Latest news with #Fay
RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
Sisters urge DPP to appeal brother's 'lenient' rape sentence
The sisters of a former priest who was convicted of their rape and jailed for eight years have called for the Director of Public Prosecutions to appeal the sentence. Earlier this month, Richard Brennan, aged 64, who is originally from Rathfarnham but had been working in the United States, pleaded guilty during his trial to raping and indecently assaulting his sister Paula Fay when she was between 15 and 17 years old. He also pleaded guilty to raping and indecently assaulting Catherine Wrightstone when she was between nine and 13 years old and he admitted indecently assaulting a third sister, Yvonne Crist, when she was 20 and he was 18. He changed his plea to guilty after all three of the sisters had given evidence at the Central Criminal Court and two of them had been cross-examined. The judge imposed a global sentence of nine years and suspended the final year. An older brother, 67-year-old Bernard Brennan, was jailed last month for four and a half years for the sexual abuse of Ms Crist and Ms Fay. Speaking on RTÉ's Oliver Callan programme, Ms Fay and Ms Wrightstone also called for reforms to how cases of historical sexual abuse are handled and for witnesses to get paid time off work to attend court, similar to jurors. "I think Irish courts seem to have broad discretion over such cases as ours, and lenient sentences, especially in historical sexual abuse cases, are sometimes justified on the basis of remorse, time elapsed and, one of the things I find a little bit disturbing, is the offenders recent good character as stated in character references provided by family and friends who only know what that person allows them to know," Ms Wrightstone said. She added: "So, in terms of reform, I would love to see the introduction of mandatory, binding, sentencing guidelines that treat sexual abuse and rape as serious offences regardless of the time elapsed. "And create a statutory offence under sexual assault for sibling sexual abuse." Ms Wrightstone also called for mitigation based solely on family support and a lack of other convictions to be disallowed. "These predatory urges don't just magically disappear, especially when there is no intervention and when decades of denial of abuse by the perpetrator are present, which was the case with Richard. It was denial right up until the very end," she said. "I would also love to see them issue judicial training directives and case law clarification, via statute, that family support must not be considered a mitigating factor unless requested by the survivor," she added. Ms Wrightstone said any updated legislation must clarify that delayed disclosure of offences due to trauma and family pressure do not lead to more lenient sentencing. "The seriousness of the offences does not diminish over time. The law should reflect the continuing harm." She said it was also important for the voices of survivors to be included when "shaping policy", along with mandatory consecutive sentences for multiple victims and mandatory training for judges regarding sibling sexual abuse cases. Ms Fay said it was vital for witnesses to be entitled to paid time off work for the duration of a trial they are involved in, particularly in a trial of this nature. "When I sought leave from my job, I was informed all I was entitled to was to either take annual leave or unpaid leave. That there was nothing in law to protect me as a witness," she said. Witnesses are entitled to paid leave for the day they are testifying but not for the whole trial. "I was completely committed to this process from the very beginning, and I feel that we need to be treated differently," Ms Fay said. She added: "I know that jury members are entitled to be paid through their employment when they're on a jury, for the entire trial, and I feel that something needs to change that a witness is also doing their civic duty. I feel it is exactly the same."
