Hunger is the world’s ‘greatest ethical challenge’
Says Irish President M.D. Higgins
The President of Ireland discusses the ‘moral outrage’ of global hunger at Expo 2015 in Milan.
President Michael D Higgins said Ireland has “innate understanding” of world hunger given its Famine history.
It is not often that you will hear a legendary singer such as Seán O’Sé light up a dull, overcast Milan morning with a live rendition of The Foggy Dew, but it happened on Tuesday when Ireland came to visit the Expo 2015 exhibition in Milan.
Accompanied by the Brú Ború band of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí fame, O’Sé was one of a number of Irish artists who welcomed President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina when they came to visit Expo on Tuesday on Irish National Day, time to coincide with Bloomsday.
In an age when hardly anyone knows what Expo is actually about, this Milan version may have hit on an irresistibly winning note. Entitled “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”, it has set out to investigate, illustrate and analyse just about every aspect of arguably the most urgent problem facing the world today.
The point was not lost on the President who said: “Global hunger in the 21st century represents the grossest of human rights violations, and the greatest ethical challenge facing the global community.
“According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, while the world at the present time produces enough food to potentially feed its entire population, more than 1 billion people are undernourished, over 2 billion suffer from nutritional deficiencies, and almost 6 million children die every year from malnutrition or related diseases.”
‘A powerful infrastructure’
The President also said that the fact that more than 140 countries are participating in this Expo means that the exhibition provides a “powerful infrastructure” which brings together the key issues of food provision, upscaling nutrition and sustainability.
Calling world hunger not only a “great ethical challenge” but also a “great moral outrage”, he added:
“Ireland knows about this, Ireland has an innate understanding of this [world hunger] . . . given that 1 million Irish people died of starvation and over 1 million emigrated during, ‘An Gort Mór’, the Great Hunger in the 1840s and [thus] food security is given the highest priority by our development aid programme . . .”
The President was formally received at Expo by Ivan Scalfarotto, Italian junior minister for constitutional reform. Mr Scalfarotto, Italy’s first openly gay government minister, took the opportunity to congratulate Ireland on its progressive “recent legislation”, in an obvious reference to the success of the same-sex marriage referendum last month in Ireland.
During his six-hour stay, the President also took time to visit the Irish pavilion, created around Bord Bia’s “Origin Green” programme which aims at promoting Ireland as “a world-leading producer of independently verified, sustainably produced food and drink while protecting a landscape rich in natural resources”.
And Bloomsday? Do not worry, it was not forgotten with actor Garvan McGrath at one point offering a spirited rendering of some excerpts from Ulysses, excerpts which he also offered in even more spirited Italian much to the bemusement of some of his audience.
‘Our condolences go to the Irish people’ involved in the Berkeley disaster
Kittredge Street apartment materials taken away for more analysis.
Two women embrace while watching sheriff’s deputies on duty at the scene in Berkeley where six Irish students were killed. They said hthey knew the victims.
It was around midnight in California’s best-known college town when Berkeley police got the first call from Kittredge Street tenants and neighbours.
According to their police log, it was just a noise complaint about a student party at the 2110 Berkeley Library Gardens Apartments – not the first or last from the eight-year-old complex, where short-term renters pay up to $3,000 per month for one-bedroom apartments.
“But cops didn’t arrive till 12.40am, just after the balcony collapsed,” said local witness Bob Brown, who lives opposite the apartment. “The police were late this time.”
The six victims have been named as Niccolai Schuster (21), Eoghan Culligan (21), Eimear Walsh (21), Olivia Burke (21), Ashley Donohoe (22) and Lorcan Miller (21). They and others seriously injured, fell on to pavement concrete, not the asphalt of Kittredge Road.
lrish Consul in San Francisco Philip Grantwent to Berkeley early in the day, talking to the building’s owners and establishing names of victims. His staff was already undergoing the usual summertime melee of lost passports and minor infractions. Now they’re facing the colossal bureaucratic and emotional toll.
