcohol in the city’s Cathays area.
The scheme, which is the first Bargain Booze has ever run, will target central Cardiff’s large student population and deliver cheap alcohol as late as 4am. This has led to criticism from safe drinking campaigners.
Mr Gunesekera owns Bargain Booze in Splott Road, but will move his business to Cathays to target its large …

Unstaffed tanning salons could soon be outlawed after a proposal by Cardiff North MP Julie Morgan today moved a step closer to becoming law.

The Sunbeds (Regulation) Bill would also make it illegal for people under the age of 18 to use sunbeds, with a fine of up to £20,000 for any salons caught breaking the law.

Cardiff councillors charged the taxpayer over £30 every day in travel expenses during the last financial year.

Forty per cent of the bill came from taxi charges after councillors argued the public transport in the city, including the council-owned Cardiff Bus, was not good enough.

Cardiff Council could be in line for a major shake up following draft proposals to redraw ward boundaries, in a move which one councillor labelled “gerrymandering”.

A newly-married couple who were threatened with a knife when their shop was burgled last week are moving back to India because they are too frightened to stay in Cardiff.

Twenty-eight illicit mobile phones and thirty SIM cards were seized from patients in Cardiff Prison in the last year, according to figures released by the Ministry of Justice.

A wheelchair basketball club in Cardiff is looking for new members. Cardiff Celts, who have two teams in the second and fourth divisions of the GB National League, are playing their next match on March 27 against the Essex Outlaws at the Eastern Leisure Centre, Llanrumney Avenue, and want to find new recruits.

A tax consultant from Cardiff has written a novel in a bid to become an independent MP. Alun Mathias, 49, distributed 1,200 free copies of his book Vicky and the Pit to homes in Cathays at a personal cost of nearly £3,000.

THE FIGHT over the future of a Cardiff green space will continue tonight at a potentially-fractious public meeting.
The Rumney Recreation Ground has been the subject of much vitriol over the past two years, with battle lines being drawn between the community and the council.
The council want to build a new school at the site, knocking down Rumney and Llanrumney high schools in the process, while the residents of the area have been battling to oppose the plans.
Chairman of the Rumney Recreation & Eastern Leisure Centre (REEL) Action Group has accused …

A HISTORIC Cardiff pub is to be demolished to make way for a Tesco, an industry insider has revealed.
The Carpenters Arms, in Newport Road, Llanrumney, was originally built in 1872 as a coach house and has been a pub since the 1960s.
Since being shut down more than a year ago it has been the subject of intense speculation among residents.
Although the company handling the sale, Horace John, Forse & Co, have only dealt with the buyer’s representative, a sales negotiator at a nation-wide estate agent has confirmed Tesco have finalised …

If you have only ever thought of Lebanese food in the context of strip-lit, sticky-floored kebab shops, the warm and welcoming Mina Restaurant and Cafe Bar will make you think again. Houmous and falafel are familiar names, but Mina, which has been running in the heart of Cathays since 1990, goes far beyond those to produce a huge range of dishes from this often-overlooked region.
For a Tuesday night, it was comfortably busy, with a broader range of customers than its student-ville location might suggest. Red-painted walls and glowing candles helped …

Two vehicles collided at the junction between Colum Road and Corbett Road today at about 10.10am.
Three people were involved in the accident and both cars were damaged. One of the cars involved was seriously damaged and the driver of the vehicle was seen by ambulance crew at the scene. The driver and passenger of the other vehicle involved were treated for shock.
An ambulance, a fire engine and police were called to the scene.
More news will follow.

“This building” says co-ordinator Billy Hillman “is like the Tardis. It’s bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.” He is talking about Eastmoors Community Education Centre, and it’s hard to disagree with him: beyond the building’s unassuming facade it’s truly surprising how much the centre has to offer the people of the area.
Located on Sanquhar Street in Splott, Eastmoors from the outside looks like any other community centre you may find in deprived inner-city areas around the UK. The range of facilities available to the children and …

Flow-Dem Crew – It Doesn\’t Matter
Students from a Cardiff school were rewarded for their success in a European video project by a trip to BBC Wales’s studios on Monday February 22.
Pupils from Willows High School in Tremorfa came first in the INDIE Goes Mobile competition held by the British Council to promote awareness of diversity and social cohesion.
They beat students from 47 other schools across the EU to claim the prize of a day being shown round the BBC’s Llandaff North studios and the sets of such shows as Pobol …

