Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Ireland no longer playing catch-up with rest of the eurozone

    

Figures released on Wednesday by the Central Statistics Office showed Ireland’s economy has now exited its second recession since 2008, driven by a jump in exports coupled with a pick-up in personal consumption.

Exports increased by €1.5bn between the start of April and the end of June, while personal spending jumped 0.7pc on the previous quarter. The country’s construction industry is finally beginning to show signs of growth too, expanding by 4.2pc in the same period.

We’ve now caught up on the eurozone as a whole, which officially pulled out of an 18-month recessionat the end of June.

In fact, Irish growth actually exceeded the eurozone average in the most recent quarter.

Yesterday, the European Commissionsaid investor confidence in the singlecurrency trading bloc had reached a two-year high in September.

The eurozone’s recovery, however, remains fragile. While Ireland has finally found itself in growth mode, other countries are still mired in recession – two consecutive quarters of economic contraction – and those conditions persist in Spain, Italy, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Slovenia. That list could be longer; not all countries, including Greece, report quarterly GDP figures.

In some of these countries, a return to growth looks unlikely to happen any time soon.

Italy cut its growth forecasts yesterday and will probably need further austerity measures to bring its budget deficit to below the European Union’s 3pc threshold, as promised this year.

But even though we can’t be sure of its quarterly GDP performance, the news still looks more positive for embattled Greece.

Unofficial estimates released this week said the country’s battered economy expanded from April to June on a quarterly basis, for the first time since its crisis erupted four years ago.

Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said on Thursday that the economy was inching towards recovery, as unemployment registered its first quarterly fall in almost four years. “Signs of a recovery are now evident,” he said.

These greenshoots of hope could provide a boost to government revenues that would help Athens avoid further, painful austerity measures to meet the fiscal targets under its international bailout. Encouraged by the figures, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras urged lenders not demand any more cuts to jobs, wages and pensions.

The troika begins an inspection tomorrow that will assess the country’s compliance with reforms and establish any further financing Athens needs before it regains market access.

Cork, Limerick and Galway to get bikes for hire next year

 

The hugely successful Dublin bikes-for-hire scheme will be available in three other cities from next summer and could be rolled out to other towns in the near future.

Public Transport minister Alan Kelly has unveiled plans to have 700 bikes installed in Cork, Limerick and Galway by next July, but told the Irish Independent that other towns and cities could also benefit.

Sponsored by Coca Cola Ireland, the bikes will be branded ‘Coke Zerobikes’, with 315 for Cork, 200 in Limerick and 185 in Galway.

There will be 31 docking stations in Cork, 23 in Limerick and 19 in Galway, with the locations to be decided over the coming months.

The schemes, which will be the first of their kind outside the capital, will allow cyclists to use bikes for either free or at a low cost and take or leave them at various docking stations throughout the cities. “This is a breakthrough day for cycling in Ireland,” Mr Kelly said.

“Cork, Galway and Limerick will be joining the likes of Paris, London,Barcelona and Dublin as the cities which have their own public-bike schemes.

“We would estimate that an additional 700,000 cycling trips will be taken per annum because of this scheme. This project has been over two years in the making.

COST: “I’m quietly confident we will be able to do something in Waterford in the future and in areas including Kilkenny, Letterkenny, Athlone and Clonmel.”

The bike stations and bikes will be funded by the Department of Transport, through the National Transport Authority (NTA), at a cost of €4m to install. It will cost another €900,000 a year to operate and maintain the service.

It is understood that Coca Cola Ireland has paid €3m over five years to secure the branding rights – much of this will go on maintenance, with the balance to be made up by councils and the €250,000 expected to be generated in subscriptions.

The cost has not yet been decided, but is expected to be the same as Dublin, where it costs €10 per year to subscribe, with the first half-hour of a bike hire free. After that, charges range from 50c per hour.

The number of cyclists in Dublin has grown by 40pc since 2009. The NTA is currently in the process of competitive tendering for companies to supply,install and maintain the bikes as part of the scheme.

The tender process is expected to be completed by December 2013, and the bikes will be available by next July.

