‘There is no going back on water charges for Ireland’ says the EU
Micheal Martin, and Enda Kenny.
THERE IS NO GOING BACK ON WATER CHARGES, THE EU COMMISSION HAS SAID IN ITS CLEAREST STATEMENT ON THE CONTROVERSY TO DATE.
Ireland is breaking EU law if the Dáil seeks to abandon charging as is expected after a nine-month consultation period agreed in the Programme for Government.
In reply to a Parliamentary Question from MEP Marian Harkin, the European Commission said Ireland “made a clear commitment to set up water charges” and there is no provision “whereby it can revert to any previous practice”.
The statement is the clearest yet on water charges and suggests that Ireland could be left open to significant EU fines unless a billing system is implemented.
The Commission said that Ireland is signed up to Article 9(4) of the Framework Directive which sets down “strict conditions”.
It says that a member state wishing to avail for flexibility under this provision needed to take a decision on what constituted an “established practice”.
“On the contrary, in the said plans, Ireland made a clear commitment to set up water charges to comply with the provisions of Article 9(1).
“Ireland subsequently applied water charges and the Commission considers that the Directive does not provide for a situation whereby it can revert to any previous practice,” the Commission said.
The statement is likely to reignite the war of words over water charges.
Fianna Fáil has claimed that it has legal advice which says that Ireland can legally scrap water charges.
However, Fine Gael continues to say that water charges cannot be reversed and recently Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that despite all the protests people will eventually end up paying for domestic water.
Legislation that allows for the suspension of water charges for nine months is to be debated in the Dáil later this month.
It will allow for the setting up of a Commission which will make recommendations on the future of water charges.
European Union must reprise role of ‘social champion’
SAYS TÁNAISTE FITZGERALD
FRANCES FITZGERALD WARNS OF SETBACK IF UK WITHDRAWS FROM EUROPEAN ARREST WARRANT OR EUROPOL.
The Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald said membership of the EU “led to real changes for women through removal of the working ban for married women and the equal pay directive”.
The European Union must change its focus and be identified again with making people’s lives better, the Tánaiste has told the Dáil.
Frances Fitzgerald said the EU began as a peace project by promoting economic co-operation and it became a “social champion”.
Citing benefits to Ireland, she said membership of the EU “led to real changes for women through removal of the working ban for married women and the equal pay directive”.
During the day-long debate on the UK decision to leave, Ms Fitzgerald said in recent years the union “is seen by too many people as a restricting rather than an enabling force, focused on economic theory rather than social progression. That must change and now is the time to begin.”
She said “the European Union must again be identified with making people’s lives better”.
Echoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s view earlier in the debate that it was the Government’s priority to maintain the common travel area between the United Kingdom and Ireland, Ms Fitzgerald said it was also “clear that the UK share our view that it should be preserved”.
SECURITY
The Tánaiste, who is Minister for Justice, said she had spoken on Monday to the UK minister of state for security and immigration. This was “a first step in this process and we agreed to have ongoing contact and further detailed discussions while maintaining our excellent relationship on security issues”.
She said a border normally had significant implications for the movement of people. But “ours will be geographically isolated from the rest of the European Union and in particular it will be outside the Schengen area so the integrity of the border controls of the Schengen area will not be affected in any way”.
Ms Fitzgerald also warned it would be a setback if the UK withdrew from the European Arrest Warrant process or from Europol, the body set up for co-operation among police services across Europe.
The Tánaiste said the arrest warrant system had replaced the traditional extradition process and had proved very successful. Europol had enhanced police co-operation between the member states and “now is a standard part of many investigations with several thousand queries a year going to and from the Garda Síochána and Europol”.
Controlling immune response ‘could ease dying’
CONTROLLING THE IMMUNE RESPONSE OF PEOPLE DYING FROM CANCER MIGHT HELP SAVE THEM FROM PAIN, FATIGUE AND LOSS OF APPETITE, ACCORDING TO RESEARCHERS.
Experts hope by using existing drugs to control symptoms, people in their last few weeks of life can have a more comfortable time before they die.
Edinburgh University worked with the European Palliative Care Research Centre.
They studied the progression of cancer in more than 2,500 patients in Europe.
