Joan Burton says abortion laws do not serve women in Ireland well
Tánaiste would like to see eighth amendment to the constitution repealed.
Tánaiste Joan Burton said abortion laws do not serve women well.
Tánaiste Joan Burton has said she agrees with Minister for Health Leo Varadkar’s comments that the current abortion laws are “too restrictive”.
Ms Burton also said she would like to see the eighth amendment to the constitution, which gives equal rights to life to the mother and the unborn, repealed.
However, in a Christmas briefing with political correspondents, she declined to comment on the right to life case currently in the public domain.
On the issue in general, she said: “The people that I want to see around the bed are the doctors, not the lawyers.
“In my view the eighth amendment does not actually serve women well when issues of their life, their safety, their health, are in question.”
“The thing that I find extraordinarily difficult about this kind of a case is that as a consequence of the eighth amendment, and I’m somebody who was opposed to the eighth amendment, the Labour Party was opposed to the eighth amendment, we said it was wrong to put it into the constitution, but the people of Ireland in their wisdom decided differently – and that’s their prerogative in any referendum to make a decision as they see fit,” Mr Burton said.
“But, what we have now, and will have, without a doubt, is over a period of time cases which will throw up the most agonising and difficult dilemmas and at the centre of that will inevitably be young women and the babies that they’re carrying.
“Now, if my daughter, or my nieces, or anyone in my circle, my friends, my family, my neighbours, is facing a pregnancy and the pregnancy and the delivery become very difficult, thankfully in Ireland our maternity services are pretty good, very good, but we all know that difficult situations arise.”
Donegal driver jailed for worst car crash in Irish history
It left eight people dead
A motorist, who killed seven close friends and a pensioner in the most deadly collision in Ireland’s history, has been jailed.
Shaun Kelly, 26, was handed a four-year sentence, with the final two years suspended and disqualified from driving for 10 years for the accident which left eight people dead.
Kelly was driving his friends and family home after watching theWorld Cup final in 2010, when the tragic accident occurred.
The 26-year-old’s Volkswagen Passat was seen speeding away from a pub. The vehicle then careered into the path of Anne McGilloway’s car in Co Donegal, ripping off a front wheel on her vehicle, causing it to spin out of control. The car crashed into an oncoming Toyota belonging to Hugh Friel, a 66-year-old man who died instantly.
“It’s very unfortunate that Shaun has been left to accept all the blame. We wish that Shaun is given a chance in life. He needs all the help and support he can get, not punishment.”
Kelly’s car ploughed into a ditch and smashed into a telegraph pole. He suffered a brain injury in the crash, while all of his friends – aged between 19 and 23 – died at the scene. None of them had been wearing seatbelts.
In Letterkenny Circuit Court, four of the victims’ families spoke in defence of Kelly stating that they “didn’t believe a prison sentence is needed”, as “enough lives have been ruined in this accident”.
Eamon Sweeney, the father of a teenage boy killed in the accident, said his son Ciaran also needed to take some responsibility for the tragedy.
“It’s very unfortunate that Shaun has been left to accept all the blame,” he said. “We wish that Shaun is given a chance in life. He needs all the help and support he can get, not punishment.”
Kelly’s father, Liam, apologised to those who were bereaved in the accident, on behalf of his son, as Kelly is incapable of doing so properly.
“They are very honest and decent people and we are very sorry for what has happened to them,” he said during sentencing. “Despite their loss, they have given us all great comfort and support.”
The former lorry driver had spent two years denying dangerous driving, but entered a guilty plea in July.
Despite also having a previous conviction for dangerous drivingafter a near-miss with a police car in 2007, he is likely to serve only two years behind bars.
While some of the bereaved relatives have reacted angrily at the sentence, the local community has remained united in its support for the Kelly family.
Ireland’s mortgage lending surges as clarity is sought on deposits
There was a massive jump in mortgage lending for the three-month period to the end of November compared with the same period last year.
According to figures released by the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, there was a 52.8% increase in the number of mortgages approved for the September to November period.
There were an average of 2,752 mortgages sanctioned per month. The value of mortgages issued over the three months was €502m, which is 56.4% higher than the same period in 2013.
Moreover, 95% of this lending was for house purchases. To the end of November, 23,796 mortgages have been approved, with a value of €4.2bn, which is a 42.2% rise on last year. Market sources say the surge in mortgage applications since September may in part be explained by the new Central Bank rules originally scheduled to come in next month.
Under the new rules, prospective house buyers would have to put up a 20% deposit and lending would be capped at three-and-a-half times’ salary. Roughly 157 submissions have been made to the Central Bank from stakeholders. The majority broadly support the cap on income but there is overwhelming opposition to the 20% deposit rule.
The Central Bank will take until the end of January to review the submissions and then release its findings.
This week Nama and the ESRI came out against the 80% loan-to-value cap. They claimed it had the potential to adversely affect housing supply.
Are you a worrier? Then you’re more likely to be a smart person
Worriers can be kept awake at night replaying the day, or imagining all the possible worst case scenarios in their lives.
But they can at least take comfort in the fact that this behaviour could be a sign of intelligence.
