Lucinda Creighton (Renua) claims Refugees coming to Ireland should be screened
Lucinda Creighton launches her new political party.
REFUGEES BEING RELOCATED TO IRELAND SHOULD BE SCREENED IN LIGHT OF LAST WEEK’S HORRIFIC SEX ATTACKS IN GERMANY, ACCORDING TO RENUA LEADER LUCINDA CREIGHTON.
The Dublin Bay South TD today said it is not “xenophobic” to hold the belief that a screening programme should be in place.
Ireland has committed to accommodate up to 4,000 refugees who have fled war-torn countries such as Syria and Iraq.
However, today’s Sunday Independent/Millward Brown opinion poll reveals that almost three in five people (59pc) are concerned that terrorists could enter Ireland under the guise of the relocation programme.
The poll was conducted prior to shocking incidents in Cologne, Germany last week, which involved a spate of attacks on women.
Speaking on Newstalk today, Ms Creighton called for tough screening rules.
“I don’t think it’s xenophobic or unreasonable to say that there should be screening, and that there should be a process and mechanism in place to ensure that refugees are genuine refugees and not economic migrants,” she said.
I think in a sense there has been an attempt to silence anyone who questions the kind of complete open door policy. It has to be open door, but it has to involve screening in terms of security but also in terms of the kind of cultural issues that are emerging in Germany,” she added.
FF calls on Central Bank to fast-track review of mortgage rules
SINN FÉIN FINANCE SPOKESMAN SAYS BANK SHOULD ‘TREAD CAREFULLY’
Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Finance Michael McGrath above left.
Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath has called on the Central Bank to undertake a review of its controversial mortgage rules now rather than wait until the summer to avoid a prolonged period of market disruption.
The Central Bank’s new governor Philip Lane (above right) has promised to review the current raft of mortgage lending restrictions in six months.
His comments in an interview recently mean mortgage applications throughout the spring and early summer – the busiest time for house sales – will continue to be carried out under the current rules.
Prof Lane said the rules could be tightened or loosened and that he remained open-minded at this point.
However, Mr McGrath maintains a six-month wait for the review would have a corrosive effect on an already sluggish market.
“Given the time it takes to assess submissions and implement any revisions decided upon, it is likely to be the end of the year at the earliest before any substantial changes are made,” he said.
“There is a very real risk that this will result in the already sluggish mortgage market grinding to a halt as potential buyers and sellers wait to see the impact of any new regulations.”
Mr McGrath said his party want the Central Bank to examine the potential of allowing 25 per cent of the deposit requirement for a first-time buyer be met by taking in to account rent payments over the previous three years.
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty urged caution saying the Central Bank should “tread carefully” to not give any impression that the spirit of the rules could be undermined.
“It was always conceived that these reviews would be monitored and altered as the evidence dictated,” Mr Doherty said.
He said Sinn Féin was “acutely aware” of the immediate impact the rules have had on first time buyers and young families wishing to move on to a more suitable home for growing families.
“Review of the rules is welcome and sensible but I hope the Central Bank treads carefully and does not give any hope to those parties who have learned nothing and are calling for a return to the politics and economics of the bubble,” he said.
Ireland heading for a great sugar crash landing
There is nothing sweet about Ireland’s sugar statistics. We are the fourth highest consumer of sugar in the world, according to Euromonitor research. Yes, the world, coming in behind the US, Germany and the Netherlands.
“It’s shocking,” says Dr Eva Orsmond, who says she sees the effects of excessive sugar consumption daily at her clinics in Dublin, Kilkenny, and Galway.
“The problem is that most people don’t realise the amount of ‘free’ or added sugar that is lurking in food, even savoury food,” she adds.
In Sugar Crash, a one-off documentary that airs on RTÉ One on Monday, DrEva reveals what our love affair with sugar is costing us in hospital admissions, dental health, long-term illnesses and premature death.
The figures are stark. The average Irish person consumes a whopping 24 teaspoons daily. To put that in context, last year the World Health Organisation revised its guidelines to recommend that adults get no more than 10 per cent of their daily calories from ‘free’ sugars or those added by manufacturers.
