Microsoft to offer rival AI models from own datacenter; launches AI coding agent
The chief executive of a company accused of engaging in a corporate espionage scheme...
Microsoft on Monday said it would offer new AI models made by Elon Musk's xAI and...
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The UK-EU deal, Keir Starmer said on Monday, is a "win-win" for all sides. But if...
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Irish Times
29 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Drivers put a brake on Tesla sales,
Irish drivers have put a brake on buying Tesla electric cars, says The Sunday Times. The company run by billionaire Elon Musk, whose split with US president, Donald Trump, dominated headlines this week, has suffered a 13 per cent drop in Irish sales so far this year. Chinese rival BYD has overtaken Tesla, increasing its sales by 48 per cent, the newspaper reports. 'In Ireland Tesla's year got off to a good start with sale of his cars doubling year on year in early 2025, driven by the arrival of the cheaper Tesla Model 3,' it says. 'But sales plunged by 62 per cent last month.' READ MORE Housing policy chasing developers away Government policy is driving investment in housing to other countries, according to the Sunday Independent. Developers including Claire Solon, managing director of the Irish arm of international player, Greystar, tells the newspaper that the Government needs to tackle 'planning, infrastructure, rent caps and viability'. The company warns that 'problematic policy changes' are pushing housing investment to other countries. Michael O'Flynn, chief executive of O'Flynn Group, says additional taxes on the building industry in the middle of a housing crisis are 'actually holding back the delivery of new homes'. He maintains that the residential zoned land tax has become a development tax. Hotelier's Heathrow runway pitch Billionaire hotelier, Surinder Arora is joining forces with US engineering giant Bechtel, to pitch an alternative third runway plan for London's Heathrow airport , reports The Sunday Telegraph. Mike Kane, Britain's aviation minister, says the country's government is open to alternative bids for the hub's third runway. Mr Arora told the newspaper that his bid could no doubt 'build it cheaper than Heathrow airport Ltd'. The hotels mogul previously led an alternative bid in 2018, saying he could do it one third cheaper than the airport company. Renewables' biogas call Renewables developer Bia Energy says data centres and large energy users should be obliged to use biogas to aid kick-starting the industry here, the Business Post writes. The firm, backed by businessman Eamon Waters, who sold Panda Recycling to Macquarie Infrastructure Fund for €1.2 billion, warns that the Government will not meet its climate plan biogas targets. Bia Energy is calling for a 'renewable heat obligation policy' which legally binds large energy users, such as data centres and pharmaceutical manufacturers, to buy renewable energy. The Republic faces penalties of up to €28 billion by 2030 if it fails to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 51 per cent.
RTÉ News
2 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Russia says it's pushing offensive into Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region
Russia said it was pushing into Ukraine's eastern industrial Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time in its three-year offensive - a significant territorial escalation amid stalled peace talks. Moscow, which has the initiative on the battlefield, has repeatedly refused calls by Ukraine, Europe and US President Donald Trump for a full and unconditional ceasefire. At talks in Istanbul last week it demanded Kyiv pull troops back from the frontline, agree to end all Western arms support and give up on its ambitions to join the NATO military alliance. Dnipropetrovsk is not among the five Ukrainian regions over which Russia has asserted a formal territorial claim. It is an important mining and industrial hub for Ukraine and deeper Russian advances into the region could have a serious knock-on effect for Kyiv's struggling military and economy. Dnipropetrovosk was estimated to have a population of around three million people before Russia launched its offensive. Around one million people lived in the regional capital, Dnipro. Russia's defence ministry said forces from a tank unit had "reached the western border of the Donetsk People's Republic and are continuing to develop an offensive in the Dnipropetrovsk region". The advance of Russian forces into yet another region of Ukraine is both a symbolic and strategic blow to Kyiv's forces after months of setbacks on the battlefield. There was no immediate response from Ukraine to Russia's statement. Moscow in 2022 said it was annexing the frontline Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, which it did not have full control over. In 2014, it seized the Crimean peninsula following a pro-EU revolution in Kyiv. In a set of peace demands issued to Ukraine at the latest talks, it demanded formal recognition that these regions were part of Russia - something Kyiv has repeatedly ruled out. Tens of thousands have been killed in Russia's three-year offensive, millions forced to flee their homes and cities and villages across eastern Ukraine devastated by relentless air attacks and ground combat. In more than a decade of conflict with Kremlin-backed separatists and the Russian army, Ukraine has never had to fight on the territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region until now. Ukrainian military personnel previously said that Russia could advance relatively quickly in the largely flat region, given there are fewer natural obstacles or villages that could be used as defensive positions by Kyiv's forces. The region - and in particular the city of Dnipro - have been under persistent Russian strikes for the last three years. Russia used Dnipro as a testing ground for its "experimental" Oreshnik missile in late 2024, claiming to have struck an aeronautics production facility. Earlier today, local Ukrainian officials said one person was killed in the region in an attack on a village close to the frontline.
