Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Saturday

Good nutrition ‘must be a global priority for everybody’ say’s researchers

         

Good nutrition is critical in the first two years of life

Malnutrition is responsible for 45% of the global deaths of children under the age of five, research published in the Lancet medical journal suggests.

Poor nutrition leads to the deaths of about 3.1 million under-fives annually, it says.

An international team reviewed different causes of malnutrition in pregnancy and childhood.

They say the first 1,000 days of life – from conception to two years – have lasting consequences for health.

Malnutrition – which includes being overweight or obese as well as under-nourished – also has an economic impact.

According to a recent United Nations report, malnutrition is estimated to cost the world $3.5tn (£2.3tn) – or $500 for every person – in healthcare and lost productivity.

If maternal and child nutrition can be optimised, the benefits will accrue and extend over generations, which is why we must work together now to seize this opportunity.”

Dr Richard HortonThe Lancet

A team led by Prof Robert Black, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, US, reviewed evidence on maternal and child under-nutrition and obesity in low-income and middle-income countries since 2008.

The team also assessed national and international progress on nutrition programmes.

Prof Black and colleagues say while some progress has been made in recent years, they estimate that more than 165 million children were affected by stunting (low height for age) and 50 million by wasting (low weight for height) in 2011.

An estimated 900,000 lives could be saved in 34 countries if 10 proven nutritional interventions were scaled-up to 90% of the world, they say.

“The nutritional consequences of the months during pregnancy and the conditions during the first two years of life have very important consequences for mortality and for adult chronic disease,” Prof Black told BBC News.

“The early nutritional deficit results in developmental consequences for the individual and that has implications for their ability to succeed in school and ultimately in society to have the most productive jobs.”

The researchers warn that countries will not break out of poverty unless nutrition becomes a global priority.

Dr Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet, said: “If maternal and child nutrition can be optimised, the benefits will accrue and extend over generations, which is why we must work together now to seize this opportunity.”

Experts working in development are gathering in London this weekend for a summit on nutrition hosted by the UK and Brazilian governments.

This will be followed by the annual summit of leaders from the G8 countries.

The Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign is calling for $1bn per year in additional aid money to be spent on malnutrition by 2015.

Enough Food for Everyone IF spokesperson Anita Tiessen said:

“These new figures confirm our worst fears – that hundreds of thousands more children are dying from malnutrition than we previously thought.

“We have made incredible progress in tackling child deaths around the world, but malnutrition remains the Achilles’ heel in our efforts to prevent millions of needless deaths each year. We must urgently prioritise tackling hunger if we are to continue the progress we have made.”

Enda Kenny’s personal crusade to get rid of Seanad faces internal revolt

  

Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s “personal crusade” to abolish the Seanad faces a major revolt from within the coalition, as a majority of Government TDs are against doing away with the upper house.

The Taoiseach, wishing to close down debate on the Seanad in such an arrogant fashion, is completely consistent with his refusal to grant a free vote on issues of conscience

Senior figures in Fine Gael today rejected speculation that the Government would consider reforming the Seanad, should the referendum be defeated.
Speaking at the Constitutional Convention, in Malahide, Frances Fitzgerald, Minister for Children, said there was no question of reforming the Seanad and that the Autumnal referendum would be an opportunity for the public to consider whether they wanted to see one really effective house operating strongly with checks and balances.

 Ms Fitzgerald said a reformed Dáil would see a strengthening of the committee system and described the amendment being put to the people as a “serious proposition”.

Adding his voice to reject sugesstions of reforming the Seanad, Party chairman, Charlie Flanagan, said there was no contemplation of a ‘Plan B.’  He said voters would be given a clear choice between abolition or retention of the Seanad.

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said it was a huge irony that the Constitutional Convention which is meeting in Malahide this weekend was not discussing the future of the Seanad because it was not allowed to do so. Mr Adams said this was a “huge mistake”.

