Glasgow taxi man banned after Donegal brothers thrown out of cab for talking Irish
A Glasgow cab driver (left picture) who ordered two Irish-speaking Donegal brothers (right picture) out of his car has been given a one-month taxi driving ban by the city’s licence regulators.
Alan McKinnon, a driver with Hampden Cabs, had his license suspended after the committee found he failed to fulfil a hire without sufficient cause or conduct himself in a civil manner after he evicted Anthony and Joe Blair from his car.
Mr McKinnon, from the Bridgeton area of Glasgow, was also told to undertake customer care training as part of the reprimand handed down by Glasgow City Council’s Licensing and Regulatory Committee.
Speaking to The Irish Post newspaper following the committee’s decision Anthony Blair said: “It was outrageous so it’s good he has been asked to do customer care training. Hopefully that will teach him about dealing with customers from different ethnic backgrounds.”
The 20-year-old added: “If it was against any other nationality there would have been uproar about it but with Irish people these things tend to blow over. Because it’s an Irish person they can give him the minimum ban and hope people forget about it.”
In a statement, Mr McKinnon – a father-of-three – said he told his passengers to stop speaking Irish because he was convinced they were talking about him.
“As they refused to stop, I stopped the car and ended the hire,” he said.
He alleges his fears had been sparked because one of the passengers was singing Celtic songs and said “you must be a hun then” after he asked them to stop singing.
Mr McKinnon’s legal representative told the hearing that he had worked for the Hampden Cabs taxi firm for 13 years without any complaints being made against him.
Claiming his client should be given no punishment, the solicitor described the use of the word ‘hun’ as “a sectarian matter”, but acknowledged it had not been used in an aggressive tone.
He went on to say the driver felt threatened and was not making a derogatory reference to the Irish language when asking his passengers to stop speaking their native tongue.
“He’s appalled to be in front of you today. He has three children and his livelihood is at stake. He is very aware of the serious nature of this matter, which could destroy his career.”
Anthony Blair denies either he or his brother Joe, 22, made reference to the word ‘hun’.
Mr Blair was visiting his grandmother in Glasgow with his brother last December 16 when the incident happened.
The pair, from Gweedore in Co. Donegal, got into the cab at around 2am with their cousin Kathleen McAleer, a Glasgow native, and her friend.
But things turned sour once the men started to converse in Irish with Mr McKinnon, whose taxi licence number is TD08553, allegedly telling them “in Britain it’s English that’s spoken”.
“Myself and Anthony began chatting in Irish as we normally do but the driver seemed to have a problem with this,” Joe Blair told the Licensing and Regulatory Committee in a statement.
“He told us to stop speaking in that language and that it was English spoken in Britain and if we wanted to speak that then we could get out.”
The driver then stopped the car and ended the hire leaving the group to walk home.
The hearing concluded with the Licensing and Regulatory Committee suspending Mr McKinnon’s license for a month and ordering him to undertake customer care training during that time.
“I was not looking for anybody to lose their job or anything like that,” Anthony Blair said. “An apology would have been far better. If anything I hope it raises awareness of the Irish in Glasgow and the fact people do speak Irish as a language.”
New Irish guidelines will protect small babies in the womb
Building on their discovery last year that is re-writing the rule books on care of babies in the womb, Irish researchers have developed the first Irish Clinical Practice Guidelines on Fetal Growth Restriction.
The guidelines will be published on 6 March 2014, at a major national obstetric meeting at the Rotunda Hospital to present the latest studies from the HRB Perinatal Ireland Network*.
The new guidelines are informed by a recent Irish study which examined 1,100 babies experiencing growth restriction in the womb. The aim was to establish exactly when health professionals need to intervene to prevent serious health complications for a small baby.
Dr Julia Unterscheider, lead researcher on the study and RCSI Fellow in Maternal Fetal Medicine explains,
‘Distinguishing between small but normal babies and small at-risk babies is one of the most common, controversial and complex problems in current maternity care. Standard international practice has been to consider those babies in the bottom 10% by weight to be at the highest risk of developing complications. These mothers and babies usually receive increased surveillance and monitoring. However, our study questions whether this is necessary for all cases.
‘Our research found that the majority of babies whose weight falls into the bottom 10% from a weight perspective go on to be a healthy baby that is simply small for its gestational age. We discovered that the highest risk for adverse outcomes are in the group of babies that fall into the bottom three per cent by weight and who have an abnormal reading on a particular ultrasound test. It is this group that need the special monitoring or intervention.
