Children and babies die in overnight attacks in Gaza
Israeli attacks on Jabalia overnight have resulted in multiple fatalities and numerous injuries, mainly to children, according to reports.
Caoimhe Ní Ghormáin, an expert in medieval Irish manuscripts, and John Gillis, who led the conservation, talk about the Book of Leinster. Video: Ronan McGreevy
Gordon Manning speaks to members of the Dublin Senior Camogie squad ahead of this week's Camogie Association vote on the wearing of shorts. Video: Bryan O'Brien
Conor Gallagher reports on Pravfond, set up by Putin, that intelligence agencies say does more than its stated goal of protecting the rights of Russians abroad
14-year-old Cara Darmody started a 50-hour disability rights protest outside Leinster House to highlight delays in children getting an assessment of needs.
CCTV footage of a tractor being driven by 16 year old completely crushing a car in Graiguenamanagh.
Amateur video footage captures the moment a sailing tallship crashed into New York's Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, killing two people and injuring 17 others.
Austria have won the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in the country's first victory since bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst won in 2014.
A Mexican Navy sailing ship crashed into the landmark Brooklyn Bridge in New York on Saturday night, killing two people and injuring 17 others.
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
The Encampments director Kei Pritsker: ‘The students risked a lot to stand with the people of Gaza. That's tremendous'
The Palestine solidarity encampments at Columbia University , in uptown Manhattan, were not the first such US student protests during the continuing Gaza conflict. But they came to be the most impactful. Beginning in April 2024, the occupation saw tents spreading across the Morningside Heights campus of the Ivy League institution. Flags and banners were unfurled. Chants went up. That first protest, seeking Columbia's financial divestment from Israel, was broken up when Minouche Shafik, the university's president, authorised the New York Police Department to enter the campus and conduct mass arrests. Nothing like this had happened since the 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War. 'Columbia wasn't actually the first campus to set up an encampment,' Kei Pritsker, director of a fine new documentary on the protests, confirms. 'Stanford University, Vanderbilt University – they also had encampments going. But the whole world saw how Columbia had called the police on their own students – students who paid tuition to study at that school, only to be arrested by their own faculty, by their own school administration.' Pritsker's The Encampments stands as a lucid, sober examination of a still-developing story. The director, unapologetically on the side of the protesters, reflects that mood in his own conversation. He lays out the case calmly. The anger is implied, not explicit. READ MORE 'People saw this happening in broad daylight,' he says. 'These videos were circulated around the world. There was so much outrage over the treatment of students who weren't bothering anyone, who were protesting peacefully. The hypocrisy of it all. The fact that the students were saying, 'Hey, we're doing this in the spirit of education.'' The protests spread across the United States' universities and then across the world. The students in Manhattan returned and tensions continued to mount. There were disputes about anti-Semitic incidents happening in the vicinity of the encampments. The university ended up cancelling its graduation ceremony in May of 2024. Shafik resigned that August. Future histories will position all the testimonies in proper context, but The Encampments is an invaluable first draft. There is a lot to unpick here about the general condition of American education and, more specifically, about its relationship with the almighty dollar. 'The schools have this false reputation – it's almost a caricature – that's been built up by conservatives, that they are run by Marxists, by leftists,' Pritsker says of the top US universities. 'The reality is the schools are really run like businesses, especially the private institutions. In the United States the average American pays more for education than any person in the world, but we have very low outcomes for education. 'That's because the schools are run like a business. The money is not just being invested in big sports stadiums and huge monuments but also just in inflating the endowment of the school. Inflating the investment portfolio. Buying real-estate investments.' [ Protesting students will not be shamed, badgered or bribed into silence Opens in new window ] The film puts the case that Columbia's vigorous response to the protests was driven more by financial concerns than by any ideological unease. 'It's clear to us that Columbia's main consideration was how their donors would feel about their reaction to the protests, not whether the school was on the moral side of history or if they were actually invested in genocide,' Pritsker says. 