Thousands of Pro-life supporters attend Dublin abortion rally

   

Official estimates put the crowd at between 15,000 and 20,000

A section of the large crowd attending the Pro-Life vigil at Merrion Square, Dublin

Thousands have rallied in Dublin against the Government’s proposed legislation on abortion. Organised by the Pro Life Campaign, the large and colourful demonstration called on the Coalition to “scrap the bill”.

Many speakers and several of those voicing opinions on the video shown on a large screen beside the platform warned the Government on its position.

“We gathered in Dublin on the coldest day of the winter, here today on the hottest day of the year and we will be here again on election day,” said Caroline Simons, legal adviser to the Campaign.

She said Taoiseach Enda Kenny had no mandate “other than keeping his pro-life promises” which she claims Fine Gael made before the last election.

Two video addresses were shown to the crowd which flooded Merion Square West and South.

Michael McAreavey, widower of Michaela who was mudered on honeymoon in Mauritius, said there was nothing more positive “than standing up for the human rights of another person, especially the most vulnerable”.

“Other countries have made the mistake of legalising abortion and have unleashed a terrible sadness across society,”

His father-in-law, Tyrone manager Mickey Harte, was among the crowd below the platform.

In an emotional contribution, Edel Best of Women Hurt, an organisation representing those who have had abortions, said she had suffered after two abortions.

“Abortion stole my children,” she said.

There was also a video presentation from Celeste Beal King, a grand-niece of murdered human rights campaigner Dr Martin Luther King Jr. “A huge challenge faces your movement, but I challenge you, Never lose heart,” she said.

She said it was “noble” to say Yes to life and No to abortion.

Maria Steen of the Iona Institute said the proposed legislation would forced doctors and other practitioners “to go against the first principle of medicine – to do no harm”.

Ide Mac Mathuna of Youth Defence said the population was being “bombarded with pro-abortion propaganda and our own Government are allowing themselves to be bullied and dictated to by the pro-abortion lobby.”

Jennifer Kehoe of the organisation One Day More and mother of a child diagnosed with severe illness in pregnancy claimed she and her husband were told “most people would go to England”.

She clalimed other parents faced with such a crisis were “frightened into abortion” and made feel that they had “the expectation and duty” to opt for abortion.

“Legality brings acceptability,” she said.

Official estimates are reported to have put the crowd at between 15,000 and 20,000 although protest organisers claimed “a conservative figure of 50,000”.

No rooms at the Shelbourne, Hotel completely booked out?

MICHELLE & THE GIRLS MUST BE COMING to town

    

First lady Michelle Obama and daughters, Sasha Obama and Malia Obama

Anyone hoping to sleep under the same roof as First Lady Michelle Obama during her Dublin visit is out of luck.

The Shelbourne Hotel is completely booked for the duration of the G8 summit.

Mrs Obama is reported to be staying at the landmark hotel and bosses now have ‘sold out’ signs on their website.

She is due to travel on Air Force One with President Barack Obama and their two daughters for the summit in Fermanagh on June 17 and 18.

SUITE

But the Shelbourne Hotel, which has yet to confirm the stay, has no rooms available for those dates. The First Lady is expected to stay in the €2,500-a-night Princess Grace Suite, with daughters Malia (14) and Sasha (12) staying in adjoining suites.

The Princess Grace Suite is the best the St Stephen’s Green hotel has to offer, with two beds, two bathrooms, four phones and three large televisions.

The Obamas’ itinerary has not yet been finalised, but it is expected mainly to involve events in Dublin.

Genes could be used to improve wine says scientists

 

Certain DNA sequences could identify grapevines more suited to climate change

DNA analysis of Italian grapes has highlighted particular genes that could be used to improve berry and wine quality, scientists say.

DNA analysis of Italian grapes has highlighted particular genes that could be used to improve berry and wine quality, scientists say.

