July 03 - Special Olympics Awareness Programme
To coincide with the UN General Assembly’s upcoming high-level meeting in September regarding the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Special Olympics, the World’s largest sports organisation for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, is embarking on an Awareness Programme targeting policy makers and parliamentarians across Europe and Eurasia. The Programme will focus on 58 countries within the Special Olympics Europe Eurasia region. The aim of the Awareness Programme is to highlight to Parliamentarians the vital work Special Olympics is doing every single day to improve the lives of millions of people with intellectual disabilities. This population, of which there are 200 million in the world, often face neglect, unmet health needs, bullying, discrimination and violence in many parts of the world.
In response to a question presented in UK Parliament by Labour MP David Crausby, on the recent incident regarding a Guardia Civil vessel discharging shots at a local Jet ski operator, Minister for Europe David Lidington stated, ‘we have protested formally to Spain in the strongest terms following reports by the Royal Gibraltar Police that Spanish Guardia Civil illegally pursued a jet ski in British Gibraltar Territorial Waters on 23rd June and fired non-lethal shots. I spoke directly to Spanish Minister Inigo Mendez de Vigo on 25th June and our charge d’affaires in Madrid was sent in to the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to reiterate the formal protest.
Yesterday evening played host to the annual Gibsport Middle School Athletics Championships. The event pulled in an impressive crowd with over 500 youngsters from a spectrum of Middle Schools in Gibraltar, participating. The evening’s events included Discus, high jump, javelin, long jump, shot put, and a series of races of different lengths.
The Government is pleased to announce that, to date, a record total of 340 summer job placements in the public sector have been offered to university students who are back in Gibraltar for their summer holidays. 226 students started work on 1st July with the remaining 114 scheduled to commence at later dates, as requested by the individual students themselves.
