Donie's daily news Ireland BLOG Thursday

The next President of Ireland could be Bill Clinton

(He reveals he could run for Irish Presidency)

  

Bill Clinton the former US President has revealed that he would be eligible to run for President of Ireland in 2018 if he wished.

The 66 year old, who served two terms in the White House from 1993-2001, told CNN he would be eligible to run for the Presidency of Ireland and France.

The former President said: “If I move to Ireland and buy a house, I can run for president of Ireland because of my Irish heritage.”

Clinton would also be eligible to fun for President of France: “Any person anywhere in the world that was born in a place that ever was a part of the French empire, if you move to, if you live in France for six months and speak French you can run for president of France.”

He was born in Arkansas which became part of the United States due to the Louisiana Purchase, when the US bought land from France in 1803 to settle a territorial claim.

The popular former President even polled well in a theoretical poll of his chances in a French election, however said his poor French would ruin his chances.

“That’s the best I’d ever do because once they heard my broken French with a southern accent I would drop into single digits within a week and I’d be toast”, he joked.

Roisin Shortall resigns as junior health minister

DUE TO LACK OF SUPPORT WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

  

Roisin Shortall has resigned as junior minister for health, over what she described as a “lack of support for the reforms in the Programme for Government and the values which underpin it”.

Ms Shortall has also resigned the Labour Party whip.

In a statement, Ms Shortall said the public has a right to expect that decisions on health infrastructure and staffing will be made in the public interest based on health need and not driven by other concerns.

She said that the decision comes after repeated and lengthy efforts to reach agreement on the implementation of the Programme for Government, both within the Department of Health and across Government.

Ms Shortall said: “It is with regret that I have today tendered my resignation as Minister of State at the Department of Health to An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny.

“I have also informed the Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, that I am resigning the Parliamentary Labour Party whip.”

She said it was “no longer possible for me to fulfil my role as Minister of State for Primary Care”.

Taoiseach and Tánaiste disappointed

The Taoiseach said he regretted Ms Shortall’s decision and thanked her for her work, particularly in the area of dealing with alcohol abuse.

A spokesperson for the Tánaiste said Eamon Gilmore was “very disappointed” at Ms Shortall’s resignation, saying that he very much appreciated her commitment to her role as Minister of State.

Mr Gilmore is in New York for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

Through his spokesperson, he said the Labour Party is very much committed to the reform agenda in health and in the Programme for Government.

Labour’s Chief Whip Emmet Stagg said he regretted the resignation, saying the loss of a junior minister was a “serious matter” for the Government.

Several Labour backbenchers have also expressed regret at Ms Shortall’s resignation on their Twitter accounts.

Dublin South-East’s Kevin Humphreys said he was disappointed she felt she had to resign.

He said he had great respect for her and that she was leading the radical reform of health services needs.

Dominic Hannigan of Meath East said he was “very sad to see Roisin go”.

Brendan Ryan, who shares the Dublin North constituency with James Reilly, said he was “so sorry” that she had resigned.

He added, that there was a lot of support for her within the party grassroots and the general public.

‘Tense and difficult’ meeting

Earlier this evening, Ms Shortall said she still had not received an explanation from Health Minister James Reilly as to what criteria were used to select an extra 15 sites for primary care centres, a spokesperson said.

They said yesterday’s meeting between the two ministers had been “tense and difficult”.

A newly released letter this evening from Minister Reilly to Ms Shortall explained the reasons for expanding the list of 20 sites for proposed primary care centres to 35.

However, it does not explain the reasons for choosing what 15 locations would be added.

Ireland’s capital hotel room revenue up by 10.7% first 8 months 2012

  

The Dublin hotel market has experienced a 10.7 per cent increase in revenue per room in the first eight months of this year compared to the same period in 2011, according to a new study.

The report by STR Global and hotel property specialist Christie + Co said the growth was driven by “enhanced rate achieveability” on the back of stronger demand. However, the city’s revenue per room was still far off the peak levels witnessed in 2007.

The strong trading throughout 2011 led to a €6 gain per room as a result of both a 4 per cent increase in occupancy to 71.2 per cent and a 5.4 per cent increase in the average room rate to €81.61. For the first eight months of 2012 as occupancy had strengthened, hoteliers achieved a higher rate from both leisure and corporate segments to reach €87.50.

