A YOUNG wheelchair user was left stranded on her way to college after she was unable to board both a train and a bus in Dublin.

Irish Rail has apologised after Aideen Horan (23), who is a student at UCD’s Blackrock campus, could not get on a train at Sydney Parade due to a lack of staff at the station to assist her.

The business student left the station and tried to get a bus instead, but was left sitting at the bus stop after a driver told her the wheelchair ramp wasn’t working.

Aideen, who has cerebral palsy, took to social media to express her anger.

She claimed that services have deteriorated in the last few years as money troubles cause staff shortages in Dart stations.

After her attempt to board a Dart was unsuccessful, she was left with no choice but to catch the bus.

Aideen told the Herald that when it pulled up at the stop  the driver told her “ramp’s broken” and closed the door.

“If a door on the bus was broken and people couldn’t get on, it wouldn’t leave the station but they’ll send one out with a broken ramp,” Aideen said. “I know we’re the minority but we still deserve to use the bus.”

Aideen had to return home and ask her roommate to accompany her on the train.

“I can’t rely on the goodwill of people and I shouldn’t have to,” she said, adding that last week’s incident was not a once-off.

The Ballinasloe native said she has also lived in Germany and Spain and travelled the West Coast of America and that Dublin’s rating as an accessible city doesn’t measure up.

“I love Dublin but for a capital city it’s not great for getting around,” she said.

Aideen lodged a complaint with Irish Rail when she had similar problems last year.

In their response, the company cited financial constraints as the reason for the lack of available staff to help.

Irish Rail also directed her to a disability assistance helpline to arrange someone to help her at the station, but she said that solution wasn’t an option for her when she is on her own.

The 20-year-old pop star's plea deal with prosecutors, detailed at a court hearing, includes a 12-hour anger management course, a $50,000charitable contribution and fines. The deal allows Bieber to avoid a driving under the influence conviction.

Singer Justin Bieber is photographed by police while in custody on January 23, 2014 in Miami Beach, Florida. Justin Bieber was arrested for driving under the influence, resisting arrest and driving without a valid driver's license

He was not present at the hearing before Miami-Dade County Judge William Altfield. Defence lawyer Mark Shapiro said Bieber had already given the money to a local children's charity.

The singer was arrested early on January 23 in Miami Beach after what police described as an illegal street race between his rented Lamborghini and a Ferrari driven by R&B singer Khalil Amir Sharieff.

Neither was charged with drag racing and there was little evidence they were even exceeding posted speed limits.

Alcohol breath tests found Bieber's level below the 0.02 limit for under-age drivers, but urine tests showed the presence of marijuana and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in his system.

Bieber was also charged with resisting arrest after a profanity-laced tirade against police officers, as well as driving on an expired license.

The urine test itself became a battle between media companies that sought access to video of it and Bieber's lawyers arguing it was an invasion of privacy.

Ultimately, Mr Altfield ordered the video released with sensitive portions blacked out. Other police video depicted Bieber walking unsteadily during a sobriety test.

In July, Bieber resolved another criminal case by pleading no contest to a vandalism charge for throwing eggs at a neighbour's house in Los Angeles. In that case, he agreed to pay more than $80,000 in damages and meet a number of other conditions.

Bieber is also charged in Toronto with assaulting a limousine driver in late December. His lawyers have said he is not guilty in that case.

Also in Miami, Bieber is being sued by a photographer who says he was roughed up while snapping pictures of the singer outside a recording studio.

The Canadian-born singer shot to stardom at age 15. His career was overseen by two music industry heavyweights, singer Usher and manager Scooter Braun, after initially gaining notice through YouTube videos.

Child protection services in Australia have made contact with a couple accused of abandoning a baby with Down’s syndrome with its surrogate mother in Thailand.

There was international outrage when it emerged the Australian couple returned from Thailand with a baby girl born to the surrogate mother, but left her twin brother, Gammy, who has Down's, behind.

Local media has since claimed court documents released by the Supreme Court of Australia show he was jailed in 1997 for a minimum of three years for sex offences involving three girls aged under 13.

Child protection officers had been attempting to reach the couple for the past few days. Western Australia Child Protection Minister Helen Morton told Fairfax Radio on Thursday: "We've had telephone contact with the family and we're in the process of putting other arrangements in place.

The surrogate mother Pattharamon Chanbua claims the couple asked her to have an abortion and left Gammy behind because of his disability. The couple denied this claim to Australian media, saying they did not know Gammy existed.

But Ms Chanbua, 21, says the father met the twins but only took his healthy twin sister.