They used blood tests to assess inflammation levels in patients with many different types of cancer, including lung, breast, and bowel cancer.
Reduce inflammation
They found a person’s level of inflammation appeared to have a direct effect on the way they felt – causing pain, fatigue, loss of appetite and nausea.
The researchers believe this may be the first time such symptoms have been shown to develop as a result of the body’s immune response to cancer, and not simply as a consequence of tumours spreading.
Lead researcher Dr Barry Laird, of the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre at Edinburgh University, said: “This study challenges the assumption that certain symptoms are an inevitable consequence of advanced cancer, and there is nothing doctors can do to make patients feel better.
“If we can understand what causes symptoms such as pain, fatigue and nausea, we can begin to tackle them.
“We already have drugs that target and reduce inflammation, so using these drugs specifically to treat symptoms may make a real difference to people living with cancer.”
He said clinical trials were now under way to test this.
The research was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Almost a quarter of Irish men admit they’ve probably driven while over legal alcohol limit
SURVEY SHOWS THAT DRINK DRIVING EXPERIENCES ARE MORE PREVALENT AMONG MEN.
64% of Irish people say they know somebody who has knowingly driven a car when above the legal alcohol limit in the past five years, a new study has shown.
1,015 adults were interviewed during the Red C survey for Newstalk. It looked at attitudes towards drink driving here in Ireland, as well as personal experiences of drink driving.
More than one in four people stated that they may have been a passenger in a car driven by someone who was over the limit.
Meanwhile, 15% think they themselves may have driven while over the legal limit – a number that rises to 24% among men.
The study also shows that drink driving is perceived to be more of a problem in rural areas than urban ones – with 77% agreeing that people in rural areas are more likely to drive when over the limit.
Meanwhile, more than a quarter of respondents said they believed that the legal drink driving limit is too low.
Tune in to the Pat Kenny Show today and tomorrow for more about Irish attitudes towards drink driving.
Great news for children’s parties and doctors as new helium source discovered
DON’T PANIC PARTY-GOERS BECAUSE SCIENTISTS WON’T BE RESTRICTING HELIUM BALLOONS JUST YET AS A NEW DISCOVERY COULD SOLVE A SHORTAGE OF THE GAS.
Reserves of the gas have been running out and doctors a year ago were calling for a ban on its use in party balloons, branding it frivolous.
But scientists have found new helium sources in Tanzania, which could be critical to the role helium plays not only in fun, but in life-threatening medicine.
HELIUM DOES NOT JUST MAKE VOICES GO SQUEAKY, IT’S EXTREMELY LOW BOILING POINT MEANS IT IS USED FOR SUPER-COOLING AND IS CRITICAL IN MRI SCANNERS, NUCLEAR POWER AND LEAK DETECTION.
Until now helium has been found accidentally during drilling for oil and gas.
But a team from Oxford and Durham Universities, working with the Norwegian firm Helium One, applied the expertise used in oil and gas exploration to find how helium was generated underground and where it accumulated.
Their research showed that volcanic activity provides the intense heat necessary to release the gas from ancient, helium-bearing rocks.
Within the Tanzanian East African Rift Valley, volcanoes have released helium from deep rocks and trapped it in shallower gas fields.
Professor Chris Ballentine, of the department of earth sciences at the University of Oxford, said it was estimated there was probably 54 billion cubic feet (BCf) in just one part of the Rift Valley – enough to fill more than 1.2 million medical MRI scanners.
Global consumption was around 8 BCf a year and the US Federal Helium Reserve, the world’s largest supplier, currently held around 24 BCf.
Prof Ballentine said: “This is a game-changer for the future security of society’s helium needs and similar finds in the future may not be far away.”
Professor Jon Gluyas, of the department of earth sciences at Durham University, who collaborated on the project, said the price of helium had gone up 500% in 15 years.
The inert gas escapes gravity and leaks into outer space.
Prof Gluyas said: “We have to keep finding more, it’s not renewable or replaceable.”