Maureen Doyle of Christie + Co, said the growth could be attributed to a general boost in demand and an increase in the number of visitors to Dublin, enhanced consumer confidence and a slight weakness of the euro against sterling and the dollar. The 9 per cent VAT rate on certain goods and services had also aided the tourism and hospitality industries to regain growth. Initiatives such as “The Gathering” were also likely to have a positive impact on the hotel market.

Data from Fáilte Ireland shows that the city’s registered room stock is over 18,500, a 37 per cent increase on 2005. Most of the new additions are in the four and five- star segments. Since a peak in 2010 supply is down slightly due to the closure of a number of properties, including the Montrose, The Royal Dublin, Ormond Hotel and Chief O’Neill’s which was converted to a hostel. Christie + Co said the pipeline for new hotel development was weak with the exception of a recently sold part-completed docklands hotel due to open next spring as “The Marker” with 187 bedrooms.

Male DNA discovered in women’s brains

     

Male DNA is commonly found in the brains of women, a study has found. The cause of the phenomenon is most likely being pregnant with a boy, say scientists.

No one yet knows the medical implications of the discovery. But there is a suggestion that male DNA in the female brain might protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

Other kinds of “microchimerism”, the harbouring of genetic material and cells swapped between foetus and mother during pregnancy, have been linked to both beneficial and harmful effects.

A study of 59 deceased women aged 32 to 101 found that the brains of those with Alzheimer’s were less likely to contain foetal-derived male DNA. The genetic material was also seen in lower concentrations in regions of the brain most affected by the disease.

But the scientists stressed that the small number of women studied and largely unknown pregnancy history means that no firm conclusions can be drawn from these findings.

Study leader Dr William Chan, from the Fred Hutchinson CancerResearch Centre in Seattle, US, said: “Currently, the biological significance of harbouring male DNA and male cells in the human brain requires further investigation.”

The researchers detected male microchimerism in 63% of the brain specimens. Male DNA was distributed in multiple brain regions and appeared to persist throughout life. The oldest woman whose brain contained male foetal DNA was 94.

The findings, published in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE, suggest that foetal cells frequently cross from the bloodstream to the brain.

Previous studies have shown that in some conditions, such asbreast cancer , cells of male foetal origin may be protective. In others, such as colon cancer, they have been associated with increased risk.

Research has also found a lower risk of rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease, in women who have given birth to a son at least once.

The Pensioner murder victim in Sligo may not have survived even if Gardai had found him earlier, says family cousin

  

The family of murdered pensioner Eugene Gillespie has said they will never know if he could have been saved if Gardai had called to his home after receiving a 999 call.

The victim’s cousin, Francis Gillespie, said Eugene endured such a severe attack that it was unclear whether he would have survived even if Gardai had found him earlier.

“I don’t know if it would have made a difference, he was very badly beaten,” he said.

Mr Gillespie said the family were still struggling to come to terms with the brutal murder of the popular Sligo man.

He added that they were now anxious to have his remains returned in order to hold a funeral for the vintage car enthusiast.

“We just want to give him a proper funeral; it’s all we can do for him now. But we have to wait until all the forensics are finished,” he explained.

Paying tribute to his cousin, Mr Gillespie added: “Eugene was one of the kindest men you could ever meet.”

He urged anyone with information on the brutal murder to come forward.

Brutal

“If anyone has any information, I would urge them to contact the gardai. The brutal manner of his attack is still hard for us to believe,” he said.

Mr Gillespie was last seen in Sligo on Thursday morning. He was discovered by family members, beaten and tied up in the hall of his home, at 9.20pm on Friday, after they had became concerned when they could not reach him on the telephone.

Eugene died in hospital last Saturday.

However, it has emerged that Gardaí received an anonymous 999 call on Thursday, alerting them to the fact that a man had been tied up in a house with a brown gate in Sligo.

Yesterday, gardai said the call had been specific about the house in question and that it was not Mr Gillespie’s home. An officer called to the house indicated and was satisfied there was nothing suspicious.

The pensioner was not found until the following night, lying unconscious on the floor of his Old Market Street home, with his hands tied behind his back.

His home is less than 100 metres from the Garda station.

Gardai are liaising with phone companies in an effort to establish the identity of the caller. They also hope that footprints from runners and blood samples taken at the house will help track down the killers.

Donie's Ireland news BLOG Wednesday

Ireland’s property prices fall almost 12% year to August 2012

   

Property prices continued to fall in Ireland for the year to August 2012, but rose month on month.