Local people were dumbfounded at how so many managed to exit narrow French windows onto the cantilevered balcony. It doesn’t seem possible, they repeated.
From the ground, it looked small, and was immediately above another balcony. The pieces of the fourth floor balcony are now gone, leaving a ragged looking slash of wood and tarpaper being inspected by police detectives earlier yesterday morning.
“Statewide, we’re going to be examining balconies more closely from now on,” said a tenant from the opposite complex waiting outside the yellow police tape.
A second neighbour, David Daniels, said they’d “never known anything like this to happen in Berkeley”.
“Our condolences go out to the Irish people,” said Daniels, a 50-year-old Berkeleyian. Like his neighbour Bob Brown, he had watched at 5am as the ambulances and paramedics were moving the last of the injured and dead to local hospitals.
It’s just horrible, he went on, adding that it would make the city look twice at balconies ever after, and should prompt many inquiries into structural issues of number 2110 Kittredge.
Materials have been taken away for more analysis, and serious doubts have been cast on the integrity of building materials.
Daniels recounted how when he first moved to Kittredge Street a few years ago, a severe windstorm combined with a leak inside the roofing to result in an upper story window frame becoming loose and a casement dangling over the side.
He alerted the fire station and it was treated promptly. But the timbers under the stucco cladding are required by code to be kiln-dried and treated. It remains to be seen if they were. The City of Berkeley, the local authority here, said it had been taking “all necessary steps to safely secure the area” and investigate the incident.
It sent building inspectors to examine the scene early in the morning and have taken precautions.
“The balcony for the affected unit, as well as the three other similar balconies in the building, have each been red-tagged, prohibiting access to those areas,” it said.
“The City has ordered the property owner to immediately remove the failed balcony and to perform a structural assessment of the remaining balconies within 48 hours.”
Greystar, the property management company for the Library Gardens Apartments, said its heart went out to the families and friends of the deceased and those injured in the “tragic accident”.
“The safety of our residents is our highest priority and we will be working with an independent structural engineer and local authorities to determine the cause of the accident. We will share more details as we have them,” it said.
Throughout the day a host of friends and J-1ers came to the sidewalk of 2020 Kittredge to leave wreaths, messages and bouquets for the deceased and injured.
A block with the words City of Berkeley etched in it was draped in the bright blue flag of Dublin.
The Euro falls amid a Greek standoff,
The euro fell on Tuesday as it appeared more likely that debt-stricken Greece would default or have to leave the single currency, while the U.S. dollar rose at the start of a two-day meeting by the Federal Reserve.
Stocks mostly rose on the day, with shares in both Europe and the United States rebounding after a two-day decline, though investors continued to closely monitor the situation with Greece. Wall Street stocks were also supported by potential deal activity in the healthcare space.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras lashed out at Greece’s creditors on Tuesday, accusing them of trying to “humiliate” Greeks, and he defied a drum beat of warnings that Europe is preparing for his country to leave the euro. The address was seen as a sign that Tsipras was unlikely to accept austerity cuts needed to unlock frozen aid and avoid a debt default within two weeks.
“The market is still anxious about Greece and would like the situation to be dealt with one way or another. The week-after-week uncertainty isn’t good for the market,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The euro EUR= fell 0.35% to $1.1243 while the U.S. dollar index .DXY, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.2 percent. The yen JPY= was flat against the dollar.
The all-country MSCI International ACWI Price Index .MIWD00000PUS rose 0.3 percent, while the pan-European FTS Eurofirst 300 .FTEU3 ended 0.6% higher, rebounding after a decline of 2.4 percent over the previous two sessions. Shares in Hong Kong .HSI fell 1.1%.
The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI rose 113.31 points, or 0.64%, to 17,904.48, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 11.86 points, or 0.57%, to 2,096.29 and the Nasdaq Composite.IXIC added 25.58 points, or 0.51%, to 5,055.55. The S&P 500 is coming off a two-day decline of 1.2%.
Wall Street was also lifted after the Wall Street Journal reported that UnitedHealth (UNH.N) was considering buying Cigna (CI.N) and Aetna (AET.N). UnitedHealth, a Dow component, rose 2.2% to $121.55.