The Welsh Communist Party will contest the Cardiff South and Penarth parliamentary seat at the next general election.
Rob Griffiths, the party’s general secretary in Britain since 1998 , has been chosen to run against controversial Labour MP Alun Michael, who was embroiled in the MPs’ expenses scandal.
Mr Griffiths currently lives in Splott and attended Bryn Hafod primary school in Llanrumney, where he grew up. He has been an activist for the Communist Party across Wales and England since 1983, and has also attended party conferences throughout the world, recently returning …

Staff at a Cardiff community centre have paid tribute to a former youth worker who passed away last year.

At an annual general meeting, staff and volunteers at Cathays and Central Youth and Community Project, Cathays Terrace, praised the work of Tony Clarke, who had been involved with the centre for 20 years.

It could be described as an own goal by Cardiff Council. Their flagship alley gating scheme, which this year had a £110,000 budget, has been widely praised by residents for its role in cutting crime. But the gates have another use, too – as playthings for youngsters.

A blur of vibrant colour meets the eye and the sound of thumping feet and pumping music mingles in the air outside the doors of studio one.For 34-years dancers young and old, novice and professional, have sprung, leapt, shimmied and side stepped their way through the doors of Rubicon Dance Cardiff.

AN ORGANISATION responsible for running community projects throughout Cardiff has been heavily condemned by a Government committee, even though local people have called it a success.

The Communites First project, funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, has spent £214million of tax payers’ money since its launch in 2001, and a report published yesterday suggests, after severe managerial failures, there is no justification for its existence.

An interview with Simon Hoare, the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Cardiff South and Penarth, at his home in Atlantic Wharf, Butetown.
Mr Hoare spoke about MPs’ expenses, his experiences of campaigning against Alun Michael, devolution in Wales, public sector cuts and the future of South Wales’s economy, among other topics.

A Cardiff community centre played host to breaker dancers from across the UK as the third “B-Boy jam”, run by Cardiff City Kings, break-dancing competition took place on Saturday.
The event saw 16 groups from across the UK compete for the champion title through knock-out rounds throughout the day. Teams travelled from as far away as Valencia and Barcelona to compete at the packed out community centre in Cathays.

RESIDENTS in a Cardiff community are terrified to speak up about anti-social behaviour, despite police increasing measures for them to do so.
Residents in lower Llanrumney have recently been besieged by children’s stone throwing and, despite police organising a special street meeting in the problem area this evening, people are still afraid to speak out for fear of being targeted in the future.
One group in a Llanrumney cafe said they understood why people would not want to go to either Police and Communities Together meetings, or any specially-organised street forums.
One …

An interview with Alun Michael, the MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, at his constituency office in Cathedral Road, Riverside.
Topics included the International Sports Village in Cardiff Bay, a hung parliament and working with Plaid Cymru, whether he has been damaged by the expenses scandal, devolution, fighting a general election through social media, and banning khat.

“Progressive” is not a term often applied to religion, but it is the cornerstone of belief for Cardiff’s Bahá’í community.
Bahá’ísm is one of the world’s youngest faiths, and its message is simple: all the world’s transcendent figures – such as Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad, Krishna, and Buddha – are true messengers from God, and are part of a recurring phenomenon of leaders sent to earth to spread His word.
In other words, Bahá’ísm is interfaith because it integrates the key figures of all religions, believing they are all sent by the …

CARDIFF theatre mini-troupe Dirty Protest are all about being spontaneous. Tonight’s show at Cardiff Arts Institute, Out With the Old, saw them reading from their scripts on stage after only two nights’ practice.

Cardiff residents face a council tax hike after South Wales Police approved a five per cent rise in the amount they request for their annual budget. The decision to endorse the £257 million budget will add more than £7 to the annual council tax bill of the average home in the city.
The rise is a pre-emptive move to bolster the police’s resources after Chief Constable Peter Vaughan warned the force could be “facing a financial black hole in the next few years” with significant cuts expected from 2011. Addressing South …

“Line your pockets with regrets like dark pennies, but trade in the currency of the body”.

Whether these words, spray-painted onto a wall of a Cardiff Post Office, are aimed at the postal establishment or not is unclear. But one thing is certain – the “currency of the body” is not available at this branch’s bureau de change.