More than 125 students were surveyed about their mood, anxiety levels and intelligence levels – and those found to worry the most, were also the smartest.
The research was carried out at Ontario’s Lakehead University, led by Alexander Penney.
The researchers surveyed 126 students about their anxiety levels, depression, overall mood, social skills, rumination and intelligence by gauging their responses to set questions.
The majority (77 percent) of participants were women. Based on their answers, each of the students were then ranked on the both the Cognitive Test Anxiety Scale (CTAS) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).
The higher scores on the respective tests indicate more severe test anxiety and higher verbal intelligence.
People who are verbally intelligent are better at reading and writing, and have stronger verbal reasoning skills. By comparison, non-verbally intelligent people are better ‘hands-on’ learners and pick up skills using non-verbal clues.
In the study, those who ranked highest on CTAS were also the most verbally intelligent, according to the WAIS. However, the students who scored highly for non-verbal intelligence were found to worry less. Experts believe verbally intelligent people spend more time relaying past and future events, trying to make sense of them, for example.
Cancer survival rates higher than ever, says a new report
National Cancer Registry finds deaths from disease dropped consistently in last 20 years.
The incidence of lung cancer is falling among men but rising among women, reflecting changing smoking patterns from decades earlier, a newly published review of 20 years of treating cancer indicates.
Cancer is still “the big C” but not quite as fearsome as before, a newly published review of 20 years of treating the disease indicates.
For the thousands of people with cancer and their families, there are many positives to glean from the report from theNational Cancer Registry.
Although the incidence of cancer is increasing, this is largely due to better and earlier detection of the disease. Meanwhile, deaths from cancer dropped consistently over the period 1994 to 2012, mainly thanks to improved treatment, and there are more cancer survivors than ever.
Over 122,000 people who contracted cancer in the past 20 years are alive today, and 94,000 of these have survived at least 10 years with the disease.
While this is welcome news, it rightly notes “the growing population of cancer survivors has implications for health service provision in the decades ahead”.
The five-year survival rates for all invasive cancers jumped from 45 per cent for patients diagnosed in 1994-1999, to 59 per cent during 2006-2011.
If you had breast cancer, your chances of survival increased from 72 per cent to 81 per cent. The improvement for prostate cancer was even better, from 69 per cent to 91 per cent.
Even in the case of tumours affecting internal organs, which tend to be harder to treat, there were significant improvements from a low base. The five-year survival rate for cancers of the pancreas grew from 6 per cent to 9 per cent, and lung cancer survival increased from 10 per cent to 15 per cent.
The bad news is that Irish cancer rates are generally higher than the European average, as improvements in our services have failed to keep pace with progress elsewhere in the EU.
The incidence of the disease is 10 per cent higher than the EU average for men and 16 per cent higher for women. Mortality is 14 per cent higher for women but 9 per cent lower for men.
Black spots
Other black spots are increases in the incidence of and deaths from lung cancer and melanomas, high mortality from pancreatic cancer and low treatment rates among older patients.
Ireland has the worst survival rates in Europe for cancer of the ovaries and fallopian tubes, and below average rates for cervical, breast and stomach cancer. The incidence of lung cancer is falling among men but rising among women, reflecting changing smoking patterns from decades earlier.
The report credits the rise in prostate cancer to large-scale prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing of men not showing symptoms. The number of PSA tests increased five-fold between 1995 and 2004. Mortality rates have declined by 2.6 per cent a year since 2001.
On average, about 36,000 people are diagnosed with cancer each year, with over half of all cases involving the four major malignancies – prostate, breast, colorectal and lung.
The risk of dying from cancer is about one in 10 for women and one in eight for men. Lung cancer was the single most common cause of cancer death, with about 1,780 deaths each year, one-fifth of all cancer deaths.
Crows are capable of utilizing tools and keeping Faces in Mind
Once it was considered by the scientists that primates were the only animals who had ability of rational thinking. But, researchers have found that Crows have the ability to utilize tools and keep faces in mind.
According to reports of Science Daily, researchers have found in a new study that crows also have capability of rational thinking. For the study, two hooded crows were given training to recognize cards by color and shape. By identifying matching cards, the crow got mealworms.
The research was published in the journal current biology. Ed Wasserman, a psychology professor at the University of Iowa and researchers at Lomonosov Moscow State University, explained how they firstly gave training to two hooded crows to win the treats by matching images.
After this, crows received training to identify cards by relationships. It was found by the researchers that crows could correctly perform the relationship identifications and do it spontaneously.
“Analogical reasoning, matching relations to relations, has been considered to be among the more so-called higher order abstract reasoning processes”, said Anthony Wright, a neurobiology and anatomy professor at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School.
Adding to it, Wright said that for decades such reasoning has been considered to be restricted to humans and some great apes. Joel Fagot, the director of research at the University of Aix-Marseille in France, said that the results breaks the view that complicated forms of cognition can only be found in our smart human species.
It was suggested by accumulated evidence that animals can do more than anticipated. Wasserman agrees that there will be skeptics and expects that the experiment will be repeated with more crows and also with other species.
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