Researchers in Italy have pinpointed certain DNA sequences that could be used to identify and breed grapevine varieties that are more suited to climate change and increase their consistency in performance.

Environmental influences can affect the qualities of grapevines, and this inconveniences the berry producers. “This can be considered a burden because the berries may mature unevenly and display large interseasonal fluctuations in quality,” the authors of the paper say this morning in the journal Genome Biology.

Grapevine berries vary in their qualities, dependent on the different regions or climates they are grown in. To investigate this, Silvia Dal Santo and her team at the Plant Genetics Lab at the University of Verona, grew a single variety of grape, the Corvina berry, across 11 different regions in Verona.

Through genetically analysing them over three consecutive years, the researchers were to pick out various environmentally sensitive genes that could influence berry quality. These qualities ranged from such specific factors such as how the berries tasted, to how they looked and even to how they were textured.

Genes that remained unchanged across the different grapes regardless of the region they were grown in were judged to be independent of the surrounding environment. These genes could be used in the future as a marker to monitor grape ripening in the field, even of other varieties, and help to optimise picking time and standardise wine quality, according to the authors.

The grapevine is the most widely cultivated perennial fruit crop in the world, and accounted for 67.5 million tonnes of berries produced in 2011. Climate change is expected to significantly impact the agriculture of wine-making.

Dal Santo’s work, headed by Professor of Plant Genetics Mario Pezzotti, will come as a relief to winemakers and drinkers alike, to whom this variability can negatively affect.

The work was funded by projects of the CARIVERONA Bank Foundation, the Italian Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Policies, and by Regione Veneto.

Donie;s Ireland daily news BLOG Sunday

Irish Government considering a reform and closing loopholes of corporate tax system

  

The Irish government is examining options to close a loophole in its tax system that has allowed multinational companies to significantly reduce taxes they pay on profits,

Ireland has been criticized by British and U.S. legislators in recent weeks for the fact that multinationals like Apple and Google reduced their global tax bills by channeling profits through Irish subsidiaries.

The Sunday Business Post said Ireland’s finance ministry was examining options to phase out the “Double Irish”, a tax avoidance technique in which multinationals funnel profits through two linked Irish subsidiaries.

Google’s international headquarters in Dublin made tax-deductible payments to a Bermudan subsidiary via a Dutch affiliate in a related arrangement known as a “Double Irish Dutch sandwich.”

The Sunday Business Post did not detail what changes might be made to the Irish tax system.

A spokesman for Ireland’s finance ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Irish government ministers have said the country’s tax system is fair and transparent and that international efforts are needed to curb large scale tax avoidance by multinational companies.

Protests against Irish property tax (LPT) to continue ahead of next Tuesday deadline

  

A series of car cavalcades and rallies are taking place in Dublin and around the country this weekend in protest against the property tax.

It comes just a few days ahead of next Tuesday’s deadline to pay the charge.

Revenue officials say over 1.1 million homeowners have filed their returns, and that anyone still wishing to do so can log on to http://www.revenue.ie.

However, the Campaign Against Home and Water Taxes is warning the government that it will pay the price if it tries to coerce people to cough up.

Campaign spokesperson, Councillor Ruth Coppinger, said that people will not vote for politicians who force the property tax down their throats.

“We will be pressuring the politicians that if they deduct this forcibly from non-payers that they will pay the price in political terms,” she said.

“It is similar really to what was done in Cyprus where ordinary peoples bank accounts were being pilfered to pay for the bailout and I think the same attitude will prevail in this country

“So the parties of austerity and labour will be made to pay the price for the property tax and austerity.”

Fodder crisis leading to the removal of truckloads of diseased carcasses from Irish farms

 

FARMERS FACING DESPERATE TIMES AS LIVESTOCK DECIMATED BY FODDER CRISIS

Cattle and sheep are dying on farms as the lack of grass and replacement fodder is leaving animals more vulnerable to disease and infection.

