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THE EDITOR OF the Irish Daily Star has been suspended as an investigation is carried out into the circumstances which led to the paper publishing pictures of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge topless.
Michael O’Kane has been suspended with immediate effect pending an investigation into the publication which has caused a furore in recent days and led to threats from the paper’s British co-owner to shut it down.
The news was announced by the Irish publisher of the paper, Independent Star Ltd, this evening.
On Saturday, the newspaper published pages from the French edition of the magazine ‘Closer’ which showed Kate topless while on holiday with her husband Prince William in southern France.
The controversial move saw the paper’s British co-owner Northern and Shell threaten to shut it down through its chairman Richard Desmond. He said at the weekend that he was “taking immediate steps to close down the joint venture”.
Co-owner Independent News and Media also condemned the publication of the pictures but said it had no prior knowledge that the images would be published and described the move to shut down the paper as “disproportionate”.
It is not clear whether Desmond can shut the paper down or withdraw financial support under the co-ownership agreement between his company and INM.
Speaking at the weekend, O’Kane defended the move the publish the pictures telling the BBC: “She’s not the future queen of Ireland so really the only place this is causing fury seems to be in the UK, and they are very very tasteful pictures.”
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Why was my comment deleted Journal.ie?
The Ukraine has one of the highest rates of HIV and drug resistant TB in the world.
@icaniwont: yeahhhhh!!! Let’s not help people if they’re sick.
@icaniwont: it’s just Ukraine, not The Ukraine. Just FYI.
@Nomad: that is recognised as a human rights violation by the UN. You neglect to mention that having HIV is commonly used to deny residency rights, work permits and travel visas. It is a discriminatory practice that does little to prevent transmission but contributed massively to discrimination and stigma.
The best way to prevent transmission is to ensure that people get tested and are diagnosed and receive access to treatment to prevent onwards transmission. The best way to make this happen is to destigmatise the process and provide adequate access to treatment which represses viral load and prevents transmission. The worst way to do that is to continue perpetrate or replicate stigmatising practices. That is what all the best practice evidence shows and you will see that the countries that have such regulations don’t have have great detection rates and do not have lower transmission rates, they just discriminate unfairly against people because they have HIV which is not the end goal or desired result of any health policy.
The best way to prevent transmission is to be celebate. The second best way is to only have sex with one other who also only has sex with you.
@Tom Mullally: Is that your approach Father Mullally?
@Tom Mullally: Telling people to have less sex has never ever ever ever worked.
You can tell god-fearing evangelicals they’ll go to hell for all eternity for pre-marital sex, and still end up with eye-watering teen pregnancy rates.
The reason is obvious: access to services. It seems covid was the primary impetus to roll out the remote testing service, but even before the pandemic, it was incredibly difficult to get appointments even in Dublin (never mind outside Dublin). Many clinics didn’t even want to see you if you had no symptoms of anything, because they were so underresourced.
Yet you get the same tired response: be absinent and you’ll be grand. Because asking people not to have sex has always worked out so well historically…
PrEP is extremely effective in getting HIV transmission rates down, but it’s still only available in a limited number of venues with limited appointment availability.
Just a case of party mad and horniness after lockdowns.
@Jensen Bhroin: sounds very similar to covid cert that was welcomed
@SquintEastwood: ahhhhh nice work there. And the level of intimacy required to transmit covid is just the same as with HIV?
If we had meaningful access to PrEP rates would fall like a stone. 56 Dean St in London has done amazing work here. From a human perspective it’s just the right thing to do and being cold-hearted, a lifetime of PrEP is less than 1% of the cost of HIV treatments and interventions.
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