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
Trump-Musk feud shows president knows how to hit a narcissist where it hurts
Sometimes you're better off letting the children fight. That was president Donald Trump 's callous wisdom on looking the other way as the Russians and Ukrainians continue to kill each other. But it might better be applied to Trump's social media spat with Elon Musk . It's hard to think of two puer aeterni who are more deserving of a verbal walloping. Their venomous digital smackdown fulgurated on their duelling social media companies, flashing across the Washington sky. In March, Trump showed off Teslas in the White House driveway and bought a more-than-$80,000 red Model S. Now, he says he's going to sell it. READ MORE Thursday was the most titillating day here since the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, when a spaceship landed an alien to warn human leaders to stop squabbling like children, or the aliens would destroy Earth. On Friday, Trump tried to convey serenity. 'I'm not thinking about Elon Musk,' Trump said aboard Air Force One. 'I wish him well.' But Trump then jumped on the phone to knock Musk, telling ABC's Jonathan Karl that Musk has 'lost his mind' and CNN's Dana Bash that 'the poor guy's got a problem.' Trump had to know that would be seen as a reference to the intense drug use by Musk chronicled by the New York Times. As Raheem Kassam, one of the owners of Butterworth's, the new Trumpworld boîte on Capitol Hill, assured Politico, 'Maga will not sell out to ketamine.' [ Keith Duggan: Trump-Musk bromance descends into a jaw-dropping feud that is funny, dismal and nauseating Opens in new window ] The Washington Post reported on Friday: 'Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under Doge's staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperilling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.' On Truth Social on Thursday, Trump threatened to take away government contracts that have handsomely enriched Musk even though, as Leon Panetta pointed out on CNN, 'some of those contracts, particularly on SpaceX, are very important to our national security.' Musk tried to tie Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, offering no evidence. He shared a post on Epstein that said Trump should be impeached. Trump reposted a message from Epstein's last lawyer, saying the smear was 'definitively' not true. Musk deleted the post on Saturday. Musk did, however, expose Trump and Republican lawmakers as hypocrites, using his online bullhorn to shame them about their broken promises to reduce the debt. The big domestic Bill is a dog's breakfast of Republican proposals that could add more than $3 trillion to the debt to make the rich richer, while cutting healthcare coverage for the poor. Republicans are the ones who always claim they're fiscally responsible, even while they keep exploding the debt. Musk reposted Trump's old tweets on the social platform X, such as this one from 2012: 'No member of Congress should be eligible for re-election if our country's budget is not balanced – deficits not allowed!' Musk sneered: 'Where is the man who wrote these words? Was he replaced by a body double!?' As the weekend began, Trump seemed to be winning the fight, as Musk grew quieter and Fox News commentators had pleaded with their parents to get back together. Trump has exposed Musk's naive streak – something I saw in 2017 when I reported that another tech lord had to explain to Musk that he couldn't get away from artificial intelligence by going to Mars; it would just follow him there. Just because Musk hung in the Oval and Mar-a-Lago and debated moving into the Lincoln Bedroom, it didn't mean he understood politics or power – or Trump. Trump didn't care about the potential conflict of interest in having the SpaceX chief pick the head of Nasa. But he did care that Musk's candidate had donated to top Democrats – and about the aborted plan for Musk to attend a briefing about military strategy against China at the Pentagon, and about Musk's barbed public trashing of Trump's 'beautiful' tariffs and 'beautiful' Bill. When I studied Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in graduate school, I was struck by how much the 1818 novel by a teenage girl reminded me of the bros in Silicon Valley. The brilliant scientists with their edgy experiments, too high on their own supply to consider the ramifications of AI. What if your creation grows stronger than you and comes back to haunt you? Musk posted that Trump was ungrateful because the nearly $300 million he spent on Republicans is what made Trump president. Musk created the monster! But Trump created a monster, too. He gave Musk free rein and enormous power over a world he knew nothing about and people for whom he had no empathy. And in the end, of course, Musk's demon mode came out and Trump's monster turned on him. 'Elon was 'wearing thin,'' Trump acidly posted, knowing how to hit a narcissist where it hurts. 'I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!' For all his macho swagger, Trump sure loves a catfight. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times .