Official Department of Agriculture figures put the number of mortalities of cattle in the first four months of this year at 152,000. That is up 36,000 on the mortality rate for the same period in 2012.

The department’s animal-welfare helpline has received 860 calls though its early warning system.

One knackery in the west – Greene’s of Ahascragh in east Galway, which serves an area stretching from Roscommon to south Galway, has reported a 100 per cent increase in activity, with queues of lorries forming to unload carcasses.

Winter hasn’t ended yet over huge swathes of the Irish countryside and the shortage of grass and fodder has left tens of thousands of farmers in desperate straits – despite the mammoth logistical operation of importing thousands of tonnes of French hay and British silage.

As religious vigils took place in Cork and Kerry and special Masses were heard in Mayo last week, praying for better weather, the true extent of the crisis became clear.

Last year’s disastrous summer and a six-month winter this year will now costthe economy €1bn.

IFA deputy president Eddie Downey told the Sunday Independent: “It’s the single biggest crisis in Irish agriculture for years, in my view, and it has been understated just how bad it is.

“What is strange is that there are pockets of the country still in crisis, while in other parts ground conditions have improved because of drier weather. But along the entire west coast and into the north-east, around Cavan, Monaghan and even north Meath, it is very very bad.

“The paradox is that in some parts of the country they have managed to cut silage. It’s not a bad crop – not wonderful, but not that far behind the norm.”

Another contributory factor is the increase in the number of cattle in the Republic, which has risen sharply in recent years due to improved prices. There are now more than 300,000 extra cattle in the country, compared with four years ago.

According to Professor John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth, the problem is the stubborn anti-cyclones that have become “locked” over Ireland, bringing with them northerly and north-westerly air flows (cold polar air), rather than the warm moist air from the south that usually comes at this time of year.

“This has been very sustained this spring – really from the beginning of March you had a tendency for the anticyclones to become entrenched in position.”

Professor Sweeney said it was still unclear why this was happening.

“Whether it is due to something that is ‘gone’ in our climate as a result ofclimate change or not is open to speculation. There is some research linking the location and weakness of the jet stream to the south with the removal of the summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.”

He added: “It is very tentative as yet, but it is being suggested that the loss of all that shiny snow and the warming up of the northern ocean is reducing the need for our depressions to whistle by us as normal. Instead, it is making the jet stream weaker and a bit more inclined to get locked in strange positions.

“That is just one suggestion but it really is too early to label a cause.”

I almost feel I have to apologise for staying at home says Lucy

 

“I almost feel as if I have to apologise for staying at home. We are afraid to promote its merits for fear of seeming like we are being too critical of working mothers and causing them to feel guilty.”

Those are the thoughts of stay-at-home mum Lucy Hill, one of three women interviewed by Arlene Harris in today’s ‘Weekend’ magazine.

The women, all stay-at-home mothers by choice, explain why they made the decision to leave the workplace and raise their children full-time.

The report provides a glimpse into the day-to-day life of the stay-at-home mum.

“We are lucky in Ireland that, generally speaking, it is accepted that families make the best choice for their individual circumstances,” says mother-of-two Denise Guidera.

“But the mums I feel sorry for are the ones who would love to be at home but can’t be, or who want to work but are forced by circumstances to stay at home.”

To read the full feature, turn to page 16 of today’s ‘Weekend’ magazine.

Do Dolphins Have the Ability to Detect Human Cancer?

 

Can dolphins detect cancer in people? To some scientists, it’s not even a legitimate hypothesis; and to many animal-rights activists, “swim-with-the-dolphin” cancer diagnostic centers would be no less objectionable than any other form of captivity.

But what if the rather far-fetched idea were true? What if we tested dolphins and discovered they can detect tiny tumors and abnormal growths in humans, perhaps even those missed by state-of-the-art technology? Instead of X-rays, MRIs and CAT scans, will patients one day be clamoring for cetacean-grams?