Fox News
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: What to know about the US-backed aid group
President Donald Trump addressed the ongoing hunger crisis in Gaza on Monday in Scotland, where he addressed the urgency of getting food into the enclave immediately, while doing it safely and securely. "The United States recently, just a couple of weeks ago, we gave $60 million … No other nation gave money," as he urged other nations "to step up." $30 million in U.S. contributions to Gaza have been channeled through the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began its operations on May 27, the organization has partnered with local Palestinian aid workers and non-governmental organizations to deliver 97 million meals to date to Gazans. GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay told Fox News Digital that GHF "has one exclusive mission: to feed the people of Gaza in a way that prevents Hamas from being able to steal or loot or divert the aid." In addition to having "zero diversion," Fay said GHF has "put [aid] directly into the hands of the people who need it the most." At its four distribution sites in Gaza, it provides boxes of aid sufficient to provide 2,400 daily calories for 5.5 people over a total of 3.5 days. GHF's sites are able to distribute, on average, 2 million total meals per day. Fay said GHF has also started a potato pilot program which has seen "hundreds of tons of potatoes" delivered into Gaza. Another new pilot program in association with local Gazan NGO Al-Amal has allowed GHF to deliver 2,000 boxes of food to families in Gaza. Fay said that GHF is in the process of scaling up the operation, vetting hundreds of inquiries received since the program's announcement and working on establishing additional local NGO partnerships. The U.N. has lambasted GHF's distributions, with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini calling the organization an "abomination" that "provides nothing but starvation and gunfire to the people of Gaza." Though media headlines are thick with accusations of violence at GHF sites, Fay said that the reality of GHF distributions "is almost the opposite of what you read about, what you see on TV." Though he admitted that "there's some chaos when thousands of desperate, hungry people are trying to get aid," he claims that only two violent incidents have transpired at GHF distributions. A stampede and a grenade attack that harmed two American veteran employees were "Hamas-fomented terrorist attacks," he said. The U.N. and many NGOs have also opposed GHF's use of armed security to protect aid-seekers. However, U.N. data shows that only 8% of U.N. aid had reached its destination without being looted in the last 10 weeks, according to a Reuters report. Fay says that GHF is ready and willing to provide security support for U.N. aid. "We need to stop pretending that there's only one way to get aid into Gaza," he explained. As GHF continues to assist Gazans, Fay says the organization has "adapt[ed] in a dynamic environment, and our distributions seem to be going more smoothly every day." New adaptations include a red-light, green-light system to indicate whether distribution sites are open and a suggestion from aid-seekers. GHF has also added more shelf-stable onions to its aid boxes. Fay said that workers are also holding back some aid to ensure that women and children receive needed assistance. Because of this change, Fay says he recently "saw women leaving and smiling at our personnel with their onions on their way home." GHF is set to deliver its 100 millionth meal to Gazans later this week.
Eater
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Eater
Detroit's First Black-Owned Brewery Wants to Make Drinking Stout a Year-Round Tradition
is a writer born with over two decades of experience in the restaurant industry, and she has been covering the local food and beverage scene for the past eight years. Detroit's first Black-owned brewery, Roar Brewing, opened its taproom at 666 Selden Street in early July with a weekend celebration that kicked off on Thursday, July 10. The three-day event featured a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a set by Detroit's own DJ Invisible, live music performances, TVs broadcasting local sports, and a lively hustle line that energized the courtyard patio. And, of course, there were plenty of pints — most notably the MVP of the tap list, a black honey oat stout. That choice wasn't accidental; it speaks directly to the brewery's mission and identity. When discussing the lack of representation in Michigan's craft beer scene, especially in Detroit, owner Evan Fay attributes it to people's unfamiliarity with the product or fear of how they might be perceived as newcomers to the industry. 'Think of us as Detroit's Guinness' 'I don't think people don't drink craft beer. I think they just don't drink beer, yet,' Fay says. 'I didn't drink a ton of beer before going into the service, but once I started learning about its complexities and the people behind it, it changed my perspective. I started to imagine what my place in it could look like. I'm hoping to inspire others in that way, too.' Roar's black honey oat stout is the brewery's main beer, a rare choice since few breweries make a dark stout their flagship. 'We want to make everyone stout drinkers,' Fay says. 'It represents the brewery really well; dark, smooth, creamy, and there's a subtle sweetness from the honey. People think stouts are just for cold weather, but I want to enjoy them any time, all the time. Think of us as Detroit's Guinness.' Roar Brewing debuted with six beers. Courtney Burk 'Craft breweries are good at gathering the community together through their programming,' Fay says. 'When I was traveling a lot, breweries and cafes were where we went to grab a drink and get to know the city through there. Breweries and cafes are two businesses that I've started because of that aspect — building community to make everyone feel at home right away.' Fay's interest in beer started after college, while stationed in Cheyenne, Wyoming. 'My first experience with beer in college wasn't craft,' Fay says. 'But being stationed near Fort Collins, [Colorado], I'd visit New Belgium often and got immersed in the culture. Later in Alaska, spots like Midnight Sun Brewing had that same welcoming vibe. When we moved to Detroit, I knew I wanted to emulate that here.' Roar debuted with a lineup of six beers, which it calls its franchise players: a raspberry wheat, pilsner, IPA, amber, and that honey oat stout. The beers are brewed on a 10-barrel system by head brewer Dave Hale, formerly of Nain Rouge. Fay served as assistant brewer during the early stages, helping develop the lineup in collaboration, but stepped back as day-to-day operations began drawing his attention away from the brewing process. The brewery uses locally sourced ingredients, including malt from Great Lakes Malt and honey from Hives for Heroes, a Michigan-based, veteran-owned business. Roar's interior opens onto an extended patio through a roll-up garage door, linking it to the nearby restaurant corridor. The brewery plans to add an 800-square-foot, three-and-a-half-season room to the outdoor plaza to increase covered seating. Events include karaoke nights, hustle and line dancing, weekly drum circles, and sports watch parties, aiming to make the brewery both a gathering spot and a taproom. A small bites food menu is currently being developed in collaboration with the neighboring Barcade, an old-school video game arcade and beer bar, and the brewery collaborated with So Creamalicious on a popcorn flight that pairs with the taproom's franchise players beer flight. The brewery also offers a pay-it-forward program inspired by Midnight Sun Brewing, where guests can buy a beer for someone who has experienced a specific situation or moment written on a card, which is then hung on the wall. Instead of a traditional mug club, Roar offers a season pass model tied to Detroit's pro sports teams. The annual Roar Pride membership costs about $175, while season pass memberships range from approximately $100 to $150. The brewery also has plans to host three brewery tours a day with beertenders facilitating them. Fay's goal is for everyone that works at Roar to know as much about the beer and the brewing process as the brewers do. The aim is to make beer really accessible to everyone in a comfortable and inviting environment. Roar Brewing is located at 666 Selden Street in Detroit; open 4 p.m. to midnight Monday though Thursday, noon to midnight Friday and Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday — except during football season.
Boston Globe
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Find refuge from the heat, real and metaphorical, in an artist's garden
'Edge of the Garden' is an unplanned posthumous tribute. Born in Shanghai, Fay was a fixture of the New York art scene for more than 50 years; permanent monuments to his ethos, a delicate balance between playful and profound, dot the New York cityscape as large-scale public artworks. The exhibition "Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden" is on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's Hostetter Gallery through Sept. 21. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston Here in Boston is his portable cornucopia: A long stem cherry, a coconut, a bell pepper, a dourian, a sweet gum. An anise, deep brown and star-shaped, perches on an earthy ground like a human toddler-size living thing. A ginseng root roughly the size of my leg and suspended above ground disarms; its network of visceral wisps and tendrils are so true to life you can almost feel it grasping for moisture in the arid cool of the gallery's climate control. Advertisement Verisimilitude was one of Fay's most obvious gifts. But likeness for its own sake — however utter — was hardly his goal. The reactions of blasé New Yorkers aside, Fay's pieces transcend likeness to the uncanny; basketball-size cherries might prompt an initial chuckle, but wonder soon takes its place. Ming Fay, "Peach," 1990s. Mixed Media. Private Collection. Ming Fay Studio In his close-looking at the overlooked — everyday things mostly confined now to supermarket shelves or your refrigerator at home — Fay brings us back to solid ground. The industrial-scale food industry makes all of this appear as if by magic, a behind-the-veil mass industry so seamless as to appear invisible. Fay refocuses on the wonder of it all, and not just the eye: Among the experiences on offer here is scent; you're invited to open the slim doors of a pair of small cabinets, where you'll find dried ginseng in one and anise in the other. Through the perforated plexiglass that holds them in, aroma comes wafting — the ginseng, acrid and sour, the anise, licoricey sweet. There's a disconnect here, between the obvious, fantastical facsimile of Fay's main oeuvre and the sudden organic rush of odor — decaying plant matter, exhaling its rot. The rift, made sudden and plain, is profound; it transforms Fay's project from whimsical to visceral, and freights it with deeper intent. Walk back, then to a deliberate cluster of his blow-ups of a different nature: a hip-height turkey wishbone, its cool yellow-gray the shade of death, or a dizzyingly intricate sculpture of a bird's skull, more air than matter, the size of a dining room chair, bleached dry by time and sun. Advertisement "Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden," in the Hostetter Gallery. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston It's all fantasy, of course — the conflation of Fay's imagination and remarkable skill. But the friction between these things — dead and living, bountiful and spent — helps give fantasy force. I'm disinclined to think of Fay along the same lines as the wry pop conceptualists that come easily to mind — I don't know whether he intended it or not, but I felt an urge to read this paean to the processes of nature, at least partly, as epitaph. All over the world, Advertisement "Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden," Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston It all leaves me leaning into 'Edge of the Garden' as a memorial exhibition in more ways than one: For Fay, and the world we know. The perfect sheen of plum skin he crafted years ago always flirted with hyper-reality, as all his works do; nothing in nature is so perfect and unscathed. An imagined ideal now reads, to me, like a study model for future generations living a very different life on a scorched earth: We had this, once, and let it go. Fay was never so fatalistic as far as I can tell. He loved the form of things, their colors, their surfaces, dark or light, smooth or knotty and sharp (a suite of drawings, hung in a small darkened space with some of Fay's fanciful hand-scratched zines, reveal his mind as hectic and playful). But nor was be blithely unaware. The exhibition, bathed in natural light against a wall of windows, narrows as it closes; through an archway, a tight cluster of looser, later works, their skin bubbling, seem to chart a new course. Made in the 2010s, it doesn't hurt that many are called 'Flame,' rough perversions of Fay's perfect facsimiles in grotesque transitional states. The future, it seems, is now. MING FAY: EDGE OF THE GARDEN Through Sept. 21. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way. 617-566-1401, Murray Whyte can be reached at
Boston Globe
27-06-2025
- Climate
- Boston Globe
Hurricane season in the Atlantic tropics: A quiet June with July trending more intense
'June is normally a quiet month,' said Phil Klotzbach, senior research scientist at Colorado State University. 'We've had above-average wind shear, and with cooler sea surface temperatures compared to this time last year.' Advertisement Take a look at sea surface temperatures for the third week of June compared to last year. The main development region was running extremely hot last June compared to late August, which helped spawn Beryl so early. This year is much different. The reason being? Strong trade winds from a stronger Bermuda high have helped with evaporative cooling of sea surface temperatures, keeping ocean temperatures closer to normal. Sea surface temperatures are much cooler this year (left) versus the third week of June last year (right) when Hurricane Beryl formed. Weather Models Since there's virtually no possibility of another tropical storm forming before Monday, we set our eyes on July, where the season typically begins to awaken. What does a normal July look like? July is usually another quiet month across the Atlantic tropics, with about 7 percent of the season activity occurring during this month. Of course, the busiest months of the hurricane season occur between August and October, with the peak date around September 10. Advertisement Over the past 30 years or so, July averages about 1.5 named storms, with .6 becoming hurricanes and .1 strengthening to a major hurricane — meaning we typically get a hurricane every other year, with 1 major hurricane every decade during July. In addition to the Gulf and Western Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Western edge of the tropical Atlantic, just to the east of the Antilles, become possible formation spots for tropical storms and hurricanes during July as sea surface temperatures generally reach the typical 80-degree minimum to support development. Tropical activity increases across the East Coast and Western Atlantic during July. Boston Globe What will this July look like? Long-term models suggest that sea surface temperatures will creep up, with wind shear becoming less intense, but it may take a while. July typically only produces one named storm, and I wouldn't be surprised if we cap off the month with just one named storm for this time around. There is another hurricane stat worth noting about July systems — there is a growing trend with Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE). ACE is a metric that measures the intensity of hurricanes. This means that July storms are trending stronger and longer-lasting. Take a look at how storm intensity during July as increased since 1950. Accumulated Cyclone Energy during the month of July since 1950. Phil Klotzbach, CSU And one last stat regarding July activity. 2020 tied the record for the number of named storms with five — Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna, and Isaias. The only other year on record with five named storms was in 2005. New England and July tropical activity New England hardly sees a direct landfall from tropical storms or hurricanes as it is, let alone during July. However, there have been several remnant storms that have pushed into the region, along with weakened tropical depressions and post-tropical systems, all flooding parts of New England over the years. Advertisement Last July, New England was impacted by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl, dumping flooding rains across parts of New Hampshire and Vermont. Tropical Storm Fay in July of 2020 made landfall in New Jersey, but most of New England took on the brunt of the storm. The last direct landfall from a tropical storm or hurricane in New England during July? Tropical Storm Beryl in July of 2006, storm names are recycled until their retired, made landfall on Nantucket. All in all, it takes one storm to make a world of difference, regardless of the time of year. Take a look at the costliest and strongest hurricanes, in terms of pressure, on record. A list of the seven costliest hurricanes on record. Boston Globe The six strongest hurricanes on record in terms of barometric pressure. Boston Globe Ken Mahan can be reached at
