Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Wednesday

The deal on Troika loan repayments must be reflected in the next budget

  

Fianna Fáil is denying that a deal on the repayment terms of Ireland’s Troika loans would effectively be a second bailout. 

The Troika has urged that Ireland and Portugal be given extra time to pay back the EU loans.

It will be discussed by Finance Ministers at a summit in Dublin this weekend, but a final decision would have to be given by Germany.

Fianna Fáil’s Finance Spokesman Michael McGrath said the Coalition must get a deal and pass it on to the taxpayer with less austerity measures in upcoming budgets.

He said: “If there is any headroom there, given what has happened in the economy over the last number of years, that headroom should be used to give people some respite in the next budget and also to invest in job creation initiatives, particularly in capital projects.

“This Government has absolutely savaged the capital budget, even the budget that has been provided is not being spent.”

Ireland ranked 10th best place in the world to grow up

    

Research dating back to boom found 86% of children here happy

Ireland has been named the 10th best place in the world for children to grow up among a list of developed countries, ranking ahead of both the UK and the United States.

The league table of 29 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is published by the children’s charity Unicef today.

Report Card 11 – Child Well-being in Rich Countries is the culmination of research dating back to 2001, focusing on children between the ages of one and 18.

The Netherlands, Norway and Iceland top the table, in that order, while Romania takes bottom place below Latvia and Lithuania respectively.

The UK is in 16th position and the United States in 26th.

Although admittedly carried out through the “boom times”, the research found that the 2000s saw an increase in the number of Irish children participating in further education.

It says 86 per cent of children in Ireland are happy with their lives, while there was also a “significant decline” in the number of those smoking and more modest declines in drinking and teenage pregnancy.

Ireland has the highest rate of children exercising – almost one in three – for at least an hour a day.

There were also positive findings in relation to children’s relationships with their parents: 83 per cent find it easy to talk to their mothers, with 68 per cent saying the same of their fathers.

However, the research noted a rise in the number of overweight children, now at over 15 per cent, more than in the UK, Germany and France.

There was also bad news in the context of the debate surrounding bullying, with Ireland just one of five countries to experience an increase over the last decade. Some 28 per cent said they were being bullied.

One-quarter of children asked if they would label classmates as being kind and helpful said they would not.

And when asked to name the defining issue of their generation, they put a need for better mental health services at the top of the list.

Peter Power, executive director of Unicef Ireland, said the findings display “huge progress” in Ireland. “It’s vital we don’t forget the children who are behind these statistics who have always been below the poverty line and continue to fall,” he said.

“We are in danger of leaving our most vulnerable groups of children behind.

“The growing levels of bullying are a warning to our society to do more to tackle a problem which has devastating and long-lasting effects.”

MEANWHILE:

As much as 15% of Irish children are obese

    

15% of Irish children are obese according to a study of rich countries by UNICEF.

But Ireland is among the top 10 best places in the world to be a child with 86% of children saying they are happy.

UNICEF says this report which focuses on industrialised or rich countries shows steady progress for Irish children over the past decade across many areas.

Ireland rated 10th for child well-being out of 29 countries, our child poverty rate is 8.5% but the report found those who do fall below the poverty line, fall harder than in other countries.

Just 1 in 3 children exercise at least one hour per day in Ireland and 15% are overweight by BMI.

Ireland is bottom of the table for the number of 15 to 19 year olds not in education, employment or training as well as being one of only 5 countries to have seen increased bullying in the 2000s.

Globally, Report Card 11 shows a decade of progress with the Netherlands retaining its position at number one, followed by four of the Nordic countries.

Women with low-self esteem work harder to keep a man 

  

Women who feel less desirable than their partners may attempt to compensate for this by investing more in their relationships, according to a new UK study. 

Dr Chris Bale of the University of Huddersfield in UK found that how desirable women think their partners are to others can affect how much time and effort they invest in the relationship.

One hundred and ninety two women (aged 18-60 years) completed an online survey on self-esteem and relationship behaviour.

Using a series of rating scales they reported how they felt about themselves, their current partner and the things that they did to maintain their relationship.

The results indicated that women who felt more desirable than their partners had higher levels of self-esteem and engaged in less behaviour designed to maintain and enhance their relationships.

However, women with lower levels of self-esteem reported putting more effort into activities designed to prevent their partner from becoming involved with someone else.

