Pat Kenny jumps RTE for Newstalk & money had nothing to do with the move
Money was not the over-riding factor for broadcaster Pat Kenny’s choice to finish his 41-career with RTÉ and join commercial radio station Newstalk.
The 65-year-old, who was on a salary of over €950,000 in 2008, said RTÉ made a generous offer to him to remain at the national broadcaster but he declined.
“I had two offers on the table,” he told Newstalk.
“The money was not the over-riding factor at all. RTÉ made me a very generous offer to continue but I weighed it up, discussed it with the family and they detected the enthusiasm I had for fundamental change.”
Kenny said he is someone who likes to surprise himself sometimes.
“The easiest thing in the world would have been to stay put, everything in place, with a team that I’m familiar with whose skills and talents I recognised and appreciated,” he said. “I could have cruised along but maybe I thought I should shape myself up.
“There probably won’t be another opportunity again to do something as dramatic is this,” he added.
Pat Kenny has previously hit headlines for his salary at the national broadcaster.
His pay packet dropped by almost €250,000 to €729,604 in 2009 after he left The Late Late Show.
The volume of Irish retail sales drops by 1.6% for month of June 2013
Irish Economy 2013: The volume of retail sales (i.e. excluding price effects) slid 1.6% in June 2013 when compared with May 2013 and there was a decrease of 1.5% in the annual figure, according to the CSO today. If Motor Trades are excluded, the volume of retail sales fell by 0.5% in June 2013 when compared with May 2013 and there was an increase of 1.1% in the annual figure.
The sectors with the largest month on month volume increases were Books, Newspapers and Stationery (+3.6%), Bars (+1.2%) and Electrical Goods (+1.0%). The sectors with the largest monthly decreases were Furniture and Lighting (-12.3%) and Motor Trades (-7.9%).
There was a decrease of 0.9% in the value of retail sales in June 2013 when compared with May 2013 and there was an annual decrease of 1.4% when compared with June 2012. If Motor Trades are excluded, there was a monthly decrease of 0.7% in the value of retail sales and an annual increase of 1.2%.
New prostate cancer treatments help men live up to three times longer than before
Men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer are living almost three times longer thanks to treatments pioneered by London researchers.
Patients with an aggressive form of the disease, which is second only to lung cancer in terms of how many men it kills each year, are surviving for about 41 months rather than 13 to 16. The research, conducted over a decade by the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden hospital, found new drugs have had such a positive impact that predictions on life expectancy need to be revised.
Johann de Bono, professor of experimental cancer medicine at the Institute of Cancer Research, said: “This analysis highlights the remarkable benefits we are seeing from new treatments.
“To put it simply, men are living for much longer with incurable disease than they did a few short years ago. Advanced prostate cancer is still incurable, but new treatments are giving men more time to do the things that matter to them with their loved ones.
“That couldn’t be more important and shows the strides we are making in the fight against the disease.”
Researchers studied data from 442 UK patients in 32 clinical trials and two drug programmes at the Royal Marsden since 2003. Four in five of the men with castration-resistant prostate cancer received docetaxel-based chemo-therapy, while half received abirat-erone, a targeted prostate cancer drug discovered at the institute and approved for NHS use last year. Three other therapies were used on a minority of patients.
The result was to give the men, aged from 41 to 82, an average of two years’ extra of life when compared to a decade earlier, according to research published in the European Urology journal. More than 10,000 UK men die each year from prostate cancer.
Professor Alan Ashworth, the institute’s chief executive, said: “We are living through a remarkable period of progress against prostate cancer, with new drugs such as abiraterone transforming the prospects for men with advanced disease.
“The study highlights the benefits of being able to treat so many patients on clinical trials, expanding access to new drugs and accelerating their path to wider use on the NHS.”
Irish home birth case at High Court attracts support at Four Courts
Aja Teehan and her husband Charles Brand above right.
MORE THAN 50 PEOPLE GATHER AHEAD OF COUPLE’S HIGH COURT CASE AGAINST HSE
More than 50 people turned up outside the Four Courts this morning to support a couple who are attempting to overturn restrictions on home births imposed by the HSE.
Aja Teehan and her husband Charles Brand are seeking permission to have a home birth, which has been rejected as she previously had a caesarean section. This would mean there are risks of a rupture of the caesarean scars.
Amongst the supporters outside were representatives of the Association for Improvement in the Maternity Services (AIMS). Barbara Western of AIMS Ireland said M/s Teehan and M/r Brand’s case challenged more than their own rights.
“They are fighting for human rights and child birth essentially. Giving woman autonomy over her own body and giving the family privacy,” she said.
“As a support officer with AIMS Ireland, I find there are too many cases of women who are severely traumatised by their births, because they are being controlled by the hospital system.
“So if women chose to have pain relief, they should be allowed to have pain relief and if they chose to have a home birth, they should be allowed a home birth and they should be supported in those choices.”
M/s Western said that the level of information on maternal rights in Ireland is totally inadequate.
A number of supporters brought their children to the demonstration.
Irish redheads gathering in Crosshaven Co Cork for Redhead’s Convention
FOR THE IRISH CANCER SOCIETY
DESCRIBED ON THEIR WEBSITE AS “A FESTIVAL OF GINGER LOVING MADNESS AND A CELEBRATION OF ALL THINGS TO DO WITH HAVING FABULOUS RED HAIR!”, THE CONVENTION WILL TAKE PLACE THIS YEAR FROM FRIDAY, AUGUST 23RD TO SUNDAY 25TH. IT IS THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE CONVENTION, AND REDHEADS FROM ALL OVER IRELAND ARE EXPECTED TO TRAVEL DOWN TO CROSSHAVEN FOR THE OCCASION.