New research finds that those who spot the logical flaws of their dream-world are likely to show greater insight when awake

You’re in a lecture hall giving the talk of your life, when you suddenly become aware of the fact that you aren’t wearing any trousers.

Dr Patrick Bourke, Senior Lecturer at the Lincoln School of Psychology, says: It is believed that for dreamers to become lucid while asleep, they must see past the overwhelming reality of their dream state, and recognise that they are dreaming.The same cognitive ability was found to be demonstrated while awake by a person’s ability to think in a different way when it comes to solving problems.

Not everyone experienced lucid dreamsIn order to investigate the connection between our sleeping and waking minds, the researchers examined 68 participants between the ages of eighteen and 25, ranging from frequent lucid dreamers to those who had never experienced the awareness of being in a dream state.

The bench then adjorned the matter asking the Centre to file affidavit within two weeks giving details about what it proposes to do for cleaning the river.

"In this matter you said there is urgency... Now there is no urgency for you. You are shuttling the issue between two ministries," the bench observed.

The bench also said that cleaning project should be done in stretches as it cannot be undertaken at one go. It suggested that initially the government should focus to clean first 100 km of the river and then it should take the task of cleaning another part of the river.

On the last date of hearing on August 5, the case was adjourned as the Centre sought more time to file response.

The issue of cleaning up of river Ganga has been monitored by the apex court and several applications have been filed.

The unchecked pollution of river Ganga has evoked sharp criticism by the apex court which has been hearing the case since 1985.

The 2,500 km stretch of the river passes through 29 major cities, 23 small cities and 48 towns.

Although Albert Einstein praised another as “the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began” after her death in the ’30s, she couldn’t get a teaching job. When she finally did, the Nazis took it away because she was Jewish.

The struggles of female mathematicians Hypatia (killed in the 5th century), Sophie Germain (1776–1831) and Emmy Noether (1882–1935) are now history. However, not until Tuesday did a woman win the Fields Medal — “the Nobel of math,” as Time magazine put it — first awarded in 1936.

The achievement of Stanford University professor Maryam Mirzakhani is not just unprecedented, but unlikely in a field where women remain underrepresented. As few as 9 percent of tenure-track positions in math are held by women, according to a 2010 study.

“This is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians,” Mirzakhani said in a Stanford University news release. “I am sure there will be many more women winning this kind of award in coming years.”

Mirzakhani was born in Iran, dreaming of becoming a writer. It was a tumultuous time in Iran, she said in an interview with the Clay Mathematics Institute. The country was still embroiled in war with Iraq and “those were hard times,” she said.

But she nonetheless remembers the first time she heard about mathematics. Her brother had a problem — and it would make her abandon her writing aspirations.

“My older brother was the person who got me interested in science in general,” she told the Clay Mathematics Institute. “He used to tell me what he learned in school. My first memory of mathematics is probably the time that he told me about the problem of adding numbers from 1 to 100. I think he had read in a popular science journal how [German mathematician Johann Carl Friedrich] Gauss solved this problem. The solution was quite fascinating for me. That was the first time I enjoyed a beautiful solution.”

There would be many more in her career. The war ended when she finished elementary school, and she and a friend spent time wandering in and out of bookstores in Tehran. “We couldn’t skim through the books like people usually do here in a bookstore,” she said. “So we would end up buying a lot of random books.”

Microsoft Devices on Wednesday announced the launch of "most affordable" Lumia 530 dual SIM smartphone for Rs. 7,349 in India.

Microsoft Devices said Lumia 530 will be available in stores at a best buy price of Rs. 7,349 starting August 14.

The new Lumia 530 will provide a powerful entry to Windows Phone 8.1 with a Quad Core processor delivering faster and smoother user experience, among others, it said in a press release.

This device will expand the reach of Windows Phone as it allows more people to enjoy Lumia innovations and Microsoft services similar to those offered in high-end Lumia smartphones, the release added.

"The affordable smartphone segment is growing exponentially, driven primarily by youth who are constantly looking out for smartphones with power-packed features at affordable prices," Viral Oza, Director-Marketing, Nokia India, a subsidiary of Microsoft Mobiles Oy, said.

Samsung has launched its new Galaxy Alpha with a metal frame, in a bid to boost sales after the plastic design of its smartphones has been blamed for the company’s recent struggles.

The Wednesday launch of the latest Galaxy smartphone comes after a difficult second quarter for Samsung. While overall smartphones sales grew by almost 27 percent, Samsung’s shipments dropped. In May, the company also appointed a new head of its design team.