'They were concerned with pleasing their donors – who happened to support Israel.' The Encampments further argues that members of Columbia's board of trustees may have direct interest in organisations that would suffer if the university divested as demanded by the students. 'They're titans of industry. They are wealthy. They are influential in politics and in culture,' he says, moving on to discuss a former secretary of homeland security. 'We talk about a few like Jeh Johnson, who is someone who sits on the Columbia board of trustees and also sits on the board of Lockheed Martin, which is a weapons manufacturer that builds weapons that are sold to Israel.' Pritsker, a journalist with BreakThrough News , did not initially set out to make a film about the phenomenon. He went to Columbia first to report on the early protests. Some of his footage from that visit made it into the final project. 'I had been in contact with the Columbia students since then,' he says. 'So when they were setting up the encampment they reached out to me and said, 'Hey, do you want to cover this? You know the administration isn't listening to our demands. They're ignoring us completely. They are banning our student groups. They're looking the other way. So we're setting up this encampment.'' Pritsker went back to the university and began filming. He felt it would be just a straightforward news package, but when rumours emerged of imminent arrests he realised that he might have a larger story to tell. He hung around, and the next morning the first police actions took place. Then information came in that other colleges across the nation were setting up their own encampments. Pritsker found himself monitoring the progress of a mighty wave. 'I asked the students, 'Hey, can I live with you guys?'' he says. 'So I lived in the encampment for the next 12 days – all really as a journalist. I had no intention of making a film out of any of this.' News reports suggest that the encampments temporarily transformed the whole atmosphere in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Cops were everywhere. The press was hovering. Chants and cheers were audible. Did Pritsker get that sense of the protests bleeding out into the wider community? 'That was a big part of it that we didn't quite get to address in the film,' he says. 'This was a citywide, and a countrywide, and a globalwide encampment at Columbia. Every single night and every single day people were going to the gates of Columbia to chant very loudly – loudly enough that the students in the camp could hear them chanting in support.' He goes on to argue that the issue of the genocide in Gaza is not something 'that stops at the university gates'. This was a concern that, one way or another, energised the whole community. 'It should come as no surprise that people in New York City wanted to express their support for the students,' he says. 'Without that support the encampment wouldn't have survived, but the students inside were receiving tons and tons of food.' [ Irish J1 visa students urged to be informed of potential risks of 'activism' in US Opens in new window ] All well and good. But student protests have, to put it delicately, never been universally popular with the wider public. There was, in the blue-collar US, at least as much outrage at student militancy of the late 1960s as there was support. And Columbia is not just some community college. These are elite students at the most prestigious of universities. 'To a degree, there is an aspect of that,' he says. 'The movement hasn't quite reached blue-collar America. There is a perception that the movement is solely for people who consider themselves progressive or left-wing. When it's really not. I think that is kind of where the movement needs to go. It needs to broaden and approach people who might consider themselves conservative or right-wing.' The Encampments does, at least, push aside the notion that there is nothing at stake for the protesters. Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia and one of the lead negotiators during the protest, is interviewed at length. In March this year Khalil was arrested by immigration officials in his university accommodation. 'Mahmoud is still in prison in Jena, Louisiana,' Pritsker says. 'He's still facing potential deportation. Some judges have issued orders slowing down the process, and obviously he has tremendous public support. 'So anything the Trump administration tries to do to Mahmoud will be heavily watched and criticised. They're trying to be really careful, and it's not clear that the administration has a solid case to do this.' Few of the protesters are facing anything like that sort of challenge. But there are risks for even those from more comfortable backgrounds. 'They have all these shiny little objects waved in front of them: lucrative careers, fancy job titles, all this,' Pritsker says, wryly. 'And the fact is they rejected that entirely. They said, 'We don't care about any of these bribes, these little trinkets that you're offering us. We want to stand with the people of Gaza at great detriment to our own safety and our own reputation.' That's tremendous.' The Encampments is in cinemas from Friday, June 6th
Irish Times
9 hours ago
- Irish Times
