ESB

ESB2Hundreds of ESB workers gather outside the ESB’s headquarters on Lower Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin.

They’re protesting an approval, made at today’s AGM, to pay a €78.4m dividend to the State/exchequer.

The workers claim the move is unlawful and that it will undermine the semi-State body’s ability to sort out a €1.6billion deficit in the ESB’s pension fund.

ESB workers protest over planned dividend to State (RTÉ)

ESB staff try to halt €500m dividend payments to State over pension dispute (Irish Times)

Pics: Emily

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My office has been contacted in recent days by sections of the press making inquiries concerning my state of health and general medical condition. The following statement will I hope provide an adequate response.

“I am currently undergoing medical management for a serious cancer condition. I am extremely grateful for the superb treatment I have received from the team of consultants at St. Vincent’s Private Hospital as well as the nursing and general hospital staff.

The cancer appears to be related to the initial incidence of viral hepatitis which I contracted from tainted drinking water while I was on unpaid Government business in Eastern Europe in 1994.

I have no difficulty in making this information public in response to press queries because I believe that there should be no stigma attaching to cancer as a disease. I continue to enjoy life and am looking forward to returning to my duties in Seanad Eireann over the next few days.

David Norris

 

(Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

(If you would like to add a message below for David we’ll get it to him)

elementselements2‘Science communicator’ and PhD student Jamie Gallagher maps where the scientists who discovered the various elements of the Periodic Table were living when they discovered them. Talking to Smart News, Gallagher sez;

One of my favourites has to be polonium, though, the first element to be discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie. They were working in a modified shed with substances so dangerously radioactive their notes are still too active to be handled safely. Working together they isolated this element and later named it Polonium after Marie’s home country. (A country, I may add, that turned her away from her pursuit of education as she was a politically interested female). It was her hope that by naming the element after Poland she could generate interested in the independence (from Germany) campaign for the country. Yet [in my periodic table] the victory comes in under the French flag where the work was carried out. It remains to this day the only element to be named after a political cause, and a wonderful tribute to a phenomenal woman.

Full sized version here.

io9

IToldJune, 2008

IrishTimesWebMarch, 2013

ITnewJune 26, 2013

 

Design Changes At Irishtimes.com (Hugh Linehan, Irish Times)

Previously: The IT Crowd

Building an Irish Times website for the new digital era (Hugh Linehan, Irish Times, March 12, 2012)

Pics: Top and bottom, Stephen Devine; middle, Designrouge.com

Thanks Stephen Devine

stewart

While John Oliver ably holds the fort back in New York, a bearded Jon Stewart, currently on location filming Rosewater in Egypt, dropped by last Friday to visit his comedic counterpart Bassem Youssef, who has appeared several times on The Daily Show.

Naturally, there were Jewish gags. Also apricot gags.

iheartchaos

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