Probably not. But I, for one, believe the hypothesis is plausible. Others are positively convinced it is fact, including Patricia Stoops of Panama City, Florida, who claims that a captive dolphin named Keppler saved her life after a chance meeting at a swim-with program in the Caribbean.

Stoops was on a Carnival cruise in the British Virgin Islands when she eagerly signed up for the “dolphin excursion” on the island of Tortola.

She and about 15 others entered the water as a group of captive dolphins approached them and began interacting as normal. But one dolphin, Keppler, took a keen interest in Stoops and refused to leave her alone.

“He did a flip in front of me,” she told WJHG-TV news in Panama City. “He kept running into me and I explained to the trainer that the dolphin had hit me. He said, ‘Oh, that’s unusual.’ The dolphin trainer said the dolphin detected something wrong with me.”

Stoops was taken aback by what the trainer’s said next: He asked if her trip was sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, to fulfill a final wish of swimming with dolphins.

“He asked if I’d ever had cancer. I said, ‘no way!’ ” she said. In fact, she had never been healthier in her life. But, she would soon discover, that was not true.

A week after returning home, Stoops noticed some pain in her chest. Thinking it had something to do with the dolphin encounter, she went to the doctor, who discovered a spot on her lung and diagnosed her with lung cancer. Now cancer free, she hopes to visit the animal in the fall.

“Thank God to this little dolphin, Keppler. He saved my life,” Stoops says.

Of course, the chain-of-events are likely coincidental, even though eerily similar, unverified accounts are posted online. Michael T. Hyson, Ph.D., research director at the Hawaii-based Sirius Institute, which advocates captive dolphins as therapy for people with autism and other disorders, writes about a dolphin named Dreamer possessed with seemingly miraculous abilities to heal and diagnose humans.

“A woman swimming with Dreamer thought she had been rammed,” Hyson writes. “The woman was taken to hospital for examination. The woman had a large bruise. X-ray revealed that under the ribs, near the center of the bruised area, there was a small tumor. It is my feeling that Dreamer likely ‘zapped’ the tumor with a powerful sound pulse, perhaps to heal it, and the high intensity sound left bruising from hydrostatic shock. At the least, the bruising called medical attention to the tumor.”

Meanwhile, “Dolphins have been known to detect certain types of cancer and pregnancy in some people,” WJHG reports, “But experts say there is no clinical research to back up those behaviors.

There has been no research in this regard, though it would be fairly simple. Dolphins could be put in the water with people with various stages of cancer and healthy controls. You could have, say, 15 controls and one patient. If a dolphin displayed unusual behaviors around that person, it’s possible the animal detected something.

Most experts I asked didn’t really know how to answer the question, “Is this possible?”

Michael Miller, spokesman at the National Cancer Institute, tells TakePart that NCI “has never conducted research of this type and I don’t know of anyone we could point you to for more information.” A search of the published literature turns up nothing.

Neuroscientist and dolphin expert Dr. Lori Marino of Emory University and The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, rules out the idea.

“This is all a coincidence and nothing more,” says Marino, an outspoken opponent of dolphinariums and other forms of captivity. “Despite the mythology, there is no evidence that dolphins can detect cancers and other diseases in the human body,” she says. “Why was the dolphin ramming the woman and getting excited? It could be for a number of reasons—agitation, play, but none of them show the dolphin detected the cancer.”

There is evidence to suggest that dogs, and cats, can be trained to detect certain forms of cancer in the breath or urine of people, though the science on that is slim. “We are not aware of any convincing evidence to show that dogs can detect cancer in patients,” says Andrew Becker, director of media relations at the American Cancer Society.

There are few published studies on dogs, cancer and diagnosis. A literature review published last year in an “effort to determine whether dogs have a role to play in modern health care as an alert tool or screening system for ill health,” especially cancer, seizures and hypoglycemia, highlighted “weaknesses in the work” and proposed “directions for future studies,” hardly a decisiveconclusion.