The pollution from cars stopping and accelerating has been terrible You can smell it in the air

The pollution from cars stopping and accelerating has been terrible You can smell it in the air. Individual people were writing in and the council was doing nothing. It was like a bomb going off."Yasmin Skelt, 36, who led the anti-hump campaign, said she was delighted "It means I'll be able to sleep. The lorries from the council depot used to go over them so fast we'd be woken up at six in the morning by the noise. Council workers took away eight of the humps - normally loved by side- street residents and hated by rat-runners and ambulance drivers - from Egerton Road, in Twickenham, just 10 months after they were put in. Residents who successfully campaigned to have the road humps removed because of increased traffic noise looked on as they were lifted Harsha Shah said: "I am very happy they are going. "Are you going to return to violence? Are the IRA going to return to violence? That is the question," he said.. THE first sleeping policeman to be removed from a British street was dug up by a local authority in London yesterday.

As has long been acknowledged by almost all participants, a three-stranded approach is needed if we are to find a viable settlement to the problems of Northern Ireland."Mr Bruton and Mr Trimble are expected to meet in Dublin within the next two weeks.Talks between Mr Major and Mr Bruton aimed at re-starting the peace process ended in deadlock yesterday, but Mr Major said it was "nonsense" to say the process was doomed.On Thursday, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, warned that the process was "doomed to collapse" if Britain continued to insist on arms decommissioning before the Republicans could join all-party talks.Speaking at the Majorca summit where he met Mr Bruton, Mr Major challenged Mr Adams to declare whether the refusal to lay down arms, thereby allowing the process to re-start, meant he was going to return to violence. In a statement issued at the European Union summit in Majorca, he said: "I look forward with interest to examining the full text of Mr Trimble's proposals - and to discussing it with him. We will certainly look at it."John Bruton, the Irish premier, said the plan should be "carefully studied". He said he could foresee the prospect of discussions between the Unionists and Sinn Fein in the assembly.John Major, in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, said: "I very much welcome the fact that Mr Trimble and the Ulster Unionists are making practical proposals about how we can move forward We will want to examine what Mr Trimble has said It will certainly bear careful examination. Mr Trimble sought to resolve the impasse over IRA arms decommissioning by arguing for Sinn Fein to contest seats in a new Northern Ireland Assembly. The Government has insisted that no all-party talks with Sinn Fein can begin until the IRA has at least begun decommissioning.At a party reception in Belfast on Friday night, Mr Trimble said that, by taking part in elections to the assembly, Sinn Fein could show it is committed to the democratic process. THE British and Irish prime ministers yesterday gave a cautious welcome to proposals from the new Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, to break the deadlock in the peace process.

Negotiations to bring some new countries from central and eastern Europe into the EU are due to start six months after the completion of the IGC, and the "political and economic realities" have yet to examined, Mr Major warned.He urged his partners to beware of a "Europe divided into two", should a small hard core decide to go ahead leaving a larger group in an outer ring.German upset, page 15. Mr Kohl said he "regretted" that his minister's remarks had been made public.Disarray over monetary union and deepening doubts over how to tackle enlargement of the EU have given new weight to Britain's calls for a halt to integration. Mr Kohl attempted to smooth over the controversy which erupted this week when Theo Waigel, German's Finance Minister, said Italy would not be ready to join the third stage in 1999. Although Jacques Chirac, the French President, called for a "short IGC" probably finishing in 1996, Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, suggested the conference could not conclude until early 1997, which would fuel European debate ahead of a British election.Several leaders stressed the IGC should look at the need for major institutional change, and both Mr Chirac and Mr Kohl renewed their commitment to the launch of the third stage of monetary union.

Federalists warn that this amounts to an ad-hoc policy of take-it-or-leave-it, which could lead to the break up of the union. But Mr Major said that the system would become essential if the union expands to up to 30 states, as envisaged over the next few years.But as the Majorca conference wound up there were signs that his hopes that he will be let off the European hook may be premature. Now we are not alone," said one official.Mr Major also signalled his intention to focus on calls for "variable geometry", a system under which member states would be able to proceed at various paces as the EU continues to evolve. Next year's inter- governmental conference (IGC) on EU reform would not be an "earth-shattering affair", he said, newly confident that he would win his battle for a limited agenda, with the more federalist plans off the table.The Prime Minister rode the wave of the market turmoil by questioning the inevitability of monetary union, saying that "maybe" some countries would go ahead in 1999, but he would be "dumbfounded" if more than a handful of states were ready "Once we were a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Looking relaxed in shirtsleeves, at his final press conference, the Prime Minister appeared to relish the prospect of telling Tory Euro-sceptics that he had convinced his partners to abandon "old slogans" by discarding federal ideas. After a summit which was overshadowed by market turmoil over monetary union, and by confusion over the EU's grand plans, Mr Major seized his opportunity to say, "We told you so", by reminding his partners that Britain had always warned against "high flown aspirations".

CLAIMING an important victory for British realism, John Major left the European summit in Majorca yesterday, confident that he had persuaded his European partners to halt the drive towards more integration and re- examine the risks of monetary union. In return they will sign a contract to do 35 hours of NHS work a week."When he launched the Welsh package, Rod Richards, Minister for Health in Wales, said: "Dentists considering a move to Wales will find a very warm welcome from patients and health authorities.". In Denmark, for instance, there is one dentist for every 900 people compared to one for 2,500 here."The Welsh scheme is worth pounds 3m and means that dentists will get start- up grants of between pounds 25,000 and pounds 50,000 for moving to specific areas where there are problems. Three dental schools have been closed and output is down by about 150 a year.