U.S. investors were also looking for clues regarding the timing of a rate hike after a two-day Federal Reserve meeting.
The central bank is unlikely to raise rates in this meeting but traders will watch for any hints from Fed Chair Janet Yellen at a news conference after the meeting on Wednesday.
The Fed has said it remains data-dependent and will raise rates only when it sees an improvement in the economy. Second-quarter data pointed to a recovery after a halt in growth earlier in the year.
The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note US10YT=RR rose 12/32 in price, pushing the yield down to 2.3111%.
In the commodity market, U.S. crude futures CLc1 rose 0.8% to $60.01 per barrel, lifted as a tropical storm moved ashore in the oil-producing state of Texas. [O/R] Brent crude for August delivery LCOc1 was down 0.5% at $63.65 per barrel.
Gold prices XAU= fell 0.4% while silver XAU= lost 0.5%. Copper CMCU3 lost 1.1% in its second straight daily decline of more than 1%.
The future of Irish post offices has very little to do with posting a letter?
Around 48% of post offices in Ireland account for just 12% of total business.
Irish Post Offices are being told to move into a number areas but it has nothing to do with posting a letter?
Entrepreneur Bobby Kerr has led a group which has authored a report for the Department of Communications which says that post offices can thrive if they move into financial services, social enterprise, public service delivery and white labelling.
The report found that a disproportionate amount of business is conducted in relatively few of the country’s 1,140 post offices. Two thirds of all transactions are conducted in just 300 post offices, while another 48% of post offices account for just 12% of total business.
The report says that An Post should fill the hole left in rural Ireland by the withdrawal of banks and should deliver services like motor tax, the electoral register, HSE payments, local authority payments and CAO and exam fees.
It also suggests post offices are better used for social enterprise and that they cross-sell goods from other suppliers.
Kerr says that An Post’s reach across the country means it is well-placed to deliver customer services.
I believe that An Post is best placed to provide a customer-led solution for a host of financial and government-related services right across the country.
There has been a slowdown in post office closures in the last five years, with a net closure rate of 24 between 2011 and 2014.
Gold that could be worth €150 million to Irish economy discovered by miners in Ireland
The valuable mineral was discovered this morning in soil three-feet deep near the border
Miners have unearthed gold believed to be worth more than €150 million in the border region.
The valuable mineral was discovered this morning in soil three-feet deep near Rockcorry, Co Monaghan.
Any gold found in the region is owned by the State and extracted under licence.
Irish gold exploration company Conroy Gold and Natural Resources confirmed that 700 metres by 300 metres gold-in-soil patch was tapped by explorers.
The company is proposing to develop a gold mine in Monaghan, around 14km away from the latest discovery and has been carrying out a number of searches in the area.
Professor Richard Conroy told the Irish Mirror: “When we hopefully get to develop it, which will be years down the line, it will be worth several million but there is an awful lot of work to be done.
“You have to do all the technical work first to see how much is actually down there.”
The discovery, which the company said revealed four gold-in-soil samples above 20ppb gold and a further five above 10ppb gold, is situated within the 50 km gold trend that Conroy outlined.
Professor Conroy explained: “This discovery confirms the gold potential of the company’s licenses in the area lying between the company’s existing gold targets to the Northwest at Clay Lake, Clontibret, where a mine is being developed, and Glenish, as well as those to the South at Slieve Glah.”
The gold lies along a major geological structure, known as the Orlock Bridge Fault.
The company has been working on the regions for years drilling, trenching and sampling.
Just last week, a gold nugget worth a staggering £10,000 (€14,000) was found in Scotland.
The precious metal – thought to be the largest found in Scotland in seven decades – was discovered by a Canadian gold panning enthusiast in a river near Wanlockhead, in Dumfries and Galloway.
It is believed the 20-carat nugget, which weighs around 18 grams, will spark a gold rush in the area.
