Latest news with #EastEuropean
The Hindu
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
The Hindu Sunday crossword No. 6
Across 8 What one may find in Napa valley when returning (4) 9 Press with spades and some golf clubs (5) 10 Friend's piano given away by fool (4) 11 Amid precipitation, boy covers university with a display of refracted light (6) 12 Self-centred persons, after consuming tea, I hear, continue to be self-centred persons (8) 13 Set up configuration once again after ROM goes bad (8) 15 Imagine setter on date, carrying sweetheart (6) 17 Snake! Stop making material for construction of road (7) 19 Parent designed... Son produces snares (7) 22 Rarely models go astray (6) 24 Brat moved around curiously and got better (8) 26 Took chance destroying rani's ark (3,1,4) 28 Thin point on projectile (6) 30 Guy who has taken house on rent leaves a new piece of camping equipment (4) 31 In Indian state, start to use last bit of bread and cheese (5) 32 Punched out paper in country (4) Down 1 Return of racket by youth centre is prohibited (4) 2 Robot has designed hat (8) 3 Shelter got from WWI mag (6) 4 Beloved takes in saint's truthfulness (7) 5 European stone shattered by Scotsman (8) 6 Journalist's baby's cot is in the South East (6) 7 Hog leaves yoghurt in accommodation (4) 14 Follow English, Susan? (5) 16 30 tailless pets returned by East European (5) 18 Without using fabric, setting up climbing frames for rodents (8) 20 Overhead cargo carrier is, perhaps, OK for car? (4,4) 21 Place of residence having candle part with one unusual pattern for starters (7) 23 Insufficient supply from leading distributor on ground (6) 25 Animal left in enclosure (6) 27 Time daughter becomes old (4) 29 Egg-shaped part of Saltoro valley (4)
Irish Independent
28-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Leading Polish retailer gets green light for off-licence near Bray Dart station
Bray People Today at 23:00 Permission has been granted to accommodate an off-licence in a ground floor unit of Dargan Hall, the residential apartment development, located opposite Bray Dart station. The application was submitted by Tempside Ltd, trading as Polonez, the Polish retailer and food distribution company, and was for a part change of use in a permitted retail unit (of roughly 156 square metres) to retail use with ancillary off-licence sales (the area for the display of alcohol is approximately 3.6 square metres), associated signage for the unit and other minor ancillary alterations. With 45 stores on the island, Polonez is among the leading providers of Polish and East European foods and the firm also has a store on St Kevin's Square, in the town. The off-licence element is split into two areas, with beer cabinets integrated into the central aisle of the store which would be visible from the cashier desks, and a further space behind the cashier desk containing spirits. In arriving at its decision, the local authority was satisfied that there are no other off-licences in the immediate vicinity. The approved use is for convenience store, which is noted to be operated by Polonez, selling eastern European groceries and the provision of an off-licence area within the shop would not be at odds with this use.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Coldest Cold Warrior
The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski,America's Great Power Prophetby Edward LuceAvid Reader, 560 pp., $29 LAST WEEK, EDWARD LUCE JOINED ME on Shield of the Republic, the podcast I cohost with Eliot Cohen, to discuss his compulsively readable biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor and longtime scholar of the Soviet Union and its relations with its East European satellites during the Cold War. Although there have been a handful of other books on Brzezinski's intellectual evolution and aspects of his public life, this is the first biography based on access to his personal papers (including his private diary) that brings together his public and private life in one volume. As we discussed on the podcast, it's a puzzle that there have been so many biographies of Brzezinski's predecessor as national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, but so few of Brzezinski. There are probably several explanations for this. Kissinger served eight years in office, including more than two years during which he was concurrently secretary of state in the Nixon-Ford administrations. By contrast, Carter's policy failures ended up limiting him to one term and casting a loser's pall on his administration's reputation. The two men's personalities may have also had something to do with it. Kissinger was more accessible, with a finely honed self-deprecating sense of humor, and he assiduously wooed the press. Brzezinski was witty, but more pointed and razor-sharp. His wit was largely aimed at others, and he could be extremely prickly with members of the fourth estate. One anecdote Luce recounts—thoroughly footnoted—illustrates how quick Brzezinski could be to inconvenience or annoy others if he perceived a rationale to doing so: At 3:00 a.m. on March 5, 1953, Merle Fainsod, Harvard University's leading Sovietologist, awoke irritably to a telephone call from his twenty-four-year-old research assistant. The excited Zbigniew Brzezinski was calling to let him know that the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, had died. Fainsod said that Stalin