Mistakenly deported man Abrego Garcia brought back to US to face criminal charges
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration , is on his way back to the US to face criminal charges, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday. Abrego Garcia will face charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the US, ABC reported earlier. The report said the charges had been filed under seal in Tennessee last month, well after Abrego Garcia's March 15th deportation. His lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador despite an immigration judge's 2019 order granting him protection from deportation to the country after finding he was likely to be persecuted by gangs if returned there, court records show. READ MORE Critics of president Donald Trump pointed to the erroneous deportation as an example of the excesses of the Republican president's aggressive approach to stepping up deportations. [ Kilmar Abrego Garcia: The story of the 'mistakenly deported Maryland man' Opens in new window ] Officials countered by alleging that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. His lawyers have denied that he was a member of the gang and said he had not been charged with or convicted of any crime. Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Photograph: Murray Osorio PLLC via AP His case has also become a flash point for escalating tensions between the executive branch and the judiciary , which has ruled against a number of Trump's policies. The US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return, with liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the government had cited no basis for what she called his 'warrantless arrest'. US District Court judge Paula Xinis has since opened a probe into what, if anything, the Trump administration has done to secure his return, after his lawyers accused officials of stonewalling their requests for information. – Reuters
Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Irish Times
‘Nobody on the right or left is gonna buy a Tesla' - the Trump spat threat to Musk's business empire
What began as Elon Musk's embrace of right-wing populism has become a defining – and potentially harmful – chapter in his business career. By endorsing Donald Trump's MAGA movement and far-right parties in Europe, Musk alienated a big portion of his original customer base, eroding Tesla's brand , sales and market share around the globe. Then came this week's rupture: a personal and public break-up with Trump that prompted threats of retaliation from a man with control over the world's most powerful government. By simultaneously burning bridges with both his customers and now the political movement he funded and amplified for months, Musk now faces a rare convergence of threats: collapsing brand loyalty, shaky revenues, and mounting legal and regulatory risk. Tesla's sales are already stumbling under the weight of partisan baggage. SpaceX, long seen as a strategic national asset, is facing new scrutiny as political winds shift. And the green shoots at X – Musk's $44 billion 'free speech' experiment – that were fuelled by Musk's proximity to the White House and the ad dollars that followed, may soon disappear. READ MORE 'Elon isn't functioning to the benefit of his shareholders,' said Ross Gerber, the chief executive officer of Tesla shareholder Gerber Kawasaki, which has been reducing its Tesla holdings over the last few years. Speaking on Bloomberg Television on Thursday while the meltdown was still going on, Gerber said Musk's behaviour is leading to the 'dismantling of the Musk empire in real time.' With enemies on both flanks, Musk finds himself at the centre of a storm fuelled by consumer revolt and political hostility. [ Donald Trump 'not interested' in talking to Elon Musk Opens in new window ] [ Trump-Musk bromance descends into a jaw-dropping feud Opens in new window ] 'Nobody on the right is gonna buy a Tesla, nobody on the left is gonna buy a Tesla. Elon is a man without a country,' said Steve Bannon, an outside adviser to Trump who has long been critical of Musk, in an interview. Bannon says he is 'in continual conversations at the most senior levels' of the Trump administration to push them to revoke Musk's security clearance and use the Defense Production Act to seize SpaceX and Starlink on grounds they are vital to US national security. Even if Trump does not take such extreme measures, there is no shortage of retaliatory options for the White House. The president could try to wield the power of agencies like the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration to inflict real harm – or even just incessant regulatory morass – on to all of Musk's businesses and the source of his wealth. In just one day, the Musk-Trump spat shaved $34 billion from his personal net worth, the second-largest loss ever in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the 500 wealthiest people on the planet. The only bigger wealth hit: his own wipeout in November 2021. Tesla lost $153 billion of market value on Thursday, with shares reversing course on Friday after Musk began to simmer down. Musk has faced deep stretches of pain before. There are flanks of sceptics who have, over the years, called for his impending demise only to be proven wrong by the world's richest man and his cult following of fans and funders willing to throw ever-growing sums of money at his ambitions. [ Elon Musk has damaged himself and shows no signs of stopping Opens in new window ] Most famously, Tesla flirted with bankruptcy only to reverse course and become the biggest electric vehicle seller in the world. Musk's $44 billion purchase of X was widely panned as the company's debt languished on banks' books, only to see those fortunes reversed after Trump's election. 