We developed these new guidelines to help standardise and improve antenatal care of pregnancies affected by Fetal Growth Restriction based on the best evidence available. They will be a great resource for obstetricians, trainees and midwives working in Ireland, but may also be useful for women and their partners, GPs and commissioners of health care’.
Dr Mairead O Driscoll, Director of Research Strategy and Funding at the Health Research Board (HRB) says, ‘It is great to see research we have funded being translated into practice so quickly. These new guidelines provide health professionals with appropriate and accurate interventions which will help improve survival rates and outcomes for small babies and hopefully reduce stress among mothers-to-be. It will also ensure resources are used in the most effective way’.
Professor Fergal Malone, Chairman of Perinatal Ireland, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the Rotunda and RCSI Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology says, ‘The critical advantage of the HRB Perinatal Ireland network is that it has given us access to large patient populations which has transformed our ability to do Perinatal research here. These guidelines are a testament to this, but also to the spirit of collaboration that exists amongst Irish obstetricians who are now working together on a range of research projects to advance the health of mothers and their babies. This research network has the potential to radically change the focus and intensity of current assessment for at risk pregnancies’.
Prof Michael Turner, UCD Professor in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Coombe Hospital and HSE National Director for Obstetrics and Gynaecology says, ‘Worldwide it is estimated that only one third of growth restricted babies are properly identified. These guidelines will enable clinicians to really focus on antenatal care appropriately and the research will hopefully have a global impact on improving maternal and neonatal care’.
Professor Fionnuala McAuliffe, Consultant Obstetrician and spokesperson for the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists adds, ‘These guidelines are important and will act as an informative resource in the management of the small baby in the womb’.
Case Study: Grainne Foley is one of the mothers involved in the study. Her son, John, was accurately diagnosed with fetal growth restriction and born 11 weeks premature, weighing just 2lbs and 6 ounces. He is now a healthy two year old boy. She will present the parents perspective of being involved in a study at the Perinatal Ireland event.
According to Grainne, ‘Taking part in the study was a bit of a no-brainer really. Knowing that there was potential for some difficulties was a real worry for me. But it was very reassuring and eased the stress knowing I was able to avail of all the expert advice, ongoing monitoring and surveillance that the research team brought to the hospital. I now have a healthy, and happy, two-year-old’.
Supplements in our diet may do us more harm than good?
Recent Swedish research suggests that antioxidant dietary supplements may actually increase cancer risk in certain people
Many people take supplements of vitamins A, C and E, thinking these antioxidants will help to ward off cancer
About two years ago I announced to my wife at breakfast my intention to start taking a regular omega-3 fatty aciddietary supplement, but added cynically – “and I will continue until we hear that it causes cancer”. Sitting again at breakfast on July 10th, 2013, I heard radio news announce that a new study had shown that omega-3 fatty acids may cause cancer. Such an experience is common. We are regularly advised that supplementing our diet with biochemical X will yield health benefits, only to have these hopes dashed soon afterwards when new research shows contrary results.
Many people take supplements of vitamins A, C and E, thinking these antioxidants will help to ward off cancer. The hypothesis is that antioxidant supplements neutralise chemicals in cells called “free radicals”, which arise naturally and can damage DNA. However, recent Swedish research suggests that antioxidant dietary supplements may actually increase cancer risk in certain people.
Decades ago it was observed that people who eat lots of fruits and vegetables seem to get less cancer. This was “explained” by the hypothesis that these are rich in healthy, desirable elements, including antioxidants and fibre. However research on the controlled ingestion of individual “desirable” dietary supplements has so far seen discouraging results.
Research in the 1980s to determine if dietary supplementation with the antioxidants beta-carotene, vitamin A and vitamin E protect smokers against contracting lung cancer was called off when it was noticed that smokers taking beta-carotene showed an increased risk of lung cancer. Also, recent research to test if vitamin E and selenium supplements prevent prostate cancer was ended when it was noticed that the people on vitamin E showed increased risk of prostate cancer.
The recent Swedish study (VI Sayin and others in Science Translational Medicine , 2014) found two antioxidants – vitamin E and a drug called N-acetylcysteine – at doses found in multi-vitamin and dietary supplements speed up the progression of lung cancer in mice and in human cell lines.
When mice with early lung cancers were fed the antioxidants, tumour growth killed the mice twice as fast. The antioxidants knocked out a tumour growth suppressor normally present in the cancer cells. These findings suggest that people with small undiagnosed lung tumours – which are more likely in smokers but may occur in anyone – should avoid taking supplementary antioxidants because they may accelerate tumour growth.