“These results represent women who feel that they have fewer desirable qualities than their partners attempting to make up for this imbalance by investing more time, effort and economic resources in their relationships,” Bale said.

“However the present research is preliminary and limited in that it surveyed only UK women. Further research should be conducted in a variety of cultures and it would also be interesting to see whether similar results are found in men,” Bale said.

The study was presented at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Harrogate.

Walking and Strolling can help Teenagers to stop  smoking 

   

Is the buzz from exercise enough to compensate for nicotine hits from cigarettes?

Researchers studying new smoking cessation methods among teens report that yes, physical activity may actually have an effect on smoking rates. The scientists, from George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) report that teen smokers who upped the number of days they exercised for 20 minutes didn’t not light up as much as teens who weren’t as active. In fact, some teens who participated in both smoking cessation and fitness programs were able to kick their habit for good.

The study involved 233 teen smokers attending 19 high schools in West Virginia, which has one of the highest teen smoking rates and one of the lowest physical activity rates in the U.S. On average, the participants in the study smoked a pack  of cigarettes a day.

The high schoolers were split into three groups. One group enrolled in an anti-smoking program paired with a fitness component. Another group went through just the anti-smoking program and another group only listened to an anti-smoking lecture. Although the researchers found that all of the groups reported exercising more to some degree, the teens who reported increasing the number of days they were physically active for 20 minutes or more — by taking, for example, a moderately long walk — significantly cut back on their smoking.

“We don’t fully understand the clinical relevance of ramping up daily activity to 20 or 30 minutes a day with these teens. But we do know that even modest improvements in exercise may have health benefits. Our study supports the idea that encouraging one healthy behavior can serve to promote another, and it shows that teens, often viewed as resistant to behavior change, can tackle two health behaviors at once,” said lead study author Kimberly Horn, an associate dean of research at SPHHS in a statement.

In a previous, but similar study, Horn found that teens who exercised were more likely to quit, and boys had better success in kicking the habit when they were working out than girls. In 2011, TIME covered Horn’s study and she stressed the power of  modest exercise in a smoking cessation program. She said:

More research is needed to confirm whether this small study applies to more adolescents, and more importantly, to figure out what aspects of physical activity contribute to smoking cessation — are there physiological changes that can combat the addictive qualities of nicotine, or is the act of exercising simply a distraction from smoking?  But if additional studies show that exercise can be an important part of helping teens to quit smoking, it may become a cost effective addition to existing cessation methods. That’s especially important given that declines in teen smoking rates appear to have stalled, and that more than 80% of adult smokers start before they turn 18 according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Watch out for the International Space Station over Irish skies tonight

     

WATCH OUT FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION OVER IRISH SKIES TONIGHT

The International Space Station photographed by a crew member on the space shuttle Endeavour in May 2011 after the shuttle undocked from the ISS. Credit: NASA

Stargazers are set to be in for a treat tonight as the International Space Station (ISS) will be passing over Irish skies at around 9.45pm. And provided that the skies are clear, people will be able to view the station as a very bright object drifting across the sky.

According to Astronomy Ireland, the ISS will be most visible over Irish skies at around 9.45pm tonight. Between now and 22 April, people will be able to catch sight of the station every night passing over Ireland.

The ISS, which orbits the Earth every 92 minutes from a distance of around 350km, moves at about 8km per second. The space station, including its large solar arrays, is about the size and width of a football pitch. Worth about US$100bn, the ISS weighs almost 925,000 pounds (420,000 kg) – that’s equal to more than 320 cars.

The complex features two bathrooms, a gym and a 360-degree bay window. The latter is presumably whereCmdr Chris Hadfield, one of six astronauts currently aboard the station, hangs out to take the panoramic photos of Earth that he shares daily via Twitter.

Hadfield, who has been resident on the space station since December, has become quite the Twitter sensation in recent months for his photos. Earlier this week he tweeted photos of the Cork coastline from space, while last night he tweeted photos of both Belfast and Dublin City as the ISS passed over Ireland.
In all 52 computers control the systems on the ISS, while 3.3m lines of software code on the ground support 1.8m lines of flight software code.

The station’s solar array wingspan, at 240 feet, is longer than that of a Boeing 777 200/300 model, and supplies the power for the space station.