would 'be just as dead in the morning' and hung up. The dictator passed away later that day. Brzezinski justified his intrusion by saying that the professor would want to be prepared for journalists to ring him at dawn for comments on Stalin's death. Brzezinski's rude awakening offers an inimitable glimpse of how his mind worked: since Fainsod's sleep would in any case be interrupted, Brzezinski would save him the trouble by getting in first. Besides, what Cold War scholar would not want to know as soon as possible about the demise of one of history's greatest monsters? Keep up with all our coverage of politics, policy, books, culture, and ideas—join Bulwark+ today: After leaving government service in 1977, Kissinger continued to seek high office and courted senior officials in successive administrations, both Democratic and Republican. Brzezinski was more focused on public debate on national security policy, and his intellectual style, which consisted largely of bludgeoning his opponents in debate, won him more enemies than friends. As Luce recounts, for Brzezinski 'the visceral and the intellectual . . . were never far apart.' While Kissinger was supremely gifted in dealing out flattery, Zbig treated fools (and some who were not so foolish) with disdain. Both men, émigrés from war-torn Europe who never lost their foreign accents, were fired by relentless ambition for power and prodigious skill in networking, including scoring patronage by the Rockefeller family (Nelson in Kissinger's case and David in Brzezinski's). As a result, perhaps improbably, they both ended up operating at the highest levels of government. Since both received their graduate educations at Harvard (and Kissinger his undergraduate degree as well) and taught there in the 1950s, it was probably inevitable that myths would grow up about their rivalry. Kissinger received tenure and Brzezinski didn't, and therein, so the story goes, lay the seeds of lifelong jealousy and competition. Luce provides a valuable corrective to this tall tale. Although it is true that Brzezinski was initially denied tenure at Harvard, Kissinger actually supported him for the professorship, and Brzezinski subsequently turned down no fewer than three opportunities to return to Harvard. The two men remained in friendly contact (more or less) for the rest of their lives, and as Luce recounts, there is real pathos in Kissinger's heartfelt condolence message to Brzezinski's family when the slightly younger Brzezinski predeceased him in 2017. That said, their 'friendship' retained more than small traces of rivalry as both sought to influence national security policy, one for mostly Republican presidents and the other for Democrats (although, as hard it is to imagine in these highly polarized times, both managed to provide advice across party lines during their long post-government careers). Kissinger's years as national security advisor were marked by high drama, including the opening to China, major arms control agreements reached (SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), vivid summits in Beijing and Moscow, and the tumultuous negotiations and tragic exit from the Vietnam war that Nixon and Kissinger inherited from their predecessors. Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Vietnam peace talks, although the catastrophic collapse of South Vietnam in the aftermath of U.S. withdrawal cast a shadow on that achievement. The Carter years were a bit more prosaic. The administration completed the establishment of formal relations with the People's Republic of China begun by Nixon and Kissinger, and the Camp David accords (for which Carter deserves enormous credit—although the catalyst for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's trip to Jerusalem was Carter's and Brzezinski's wrongheaded determination to bring the USSR back into the Middle East by convening a multilateral peace conference in Geneva). The positive achievements, however, were obscured by the larger failures. The last year of Carter's term, especially, was an almost Dickensian study in contrasts in which Brzezinski played a large part. Most people overlooked the investment in technologies like stealth and precision targeting that started a revolution in warfare (largely because they were secret). Much more visible were the breakdown of arms control negotiations in response to Soviet adventurism in the Third World culminating in the invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the collapse of the Shah's regime in Iran and the subsequent hostage crisis. Share FOR ALL THAT, HOWEVER, I suspect that readers of Luce's biography will come away thinking that Brzezinski was, perhaps, a more consequential figure in the history of American national security that the admittedly more seductive personage of Kissinger. For one thing, he was more prescient, in big ways and small. Luce recounts: In the midst of [the 1976 Entebbe hostage crisis], Brzezinski was invited to dinner at the home of Shimon Peres, Israel's defense minister. Peres kept having to leave the room to take calls. Somewhat flippantly, Brzezinski quipped to Peres that Israeli commandoes should storm the airport and free the hostages. Peres gave Brzezinski an enigmatic stare and went silent. The following day it became obvious why he had kept his counsel: Israeli forces raided the airport in one of the most daring rescue operations in modern