While in April this year the Connemara Mining Company bought prospecting licences on the Inishowen peninsula
Building and moulding a child that can cope with life is a mighty task
There’s so much advice around parenting these days that it feels like you need a Phd. Ailin Quinlan cut to the chase and got tips from one of the country’s foremost experts in children and mental health.
Every parent yearns for an emotionally healthy child. Clinical psychologist Paul Gilligan has written a book for parents on how to raise one.
But what is an emotionally healthy child? “An emotionally healthy child is a child who’s generally content and confident, has a positive belief in themselves and can handle adversity in an appropriate manner,” says Gilligan, who is CEO of At Patrick’s Mental Health Services and chair of the Children’s Rights Alliance.
“They experience positive emotions in an appropriate way, at the appropriate time, and behave in a positive manner,” says the former CEO of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Children aged under 13 reflect their emotions in behaviour — for example, a depressed child may not do their homework, may not want to get up in the morning or may be the subject of complaints from the class teacher.
Gilligan says that parents have a built-in ability: “We are born with a deep capacity to love our children and to do the best we can for them,” he says. The goal is for the parent to connect with both of these qualities.
It is normal for parents to make mistakes, he says. Three things factors decide a child’s emotional and mental health — the child’s personality, his/her experiences, and the support he/she receives from parents and other important people in their lives. If these factors are not healthy, they can cause problems.
“Emotionally healthy children are able to navigate the difficulties of life — even if they develop an issue about something, if they are emotionally healthy they are better able to cope with it,” Gilligan says.
His tips on raising an emotionally healthy child:
- Connect with your deep love for your child
“We are in an era where parents are reluctant to talk about loving their child. Consciously acknowledge that love, and remind yourself that your actions spring from that,” he says.
- Believe in yourself as a parent
Don’t be overly confident, but believe in your ability to parent your child. Recognise that this may involve asking for help or advice. Don’t beat yourself up about what you’re not doing. “Research tells us that parents spend more time with their children nowadays than they did in the 1960s, but are more prone to questioning themselves around their ability to parent and provide for their child,” Gilligan says.
- Teach your child self-confidence
Encourage self-respect and self-care, and their development of realistic expectations of themselves.
“Help them map out their day,” he says. Encourage your child to understand that while they must do their homework, they should also relax afterwards, with a game of football, for example.
Develop realistic expectations by encouraging self-awareness and insight, and support them in doing their best in their hobbies and activities.
“Help them reflect on their achievements,” he says.
- Teach your child how to deal with difficulties
Protect them from unnecessary difficulties by identifying problems, such as bullying — but recognise that they will have to deal with the death of a beloved relative, for example, or a poor performance in an examination.
- Teach your child to be happy
First, recognise that your child cannot be happy all the time, but when there is the opportunity, encourage them to be happy.
“Let them be themselves, and allow them to realise their own individuality,” he says.
Remember, says Gilligan, life is full of things to be sad or happy about — but that also it often depends on how we interpret them. A child can be happy or disappointed with a B-plus grade in a test, depending on how they look at it, for example.
- Ensure the child’s environment is healthy and safe
Take a balanced approach, he says, because these days there is a major focus on “risks” and parents can become overly concerned.
“Be reasonable about assessing risk. Don’t swaddle a child in cotton wool and don’t expose a child to serious hazards. It’s all about balance,” he says. “We can overplay the risks to children.”
- Listen to, and communicate with, your child
It’s important to listen to what they are saying, and to communicate as clearly as possible. Integrate communication into family life, he says, by, for example, sitting down to an evening meal together.
- Look after yourself as a person
Reinforce yourself. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge what you do for your child, so that they see that you do your best. Try to maintain a balance between work, family and social life.
Raising Emotionally Healthy Children, by Paul Gilligan, published by Veritas, €14.95, will be launched by RTÉ broadcaster, Áine Lawlor, today at St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services, James St, Dublin 8.
‘Life outside of Earth is probably going to be really hard to find’
Say Scientists
In previewing missions in the search for life and discussing its challenges, the scientists confess they ‘can’t even agree on a definition of what life detection is’
This guy is smiling, but the search for life is not easy, says Nasa.
NASA scientists previewed several missions in the search for life off Earth on Tuesday, including a plan to scoop up minerals from an asteroid and one to drill into the surface of Mars.
The missions described by researchers included satellites, spacecraft, landers and work concentrated on Mars, Jupiter moons, an asteroid and on Earth itself.
“Sciences are being unified by the search for life in the universe,” said Dr John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at Nasa, before conceding that “life outside of earth is probably going to be really hard to find”.
“We can’t even agree on a definition of what life detection is.”
Grunsfeld said missions to Mars in the next few years will have greater capabilities than the Curiosity rover, which continues to explore Mars and in April discovered water on below the surface of the red planet. The European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission, for instance, aims to specifically search for signs of life.
The lander will have a “deeper drill than any lander”, Grunsfeld said, able to reach down into the Martian crust “a couple of meters” where the deadly radiation that bombards the planet would not be as able to affect life.
“The surface of Mars is bathed in ultraviolet light, bathed in radiation,” Grunsfeld said. “Mars’s magnetic field is essentially gone, so the surface of Mars is essentially sterilized.”
Places where the frozen water exists, as in the planet’s polar glaciers and below the surface, might be able to harbor life, but “these are challenging places to get to”, he said.
Last year the Curiosity rover detected “spikes” of methane, stoking speculation of life on the planet, but Grunsfeld noted that those signals could be abiotic as well as from a biotic organism.
“On future missions we’re going to look more toward what kind of instruments could detect life,” he said. “A DNA sequencer for instance might fail miserably even if it were surrounded by extant Martian life.”
The ExoMars mission is planned for 2018 and receive assistance from Nasa.
Grunsfeld also described a mission named Osiris Rex, which aims to send a satellite to an asteroid called Bennu in order to study its composition. The satellite will “do a quick touch-and-go and grab samples, up to 2kg (5lb)”, he said, which researchers will then be able to study.
In part, the Osiris Rex team will try to determine whether the organic materials that started life on Earth were “seeded” on the planet by collisions with carbonaceous asteroids like Bennu.
Dr Britney Schmidt, the principal investigator for the Nasa-funded Sub-Ice Marine and Planetary Analog Ecosystems (Simple) mission, spoke about the possibilities for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
“There’s a whole host of ice-rich worlds which potentially harbor subsurface oceans,” Schmidt said. “These are important places to think about in the search for life even within our own solar system.”
In February, Nasa won approval from the White House to proceed with a mission to fly by Europa, which is covered in a sheet of ice that has intrigued scientists for the likelihood that it coats a subsurface ocean.
The mission will feature an ice-penetrating radar that has been used to explore similar surfaces on Earth, Schmidt said, and try to determine whether the moon harbors “enough energy to power biology in these very distant and seemingly so alien worlds”.
Dr Alexis Templeton showcased some of her research on alien environments here on earth, where scientists have discovered life in what were until recently considered utterly inhospitable regions.
In particular, Templeton studies how rocks may have helped create life in these extreme environments. “Rocks have within them, depending on their chemistry, the ability to release electrons,” she said, which “can fuel certain systems, essentially a lot like fuel cells do”.
Citing the discovery of life in the high-pH waters of remote deserts and the ways that water can release chemicals and energy when it interacts with certain rocks, Templeton said that the research could help colleagues determine what exactly they should look for on celestial bodies. On a moon of Saturn, for instance, plumes of particles ejected from the south pole could “represent potential for liquid water that’s stored underneath the ice shell”, she said.
Dr Vikki Meadows, a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory, said that she was studying hunting for oceans on planets by looking for the “glint effect”.
Meadows described the phenomenon as “something that should be very familiar to you if you’ve ever sat on a beach after sunrise or sunset” – the reflected light of the sun off the surface of the water at a particular angle.
With the help of a blurry photo of a crescent Earth, from a satellite that later crashed into the moon, researchers were able to calculate the glint effect for other planets – a prediction that could help detect oceans on solar systems outside our own.
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