Residential property prices throughout Ireland fell by almost 12 per cent over the year to August, but the pace of decline slowed from July, the Central Statistics Office said today.

In comparison, prices fell by 13.6 per cent over the 12 months to the end of July.

Over the month of August, prices rose slightly, gaining 0.5 per cent, outpacing the 0.2 per cent rise the previous month.

The CSO figures are based on mortgages, and do not take into account the cash transactions that are taking place in the market.

In Dublin, prices were 0.5 per cent lower in the month, and had fallen 13.8 per cent compared with a year earlier. House prices were 14.4 per cent lower compared with August 2011, and apartments were down 13.4 per cent. To date, Dublin house prices have lost 56 per cent from their peak reached in early 2007, and apartments have fallen by 63 per cent.

Throughout the rest of the country, the price of homes was down an average of 10.7 per cent year on year, with property prices showing a 1.3 per cent rise in August. Overall, prices have declined 46 per cent since the 2007 peak of the property boom.

Sligo Garda checked the wrong house after 999 call in Gillespie murder case

  

Gardai investigating the brutal murder of Sligo man Eugene Gillespie have confirmed they received – and acted upon – a 999 call to the local Garda station last Thursday which said there was a man tied up in a house with a brown gate.

Mr Gillespie was not found until the following night, lying on the floor with his hands tied behind his back at his home on Old Market Street, about 100 yards from the Garda station. He died from his injuries at Sligo General Hospital on Saturday.

As detectives carried out a number of raids in Sligo town yesterday as part of the inquiry into the murder, it emerged gardaí had checked out a different house after getting the 999 call last Thursday.

A spokesman said gardaí had acted on the information and a garda had gone to the house “as described”, but was satisfied there was “nothing untoward”. He confirmed Mr Gillespie’s house was not the one checked, but refused to say whether the house actually checked was on the same street.

The Irish Times has confirmed there is a brown wooden gate leading to a yard adjacent to Mr Gillespie’s house. There is also a brown gate up the street closer to the Garda station.

Gardaí had initially believed Mr Gillespie had not been seen since 9pm last Wednesday, September 19th, but it is understood another sighting from Thursday morning has been confirmed.

Mayor of Sligo David Cawley was among those who defended gardaí on the matter yesterday, saying the information given in the 999 call was not exact enough.

“I have never known the gardaí to take a 999 call lightly. Unfortunately it may have been less than exact about where the house was,” he said.

Mr Cawley said he was confident gardaí were “pulling out all the stops” and he believed they would track down the perpetrators of a crime which has shocked the community and frightened many people living alone.

The Sligo Champion newspaper yesterday reported a young man had made a 999 call on Thursday, about a man tied up in a house. Gardaí said they were liaising with phone companies in an effort to establish the identity of the caller.

Gardaí hope footprints from runners found at the scene and blood samples taken at the house will help to track down the killers.

It is understood there was no sign of a break-in at Mr Gillespie’s home. Many local residents have pointed out that the former telephone exchange operator would not hesitate to answer a knock at the door.

Revelations about the 999 call have come as a shock to neighbours already upset Mr Gillespie suffered alone until Friday night, but there was no public criticism of gardaí. Jim Middleton, a friend who was also raised on Old Market Street, said: “How many brown gates are there in Sligo? There must be five gates on that street.”

Mr Cawley yesterday appealed to local people to notify gardaí of anything out of place they noticed in the Old Market Street area, no matter how trivial. “As we are going into the dark days of winter, I think this should remind us to look in on our older neighbours,” he added, stressing that Mr Gillespie was neither very old nor frail.

Fianna Fáil spokeswoman for older people Senator Mary White called for all elderly people to be given personal alarms.

Vitamin D deficiency ups heart disease risk

Vitamin D deficiency ups heart disease risk

    

Low levels of vitamin D are associated with a markedly higher risk of heart attack and early death, according to a new research.

The study involved more than 10,000 Danes and was conducted by the University of Copenhagen and Copenhagen University Hospital.

Vitamin D deficiency has traditionally been linked with poor bone health. However, the results from several population studies indicate that a low level of this important vitamin may also be linked to a higher risk of ischemic heart disease, a designation that covers heart attack, coronary arteriosclerosis and angina. Other studies show that vitamin D deficiency may increase blood pressure, and it is well known thathigh blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack.