Samsung has pitched the Galaxy Alpha with its metal frame as a new start, and the design as something “entirely new” compared to the design of its existing products, which have been justifiably criticized for looking cheap irrespective of what they cost.

However, in reality the shape of the home button still makes it look very much like a Samsung smartphone, and the plastic back has inherited the dimpled design of the Galaxy S5. For some, the changes Samsung has made aren’t nearly big enough.

“Overall it’s a good phone but I was disappointed with the design, even with the metal frame it feels too plastic,” said Francisco Jeronimo, research director for European mobile devices at IDC.

Samsung has also decided to make the Galaxy Alpha thin and light: it weighs just 115 grams and is 6.7 millimeters thick.

Under the hood, the smartphone is based on Android 4.4.4 and powered by an Exynos processor with four ARM Cortex-A15 cores running at 1.8GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores running at 1.3GHz. The screen measures 4.7 inches and has a 1280 by 720 pixel resolution.

The smartphone also has a 12-megapixel camera on the back and a 2.1-megapixel front camera. It has 2GB of RAM and 32GB of integrated storage, but no microSD card slot. The LTE connection supports download speeds up to 300Mbps, as long as there is a network that can handle it as well.

 Pope calls on Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general, to consider the tears and the heartfelt cries of despair of religious minorities and end the humanitarian tragedy

David Cameron has broken off his holiday to lead the government's response to the Iraq crisis as Europe and the US stepped up their humanitarian support to the persecuted religious minorities stranded in northern Iraq.

Mr Cameron is chairing a meeting of the government's Cobra emergency committee this afternoon after returning earlier than expected from his holiday in Portugal.

 In an interview with Sky News, Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary, said: "Why bring MPs back? The argument appears to be that when events stir the public conscience and the men in khaki are on high alert, Westminster simply must express itself.

"Even if no one offers anything workable to be done, there are plenty of things to be said."

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is ready to call a special foreign ministers' meeting as early as this week and is talking to EU governments about it, a spokesman said.
Meanwhile Justine Greening, International Development Secretary, said there had been "five successful air drops" to the region since Tuesday night.
Thousands more poured across a bridge into Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday after trekking into Syria to escape, most with nothing but the clothes they wore.

Some women carried exhausted children, weeping as they arrived to the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.

But there are still large numbers on the mountain, said 45-year-old Mahmud Bakr.

"Many of them are elderly; they cannot walk this distance," Bakr told AFP.

"My father Khalaf is 70 years old - he cannot make this journey. But up there, there is very little food and no medicine," he said.

UN minority rights expert Rita Izsak has warned they face "a mass atrocity and potential genocide within days or hours".

In a letter to Ban Ki-moon, the Pope issued a heartfelt plea to the UN secretary-general to help the stranded refugees.

Pope Francis said: "I write to you, Mr Secretary-General, and place before you the tears, the suffering and the heartfelt cries of despair of Christians and other religious minorities of the beloved land of Iraq.

As an election campaigner, Narendra Modi promised sweeping market reforms to revive India's economy and put the country to work. As prime minister, he has dismayed admirers, apparently reverting to the script of the hapless government he defeated.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves to supporters during a public rally in Kargil. (AFP Photo)

To some of the economists and business leaders who as his campaign cheerleaders dared to dream of a Thatcherite revolution, he seems not to be listening. Three months after his win, it is dawning on them that their views count for little.

"As of now, the momentum is lost. They might still recover it, but we have lost the moment," said Bibek Debroy, a prominent economist who co-wrote a book laying out a reform agenda that the new prime minister himself launched in June.

Debroy told Reuters that so far there had been no signs of the promised change at institutions sapped by graft and over-regulation that many Indians have grown to revile.

Back in the heady days of the election campaign, Modi and his supporters seemed much more in tune, all lambasting the last centre-left government for years of waste and policy paralysis and building expectations of a regime of "minimum government and maximum governance" that would unshackle key sectors of the economy from the state.

But now there is a sense that the 63-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strongman, who made his reputation putting his home state Gujarat on a high growth path, has somehow stumbled in New Delhi.

To be fair, the government has a five-year term to achieve Modi's goal of transforming India into an economic and military power able to withstand the rise of China on its doorstep.

On Friday, Modi will make his first Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Old Delhi, and the expectation within his party is that he may use the occasion to announce bold changes that have so far been absent.

According to economists at HSBC, the government has already moved with "unaccustomed alacrity" on a number of fronts, such as opening up the state railways to foreign investment and providing new guidelines for a more streamlined bureaucracy.