The Convention will start with ‘REDgistration’, where redheads will receive an official ‘RedHead Certificate of Genuine Foxiness’. Impromptu speeches or performances will be catered for by the ‘Big Red Soap Box’ and prizes will be given in family-friendly competitions like ‘longest red hair’ and ‘furthest travelled redhead’.
There will be a King and Queen ‘of the Gingers’ crowned at the Convention, which has been selected as one of the ‘Gathering Ireland’ flagship events for 2013.
The highly anticipated documentary “Being Ginger” by Scott P.Harris will have it’s world premiere at the Irish Redhead Convention. The documentary begins with the question ‘Can I find a woman who is specifically attracted to men with red hair?’ and explores the lives, loves and insecurities of modern redheads.
Scarlet beauty blogger Stephanie Vandetti will be speaking at the Conference. Her blog ‘How To Be A Red Head’ was nominated for Best Beauty Blog in 2011 by Shape Magazine, and Vandetti now has a Huffpost and Style.com coloumn entitled RockitlikeaRedhead
For any non-redhead that feels left out, there will be red hair dying available at the Convention.
A pre-convention event this week saw the organisers break a Guiness World Record for most cookies baked in an hour, with 4695 ginger nuts being baked in Hassett’s bakery in Carrigaline in advance of the festival. The ginger nuts are now on sale on the Irish Redhead Convention website.
Ireland braced for Tornado’s & Thunder storm’s
IRELAND IS BRACED FOR A BATTERING OF FLASH FLOODS, THUNDER STORMS AND TORNADOES MAY HIT IRELAND ON THURSDAY.
Heavy rain, severe wind gusts and tornadoes for the country, along with the possibility of an isolated large hail event have been forecast by the European Storm Forecast Experiment (ESTOFEX).
This “level one” threat, which gives a 5% to 15% chance of severe weather conditions, was issued alongside Met Eireann’s yellow weather warning.
The country is braced for a battering of flash floods and thunder storms, with up to 50mm of rain expected to fall in parts overnight.
With the worst of the weather expected west of Munster and Connacht, road safety chiefs have warned motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to take extra care in the hazardous conditions.
Road Safety Authority (RSA) chief executive Noel Brett advised drivers to slow down and keep a safe distance from other vehicles.
“The changeable weather that’s being forecast for the coming days will present some very challenging road conditions for road users,” Mr Brett said.
“As visibility is greatly reduced while travelling in heavy rain remember to allow extra time to complete your journey.”
Munster, Connacht and west Ulster are expected to get the worst of the forecasted thunderous downpours and flash floods. Met Eireann warned Leinster, Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan would also be hit by torrential rain.
This comes a week after some areas of Dublin were ravaged by flooding, and landmark department store Clerys was forced to shut its doors for days after parts of its roof fell through.
Rare atmospheric phenomenon caught by Armagh Observatory
The sprite appeared as a carrot-shaped flash of light
The Armagh Observatory has captured a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as a ‘sprite’ on film.
It is one of the very few observations of the phenomenon from the UK and Ireland.
The observatory said the detection was made around the time of a thunderstorm over Dublin on the 24/25 July 2013.
The images show the sprite, a carrot-shaped flash of light, rising high above the thunderclouds as seen from Armagh.
Typical lightning discharges often jump between clouds or between clouds and the ground.
Sprites are associated with similarly powerful electrical fields that occur high above the clouds of the Earth’s atmosphere often during particularly intense thunderstorms.
The rare flashes are observed at heights from around 50 to 100 km, in the middle part of the Earth’s atmosphere known as the mesosphere.
Because they are red and usually far away, to the naked eye sprites appear very faint and, like lightning, only last for a very short time – at most for up to a few hundredths of a second.
Unexpected
But they are very energetic phenomena and can measure up to several tens of kilometres across.
Their discovery in the late 1980s was unexpected, and only became possible when light-sensitive, surveillance-type video cameras were introduced.
The Armagh Observatory has used three of those cameras since 2005 to help study meteor activity in this region of the Earth’s atmosphere.
On 25 July, around 15 lightning flashes were seen between 01:00 and 03:00 BST. At 01:05 BST the luminous, carrot-shaped sprite was recorded on video.
The Armagh Observatory’s John McFarland said its ground location appeared to have been at least 30 km from Armagh roughly towards the direction of counties Louth and Dublin.
“It appears to be a typical ‘red sprite’, sometimes called a ‘carrot’ sprite owing to its distinctive shape,” Mr McFarland said.
“Apart from being extraordinary and awesome to behold, the relatively recent discovery of sprites reminds us that the Earth’s upper atmosphere remains a mystery, with a lot still to be learned about the environment of our own planet.”
Red Cross Charity says sea water or vinegar soothes jellyfish stings
Use seawater right or vinegar below left to soothe jellyfish stings.
Vinegar one of the cures for Jellyfish stings
There have been increased sightings of several types of jellyfish in swimming areas
Joe Mulligan, British Red Cross head of first aid, said: “A sting from a jellyfish can be extremely painful, but trying to treat it with urine isn’t going to make your day any better. Urine just doesn’t have the right chemical make-up to solve the problem.
“If people have been stung, they need to get out of the water to avoid getting stung again. Once out, slowly pouring seawater over the sting will help ease the pain.
“Doing the same thing with vinegar can be even more effective as the acid helps neutralise the jellyfish sting. But, unless you’re near a chip shop, seawater will probably be easier to find.”
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