Irish Government considering a reform and closing loopholes of corporate tax system
The Irish government is examining options to close a loophole in its tax system that has allowed multinational companies to significantly reduce taxes they pay on profits,
Ireland has been criticized by British and U.S. legislators in recent weeks for the fact that multinationals like Apple and Google reduced their global tax bills by channeling profits through Irish subsidiaries.
The Sunday Business Post said Ireland’s finance ministry was examining options to phase out the “Double Irish”, a tax avoidance technique in which multinationals funnel profits through two linked Irish subsidiaries.
Google’s international headquarters in Dublin made tax-deductible payments to a Bermudan subsidiary via a Dutch affiliate in a related arrangement known as a “Double Irish Dutch sandwich.”
The Sunday Business Post did not detail what changes might be made to the Irish tax system.
A spokesman for Ireland’s finance ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Irish government ministers have said the country’s tax system is fair and transparent and that international efforts are needed to curb large scale tax avoidance by multinational companies.
Protests against Irish property tax (LPT) to continue ahead of next Tuesday deadline
A series of car cavalcades and rallies are taking place in Dublin and around the country this weekend in protest against the property tax.
It comes just a few days ahead of next Tuesday’s deadline to pay the charge.
Revenue officials say over 1.1 million homeowners have filed their returns, and that anyone still wishing to do so can log on to http://www.revenue.ie.
However, the Campaign Against Home and Water Taxes is warning the government that it will pay the price if it tries to coerce people to cough up.
Campaign spokesperson, Councillor Ruth Coppinger, said that people will not vote for politicians who force the property tax down their throats.
“We will be pressuring the politicians that if they deduct this forcibly from non-payers that they will pay the price in political terms,” she said.
“It is similar really to what was done in Cyprus where ordinary peoples bank accounts were being pilfered to pay for the bailout and I think the same attitude will prevail in this country
“So the parties of austerity and labour will be made to pay the price for the property tax and austerity.”
Fodder crisis leading to the removal of truckloads of diseased carcasses from Irish farms
FARMERS FACING DESPERATE TIMES AS LIVESTOCK DECIMATED BY FODDER CRISIS
Cattle and sheep are dying on farms as the lack of grass and replacement fodder is leaving animals more vulnerable to disease and infection.
Official Department of Agriculture figures put the number of mortalities of cattle in the first four months of this year at 152,000. That is up 36,000 on the mortality rate for the same period in 2012.
The department’s animal-welfare helpline has received 860 calls though its early warning system.
One knackery in the west – Greene’s of Ahascragh in east Galway, which serves an area stretching from Roscommon to south Galway, has reported a 100 per cent increase in activity, with queues of lorries forming to unload carcasses.
Winter hasn’t ended yet over huge swathes of the Irish countryside and the shortage of grass and fodder has left tens of thousands of farmers in desperate straits – despite the mammoth logistical operation of importing thousands of tonnes of French hay and British silage.
As religious vigils took place in Cork and Kerry and special Masses were heard in Mayo last week, praying for better weather, the true extent of the crisis became clear.
Last year’s disastrous summer and a six-month winter this year will now costthe economy €1bn.
IFA deputy president Eddie Downey told the Sunday Independent: “It’s the single biggest crisis in Irish agriculture for years, in my view, and it has been understated just how bad it is.
“What is strange is that there are pockets of the country still in crisis, while in other parts ground conditions have improved because of drier weather. But along the entire west coast and into the north-east, around Cavan, Monaghan and even north Meath, it is very very bad.
“The paradox is that in some parts of the country they have managed to cut silage. It’s not a bad crop – not wonderful, but not that far behind the norm.”
Another contributory factor is the increase in the number of cattle in the Republic, which has risen sharply in recent years due to improved prices. There are now more than 300,000 extra cattle in the country, compared with four years ago.
According to Professor John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth, the problem is the stubborn anti-cyclones that have become “locked” over Ireland, bringing with them northerly and north-westerly air flows (cold polar air), rather than the warm moist air from the south that usually comes at this time of year.
“This has been very sustained this spring – really from the beginning of March you had a tendency for the anticyclones to become entrenched in position.”
Professor Sweeney said it was still unclear why this was happening.
“Whether it is due to something that is ‘gone’ in our climate as a result ofclimate change or not is open to speculation. There is some research linking the location and weakness of the jet stream to the south with the removal of the summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.”
He added: “It is very tentative as yet, but it is being suggested that the loss of all that shiny snow and the warming up of the northern ocean is reducing the need for our depressions to whistle by us as normal. Instead, it is making the jet stream weaker and a bit more inclined to get locked in strange positions.
“That is just one suggestion but it really is too early to label a cause.”
I almost feel I have to apologise for staying at home says Lucy
“I almost feel as if I have to apologise for staying at home. We are afraid to promote its merits for fear of seeming like we are being too critical of working mothers and causing them to feel guilty.”
Those are the thoughts of stay-at-home mum Lucy Hill, one of three women interviewed by Arlene Harris in today’s ‘Weekend’ magazine.