Curiosity sees hint of Earth-like atmosphere on ancient Mars planet
NASA’S CURIOSITY TOOK THIS SELFIE WHILE CONDUCTING SCIENCE AT THE “WINDJANA” SITE ON MARS, IN APRIL AND MAY OF 2014. ITS INVESTIGATIONS TURNED UP EVIDENCE OF AN OXYGEN-RICH ATMOSPHERE IN MARS’ DISTANT PAST.
Monday, June 27, 2016, 5:51 PM – Did Mars once have an atmosphere rich in oxygen, more akin to what we have here on Earth? That’s what the latest find from NASA’s Curiosity rover is pointing to, but if so, where did this oxygen come from?
As NASA’s 1-ton, nuclear-powered robotic rover trundles across the rocky Martian terrain, it pauses at times to conduct some science – scoop some sand, drill down into rocks or shoot things with a high-powered laser – which has yielded up some truly remarkable discoveries.
One of these discoveries found that Gale Crater, where Curiosity is roving, once held a large lake of fresh water, with just the right conditions that it would actually be drinkable for us.
Now, according to the latest news from NASA, scientists working with data from one of the rover’s science “pauses” have found manganese oxide minerals – a type of mineral that only forms in one of two ways:
1) In the presence of liquid water and high concentrations of oxygen, or
2) From microbial life.
“Now we’re seeing manganese oxides on Mars,” Nina Lanza, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in a NASA statement. “And we’re wondering how the heck these could have formed?”
“These high manganese materials can’t form without lots of liquid water and strongly oxidizing conditions,” Dr. Lanza explained. “Here on Earth, we had lots of water but no widespread deposits of manganese oxides until after the oxygen levels in our atmosphere rose.”
According to NASA, here on Earth, manganese oxide minerals are used as a kind of historical marker, since they only appear in the geological record after the atmosphere became oxygen-rich due to organisms using photosynthesis.
This isn’t even the first time that manganese deposits have been located on Mars. In 2014, “the jelly donut” rock that the Opportunity rover accidentally dislodged turned out to have manganese in it, and more recently, a combination of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Opportunity investigations found high concentrations of manganese on the ridge of Endeavor Crater, where Opportunity has been investigating.
Given that Endeavor Crater and Gale Crater are roughly on opposite sides of the planet from one another, this lends good support to the idea that these minerals are quite wide-spread.
Drill holes made by Curiosity on May 11, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The fact that there was oxygen on Mars in the past isn’t the truly remarkable find here. Given the iron oxide dust that gives Mars the nickname The Red Planet, oxygen had to be there in the past. Studies prior to this have even shown that the planet could have had abundant oxygen in its atmosphere long before Earth did.
According to Dr. Lanza, though, manganese oxide minerals require much higher concentrations of oxygen to form than are needed to oxidize iron – higher levels than were ever thought to have existed on Mars.
So, what could be the source of such high concentrations of oxygen?
Although it’s fun to speculate that the high oxygen levels, or even the minerals themselves, may have been produced by ancient Martian microbes, there’s probably a safer and simpler explanation.
Since Mars lacks a strong magnetic field now, even if it was stronger in the past, as it weakened, it would expose Mars’ surface to an increasing bombardment by high energy particles from the Sun and from space. Now, this bombardment apparently sterilizes the surface to some depth, but back in the ancient past, these particles would have plunged into the oceans, splitting apart water molecules into their component atoms.
Mars’ gravity wouldn’t have been strong enough to keep the hydrogen around. Even Earth’s gravity – at 2.5 times stronger than Mars’ – is not particularly good at that, with hydrogen only found in the far upper reaches of our atmosphere. The free oxygen, on the other hand, was heavy enough to be bound to Mars longer, thus being around to produce both the iron oxide dust and these manganese oxide minerals.
One thing to note is an important point made by Dr. Lanza: “It’s hard to confirm whether this scenario for Martian atmospheric oxygen actually occurred. But it’s important to note that this idea represents a departure in our understanding for how planetary atmospheres might become oxygenated.”
This may be a new piece of the puzzle to add to our overall knowledge of how planets and their atmospheres form, or it may actually be a step towards the discovery that life actually existed on the Red Planet at some point in its past.
The next step, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is for the researchers to see if there is any discernible difference between manganese oxides produced through biological processes and those that arise from simple geological processes.
