Westlife star Shane Filan’s
‘firm Shafin developments’ in receivership?
Shane Filan of Westlife & Sligo: being pursued by the Bank of Ireland for debt
At home Westlife singer Shane Filan’s and brother Finbar picture above, their property company Shafin Developments has gone into receivership.
Ulster Bank has appointed Patrick Horkan of KPMG as receiver and manager to the company which is jointly owned by the singer and his brother Finbarr.
Shafin Developments borrowed from Ulster Bank in 2006 in respect of property in Co Leitrim.
The company’s assets include four residential properties and a partly-developed site at Dromahair, Co Leitrim. The company also has an interest in a site at Carraroe, Co Sligo.
Shafin Developments, which Filan once referred to as a “nice little pension plan”, had run into serious financial difficulties, having accumulated losses of €3 million by the end of 2010 and bank debt of about €5 million.
Bank of Ireland is also pursuing the Filans for debt and was given permission by the High Court in April to fast-track the case.
According to reports, the 32-year-old singer and his wife Gillian have moved to England where he is in the process of entering Individual Voluntary Arrangement.
Westlife was toppled from this year’s the Sunday Times rich list due to the debts incurred by Filan through his ill-fated property speculation.
Last September, he sold his vintage Aston Martin in England for almost €400,000. Filan had bought the car for himself as a 30th birthday present.
Filan will tour with Westlife on the band’s farewell tour which begins this month, and reports indicate that his sights are now set on a solo career.
The human species on earth is still evolving,
A study finds
Natural selection continues even with advent of agriculture and other major cultural shifts
Natural forces of evolution still continue to shape humanity despite the power we have to profoundly alter the world around us, researchers say.
Evolution occurs in response to outside forces that weed out whatever individuals are least fit to survive those pressures, allowing those better-fit individuals to survive and reproduce. However, since humans radically alter their environment’s, some researchers have questioned whether natural forces of selection continue to act upon our species. For instance, agriculture can generate surplus food that can insulate us from many ills of the world.
The findings, detailed online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to accumulating evidence of our continued evolution. For instance, past research has suggested the human brain has been shrinking over the past 5,000 years. Another study of an island population in Quebec found a genetic push toward a younger age at first reproduction and larger families.
To explore this debate further, scientists examined church records of nearly 6,000 Finns born between 1760 and 1849, which detailed information on births, deaths, marriages and economic status. The data enabled the researchers to investigate human patterns of survival and reproduction and compare them with other species — genealogy is very popular in Finland, and the country has some of the best available data for such research.
“Studying evolution requires large sample sizes with individual-based data covering the entire life span of each born person,” said researcher Virpi Lummaa at the University of Sheffield in England.
The researchers investigated how agriculture might have affected four key aspects of human life — survival to adulthood, access to mates, mating success and fertility per mate. Their findings suggest that farmer and fisher Finns continued to evolve just like other species. For instance, variations in fertility and survival to adulthood match patterns seen in other organisms.
“We have shown advances have not challenged the fact that our species is still evolving, just like all the other species ‘in the wild,’” Lummaa said.
Intriguingly, “both the relatively wealthy individuals were exposed to very similar overall selection as the poor in our study,” said researcher Alexandre Courtiol, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. “Many people intuitively think that ‘wealth’ might somehow protect us from the influence of the environment.” Instead, both wealthy and poor seemed to experience similar levels of early survival and fertility.
As with most animal species, men and women are not equal when it comes to natural selection, the researchers found.
“Characteristics increasing the mating success of men are likely to evolve faster than those increasing the mating success of women,” Courtiol said. “This is because mating with more partners was shown to increase reproductive success more in men than in women.” In this case, men were more likely to remarry than women.
The fact that natural selection continues to occur in humans during the advent of agriculture and other major cultural shifts “means that biology and culture must have interacted and shaped each other to an extent underestimated so far,” Courtiol told LiveScience.
“Most scientists studying human evolution focus only on our hunter-gatherer way of life 10,000 years ago, but we show that, albeit interesting, this will not give you a complete picture of the story — we also need to focus on how people were living until very recently, and probably even today,” Courtiol added.
“Extending our research toward modern days would be particularly interesting to understand how the current environment continues to shape humans,” Courtiol said. “This could be potentially of importance from a medical point of view, to understand, for instance, how quickly our immunity can respond to new major epidemics. One major obstacle is that we need reliable data at the level of individuals — number of offspring, number of partners, birth and death date — across the lifetime of all born individuals, and such datasets are rare because even many famous longitudinal studies are biased towards certain types of people or do not cover all necessary life events.”
New drug to treat melanoma cancer is a big breakthrough
Has yet to be approved
A drug which has been hailed as a breakthrough treatment for melanoma may soon be approved for use in Ireland.
Ipilimumab is thought to be twice as effective as other drugs in treating skin cancer.
t has been cleared by the European Medicines Agency but a course of treatment will cost sufferers around €85,000.
The Taoiseach told the Dail today that it would be approved here as soon as an arrangement can be reached to reimburse those costs.
Just anticipating a mobile telephone call while your driving is enough to risk a car crash
Anticipating a mobile phone call or text is enough distraction to increase the risk of a crash, claim scientists.
It is well-known that using a mobile while driving can lead to car crashes, but new research has shown how even expecting a call or text can cause motorists to be driven to distraction.
With more and more younger drivers continuing to use their iPhone or BlackBerry while behind the wheel, regardless of the risk, researchers wanted to see if compulsive mobile use could contribute to car crashes.
University of Washington, US, researchers tested 384 students on a Cell Phone Overuse Scale (CPOS), a 24 item instrument that assesses four aspects of problematic mobile use – frequent anticipation of calls/messages, interference with normal activities, a strong emotional reaction to the mobile, and recognising problem use.
The students also took an online anonymous survey that included questions about driving history, previous crashes while operating a vehicle, and items assessing risk behaviours and psychological profile.
Results showed for each one point increase on the CPOS, there was an approximately one per cent increase in the number of previous motor vehicle crashes, and of the four dimensions of compulsive phone use, a higher level of call anticipation was significantly associated with previous crashes.
Dr Beth E Ebel, of the University of Washington, said: “Young drivers continue to use cell phones in the car, despite the known risk of crash.
“We were interested to explore how cell phone use contributes to distracted driving and to begin o understand the relationship between the driver and the phone.”
Jennifer M Whitehill, a PhD student at the University of Washington, said: “We know it is important to prevent young drivers from taking their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road to use a cell phone.
“This study suggests that thinking about future cell phone calls and messages may be an additional source of distraction that could contribute to crashes.”
The researchers presented their findings at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) meeting in Boston.
No comments:
Post a Comment