Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Former Labour Court chair to lead water commission

SIMON COVENEY TO APPOINT KEVIN DUFFY AS CHAIRMAN AFTER JOE O’TOOLE’S RESIGNATION

   

Former Labour Court chairman Kevin Duffy is to lead the expert commission examining the future of water charges in the State.

Minister for Housing Simon Coveney is to appoint Mr Duffy to replace Joe O’Toole, who was forced to resign this week after a series of controversial interviews.

Mr O’Toole, a former senator, said he believed water must be paid for and that he supported the polluter pays principle. He blamed Fianna Fáil for his resignation, insisting he had retained the support of Mr Coveney despite his comments.

“That was until Minister Coveney informed me that the main Opposition party would not co-operate with Government on this and related issues for as long as I remained in the chair,” he said.

Mr Duffy, who is a former assistant general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, has been chosen to replace him. It is understood Mr Coveney informed Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Fianna Fáil of the decision on Thursday.

The seven member commission is examining the future of water charges and has five months to report back to an Oireachtas committee which will then vote on its recommendations.

Mr Coveney is to travel to Brussels on Friday to meet environment commissioner Karmenu Vella to explain the decision to suspend water charges for nine months.

The Minister and Mr Vella have been in contact but Mr Coveney is expected to stress the rationale behind the agreement reached with Fianna Fáil which underpinned the formation of a minority government.

The meeting follows an instruction issued by the European Commission that Ireland cannot revert to the position of not paying for water.

Tánaiste Fitzgerald agrees to accept more refugees into Ireland

    

A SELECTION TEAM WILL BE SENT TO LEBANON TO SELECT AN ADDITIONAL 260 REFUGEES UNDER THE REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMME, TÁNAISTE AND MINISTER FOR JUSTICE AND EQUALITY, FRANCES FITZGERALD CONFIRMED TODAY.

“I am pleased to confirm that the Refugee Resettlement Strand of the Programme has seen significant progress,” the Tánaiste said.

“Two hundred and seventy three refugees have already arrived from Lebanon and the remainder of the 520 refugees we committed to resettle in Ireland in 2016 will be here by the autumn.

“This is in advance of the EU deadline and clearly demonstrates Ireland’s continued proactive approach to resolving this unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

“Yesterday I informed the Government of my decision to send a further mission to Lebanon in the autumn to select an additional 260 refugees to be admitted in Spring 2017.”

The decision by the Tánaiste to increase the number of refugees to arrive in Ireland under the Resettlement Strand of the IRPP takes account of the slower than anticipated arrival of asylum seekers from Greece and Italy as a result of administrative issues in those countries.

“My decision reflects the Government’s commitment to welcome vulnerable refugees fleeing war and conflict and is another positive step towards delivering on Ireland’s overall commitment to accept 4,000 persons,” she said.

“Once in Ireland, these refugees will have access to vital health and education services. Our focus will be on helping them to rebuild their lives here in Ireland.”

She added: “A further 28 Syrians arrived in Ireland in the last couple of weeks under relocation from Greece.

“I am aware that progress regarding the relocation of persons from Italy and Greece has been slower than we would have wanted but this should not be taken as any diminution of our commitment to delivering on this part of the programme.

“The delay has been largely outside of our control and my officials have been working closely with their Greek and Italian counterparts on this issue.

“The Greek authorities have now agreed that they will double the numbers available for transfer to Ireland to 40 persons every four weeks with the prospect of this number increasing further later in the year. In effect this means that the relocation strand will now be fully operational.”

Troubled suicide charity Console is to be wound down and transferred to other support services? 

   

David Hall (left pic) who was installed last week to try to rescue the charity and Paul Kelly right.

THE TROUBLED SUICIDE BEREAVEMENT CHARITY CONSOLE IS TO BE WOUND DOWN.

The charity’s services, which included counselling and a helpline, are expected to be transferred to other support organisations.

In a statement today the HSE said that on the request of Minister Simon Harris, a very constructive meeting took place this morning involving David Hall, the Charities Regulator, representatives from the Charities sector, the HSE and Department of Health officials.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the ongoing issues regarding Console and how services currently being provided by Console and funded by the HSE can be continued. These services are the 24/7 Suicide Helpline, the Suicide Bereavement Liaison Service, and the Suicide Bereavement Counselling Service.

All parties at the meeting reiterated that the over-riding priority is the continuation of services to clients who are currently availing of them.

The HSE has been considering arrangements for a transition of the three services in the past number of weeks. A major part of today’s meeting was to discuss with David Hall a specific proposal for the continuation of the three services.

These discussions will continue today. It would be inappropriate to the discussions and unhelpful to the vulnerable users of the three services to make any further comment at this time.

David Hall who was installed last week to try to rescue the charity outlined spending to the High Court. He had warned Console would have to close its doors shortly if it did not get additional funding by the HSE.

He said it was costing €100,000 a month to run Console and the HSE funding amounts to just €70,000 and some €70,000 is owed to the Revenue Commisioners and there are also unknown legacy debts.

He has found no secret stash of funds which would help bail out the charity.

Former chief executive Paul Kelly, who is in a psychiatric hospital, spent lavish amounts of donations and HSE funding on his salary, cars and travel.

Console enjoyed an income of over €5m in recent years. But much of the cash was squandered using credit cards. Around €53,000 which was deposited by the HSE is all that was left in the bank account.

Interim Console CEO says ‘significant and imminent challenges’ facing charity

Another £100,000 is in the Console account in the UK.

The government has pledged to ensure the continued delivery of Console’s services.

During Leaders’ Questions at the Dáil on Thursday, Fianna Fáil’s finance spokesperson Michael McGrath asked Education Minister Richard Bruton for a guarantee that Console’s staff and services would be protected.

“Minister, can you give a commitment that the essential services Console has been providing, and continues to provide under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, will be protected and will continue to be provided?” he said.

In response, Mr Bruton said that progress had been made to ensure the protection of those services.

“I can assure you that there has been a meeting with Console, the primary motivation behind that meeting is to protect those services as the deputy said and to make sure that the workers in this service continued to be treated properly and that the service continues to be delivered.”

He added that Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald had signed a commencement order for Part Four of the Charities Act (2009) to give the charity regulator additional investigative powers and the staffing necessary to carry out a thorough investigation.

When asked whether the troubled charity has a future, Mr Bruton said: “There isn’t a member of the house who hasn’t been touched by some family who has suffered a suicide and the dramatic impact that has on all around them.

“The support services of organisations like Console are absolutely central.

“As to whether the services will be protected within Console or within some other organisation, I think that is really the subject of discussion that I can’t give an authoritative answer on. But the core commitment and objective is to ensure that the services are protected.”

Gene test may one day predict Alzheimer’s risk in young adults

      

A GENE TEST MAY ONE DAY BE ABLE TO PREDICT THE RISK FOR ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE IN YOUNG ADULTS, A NEW STUDY SUGGESTS.

People without any thinking impairments, but with a high number of gene mutations linked to Alzheimer’s, developed worse memory over time and had a smaller hippocampus — the part of the brain associated with memory and emotion, the researchers found.

“This implies that genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease may exert an effect on the hippocampus very early in life, which may make those individuals more likely to get Alzheimer’s disease late in life,” said lead researcher Elizabeth Mormino. She is an instructor in neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Charlestown, Mass.

Although the effects were small, they offer the possibility that genetic mutations may help spot people at risk of Alzheimer’s disease decades before symptoms start, she added.

But Dr. Sam Gandy, director of the Center for Cognitive Health at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, said people should not be rushing out to get tested to see if they have a high risk of Alzheimer’s.

“It’s only for research at this point,” he said. “It’s potentially very useful in designing super early interventions, but not clinically useful yet.”

For the study, Mormino and her colleagues calculated a genetic risk score based on whether a person had several high-risk gene mutations. The participants, average age 75, included 166 people with dementia and more than 1,000 people withoutdementia.

In addition, Mormino’s team looked for markers of Alzheimer’s, including memory and thinking decline, disease progression and the size of the hippocampus. They also looked at links between the risk score and hippocampus size in more than 1,300 healthy 18- to 35-year-olds.

The investigators found that among older people without dementia, a higher genetic risk score was associated with worse memory and a smaller hippocampus at the start of the study, accounting for 2 percent of the total variance in memory and 2 percent of the variance in hippocampus size.

Over a three-year follow-up period, a higher risk score was tied to greater memory and thinking decline and disease progression, the researchers reported.

Moreover, the risk score was linked with overall Alzheimer’s progression. Among the 194 participants who were healthy at the start of the study, 15 developed mild thinking impairment or Alzheimer’s disease. Of 332 patients with mild thinking impairment at the start of the study, 143 developed Alzheimer’s disease, the findings showed.

With each increase in the Alzheimer’s genetic risk score, the odds of the disease progression increased nearly two times, the study authors said.

Among the younger participants, a high risk score was linked to a smaller hippocampus. However, the risk score accounted for less than 1 percent of the difference in hippocampus size between those with high and low scores, the researchers noted.

The findings were published online July 6 in the journal Neurology.

“We are starting to put the pieces of the puzzle in place that look at what these genetic risk factors might mean,” said Heather Snyder, senior director for medical and scientific operations at the Alzheimer’s Association. “It’s a first step in that direction, but it’s not ready for prime time — we still have a ways to go.”

If you have a parent or a sibling that has Alzheimer’s disease, you are at an increased risk, and “there is nothing more that a genetic test will tell you about your risk,” she said.

In the future, genetic testing might predict risk and there may be ways to stop or slow the progression of the disease, Snyder said. “But we are not there yet.”

What Do Goats, Puppies and Horses Have in Common?

GOATS COMMUNICATE WITH HUMANS USING EYE CONTACT, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY

   

ANYONE WHO HAS OWNED A DOG KNOWS THEY CAN SAY A LOT ONLY USING THEIR EYES. FOOD DISH EMPTY? THEY’LL LOOK UP AT THEIR HUMAN IN ANTICIPATION. WANT TO GO OUTSIDE? THEY’LL TURN THEIR HEAD TO MAKE EYE CONTACT.

Researchers thought that along with our canine companions horses were the only other domesticated animal that communicated with humans using eye contact. But a new study published in the journal Biology Letters suggests we can add one more animal to the list: goats.

Researchers from Queen Mary University conducted their study at Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats in the U.K.—an ungulate’s paradise where the resident animals receive lots of human interaction, reports Jennifer Viegas for Discovery News. The team first trained the 34 male and female goats to lift the lid on a plastic box to get at a treat. Then they created an “unsolvable problem” for the animals by sealing the box shut.

The researchers stood by as the goats tried to open the box. When they failed, the animals looked to the human experimenters as if asking for help, similar to how puppies looked back and forth between the box and person. When the researchers turned their backs, the goats did not gaze up as many times or for as long, indicating that seeing a person’s face is important.

“Goats gaze at humans in the same way as dogs do when asking for a treat that is out of reach, for example,” co-author Christian Nawroth says in a press release. “Our results provide strong evidence for complex communication directed at humans in a species that was domesticated primarily for agricultural production, and show similarities with animals bred to become pets or working animals, such as dogs and horses.”

“These results are pretty surprising,” Laurie Santos of Yale’s Canine and Primate Laboratory tells Rachel Feltman at The Washington Post. She explains that the study shows domestication for non-social reasons—goats are primarily bred for meat, milk and hides—can still produce animals with the social skills to communicate with people. “This is exciting, as it shows how little we still understand about how the process of domestication can shape rich social understanding.”

Researchers already know goats are smart and have some sort of emotional life. Previous research by the study co-author Alan McElligott showed that goats change the position of their ears and their vocalizations when feeling negative emotions. McElligott also previously showed that goats are able to learn a complex task quickly and remember how to do the same task ten months later.

Understanding the domestication process and the inner-life of goats could lead to better treatment in the future, Jan Langbein of the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology tells Discovery News. “Public knowledge about cognition in, and emotions of, farm animals will change consumers’ attitudes towards them,” he says.

These studies could also help differentiate them from their long-time, petting-zoo frenemy, sheep. “Currently there are about a billion goats on the planet being used for agriculture, but still most of the welfare guidelines for keeping them come from sheep,” McElligott tells Feltman. “Anyone who’s worked with goats and sheep know they’re quite different.”    

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

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.