history. On many of the big questions, as well, Brzezinski saw things more clearly, or at least more creatively, than Kissinger. Kissinger accepted that the Cold War was a long twilight struggle and that, in a world of nuclear parity with the USSR and limited support in Congress for spending on national defense, it was his job to manage American decline (as he allegedly said to Adm. Elmo Zumwalt). Brzezinski, on the other hand, was more upbeat about American prospects, more fixated on Soviet weaknesses, particularly nationalism in Eastern Europe and the nationalities problem in the USSR. The comprehensive net assessment of U.S. and Soviet strengths and weaknesses that Brzezinski (working closely with Samuel Huntington and Andrew Marshall) conducted at the outset of Carter's term found that only in the area of military power, particularly the nuclear balance, did the Soviet Union outstrip the United States. The policy shifts that Brzezinski helped initiate—the MX missile, the dual-track decision in NATO (modernizing America's arsenal of theater nuclear weapons in Europe while also negotiating more arms control agreements), counterforce nuclear targeting, emphasis on improvements in command and control of nuclear weapons and continuity of government, covert action to undermine the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and Poland, increases in the topline spending on defense in the last two years of Carter's administration, and the inclusion of strategic defense in assessments of the nuclear balance—set the stage for the Reagan Revolution that was to come as the result of the 1980 election and, in no small measure, contributed to the overall collapse of Soviet power in 1991. Join now BRZEZINSKI'S JUDGMENT, HOWEVER, was far from flawless. Luce largely acquits Brzezinski of the charge of antisemitism that dogged him throughout the last forty years of his career, and recounts the fascinating relationship that Brzezinski enjoyed with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin: Although Begin was Israel's most hawkish leader, he and Brzezinski hit it off. Indeed, their shared hawkishness may even have helped. . . . There was something about Begin's inveterate nationalism that struck a romantic chord in Brzezinski. That both men had been born in Poland—although raised in very different milieus—helped. They could switch easily from English to Polish. Their shared compendious knowledge of the Polish Home Army's wartime resistance and the Warsaw Uprising gave them plenty to talk about. Begin had been imprisoned for part of the war by Stalin's NKVD, which meant that they also shared an allergy to communism. Their discussion ranged to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the Jewish Polish father of revisionist Zionism, who had been Begin's mentor. Brzezinski's assessments of Middle East events (about which he knew far less than Europe or even Asia, where he had spent considerable time) were sometimes catastrophically off. The most prominent examples were Iran during the crisis over the future of the Shah's regime and, at various points, Israel. Perhaps Brzezinski's his greatest lapse, and one which rekindled charges of antisemitism, was his endorsement of The Israel Lobby, the scurrilous book by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer on the supposedly determinative role of shadowy, unpatriotic, scheming forces in setting U.S. Middle East policy. Share The Bulwark LUCE'S VALUABLE VOLUME will have to serve as just a foundational effort to give Zbig his due. Although it is grounded in Brzezinski's personal papers, it only scratches the surface of the broader array of primary sources (both published and unpublished) that have become available in the last few years—not to mention a growing secondary literature on many of the topics that Luce covers in this book. The official Defense Department history of Harold Brown's tenure as Secretary of Defense and the rich documentation in the State Department's series Foreign Relations of the United States as well as the declassified documents available at the National Security Archive could all have been used to great advantage in fleshing out some of the details in episodes that Luce covers. Recent important secondary accounts of the Iran crises like Ray Takeyh's The Last Shah and Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah would have enriched his account of that climactic experience of the Carter presidency. Finally, a cursory citation of William Inboden's Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink would have prevented an ill-advised overreliance on sketchy sources arguing that Reagan and his campaign minions were responsible for colluding with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election of 1980. Although Brzezinski became more pessimistic about the United States and its prospects, particularly in his last few years, close study of his broader optimism about America and his indefatigable pursuit of American advantage in strategic competition with the USSR as his life's work will yield valuable lessons for today's even more complicated era of great power competition. Send this review on to a friend who cares about foreign policy or who lived through the Carter administration: Share
Miami Herald
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Fact Check: Did Saudi TV Deepfake Cover Up Trump's Royal Coffee Snub?