However, we must be cautious in interpreting this Swedish work. The strains of mice used in the research are genetically predisposed to easily developing lung cancer, and consequently the results may not translate readily to humans. Secondly, these results do not cast suspicion on foods that are naturally rich in antioxidants, for example tomatoes and berries. You would have to eat very large amounts of such foods to reach the levels of supplement used in the Swedish study. Also, foods are complex, containing many other substances that may influence how antioxidants affect the body.
A correlation between omega-3 fatty acids and increased risk of prostate cancer was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2013). The study involved 35,000 men over the age of 50. Omega-3 fatty acid blood levels in 834 of these men diagnosed with prostate cancer were compared to levels in 1,393 men randomly chosen from the 35,000 participants.
Men with the highest levels of omega-3 fatty acids had a 43 per cent higher risk of developing prostate cancer and a 71 per cent higher risk of developing high-grade prostate cancer, which is more likely to be fatal.
Oily fish is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, and many people eat fish to enhance their fatty acid levels. However, diet was not studied in this research, and it is not known whether the omega-3 fatty acids came from food or from health supplements. Commenting on these results, Marji McCullough, epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society, said: “In general it’s better to try to get nutrients from food . . . People don’t need to eliminate fish from their diet.”
What do we make of all this? I am no fan of dietary health supplements. I believe that our long evolutionary history has adapted humans to absorb all necessary nutrients from an adequate diet, and so supplementing intake levels beyond this is unwise. My advice to the average healthy person free of medical conditions is simple: eat a wide variety of fresh, whole foods in moderation, mostly plants, and take plenty of aerobic exercise.
World surfers pounce as giant waves of Sligo roar back to life
Six very lucky surfers take their lives in their hands to catch giant waves off the coast of Sligo.
New York surfer Kurt Rist could feel the adrenalin pumping through his veins as he rode the 55 foot wave – the biggest of his life.
After more than three years of waiting, he was one of six surfers who took to the Sligo coast on Monday to surf the spot, which was dubbed Prowlers by the surfers who pioneered it in 2010.
One of the most secret surfing spots in the world, it is located about 2km from Mullaghmore, another world-class big wave break. The exact location of Prowlers is a closely-guarded secret that those in the know are loathe to reveal to outsiders.
“We’d like the top notch surfers around the world to surf with us in Ireland but we don’t want to be overrun,” said Dylan Stott, who joined Rist at Prowlers on Monday. “We’ve been waiting years for it to happen and conditions are really rare. It’s our secret so I can’t say exactly where it is.”
Rist (28), who has been a surfer for over 20 years, says big wave surfing is almost like a form of meditation.
“Your mind is completely empty, you’re completely focused on the present and everything else in your life disappears,” he said . “That’s what’s really cool about big wave surfing, because of the danger involved the focus is next to nothing. When you do catch the wave, it’s exciting, thrilling, scary and so gratifying.”
Rist first came to Ireland in 2009 to surf at Mullaghmore. Originally from Southampton, New York, the surf instructor spends six months of the year in Ireland riding the west coast swell. He has surfed all over the word, including Hawaii, Peru andIndonesia, but always chooses to come back to Irish shores for the winter.
Since the first sighting of waves breaking at Prowlers in 2006, local surfers have been studying the coastline, charts, wind conditions, swells and tides in an attempt to pinpoint the moment the towering waves will break at the spot again.
“There are 100 variables that make it all come together, that’s why it’s so rare,” said Stott.
Prowlers shot to fame in November 2010 when it was caught on camera for the first time. Photographer Aaron Pierce who took the shot on Monday, watched the surfers from a five-metre boat about 30 metres from the wave.
When waves get to a certain size, they are travelling too fast for surfers to catch them using arm-power alone so they get towed in by jetski.
“You have to be really careful because big rips can pull the boat towards the wave,” said Pierce, who is from New Zealand. “We’re always in contact with the coast guard and keep a radio with us at all times.”
Galway priest solves the mystery of ashes burning foreheads
Parishioners at several churches reported adverse reaction to Ash Wednesday blessing
The ashes used to mark people’s foreheads are the burned remains of palm fronds blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year.
An elderly Galway priest has solved the mystery of the sacred ashes that burned the forehead of parishioners in a number of churches across the State on Ash Wednesday.
Monsignor Malachy Hallinan, parish priest of Westside parish in Galway city, was one of a number of priests who were shocked when members of their church community reported the adverse reaction after receiving the ashes on Wednesday morning.
Blessed ashes that burned the foreheads of some 30 parishioners in Co Cork are to be sent for analysis to a public health laboratory.