The NTA also plans to extend the Dublin Bikes scheme from 550 bikes at present to 1,500 over the next year.

Praveen Halappanavar begins right for life action against hospital and doctor

   

Proceedings allege negligence and breach of Savita’s right to life by hospital and clinicians

Praveen Halappanavar alleges medical negligence and a breach of wife Savita’s right to life, by Galway hospital and the team of clinicians.

The husband of the late Savita Halappanavar has served legal proceedings against Galway University Hospital and the consultant who treated her in the week before her death.

  Praveen Halappanavar’s solicitor, Gerard O’Donnell, said the proceedings, against hospital and Dr Katherine Astbury, were served to the hospital’s solicitors in the city yesterday. He said the proceedings alleged medical negligence and a breach of Ms Halappananvar’s right to life, by the hospital and the team of clinicians led by Dr Astbury.

Ms Halappanavar died at the Galway hospital on October 28th last. She had been 17 weeks pregnant and miscarrying when she was admitted to the hospital on October 21st. She had requested a termination of the pregnancy after being told she was miscarrying but this was refused as the foetal heartbeat was still present. She contacted septicaemia and went into septic shock, particularly after October 24th, after she delivered the foetus. She suffered multi-organ failure and died at 1.09 am in intensive care a week after she arrived at the hospital.

A inquest into her death in April returned a verdict of death by medical misadventure, while a HSE investigation into her care found there was an overemphasis on the welfare of the unviable foetus and an under emphasis on Ms Halappanavar’s deterioration. An investigation by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) is ongoing.

The proceedings relate to the care she received between October 21st and the morning and early afternoon of October 24th. Mr Halappanavar has no issues with the care his late wife received in the high dependency and intensive care units between the afternoon of October 24th and the time of her death, at 1.09 am on October 28th.

Speaking to The Irish Times today, Mr O’Donnell said his client was “pleased” the proceedings had now been served. The decision to take legal action against the hospital was first reported in The Irish Times in July.

“He is anxious to get things moving,” said Mr O’Donnell. “This is another strand in achieving accountability. That is what my client wants and it is what her family wants.”

Canada has plenty of jobs but Ireland is my home

  

MY CANADIAN AND IRISH FRIENDS THOUGHT I WAS MAD TO MOVE BACK AFTER TWO YEARS IN TORONTO BUT I’M HAPPY, WRITES CLAIRE O’KEEFE

I’m writing this at home, in the family sitting room with its high ceilings, abandoned webs and familiar ripe scent of ancient wood. I’m home after spending nearly two years living and working in the great city of Toronto. I had adapted to the Canadian culture, the way of life, like every other emigrant and landed a permanent job in my field of work, but two years in, I made the big decision to return home to Ireland.

My own choice was made, my future was decided but my circle of friends, both Canadian and Irish, had interesting reactions to my choice.

I’m not going to pretend the decision-making process was easy. It was a tough undertaking, over the past few months, to weigh up the pros and cons of living in a rich, vibrant city like Toronto, with so much diversity and so many opportunities. Honestly, there is a real sense that the impossible can be achieved in Canada. But the cons won out in the end.

I had reached the point when my work permit was set to expire and the next step was to apply for permanent residency, which is one step away from citizenship. The truth is I wasn’t enamoured enough with Canada – despite all its treasures – to consider living there long term. There is also the issue of wanting to be near the people you love. When your heart feels heavy for home, and has felt that way for a long time, there’s no diet for that; there’s no cure until the Visa card is whipped out and the plane tickets are booked.

I booked mine in June. Now that I’m home (I got back in early September) I’m comforted by the fact that I’ve felt nothing like regret since I clicked the ‘book now’ button on that warm evening in our apartment’s small kitchen. I’m also glad that I’ll be armed with close to two years of professional experience. But looking at my decision to move back to Ireland through other peoples’ eyes was a little extraordinary.

“You’re not serious.” This was generally the reaction I got from my Irish friends living in Canada when I told them my news. The eyebrows raised; the eye-to-eye stare endured and then, seconds later, the pity arrived. You could see it in their expressions, leaking empathy with their Puss ‘n Boots eyes. “It’s because you’re homesick is it?” they said. “Ah you’re right girl, it’s hard work living in Canada.”

The compassion was not meant to antagonize or annoy, but to help me to justify a hard decision. That’s nice, but no justification is necessary.

The Canadians had a different reaction altogether. “I’m leaving Canada for Ireland,” I’d say to my Canadian friends. “What?” they’d ask. “I’m leaving for Ireland,” I’d say again because they don’t believe me. “You’re going home?!” they say with absolute incredulity. Over and over again, I repeated the decision and explained the reasons why it was made. Over and over again I was met with astonishment.

“But why is she going to Ireland,” I heard my Canadian friend ask my Irish friend, “does she really want to go back?”… as if I had a gun to my head.

It’s a comical reaction. It may be founded in the Canadians’ patriotism, clearly evident from the word ‘CANADA’ and the Maple Leaf emblazoned on clothes, bags, and hats. It may be hard to process the notion that someone would want to leave such a great and wonderful country as theirs.

It also may be founded in the belief that I might be mad. Why would I go back to a near-beaten country with Cute Hoors and white collar criminals roaming free? Why would I dismantle and destroy a life I’ve built in a safe, secure and regulated country like Canada, to return to chaos in a nation that can be called Europe’s Whipping Boy?

Because it’s Ireland. Because it’s unique. Because it’s home.

Transcending climate catastrophe: hopeful answers from the Great Spiritual Traditions

  

This year’s droughts, floods, and horrific wildfires all come after a mere 1 degree Fahrenheit of global warming over the 20th century. With a projected 9 degrees of warming by 2100, how do we deal with the potential extinction of civilization?

Personal Death, the great mystics tell us, is always on our minds, even if buried deep in the psyche. If you think otherwise, notice your response the next time you’re crossing the street, intently talking on your cell, when a bus suddenly bears down on you at 60 mph.

HUMAN-CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE IS JUST SUCH A BUS.

We’ve recently seen 65 % of the nation gripped by drought, record Western wildfires, more than 26,000 heat records shattered, the U.S. corn crop withered, herds of cattle slaughtered for lack of water. 2011 saw the record Mississippi River and Midwest floods, and Texas drought. 2010 saw Russia’s wildfires and Pakistan’s floods. This happened with just 1 degree Fahrenheit global warming over the 20th century. The horrific impacts of 9 degrees warming – likely by 2100 on our current course – is unimaginable.

Clearly, the potential demise of our civilization, our species, of hundreds of thousands of other species, of the world of tigers and maple trees and temperate weather is underway. It is equally on all our minds at all times, and yet buried as deep down as we can bury it.

The denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance being displayed by everyone – from politicians to pundits to parents, plumbers and poets – is indicative of this now innate but forbidden knowledge.

For those of us who are activists and journalists, who do bring it to the surface, we hold out the irrational bargaining chip of carbon taxes, solar power, or better light bulbs, as if these elixirs will save us. In so doing, we invoke the denial and wrath of the right wing pundits and politicians, who irrationally insist our collapsing global ecosystems are a hoax perpetrated by Al Gore and the UN to gain world domination. None of us is bad or evil in our assertions – rather we all stand at different stages of the grieving process.

This year’s record Arctic meltdown – ignored by the media and presidential candidates –likely sounded a death knell for all we hold dear: our world, country, community, our families, ourselves. It is clear that our well-meaning scientists got it wrong with their models. The extreme weather that wasn’t supposed to happen until after 2050, the Arctic meltdown that wasn’t supposed to begin until after 2070, the Greenland and Western Antarctic Ice Sheet meltdown that wasn’t to begin until after 2100, are all under way now.

The rate of damaging global change is turning exponential, even as the rate at which the world burns fossil fuels rises. Like a chain smoker, diagnosed with terminal cancer, we can’t stop.

Those alive in 2100 will likely be living on a very different, hostile planet. Monster heat waves, droughts, deluges, sea level rise, die off of fisheries and forests, destruction of industrial agriculture, water shortages, famine, plague, war… all likely await those of us who live into the 2020s, 2030s and beyond.

SO WHERE DO WE BEGIN? WHAT DO WE DO?

The best and healthiest response may be surrender (this does not mean inaction!). We are personally powerless to stop this terrible thing from happening. Though hard to swallow, surrender is the only means to serenity and sanity.

Of course, this will be hard. Few of us has surrendered to the inevitability of our own deaths – I, for one, have not. Surrendering to the death of civilization, and possibly humanity and much of life on earth comes even harder. But it is the only way to avoid the bitterness and desolation that await otherwise.

How should we act from within surrender? As mystics tell us, by preparing for a good death with a good life.

This means embracing love instead of hate, peace instead of war, joy instead of despair. It means giving up selfish separateness for selfless unity with the planet and all living beings. It means surrender to service over personal gain.

The great spiritual teachers of every tradition tell us: we personally are transitory. This world is transitory. All this will pass. To avoid the pain and suffering at such a great loss, the only solution is to live fully into the present moment, to surrender and bless it all.

For today, we can be bigger and better people than we were yesterday. Change the light bulbs for sure. Change the world to be a better place too. But also, try to change your life to be full of hope, love, meaning, charity, peace and equanimity in the face of all the possibilities to come.

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

The nine key features of the new “code of conduct on Ireland’s mortgage arrears problems”

  

THE NEW CODE OF CONDUCT MAKES IT INCUMBENT ON BANKS TO WORK WITH DISTRESSED MORTGAGE HOLDERS TO FIND SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS,

Irish banks that are dealing with people in mortgage difficulties are obliged to keep them informed of all their options and the alternatives every step of the way. 

The revised code of conduct published by the Central Bank leaves little wriggle room for lenders who do not work with borrowers and try to arrive at the best long-term solution for them.

However, in case the banks do not keep up their side of the bargain, it is worth keeping in mind some key features of the new code of conduct.

Q. Who does this cover? A. As soon as a borrower does not keep up repayments the code kicks in.

A bank is obliged to write to the customer and establish what has happened and offer support to right the situation.

Throughout the process banks have been told to communicate properly with customers but not excessively. Unnecessary calls to people are not allowed.

Unsolicited visits to a person’s home are not allowed unless all other attempts to make contact have failed and it has been classed as a non-cooperative case. Even in these circumstances the lender must give five days’ notice of their intention to call.

Q. What is the first step? A. People have 31 days to get in line before the process moves on. After a month, the banks have to spell out what can be done for the borrower and what their options are. This should include details on what happens if they co-operate with the banks and what can be done if they do not co-operate.

Q. When is the next pinch point? A. If the situation has not improved within three months, the bank has to start drawing up alternative options. When it gets to this stage, lenders have been told they must assist people to get all additional help available, including support from the State if it is applicable.

If a borrower co-operates, a lender cannot impose surcharges or interest on the arrears.

But if somebody fails to co-operate or rejects all of the offers tabled, legal proceedings can begin to repossess the house.

Q. What options are the bank supposed to offer people willing to co-operate? A. Before taking further action the banks have to explore a range of relief options depending on the circumstances in each case.

This includes: The bank take an equity stake in the property in exchange for a write off; put loans on an interest-only basis for a set period of time; permanently lower the interest rate; allow people to pay interest plus a portion of the principal; defer all or part of the mortgage; and/or split the mortgage to park part of it until a later date.

The banks have also been told to consider writing off a portion of the principal due altogether.

Along the way, banks have to document all of the options considered and give reasons for why the preferred solution tabled was considered the most appropriate in this case.

Q. Will the process be the same for everybody? A. No. The Central Bank has stressed that every case is unique and while it has revised a framework for dealing with customers who get into difficulty, it cannot set out a specific plan for each person.

Q. What if a borrower is on a tracker mortgage? A. A bank cannot force a co-operating mortgage holder to change from a tracker deal to another type of product.

The lender can offer a package that includes removing the tracker rate but only if it is the best option available for the customer because the new deal would leave them better off.

Q. If there is no realistic way of managing a mortgage to allow a person keep their home, what should a bank do? A. If a person has been co-operating but all of the remedies are unsustainable, the bank has to look at solutions.

These include giving people the option of handing over their keys and walking away, trading down to a more affordable home, selling the property themselves, or allowing the person to rent the home directly from the bank.

Q. When can a bank begin repossession proceedings? A. When all other avenues to change the mortgage or make it more manageable have been exhausted.

It can also move against the homeowner if they are classed as uncooperative or are deemed to have defrauded the bank. This can happen three months after the first installment is missed.

Q. If a borrower does not work with the bank, can it still avail of the code? A. The code makes a strict definition between those who deal honestly and openly with the bank and borrowers who do not co-operate.

If you fail to provide important information or do not keep in contact with the bank during a period when the loan is not being serviced, you fall into the latter category.

Banks can begin legal proceedings as soon as they declare a borrower to be non-cooperative.

Eamon Gilmore welcomes the US Senate’s approval of new immigration bill

 

The Tánaiste has welcomed the US Senate’s approval of a new immigration reform bill by 68 votes to 32.

Eamon Gilmore said the bill was another step closer towards addressing the problems faced by the undocumented Irish in the US.

Senator Mark Daly of the Ireland America Association, said it is great news – but the bill still faces the challenge of the House of Representatives.

“The house of representatives is a far more difficult challenge in terms of getting agreement between the republicans and the democrats,” he said.

“But this is really a very positive development and I don’t think 12 months ago we would have believed we would have got this far this fast.”

Irish house prices down in May but slump appears to be bottoming out

 down 1.1% 

Tiny price increases reported in Dublin

Data from the CSO show that house prices fell 1.1 per cent in the year to May.

Property prices across the State fell 1.1 per cent in the year to May, but the general rate of price decline is slowing. The CSO reported a fall of 1.2 per cent in the 12 months to April this year, but this compares to decline of 15.3 per cent recorded between May 2011 and May 2012.

The annual index is calculated as a simple average of the published CSO indices for March, June September and December of each year with a base year of 2005.

Taking the 2005 average as 100, residential property prices rose to a high of 130.5 in September 2007 before slipping downwards for the next 12 months to a figure of 120.1. Price falls accelerated thereafter, hitting a low of 64.1 in March of this year. Price indices generally are now showing small gains.

Overall, residential property prices grew by 0.3 per cent in May and by 0.8 per cent in April of this year. Prices rose by 0.2 per cent in May 2012.

Dublin specifically residential property prices grew by only 0.5 per cent in May and were 1.4 cent higher than a year ago. House prices in the Dublin area grew 0.5 per cent in the month and were 1.3 per cent higher compared to a year earlier. Apartment prices in the capital were 1.2 per cent lower when compared with the same month of 2012. However this figure is calculated on a relatively small sample size and could reflect volatility because of this.

Residential properties in the rest of the State (i.e. excluding Dublin) grew by 0.1 per cent in May, the same as in May last year.

Despite the signs of a modest price recovery, the Dublin market has shown steep declines since the 2007 peak – the most striking price falls anywhere in the Republic. House prices in the city are now on average 55 per cent cheaper whereas apartments are some 61 per cent lower, the CSO reports.

Price falls elsewhere in the State are still pronounced, but not as dramatic. The fall in the average house price outside Dublin is some 48 per cent lower than it was seven years ago, but only 2.8 per cent lower than this time last year.

The trend is also matched in the North.

House prices in Northern Ireland have shown a 2.1 per cent drop – the largest decline anywhere in the UK, figures released by the Nationwide building society show. Average Northern residential property prices have fallen 53 per cent since their 2007 peak.

The average property price now is just £108,116 (€126,000). The average UK price, in contrast, is £168,941 (€197,000). But the average for the London area meanwhile has hit an all-time high of £318,214 (€371,217)

The fall in prices north of the Border is in marked contrast to the overall trend in Britain where an annual increase of 1.9 per cent is the largest year-on-year jump in prices since 2010. The Nationwide reports that the average monthly rise in prices is currently 0.3 per cent, down from 0.4 per cent in May.

Britain plans its first three-parent IVF babies

 

Treatment for families seeking to avoid passing incurable diseases to children

Britain is planning to become the first country in the world to offer controversial ’three-parent’ fertility treatments to families who want to avoid passing on incurable diseases to their children.

Britain is planning to become the first country in the world to offer controversial “three-parent” fertility treatments to families who want to avoid passing on incurable diseases to their children.

The methods, currently only at the research stage in laboratories in Britain and the United States, would for the first time involve implanting genetically modified embryos into women, and raise serious ethical questions.

The techniques involve intervening in the fertilisation process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy.

They are designed to help families with mitochondrial diseases – incurable conditions passed down the maternal line that affect around one in 6,500 children worldwide. Mitochondria act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells,

The controversial potential treatment is known as three-parent in vitro fertilisation (IVF) because the offspring would have genes from a mother, a father and from a female donor.

After a national public consultation showed Britons broadly favour the idea, the government’s chief physician said today it should be allowed to go ahead under strict regulation.

“Scientists have developed ground-breaking new procedures which could stop these diseases being passed on, bringing hope to many families seeking to prevent their children inheriting them,” Sally Davies, chief medical officer, told reporters.

“It’s only right that we look to introduce this life-saving treatment as soon as we can.”

Ms Davies said the government’s health department is drafting regulations to cover the new treatments, and plans to publish them later this year. The move would make Britain the first country in the world to give patients to option of using so-called mitochondrial DNA transfer to avoid passing the diseases on to their children.

DNA Swap: Scientists are researching several three-parent IVF techniques.

One being developed at Britain’s Newcastle University, known as pronuclear transfer, swaps DNA between two fertilised human eggs. Another, called maternal spindle transfer, swaps material between the mother’s egg and a donor egg before fertilisation.

A British medical ethics panel which reviewed the potential treatments for mitochondrial diseases decided last year they were ethical and should go ahead as long as research shows they are likely to be safe and effective.

Because Britain is in the vanguard of this research, ethical concerns, political decisions and scientific advances here are closely watched around the world – particularly in the United States where scientists are also working on DNA swap techniques.

Some pro-life campaigners have criticised the scientific research, saying that creating embryonic children in a lab abuses them by subjecting them to unnatural processes.

Critics also worry that modifying embryos to avoid disease could be the first step towards the creation of “designer babies”, whose genetic makeup could be modified as embryos to ensure certain traits such as height or hair colour.

Asked whether she was “comfortable” with taking such a major step along the way to allowing human genetic modification, Ms Davies said she had debated and considered the ethical implications with many experts over many years and had come to the conclusion the techniques should be allowed.

Any final decision on putting the regulations in place to allow the new treatments to be offered will be subject to a vote in parliament, but Ms Davies said she hoped the first patients may be able to get the new treatments within the next two years.

The consumption of fish oils can reduce your risk of Breast Cancer

       

 Consuming fish oils can significantly lower a person’s risk of developing breast cancer, according to a new study published in the BMJ.

The researchers reviewed 21 different independent prospective cohort studies, they found that a high intake of fish and marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids was associated with a 14 percent reduced risk of breast cancer.

Breast cancer is a form of cancer that develops from breast cells. It is one of the most common cancers, responsible for nearly a quarter of all cancer cases and 14% of cancer deaths in 2008. More than 200,000 women are diagnosed with the disease each year.

Lifestyle and diet play a very important role in preventing the cancer from developing.

For people to actually reduce their risk they should consume at least 1-2 portions of oily fish per week – such as sardines, salmon, tuna.

n-3 PUFAs are all omega 3 essential fatty acids that have to be acquired through diet – as they cannot be produced in the body. n-3 PUFAs include: α-Linolenic acid (ALA), Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), Docosapentaenoic acid (DPA), and Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

These acids play a vital role in the brain’s chemical messaging and regulation of blood.

Oily fish provide EPA, DPA and DHA, and nuts and leafy green vegetables provide ALA.

Even though n-3 PUFAs were previously found to have positive effects on cancer risk, results from previous human studies have varied significantly.

A diet rich in oily fish can reduce your risk of breast cancer.

In order to find out whether n-3 PUFAs have anti-cancer properties, a team of Chinese researchers set out to assess the link between fish and n-3 PUFA intake and the risk of breast cancer, by reviewing and analyzing the results of 26 different international studies.

The team analyzed data on approximately 800,000 participants and more than 20,000 cases of breast cancer.

Comparing the lowest and highest category of marine n-3 PUFA intake, the investigators identified that high Marine n-3 PUFA intake was associated with a 14 percent reduced risk of breast cancer.

In addition, for every 0.1 g per day increase in the consumption of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (n-3 PUFA) from fish, the risk of breast cancer decreased by 5 percent.

However, the plant based n-3 PUFA “ALA” seemed to have no anti-cancer properties.

The authors said that their finding “supports a protective role of marine n-3 PUFA on the incidence of breast cancer.”

THEY CONCLUDED:

“Our present study provides solid and robust evidence that marine n-3 PUFA are inversely associated with risk of breast cancer. The protective effect of fish or individual n-3 PUFA warrants further investigation of prospective studies.”

A report in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, similarly found that fish oil supplements may play a role in preventing breast cancer.

Omega-3 fatty acids, as well as their metabolite products have also been shown to slow the growth of triple-negative breast cancer cells better than cells from luminal types of cancer, according to research presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013.

Dublin Zoo introduces two new baby mangabey’s Awiane and Jomoro

 

Mothers Monifa and Malull with ‘dominant male Danzo and their new babies Awiane and Jomoro at the African Plains enclosure

It is monkey mania at Dublin Zoo. The Phoenix Park baby boom continues as two white-crowned mangabey’s are born.

Brother and sister Jomoro and Awiane were born within two weeks of each other in April, to dominant male Danzo and respective mothers Mallul and Monifa, after five-and-a-half month pregnancies.

Speaking to the Herald, African Plains headkeeper Helen Clarke-Bennet couldn’t hide her delight at being able to show the baby monkeys to the world.

“We’re delighted with the arrival, we’ve done really well with these elegant little guys over the last few years,” she said.

“They don’t normally breed well and we’re down to a second generation with them here so it’s just fantastic.”

The last 12 months has seen a bumper baby year for the zoo. A newborn white-faced saki monkey was welcomed in April as well as the arrival of Jabari, a white rhinoceros calf.

In late 2012, the zoo welcomed baby red pandas, meerkat pups and a newborn Brazilian tapir calf.

Russian Urals region meteor shock wave rippled around the Earth twice

  

When a meteor slammed into the atmosphere over the Russian Urals region on Feb. 15, 2013, the huge quantity of energy released was encapsulated in a powerful shock wave that blasted the city of Chelyabinsk, causing property damage and inflicting over 1,500 injuries.

Now, after analysis of data gathered by global detectors used to detect ultra-low frequency acoustic waves, scientists have revealed that the meteor’s shock wave traveled all the way around the globe, twice.

The International Monitoring System (IMS) network operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) is used to detect infrasound evidence of nuclear tests, but on that February morning, the network detected the most powerful event it had ever seen. But this signal wasn’t a nuclear weapon, it was a high-speed, 10,000 ton chunk of space rock carrying out a surprise attack on Russia.

“For the first time since the establishment of the IMS infrasound network, multiple arrivals involving waves that traveled twice round the globe have been clearly identified,” writes Alexis Le Pichon, scientist of the Atomic Energy Commission, France, and his team in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Le Pichon’s team used data from 20 IMS stations around the globe to estimate the energy of the Chelyabinsk event: “A preliminary estimate of the explosive energy using empirical period-yield scaling relations gives a value of 460 kilotons of TNT equivalent,” they add. This means the Russia meteor delivered an equivalent energy of nearly 30 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs in the skies over Chelyabinsk.

This IMS estimate confirms that this meteor strike is the largest impact since the 1908 Tunguska event that flattened 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometers (830 square miles). That event, however, is estimated to have delivered 10-15 megatons of TNT equivalent to the atmosphere, generating an immensely powerful shock wave that caused chaos over a wide and, fortunately, sparsely populated area.

The Russian meteor quickly brought attention to the number of small asteroids that are out there, capable of remaining undetected (the Russian meteor was only 17 meters wide) and yet still deliver a shocking punch to a populated region.