President Donald Trump was criticized for appearing not to drink coffee he was offered while meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman but footage showing him sipping the beverage prompted speculation one of the encounters had been "fixed" with the help of AI. Trump was accused on social media of disrespecting local customs when he accepted a cup of the beverage on Tuesday but appeared not to drink from it. Footage shown by Saudi state channel Al Arabiya of Trump actually imbibing the hot drink prompted speculation that AI had been used to "smooth out his manners". Newsweek has contacted Al Arabiya and the White House for comment. The Claim The NEXTA channel claimed that al-Arabiya had used AI to manipulate the video of Trump's meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It posted video of Trump holding a cup of coffee not drinking it next to an allegedly "edited video" in which he can be seen drinking it. The outlet said that the reason for this edit is that, according to local etiquette, refusing coffee is considered disrespectful. The Facts Trump's approach to cultural traditions is the subject of scrutiny given the high economic and diplomatic stakes of his Middle East tour which were highlighted by Saudi Arabia giving a $600 billion commitment to invest in the U.S. Ynet reported how after Trump's arrival at Riyadh, he and his delegation, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were served traditional Arabic coffee. Footage showed how Rubio drank the coffee while Trump held his cup as he spoke with the crown prince before eventually setting it aside. YNet said that another clip during a reception at Al-Yamamah Palace, showed Trump getting another cup but holding it between his knees without drinking although video later aired on Saudi media showed him drinking. East European outlet NEXTA was among those who speculated that technology had helped iron out an awkward diplomatic moment. "What an embarrassment! A Saudi TV channel edited Trump's video using AI to smooth out his manners," its post on X read next to videos it said showed the differences in the encounters. "The al-Arabiya channel used AI to edit the video of Trump's negotiations with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman," the post added. This theory was amplified by other social media accounts and by Russian state media, including Life News and Ministry of Truth. Social media users responding to the claims also pointed out the different occasions depicted in the videos. "The first one was in the airport when he didn't drink. The second one was in Royal court after hours of Trump arrival when he drank." The clips are tightly framed and at different angles making it difficult to compare what is behind the leaders but the background does appear to be different. The alleged "tell-tale" signs of AI manipulation, such as different chair design and positions of attendees, are thus likely due to incidents taking place at different locations. Trump has publicly said he avoids alcohol, cigarettes because they contributed to the early death of his brother, Fred Trump Jr., in 1981. He also expanded the ban on stimulants to include coffee. But Trump does not eschew caffeine, quaffing up to 12 Diet Cokes a day, according a report in The New York Times from 2017 which said that during his first term he had a button on his desk that could summon the drink. Trump's first overseas visit since he got elected for the second time had started well after Air Force One landed at Saudi Arabia's King Khalid International Airport on Tuesday. After being greeted by Salman and getting a 21-gun salute and trumpets, he went to the Royal Court, where a procession of dignitaries, officials and business figures waited their turn to shake hands with them. Trump also returned a salute given to him by the kingdom's military officials. The Ruling Unverified. While these kinds meetings are long and any clips can be taken out of context, there isn't sufficient evidence to support the claim that the footage showing Trump was changed by AI. Instead, videos appear to show two occasions in which the U.S. president was offered coffee to drink. On one of the clips in which he is seen drinking, there appears to be different backgrounds, suggesting he may have drunk coffee in one encounter but refrained from doing so in the other. FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK Related Articles Map Shows Countries That Prefer China to the USTrump Praises Qatar for 'Largest Order of Jets' in Boeing's HistoryBlackRock CEO Warns Trillions of Dollars Sitting Idle Amid 'Uncertainty'Iran Reacts to Trump Speech: 'Pure Deception' 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Newsweek
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Fact Check: Did Saudi TV Deepfake Cover Up Trump's Royal Coffee Snub?