The women, all stay-at-home mothers by choice, explain why they made the decision to leave the workplace and raise their children full-time.
The report provides a glimpse into the day-to-day life of the stay-at-home mum.
“We are lucky in Ireland that, generally speaking, it is accepted that families make the best choice for their individual circumstances,” says mother-of-two Denise Guidera.
“But the mums I feel sorry for are the ones who would love to be at home but can’t be, or who want to work but are forced by circumstances to stay at home.”
To read the full feature, turn to page 16 of today’s ‘Weekend’ magazine.
Do Dolphins Have the Ability to Detect Human Cancer?
Can dolphins detect cancer in people? To some scientists, it’s not even a legitimate hypothesis; and to many animal-rights activists, “swim-with-the-dolphin” cancer diagnostic centers would be no less objectionable than any other form of captivity.
But what if the rather far-fetched idea were true? What if we tested dolphins and discovered they can detect tiny tumors and abnormal growths in humans, perhaps even those missed by state-of-the-art technology? Instead of X-rays, MRIs and CAT scans, will patients one day be clamoring for cetacean-grams?
Probably not. But I, for one, believe the hypothesis is plausible. Others are positively convinced it is fact, including Patricia Stoops of Panama City, Florida, who claims that a captive dolphin named Keppler saved her life after a chance meeting at a swim-with program in the Caribbean.
Stoops was on a Carnival cruise in the British Virgin Islands when she eagerly signed up for the “dolphin excursion” on the island of Tortola.
She and about 15 others entered the water as a group of captive dolphins approached them and began interacting as normal. But one dolphin, Keppler, took a keen interest in Stoops and refused to leave her alone.
“He did a flip in front of me,” she told WJHG-TV news in Panama City. “He kept running into me and I explained to the trainer that the dolphin had hit me. He said, ‘Oh, that’s unusual.’ The dolphin trainer said the dolphin detected something wrong with me.”
Stoops was taken aback by what the trainer’s said next: He asked if her trip was sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, to fulfill a final wish of swimming with dolphins.
“He asked if I’d ever had cancer. I said, ‘no way!’ ” she said. In fact, she had never been healthier in her life. But, she would soon discover, that was not true.
A week after returning home, Stoops noticed some pain in her chest. Thinking it had something to do with the dolphin encounter, she went to the doctor, who discovered a spot on her lung and diagnosed her with lung cancer. Now cancer free, she hopes to visit the animal in the fall.
“Thank God to this little dolphin, Keppler. He saved my life,” Stoops says.
Of course, the chain-of-events are likely coincidental, even though eerily similar, unverified accounts are posted online. Michael T. Hyson, Ph.D., research director at the Hawaii-based Sirius Institute, which advocates captive dolphins as therapy for people with autism and other disorders, writes about a dolphin named Dreamer possessed with seemingly miraculous abilities to heal and diagnose humans.
“A woman swimming with Dreamer thought she had been rammed,” Hyson writes. “The woman was taken to hospital for examination. The woman had a large bruise. X-ray revealed that under the ribs, near the center of the bruised area, there was a small tumor. It is my feeling that Dreamer likely ‘zapped’ the tumor with a powerful sound pulse, perhaps to heal it, and the high intensity sound left bruising from hydrostatic shock. At the least, the bruising called medical attention to the tumor.”
Meanwhile, “Dolphins have been known to detect certain types of cancer and pregnancy in some people,” WJHG reports, “But experts say there is no clinical research to back up those behaviors.
There has been no research in this regard, though it would be fairly simple. Dolphins could be put in the water with people with various stages of cancer and healthy controls. You could have, say, 15 controls and one patient. If a dolphin displayed unusual behaviors around that person, it’s possible the animal detected something.
Most experts I asked didn’t really know how to answer the question, “Is this possible?”
Michael Miller, spokesman at the National Cancer Institute, tells TakePart that NCI “has never conducted research of this type and I don’t know of anyone we could point you to for more information.” A search of the published literature turns up nothing.
Neuroscientist and dolphin expert Dr. Lori Marino of Emory University and The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, rules out the idea.
“This is all a coincidence and nothing more,” says Marino, an outspoken opponent of dolphinariums and other forms of captivity. “Despite the mythology, there is no evidence that dolphins can detect cancers and other diseases in the human body,” she says. “Why was the dolphin ramming the woman and getting excited? It could be for a number of reasons—agitation, play, but none of them show the dolphin detected the cancer.”
There is evidence to suggest that dogs, and cats, can be trained to detect certain forms of cancer in the breath or urine of people, though the science on that is slim. “We are not aware of any convincing evidence to show that dogs can detect cancer in patients,” says Andrew Becker, director of media relations at the American Cancer Society.
There are few published studies on dogs, cancer and diagnosis. A literature review published last year in an “effort to determine whether dogs have a role to play in modern health care as an alert tool or screening system for ill health,” especially cancer, seizures and hypoglycemia, highlighted “weaknesses in the work” and proposed “directions for future studies,” hardly a decisiveconclusion.
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