Counting in teaspoons, that means adults should limit themselves to 10 teaspoons a day — or six to get health benefits.
“It’s easy to identify some sugars, such as fizzy drinks and the biggest offenders, breakfast cereals,” says Dr Eva. “But people mightn’t realise that a single glass of [some brands of] orange juice might be twice the daily recommended intake for a child.”
She says she was shocked to find that sugar was hiding in all kinds of unexpected foods, such as crackers and bread.
“I found a lot of things hard to swallow, even as a health professional” she tells Feelgood. “For instance, I thought my sons (aged 18 and 19) would not be harmed by a little sugar as they will burn it off, but that is wrong. A high intake of sugar is still a risk factor for disease.”
She says looking at the sugar content on labels was also a salutary lesson. In the documentary, she charts the progress of a Kilkenny family who were stunned to find out how much sugar was in their ‘normal’ healthy diet.
For instance, an average bowl of muesli with a pot of flavoured yoghurt at breakfast sounds like a healthy option but, depending on the brand, that single meal could constitute your entire daily intake of sugar.
Sugar may not always be visible, but its effects are all around us in stark relief. Between 1997 and 2007, obesity levels rose here by a staggering 67 per cent and with them, our love of sugar.
Who can say why sugar consumption rates rose so sharply. Part of it might be explained by the increased disposable income of the Celtic Tiger years which we spent on processed and pre-prepared food, Dr Eva speculates.
The ‘low fat’ fad is partly to blame too, she believes. Manufacturers took the fat out of food, but replaced it with sugar, which has no nutritional value and doesn’t fill you up. “In fact,” Dr Eva says, “foods with high sugar make you want more of them”.
And so the cycle goes on, leading to obesity, high cholesterol, an increased risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and growing dental problems.
The number of teeth extractions among children is also on the rise due to excessive sugar intake.
“No matter how much you brush your teeth, it will not be enough to compensate for the excessive sugar intake,”she says.
One of the most chilling findings is that part of the problem is hidden. Food labels don’t distinguish between added sugars and those that occur naturally. Though, if a product is high in sugar — added or not — it is probably best avoided, Dr Eva says.
And although fruit is not counted as a ‘free’ sugar, it is a good idea to monitor your intake of that too, she adds.
But it is not all doom and gloom. Adopting a healthy diet can very quickly undo much of the damage done by excessive sugar.
“We all need to go back to basics,” says Dr Eva, advocating a return to home-cooking with fresh ingredients. After that, she says, the solution is “education, education, education”.
NASA shares incredible pictures of rippled sand dunes on the planet Mars
The beautiful Namib sand dune on Mars left pic. and right a picture of Downwind of the Namib sand dune.
NASA has unveiled spectacular photographs of majestic sand dunes on
It is the first chance scientists have had to examine active sand formations on any planet other than Earth.
The Curiosity Mars rover, NASA’s car-sized reconnaissance robot, has been based on Mars’ surface for more than three years now, and successfully captured the stunning images.
The photographs depict the enormous, segmented Namib dune which stands at a whopping 13 – 17 feet tall.
“One of the first things they want to explore is the grain size and morphology of different parts of the slipface,” Lauren Edgar, a member of the Curiosity team and a USGS Astrogeology Science Centre research geologist said.
The ripples on the dunes change over time due to the prevailing winds on Mars.
After short period of time, so much sand builds up that the sand at the bottom can’t sustain the weight of the sand on top, and a tiny avalanche occurs
The Namib sand dune is just one of many dunes located in the Bagnold Dunes field on the northwestern side of Mars.
It is situated very near to where Curiosity first touched down back in 2012.
Your Neanderthal DNA may have passed on to you allergies
In the American Journal of Human Genetics, two research teams reported that in many people, a group of genes that governs the first line of defense against pathogens was probably inherited from Neanderthals.
If you sneeze when flowers bloom in the spring and tear up in the presence of a cat, your Neanderthal DNA may be to blame.
About 2% of the DNA in most people alive today came from trysts between ancient humans and their Neanderthal neighbours tens of thousands of years ago, recent studies have shown. Scientists are trying to determine what, if any, impact that Neanderthal genetic legacy has on our contemporary lives.
In two papers published last week in the American Journal of Human Genetics, two research teams reported that in many people, a group of genes that governs the first line of defense against pathogens was probably inherited from the Neanderthals.
These same genes also appear to play a role in some people’s allergic reaction to things such as pollen and pet fur, the scientists said.
“It’s a bit speculative, but perhaps this is some kind of trade-off,” said Janet Kelso, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and senior author of one of the new studies. “Increased resistance to bacterial infection was advantageous, but may have resulted in some increased sensitivity to nonpathogenic allergens.”
About 50,000 years ago, the modern humans who left Africa encountered Neanderthal settlements in the Middle East, scientists believe. On some occasions, these meetings led to couplings whose legacy is apparent in the genomes of people with ancestors from Europe and Asia.
Not everyone with Neanderthal DNA inherited the same genes. But the immunity genes appear to be more prevalent than others.
Among some Asian and European populations, researchers found that these particular Neanderthal genes can be found in 50 percent of people.
“That’s huge,” said Lluis Quintana-Murci, an evolutionary geneticist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and senior author of the other study. “It came as a big surprise to us.”
The findings imply that these Neanderthal genes must have served our ancestors well if they are still in our genome today, and especially at such high frequency, said Peter Parham, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford School of Medicine. If the DNA weren’t valuable, it would have been flushed out of the human gene pool.
“It suggests there was a benefit for the migrating modern human and the archaic human to get together,” said Parham, who wasn’t involved in the research. “What has survived is a hybridization of those populations.”
Both of the research groups report on a cluster of three genes — known collectively as TLR6-TLR1-TLR10 — that makes up part of the body’s innate immune response to invading bacteria and viruses.
The innate immune response is different from the acquired immune response that we get through exposure to pathogens, either through vaccines or simply getting sick. Innate immunity kicks in first, and if it’s successful, it can destroy a pathogen in a few hours, before we even know we are sick.
Because this innate immune response is so useful, it has been a strong site of positive selection over time, Quintana-Murci said.
Though both groups of researchers came to the same conclusion that Neanderthal DNA plays an important role in immunity, the teams were asking different questions at the outset of their studies.
Quintana-Murci’s group is trying to understand how microscopic pathogens have influenced the human genome as our species has evolved.
Because infectious diseases have killed so many people throughout history, it makes sense that genes involved in immunity would spread through natural selection.
For their study, Quintana-Murci and his colleagues examined 1,500 innate-immunity genes in people and matched them up with a previously published map of the Neanderthal DNA in the human genome.
The team calculated the percentage of Neanderthal DNA in innate-immunity genes as well as in other genes. When they compared them, they saw that innate-immunity genes had much higher proportions of Neanderthal sequences.
Kelso’s group, on the other hand, is interested in ancient genomes like those of Neanderthals. In particular, her team aims to uncover the functional consequences of long-ago interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals.
The Max Planck Institute scientists analyzed the genomes of thousands of present-day people from all over the world, looking for evidence of extended regions with high similarity to the DNA of Neanderthals. Then they checked how often they saw those Neanderthal-like DNA sequences in humans alive today.
“What emerged was this region containing three genes involved in the innate-immune system,” she said.
Both research groups said there is still much work to be done to determine how this Neanderthal DNA helped humans survive.
However, they are already certain that interbreeding with Neanderthals aided early humans as they faced new dangers after leaving Africa.
“The things we have inherited from Neanderthals are largely things that have allowed us to adapt to our environment,” Kelso said. “This is perhaps not completely surprising.”
Because Neanderthals had lived in Europe and western Asia for about 200,000 years before modern humans got there, they were probably already well adapted to the local climate, foods and pathogens.
“By interbreeding with these archaic people, modern humans could then acquire some of these adaptations,” Kelso said.
Parham of Stanford said the results are convincing, especially since they were made by two independent groups that essentially confirmed each other.
The results add to a growing body of work that highlights our debt to our Neanderthal relatives.
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