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. President Donald Trump was criticized for appearing not to drink coffee he was offered while meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman but footage showing him sipping the beverage prompted speculation one of the encounters had been "fixed" with the help of AI. Trump was accused on social media of disrespecting local customs when he accepted a cup of the beverage on Tuesday but appeared not to drink from it. Footage shown by Saudi state channel Al Arabiya of Trump actually imbibing the hot drink prompted speculation that AI had been used to "smooth out his manners". Newsweek has contacted Al Arabiya and the White House for comment. President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on May 14, 2025. President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on May 14, Claim The NEXTA channel claimed that al-Arabiya had used AI to manipulate the video of Trump's meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It posted video of Trump holding a cup of coffee not drinking it next to an allegedly "edited video" in which he can be seen drinking it. The outlet said that the reason for this edit is that, according to local etiquette, refusing coffee is considered disrespectful. What an embarrassment! A Saudi TV channel edited Trump's video using AI to smooth out his manners. The al-Arabiya channel used AI to edit the video of Trump's negotiations with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the edited video, Trump is shown drinking the coffee offered to… — NEXTA (@nexta_tv) May 14, 2025 The Facts Trump's approach to cultural traditions is the subject of scrutiny given the high economic and diplomatic stakes of his Middle East tour which were highlighted by Saudi Arabia giving a $600 billion commitment to invest in the U.S. Ynet reported how after Trump's arrival at Riyadh, he and his delegation, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were served traditional Arabic coffee. Footage showed how Rubio drank the coffee while Trump held his cup as he spoke with the crown prince before eventually setting it aside. YNet said that another clip during a reception at Al-Yamamah Palace, showed Trump getting another cup but holding it between his knees without drinking although video later aired on Saudi media showed him drinking. What an embarrassment! A Saudi TV channel edited Trump's video using AI to smooth out his manners. The al-Arabiya channel used AI to edit the video of Trump's negotiations with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the edited video, Trump is shown drinking the coffee offered to… — NEXTA (@nexta_tv) May 14, 2025 East European outlet NEXTA was among those who speculated that technology had helped iron out an awkward diplomatic moment. "What an embarrassment! A Saudi TV channel edited Trump's video using AI to smooth out his manners," its post on X read next to videos it said showed the differences in the encounters. "The al-Arabiya channel used AI to edit the video of Trump's negotiations with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman," the post added. This theory was amplified by other social media accounts and by Russian state media, including Life News and Ministry of Truth. Social media users responding to the claims also pointed out the different occasions depicted in the videos. "The first one was in the airport when he didn't drink. The second one was in Royal court after hours of Trump arrival when he drank." The clips are tightly framed and at different angles making it difficult to compare what is behind the leaders but the background does appear to be different. The alleged "tell-tale" signs of AI manipulation, such as different chair design and positions of attendees, are thus likely due to incidents taking place at different locations. Trump has publicly said he avoids alcohol, cigarettes because they contributed to the early death of his brother, Fred Trump Jr., in 1981. He also expanded the ban on stimulants to include coffee. But Trump does not eschew caffeine, quaffing up to 12 Diet Cokes a day, according a report in The New York Times from 2017 which said that during his first term he had a button on his desk that could summon the drink. Trump's first overseas visit since he got elected for the second time had started well after Air Force One landed at Saudi Arabia's King Khalid International Airport on Tuesday. After being greeted by Salman and getting a 21-gun salute and trumpets, he went to the Royal Court, where a procession of dignitaries, officials and business figures waited their turn to shake hands with them. Trump also returned a salute given to him by the kingdom's military officials. The Ruling Unverified. While these kinds meetings are long and any clips can be taken out of context, there isn't sufficient evidence to support the claim that the footage showing Trump was changed by AI. Instead, videos appear to show two occasions in which the U.S. president was offered coffee to drink. On one of the clips in which he is seen drinking, there appears to be different backgrounds, suggesting he may have drunk coffee in one encounter but refrained from doing so in the other. FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK
