G8 leaders in Fermanagh call for fiscal flexibility in bid to boost global economy
OPENING OF TWO-DAY SUMMIT MARKED BY TENSIONS OVER SYRIA
World leaders meeting at the G8 summit in Co Fermanagh have called for flexibility in fiscal policy as they seek to overcome weak prospects for the global economy.
The call by the leaders of the Group of Eight major powers came ahead of talks tomorrow at the Lough Erne Resort near Enniskillen to tackle tax evasion by big business and aggressive tax avoidance.
The intervention backs moves already under way in the euro zone to ease the pace of tax increases and spending cutbacks in countries such as France as leaders confront concern that the years-long austerity drive is fanning recession.
“The pace of fiscal consolidation should be differentiated for our different national economic circumstances,” the G8 leaders said in a statement after their first session of talks.
The Government insists it will stick to the fiscal targets laid down by the EU-IMF troika to ensure its exit from the bailout at the end of the year.
However, Irish officials are already examining how money could be put back into the economy in next year’s budget.
With Dublin still counting on concessions from its EU partners to ease the cost of rescuing Allied Irish Banks and the Bank ofIreland, the G8 leaders urged the euro zone to push ahead with its banking union initiative and said it was “strongly needed”.
In spite of German reservations about this project, chancellor Angela Merkel was one of eight co-signatories of the statement alongside the leaders of the US, Britain,Canada, Russia, France, Italy and Japan.
The G8 leaders said actions by policy makers in the US, Japan and the euro zone have made it less likely that economic growth will slow sharply.
“Downside risks in the euro area have abated over the past year, but it remains in recession,” the leaders said.
Their statement came hours after Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said the existence of the single currency was no longer under threatened.
“There is no comparison between the current situation and the situation let’s say nine months ago, where the euro and the euro zone was under existential threat. That isn’t the case any more.”
With leaders due to discuss business taxation today, Mr Van Rompuy said fraud and evasion undermined the social contract in democratic societies. “In times of budgetary consolidation, they become more unacceptable than ever; morally, politically and financially unacceptable,” he said.
This debate has potential to raise difficult questions for the Government, give controversy over the tax practices in Ireland of companies such as Apple Computer.
On the fringes of the summit, however, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said Ireland had nothing to hide and everything to gain from the debate.
“I can’t say what other leaders might speak of, but it hasn’t been raised with me today. International leaders are very clear that a low corporate tax economy doesn’t mean anything wrong in regard to tax,” he told reporters.
“We have been very upfront about this. I said this at the European Council a number of weeks ago.”
The opening of the two-day summit was marked by continuing global tensions over the civil war in Syria, with Russian president Vladimir Putin under pressure from US president Barack Obama and other leaders to withdraw his support for the Assad regime.
This question was expected to dominate bilateral talks between the two leaders which began around teatime. Mr Obama, in a tense meeting with Mr Putin, said the two men had different views on the war in Syria but shared an interest in stopping violence and ensuring chemical weapons were not used.
Mr Putin has made it clear that he opposes moves by the US to arm the rebels and he will resist the imposition of a no-fly zone over Syria.
Mr Obama’s first engagement today was in Belfast, where he told an audience of 2,000 predominantly young people the achievements of the peace process were extraordinary.
However, he called for further resolute actions to heal the divide between the two communities. “There are still wounds that haven’t healed, and communities where tensions and mistrust hangs in the air. There are walls that still stand; there are still many miles to go.”
Irish Primary teachers vote to accept the Haddington Road deal
INTO EXECUTIVE HAD URGED ACCEPTANCE OF DEAL
Primary school teachers have voted to accept the proposed new Haddington Road agreement on reducing the State’s pay and pensions bill.
In a ballot result announced tonight, members of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) voted in favour of the proposed deal by 63 per cent to 37 per cent.
Members of the INTO decisively rejected the Croke Park II proposals several weeks ago. However the Government agreed to significant changes as part of the process that led to the emergence of the Haddington road proposals.
The executive of the INTO urged members to accept the Haddington Road proposals.
The decision by national teachers to accept the new proposals represents a major boost for the Government in its plans to reduce the public service pay bill by €300 million this year and €1 billion over three years as part of an agreement with unions.
INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan welcomed the outcome of the ballot, saying it was clear that teachers viewed the Haddington Road proposals as better than the government’s alternative proposals.
“Teachers have not so much backed the Haddington Road proposals as rejected the government’s alternative,” she said.
Under the three-year Haddington Road proposals, which would come into force in July, teachers would cease to be paid the current supervision and substitution allowance .
However, salary increases of € 796 would be applied to incremental scale points in the 2016/17 and 2017/18 school years (total increase of € 1,592) in compensation for the loss of the supervision allowance.
Teachers earning less than € 35,000 would face one three-month increment freeze during the course of the agreement.
Teachers earning between € 35,000 and € 65,000 would have two increment freezes of three months each during the course of the agreement.
Teachers earning over € 65,000, along with other higher-paid public service staff, would face pay cuts. The reductions for teachers would run at between 5.5 per cent and 6 per cent.
However as part of the changes introduced under the Haddington road proposals, there is now a provision to restore original salary levels in two equal phases – on April 1st, 2017 and January 1st, 2018.
The Government has warned that it will impose cuts unilaterally on public service groups that do not accept the Haddington Road proposals.
Under legislation introduced last month, the Government can cut salaries for those earning more than €65,000 and suspend the payment of increments.
The legislation also contains measures allowing Ministers to reduce non-core remuneration or increase the working time of public servants.
The executives of two other teaching unions, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) and the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) have effectively rejected the Haddington road proposals and, to date, have announced no plans to ballot members on its provisions.
Essentially the two union executives argued that the Haddingto Road proposals were not sufficiently different to the Croke Park II proposals which were rejected by their members.
Last week public sector members of the Unite trade union became the first to reject the Haddington Road agreement in a ballot.
The union , which represents around 6,000 public service staff, opposed the proposals by 72.6 per cent to 27.4 per cent.
Following a meeting at the end of May, the union had recommended that its 6,000 public service members reject the agreement on pay and conditions.
Unite’s regional secretary Jimmy Kelly said the Haddington Road proposals were bad for the public sector as they would take €1bn out of the sector and would lead to job losses.
Obama’s Irish ancestry highlighted during first family’s visit to Trinity College
CROWDS TURN OUT TO CATCH A GLIMPSE OF OBAMA FAMILY
Genealogists can say more about the Irish ancestry of US President Barack Obama than about former presidents such as John F Kennedy, according to the genealogist who showed the Obama family tree to Michelle Obama and her daughters at Trinity College Dublin today.
In the first stop of their visit to the Republic, Mrs Obama visited the Old Library with her daughters Malia, who will turn 15 next month, and Sasha, who celebrated her 12th birthday last week. They arrived in Dublin just before noon, having flown into Belfast earlier with the US president Barack Obama. He travelled to Co Fermanagh for the G8summit.
Fiona Fitzsimons and Helen Moss of Eneclann, a university spin-out company researched President Obama’s Irish ancestry from Falmouth Kearney, president Obama’s second great-grandfather to his seventh great-grandfather,Joseph Kearney. John Kearney, who was a distant cousin of the president, went on to become the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, and later Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory.
Scientists uncover clues to stopping cancer’s spreading
Scientists believe they may have discovered a key to developing drugs which could help stop the spread of cancer.
Experiments carried out by a team at University College London has uncovered clues in what causes the disease to migrate from one part of the body to another.
In many cases death is not caused by the primary tumour, but the secondary growth.
The key follows experiments carried out by a team at University College London using frog and zebrafish embryos.
Scientists identified a mechanism which called ‘chase and run’ which showed how diseased and healthy cells follow each other around the body.
“Nobody knew how this happened, and now we believe we have uncovered it. If that is the case it will be relatively easy to develop drugs that interfere with this interaction,” said Prof Roberto Mayor, who led the team.
While the team, led by Professor Roberto Mayor, have not identified what causes cancer in the first place, their research could give vital clues to mechanism which enables it to spread in a disease which claims 150,000 lives a year in Britain.
Their findings are published in Nature Cell Biology.
The key is to understand why cancerous cells attach themselves to healthy cells in the first place.
They did this by mimicking what they believe happens by using comparable types of cell and observing their behaviour.
The role of the cancer cell was taken by neural crest cell, a common form of stem cell which eventually forms animal tissue.
Meanwhile the placode cells, which eventually form part of the cranial nerve, performed the part of the healthy cell.
The experiment showed that placodes not only attracted the neural cells but were followed by them as they tried to escape.
“We use the analogy of the donkey and the carrot to explain this behaviour: the donkey follows the carrot, but the carrot moves away when approached by the donkey,” added Prof Mayor.
“The findings suggest an alternative way in which cancer treatments might work in the future if therapies can be targeted at the process of interaction between malignant and healthy cells to stop cancer cells from spreading and causing secondary tumours.
“Most cancer deaths are not due to the formation of the primary tumour, instead people die from secondary tumours originating from the first malignant cells, which are able to travel and colonise vital organs of the body such as the lungs or the brain.”
Eric Theveneau, another member of the team, added: “These cells are very similar in their behaviour to cancer cells and this could be analogous to the cancer system.”
The next step, he added, would entail medical researchers be using their findings to gain a better understanding of how cancer cells behave.
Dr Kat Arney, science information manager at Cancer Research UK, welcomed the findings but advised caution.
“This research helps to reveal some of the fundamental biological processes that might be at work as cells move around the body, but the scientists have only looked at developing frog and zebrafish embryos rather than specifically looking at cancer cells.
“So there’s a very long way to go to see whether this knowledge can be translated into new treatments for cancer patients.”
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