'Musk has a habit of teetering on the edge of destruction and pulling himself back just in the nick of time,' said Nancy Tengler, whose firm holds 3.5 per cent of its growth portfolio Tesla stock, in a Friday interview on Bloomberg Television. Tengler, chief executive and chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments, said her firm has been adding Tesla shares in recent months but now has a 'full position.' 'He needs to dial down the rhetoric and the drama and get back to the business,' she says, as investors own Tesla stock for growth, not for 'the histrionics.' To pull off a rebound this time around, Musk is going to have to convince people to start buying his electric vehicles at a faster clip and reverse the painful sales slide in the US, Europe and around the world. He is also going to have to attract riders to his new robotaxi service in Austin as the company makes a gigantic bet on artificial intelligence, robotics and self-driving cars. Musk has lobbied lawmakers to help clear a path for driverless vehicles, something Trump initially endorsed. It is now unclear if the Trump-Musk fallout complicates the regulatory environment for autonomous vehicles and potentially slows the path forward for Tesla's robotaxi network. 'The disagreement will not help Tesla demand but could potentially (temporarily) alienate multiple sides of the political spectrum,' said Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas in a research note entitled 'Well That Escalated Quickly...' Jonas said emotions are 'running high' and that he is sticking to his long-term $410 price target on Tesla's share price but is bracing for near-term volatility and is 'prepared for the stock to give up more.' Other tests in the coming weeks may include a $5 billion debt offering of the billionaire's AI company, xAI Corp, as well as funding rounds for xAI and SpaceX. Musk recently closed a $650 million late-stage raise for his neurotechnology company Neuralink from big investors including Sequoia Capital, ARK Investment Management and Founders Fund. From a legal and regulatory perspective, there is even more at stake for Musk if the Trump administration turns on the billionaire and claws back contracts like the president threatened on Thursday. SpaceX, one of the world's most valuable start-ups with a market value of $350 billion, has received more than $22 billion in unclassified contracts from the Defense Department and Nasa since 2000, according to data from Bloomberg Government. It launches critical national security satellites for the Pentagon and the US is depending on the Musk-led company to develop a spacecraft to put American astronauts on the moon in as little as two years. Musk's vow to decommission its all-important Dragon spacecraft, which ferries cargo and people to the International Space Station for the US, sent shock waves throughout the industry. Following through with the threat, which Musk later walked back, would sever a vital part of the US space program. 'It is untenable to have a CEO of a prime defence and aerospace contractor threaten to shut down services the government has contracted with them to perform,' said Lori Garver, a former Nasa deputy administrator under former president Barack Obama. Garver says Nasa needs SpaceX, but that SpaceX's business model also depends, in part, on the US government. 'Elon has already walked back decommissioning Dragon, because they do require now, as a big part of their business plan, government contracts. But they provide a service for those contracts. So it's a symbiotic relationship,' Garver said. On a more day-to-day basis, government agencies could try to inflict pain on Musk's businesses by delaying everything from space launches to satellite service to robotaxi expansion. Investigations into publicly traded Tesla or the finances of his companies could include the SEC, as well as antitrust probes and Federal Trade Commission interest around social media moderation, data use or AI. So far, Musk and Trump may be trying to at least press pause on the public spectacle. White House officials say Trump plans to focus his attention on inflation and the economy rather than speak to Musk, and insinuated without evidence that the billionaire was agitating for a call with the president. (In a pair of posts on his social media platform Friday morning, Trump intensified his push for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower rates.) As for pulling Musk's government contracts, Trump has not yet pursued any steps to follow through with his threats, one of these people said. He is, however, thinking of getting rid of his Tesla. – Bloomberg