Work is due to begin on a new school “safety zone” to stop speeding drivers and make the roads around a Cardiff primary school safer.
The construction of a zebra crossing and the narrowing of several junctions on Pen y Wain Road is due to start next week and is scheduled to last around six weeks.
Roath Park Primary School headteacher, Colin Skinner, was delighted with the plan and said the children had been involved in pushing for the changes.
He said: “It’s amazing, it’s the result of a lot of hard work …

Cardiff University’s Act One went for laughs over substance at their performance of Much Ado About Nothing at the YMCA theatre in The Walk, Roath.
It was a risky choice, and one made even more questionable by the programme blurb, which told us: “There isn’t really anything we cut out… Okay, so maybe two characters and two scenes, but trust us… they were rubbish.”
After such a casual dismissal of none other than Shakespeare,  I watched the curtain rise with more than a little scepticism. But the gamble payed off – mostly. Their …

POLICE strategies to combat underage drinking in Cardiff could backfire as fears emerge children will now turn to adults to supply their alcohol.

Roath police announced they had issued seven anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) in the last month to combat the problem but shop staff at Bargain Booze Plus say children are attempting to aquire their alcohol from a different source.

A Cardiff-based Welsh Assembly initiative has used an X Factor style talent show to help battle anti-social behaviour.
Last Tuesday, Rumney Community Centre staged Rumney’s Got Talent, a talent show for young people run in conjunction with the Communities’ First Programme. The show was the culmination of four weeks of free workshops and auditions.
The performances were outstanding with a selection of aspiring singers, hip-hop dancers and improvised freestyle rappers competing to impress the judges.
Codie Davenport, 15, took the top prize, the chance to perform on Radio Cardiff and a £30 gift …

Some lighter goings-on in Cardiff this week.

A meeting between Cardiff Council and residents living above a Cardiff row of shops is being held tomorrow (Tuesday) in attempt to solve the recent security issues in the area.

Staff at the now-infamous Tesco branch in St Mellons were resolute in their handling of a planned pyjama flashmob today — despite the fact the turnout was low.
Unperturbed there were only half a dozen in nightwear, both staff and police officers were anxious to clamp down on any activity which may have attracted publicity.
Both flashmob participants and members of the press were asked not to take photos. One journalist was physically removed from the premises, while another was threatened with legal action.
A member of staff who was involved in escorting …

Shattered glass and angry residents are becoming an ever more common sight on the streets of Cardiff as areas such as Adamsdown and Ely have become hot spots over the last month for anti-social behaviour, criminal damage and theft.

The police stations outside the city centre have had their funding cut by central government and so have to reduce the number of officers who can walk local beats and make their presence felt in the community.

Residents in poorly-maintained properties in Cathays could be in line for improvements in their living standards.

The council is seeking to introduce additional requirements for landlords who manage houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).

Councillors met with the landlords’ forum this week to present the proposals, which will be debated by the full council shortly.

Cardiff officials have dismissed the case for legalising heroin, made yesterday by the leader of Carmarthenshire council, as both impractical and unrealistic — though a senior council official has advised against hysteria from either side of the debate.

Reacting to the comments, made by Meryl Gravell OBE, leader of Carmarthenshire county council, Cardiff councillor Heather Joyce said she saw no logic behind making hard drugs legal.

ONE of Cardiff’s oldest pubs is due to be demolished and replaced by 22 new flats.
The 19th century Grosvenor Hotel on South Park Road, Splott, has been empty for three years and Brain’s Brewery, who owned the hotel, have sold the site for it to be developed.
Despite the four-storey building dating from the 1890s, Welsh heritage organisation Cadw has refused to list the building so it can be protected.
The property has been listed on the website of property surveyors Rawlins and Madley since 1 February and it looks set to …

A high-speed car chase shattered the calm of Llandaff High Street this afternoon as a stolen quad bike ploughed into a parked car.

A police helicopter and six police cars raced after the quad bike when they were alerted to a vehicle behaving suspiciously. They chased the bike to the junction between Bridge Street and Fairwater Road where the thief crashed into the parked Audi.

A Cardiff bar is planning to extend its opening hours until 1.30am.

Mr Smith’s, on Woodville Road, Cathays, is currently open until 12am on weekdays and 12.30am on Fridays and Saturdays but they want to be open for an extra hour every evening.