“We have now examined the association between a low level of vitamin D and ischemic heart disease and death in the largest study to date. We observed that low levels of vitamin D compared to optimal levels are linked to 40 percent higher risk of ischemic heart disease, 64 per cent higher risk of heart attack, 57 percent higher risk of early death, and to no less than 81 percent higher risk of death from heart disease,” said Dr. Peter Brondum-Jacobsen, Clinical Biochemical Department, Copenhagen University Hospital.

The higher risks are visible, even after adjustment for several factors that can influence the level of vitamin D and the risk of disease and death. This is one of the methods scientists use to avoid bias.

The population study that forms the basis for this scientific investigation is the Copenhagen City Heart Study, where levels of vitamin D were measured in blood samples from 1981-1983. Participants were then followed in the nationwide Danish registries up to the present.

“With this type of population study, we are unable to say anything definitive about a possible causal relationship. But we can ascertain that there is a strong statistical correlation between a low level of vitamin D and high risk of heart disease and early death,” said Borge Nordestgaard, clinical professor at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen and senior physician at Copenhagen University Hospital..

The explanation may be that a low level of vitamin D directly leads to heart disease and death. However, it is also possible that vitamin deficiency is a marker for poor health generally,” he added.

The scientists are now working to determine whether the connection between a low level of vitamin D and the risk of heart disease is a genuine causal relationship.

Irish people have genetic predisposition towards macular degeneration

‘New research reveals’

     

Irish people have a genetic predisposition to a condition that is the most common cause of registered blindness in this country, according to new research released this week.

Genetic abnormalities associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which have been identified among white populations elsewhere in the world, have now been shown to be very common among Irish AMD patients too.

  An estimated 70,000 people in Ireland have some form of AMD. The biggest risk factor is being over the age of 50; other risks include smoking, being overweight and having high blood pressure, as well as a family history of the condition.

The retina in the eye sits on pigmented cells that look like brown velvet, explains eye surgeon Mark Cahill of the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin. That pigment becomes thinner in everybody with age.

“What we are trying to figure out worldwide is why some people’s pigment gets thinner than others,” says Cahill, who was co-director of the new research with Dr Marian Humphries in the department of genetics, Trinity College Dublin.

The study, conducted by Sorcha Ní Dhubhghaill, looked at more than 200 patients with AMD and compared them with a group of more than 100 volunteers of the same age without the condition. Along with known lifestyle risk factors, it found that family history was also significant among those with the disease.

Blood samples from all the study’s participants were examined – specifically looking at single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced “snips”), which Cahill describes as “little nicks in your genetic map”, three of which are associated with macular degeneration.

Sure enough, if the people studied had this change in the SNPs, they were more likely to be in the group with macular degeneration.

John Butler (77) gave little thought to the fact that his father and grandfather before him had vision loss until the first signs of AMD were detected in him during a routine eye test about five years ago. He only went for the test because he needed glasses; his arms, he says, had got too short to hold a book far enough away to read. He was referred to a leading consultant ophthalmologist, Prof Stephen Beatty in Waterford.

Then this time last year, when Butler, a retired commercial diver and boat-builder who lives in Dunmore East, Co Waterford, was on holidays in the Canaries, he noticed words starting to run into each other as he read.

“I thought I was going to go blind,” he says and he rang Beatty, who started treatment as soon as Butler returned to Ireland. He has been getting a monthly injection of medication in the one affected eye since.

“Now I can read without my glasses. It is really fantastic,” he says.

His father, who had the same problem in the 1960s, was not so lucky. He had an operation, for which he was given a 50/50 chance of success, but unfortunately it didn’t work and he became blind.

Hugh O’Brien (72), who is registered blind due to AMD, started having problems with his vision about 12 years ago. But as he had a more serious health issue, ulcerative colitis – a type of inflammatory bowel disease – at the time, he did not regard getting treatment for the eye as a priority. “It was only in the left eye and it didn’t seem that urgent.”

However, after having major surgery for the colitis in 2002, his vision began to deteriorate and the other eye became affected.

Despite laser treatment and injections into the eyes, he has lost all vision in his right eye and now has only peripheral vision in his left eye.

A retired secondary school teacher living in Cootehill, Co Cavan, O’Brien thought this was the end of his plans for various writing projects on local history. But, thanks to the “fantastic” work of the National Council for the Blind (NCBI), he now uses a computer fitted with a screen reader that speaks everything that appears on the screen.

Indeed, O’Brien says one of the positives of his condition has been this introduction to computers, which he believes he would have avoided for the rest of his life otherwise.

Now that the genetic change associated with AMD has been identified in Irish people, it should help to target more effective treatment, says Cahill, at a time when the number of people with AMD is bound to rise as Ireland’s population gets older and lives longer.

Although screening everybody for this genetic change is impractical, it would be very useful for people diagnosed with the first signs of AMD. If it was shown that they had this genetic marker, they could be watched more carefully because their vision is more likely to deteriorate faster.

Currently, the first thing newly diagnosed patients are asked to do is look after blood pressure and try to stop smoking. There are also oral pigment supplements (see panel) that can be taken, which have been shown to prevent progression to more serious forms of AMD in 25-30 per cent of people who have one eye affected.

But once you have signs of the more serious form of AMD, known as wet AMD, medicines need to be injected into the eye, which reduce the chance of progression by up to 90 per cent – and even bring about significant vision improvement in some cases.

“The earlier we get it and the better your vision is, the better chance you have that it won’t get worse,” adds Cahill, which is why one of the aims of the current AMD Awareness Week, running until this Sunday, is to spread the message that if people see any distortion – straight lines bent out of shape – they need to have an eye test immediately.

Milky Way galaxy surrounded by massive hot gas halo

  

Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to find evidence our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded in an enormous halo of hot gas that extends for hundreds of thousands of light years. The estimated mass of the halo is comparable to the mass of all the stars in the galaxy. 

If the size and mass of this gas halo is confirmed, it also could be an explanation for what is known as the “missing baryon” problem for the galaxy. 

  Baryons are particles, such as protons and neutrons, that make up more than 99.9 percent of the mass of atoms found in the cosmos.

Measurements of extremely distant gas halos and galaxies indicate the baryonic matter present when the universe was only a few billion years old represented about one-sixth the mass and density of the existing unobservable, or dark, matter.

In the current epoch, about 10 billion years later, a census of the baryons present in stars and gas in our galaxy and nearby galaxies shows at least half the baryons are unaccounted for. 

In a recent study, a team of five astronomers used data from Chandra, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space observatory and Japan’s Suzaku satellite to set limits on the temperature, extent and mass of the hot gas halo. Chandra observed eight bright X-ray sources located far beyond the galaxy at distances of hundreds of millions of light-years.

The data revealed X-rays from these distant sources are absorbed selectively by oxygen ions in the vicinity of the galaxy. The scientists determined the temperature of the absorbing halo is between 1 million and 2.5 million kelvins, or a few hundred times hotter than the surface of the sun. 

Other studies have shown that the Milky Way and other galaxies are embedded in warm gas with temperatures between 100,000 and 1 million kelvins. Studies have indicated the presence of a hotter gas with a temperature greater than 1 million kelvins. This new research provides evidence the hot gas halo enveloping the Milky Way is much more massive than the warm gas halo. 

“We know the gas is around the galaxy, and we know how hot it is,” said Anjali Gupta, lead author of The Astrophysical Journal paper describing the research. “The big question is, how large is the halo, and how massive is it?” 

To begin to answer this question, the authors supplemented Chandra data on the amount of absorption produced by the oxygen ions with XMM-Newton and Suzaku data on the X-rays emitted by the gas halo. They concluded that the mass of the gas is equivalent to the mass in more than 10 billion suns, perhaps as large as 60 billion suns. 

“Our work shows that, for reasonable values of parameters and with reasonable assumptions, the Chandra observations imply a huge reservoir of hot gas around the Milky Way,” said co-author Smita Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus. “It may extend for a few hundred thousand light-years around the Milky Way or it may extend farther into the surrounding local group of galaxies. Either way, its mass appears to be very large.” 

The estimated mass depends on factors such as the amount of oxygen relative to hydrogen, which is the dominant element in the gas. Nevertheless, the estimation represents an important step in solving the case of the missing baryons, a mystery that has puzzled astronomers for more than a decade. 

Although there are uncertainties, the work by Gupta and colleagues provides the best evidence yet that the galaxy’s missing baryons have been hiding in a halo of million-kelvin gas that envelopes the galaxy. The estimated density of this halo is so low that similar halos around other galaxies would have escaped detection. 

The paper describing these results was published in the Sept. 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Other co-authors were Yair Krongold of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City; Fabrizio Nicastro of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.; and Massimiliano Galeazzi of University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. 

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra’s science and flight operations from Cambridge.