Fr Eugene Baker administered the ashes as part of a ceremony marking the beginning of Lent at St Joseph’s Church in Newtownshandrum in north Cork yesterday. The ashes, which caused a burning sensation on the skin of those who received the blessing, are to be analysed to determine what caused the reaction.
In Galway, Monsignor Hallinan said he had never experienced such a reaction in his 48 years as a priest. He had stored the palm from Palm Sunday last year in his garage and spent the weekend breaking it up.
He then burned it in his stove and let it rest before putting water through it on Tuesday night. He thought he heard a little fizz but paid no attention to it.
“At the 10am mass we began to give out the ashes, three of us. Then, at about half past ten word came back that people were suffering a little burning in the forehead.
“About 10 minutes later a man came and the skin had broken, so I immediately took all the ashes in from the church and didn’t go to the school (with them)”.
His secretary contacted the public analyst in Galway, Dr Andrew Flanagan, and supplied a sample of the ashes for analysis.
“When I met him he asked me if it was it dry and seasoned. I said it was perfectly dry — the driest I ever had. He said ‘that’s your misfortune’. He said that once you burned it, you took away all the carbon from it — you could say it was almost over-cooked.
“Then when I applied the water it became caustic. I didn’t know that. He rang back at 12.30 to confirm it and later delivered the results to my house for fear I might have evening Mass.
“He told me that if I had dirty wet green palm, there would be less danger — no danger at all.
“People immediately were ringing in and once I told them what happened, that was it. But I am concerned about the people,” Monsignor Hallinan said.
He went on local radio yesterday to warn people of the danger associated with the ashes and stressed that it contained no chemicals.
“If people have burns or skin broken, let them contact the doctor immediately or get some medical advice and care.
“The public analyst said it had happened in one other place in Galway, but it hadn’t been publicised and he said it was time to get the word out to the priests and to the parishes in regard to this matter – it’s too serious a matter to leave.”
In Cork , Health Service Executive laboratory technicians at St Finbarr’s Hospital were expecting to receive the ashes from at Newtownshandrum in order to carry out tests after some 30 parishioners had their foreheads burned.
“It was an extraordinary event,” spokesman for the Diocese of Cloyne Fr Jim Killeen said. “I’ve never heard of this happening before.
“The ashes in question are to be sent off now for laboratory analysis so we can only wait and see what was the cause,” he said.
It’s thought the presence of chlorine in holy water added to the ashes may have caused the ‘extraordinary’ burning sensation.
“Generally holy water is ordinary tap water that is blessed. But there would not be a huge amount added to make the ashes,” Fr Killeen said.
Fr Baker said he was shocked by the incident and immediately ceased distributing the ashes as parishioners began to complain of a burning sensation on their skin. He apologised to Mass -goers and instructed them to wash the ashes off in the sacristy.
“It was about 30 people – they had all received the ashes before any alarm was raised. Some minutes afterwards, someone said it.”
The ashes are the burned remains of palm fronds blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year.
Prayers are said over the ashes as a blessing and holy water can be added to moisten them before distribution.
Another asteroid buzzes by Earth today
A 25-foot-wide asteroid will have its closest approach to Earth at 4:21 p.m. ET today
For the second day in a row, an asteroid is buzzing past Earth.
NASA announced that an asteroid measuring about 25 feet across will pass safely past Earth today at 4:21 p.m. ET. The asteroid, dubbed 2014 EC, is expected to approach the Earth at a distance six times closer than the moon.
The news comes just a day after another asteroid — this one named 2014 DX110 — whizzed by Earth closer than the distance between the Earth and the moon.
“This is not an unusual event,” said Paul Chodas, a senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. “Objects of this size pass this close to the Earth several times every year.”
The approaching asteroid will not be visible to the unaided eye.
The Virtual Telescope Project has been trying to track the asteroid but has been unable to capture images of the asteroid because of poor weather andcloud cover. If conditions improve, the group will post images or video to its web site.
The Catalina Sky Survey, based near Tucson, Ariz., first spotted the asteroid on Wednesday, according to NASA. Its closest distance is expected to be about 38,300 miles above the Earth’s surface.
Scientists are increasingly interested in studying asteroids to help protect the planet in the event of a possible devastating collision. They also want to learn whether the makeup of asteroids might offer clues to the birth of the universe.
Last year, NASA unveiled a plan to study near-Earth asteroids by 2025.
The plan includes finding a nearby asteroid that weighs about 500 tons but would be 25 or 30 feet long. NASA would pull the asteroid into orbit around Earth and then land astronauts on its surface to study it.
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