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The Journal
2 days ago
- Business
- The Journal
An Bord Pleanála raised concerns over use of ChatGPT for inspector's report into Limerick plant
AN BORD PLEANÁLA removed one of its inspectors from deliberations on a controversial expansion of a large steel plant in Limerick following concerns that a report was being written with the help of ChatGPT. A spokesperson for the State body told The Journal that the report was scrapped 'out of an abundance of caution' as its board members felt the use of artificial intelligence (AI) had the potential to 'raise concerns about the integrity of the decision-making process' for the report into Aughinish Alumina, near Foynes on the Shannon Estuary. An Bord Pleanála also 'advised all staff that the use of unapproved technology was strictly prohibited' in the wake of the incident. The file was then re-assigned to a new inspector for fresh consideration, with the second inspector's report sent to a 'newly constituted' board to decide on. This board granted planning permission to expand Aughinish Alumina's waste storage at the site in March. It was the second time the development had come before An Bord Pleanála, with the High Court previously quashing its decision to expand the site following objections by environmental groups. However, the use of AI now forms part of a challenge by Limerick-based environmental group Environmental Trust Ireland in its bid to halt the expansion of the site. The Aughinish Alumina plant near Foynes Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo A spokesperson for An Bord Pleanála told The Journal that it learned that the 'unapproved technology' was used for 'editing and formatting certain aspects' of a report after the employee reported their use of ChatGPT. In a lengthy statement, An Bord Pleanála said the incident 'raised the need to improve the policy' relating to the acceptable use of technology such as artificial intelligence. Access to AI software was also disabled on An Bord Pleanála systems in response to the discovery, the body's spokesperson said. 'The incident reaffirmed the need for bespoke GenAI technology specifically designed for the requirements of An Bord Pleanála,' the spokesperson added, pending the development of a digital strategy with guidelines for use of the advanced AI programmes. The spokesperson said that this work was already underway since the appointment of a new director of digital strategy last year. Major employer with Russian links A major employer in the mid-west, Aughinish Alumina employs 450 people on its 222-hectare site. The plant is owned by Russian metals company Rusal, which was co-founded by Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska, who is still a shareholder in Rusal, is an industrialist who is reported to have had close ties to Russia president Vladimir Putin. Advertisement In 2018, Deripaska was placed on a US sanctions list and the UK government also announced sanctions against the oligarch in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The businessman is well-connected in Russian politics and business, and was pictured earlier this month at the Kremlin in Moscow for a ceremony ahead of World War II commemorations. Rusal co-founder Oleg Deripaska addressing a meeting of the Bank of Russia's financial congress last year. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Aughinish Alumina has been looking to expand its disposal area for bauxite residue – an ore from aluminium, also known as 'red mud' due to its copper colouring. The site's expansion plans have been the subject of legal challenges over recent years, with the High Court quashing previous planning permission granted by An Bord Pleanála. The amended planning application that received approval in March included findings from An Bord Pleanála stating that the development 'would not have significant negative effects on the environment' if given the go-ahead. This permission has now been challenged by two environmental groups – Environmental Trust Ireland and Futureproof Clare – in separate judicial reviews lodged this week. Environmental Trust Ireland, which is represented by Limerick firm Hayes Solicitors, has taken a case which it is understood is partly based on the alleged concerns raised internally within An Bord Pleanála. In the planning authority's board minutes from last October for the Aughinish refinery's expansion – seen by The Journal – it records that it was 'brought to the Board's attention that certain parts of the Inspector's report may have been written following interaction with an external technology system', later referring to ChatGPT. However, it is understood that Environmental Trust Ireland is challenging whether the inspector remained involved in the process after the AI use was flagged, referring to later minutes for An Bord Pleanála's March meeting to discuss the refinery's expansion. While the inspector was listed in later minutes, An Bord Pleanála has stressed to The Journal that the individual was not involved in the case after November 2024. It is understood that an admin error may have resulted in the confusion. Environmental claims The judicial review taken by Environmental Trust Ireland is one of two filed this week against the expansion of the refinery's disposal area the red mud waste. A group called Futureproof Clare has taken the other, separate case. It is represented by FP Logue solicitors and The Journal understands its arguments are based around the environmental impact of the expansion. The plant has capacity at its bauxite residue disposal area (BRDA) until 2030 and the new extension will extend the lifetime of the BRDA up to 2039. The proposed development would increase the height of sections of the disposal area by 12 metres. It would bring the total height to 44 metres. The company has maintained that it can't continue production unless its waste facility is expanded. Aughinish Alumina did not respond when contacted for comment. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
Irish Times
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad by Donnacha Ó Beacháin; and Putin's Sledgehammer by Candace Rondeaux
Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad Author : Donnacha Ó Beacháin ISBN-13 : 978-1788218016 Publisher : Agenda Publishing Guideline Price : £24.99 Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos Author : Candace Rondeaux ISBN-13 : 978-1541703063 Publisher : Public Affairs Guideline Price : £28 The ruthlessness of Russia 's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its disregard for the lives of Ukrainian civilians and the appalling slaughter of innocents in towns such as Irpin and Bucha have led many to believe in the inherent evil of Russia, Russians and all things Russian. Donnacha Ó Beacháin, professor of politics at Dublin City University , pursues this view relentlessly in Unfinished Empire. He puts forward indisputable material to support his views and goes back through Russian history to make this case but eschews references that may exonerate some Russians from guilt. In Putin's Sledgehammer the journalist and academic Prof Candace Rondeaux of Arizona State University concentrates on the odious exploits of Russia's private military companies, especially Wagner and its rival Redut, in Ukraine and elsewhere. Her story is more nuanced than Ó Beacháin's Manichaean version and tells us of non-Russian as well as ethnic-Russian involvement in atrocities. In one excerpt Rondeaux points out an Irish connection when the military supplies of Redut were paid for by the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, owner of the Aughinish Aluminum plant in Co Limerick; a stark reminder of the international tentacles of Vladimir Putin 's allies. After the Tsarist empire came to its bloody end, most of its territory was inherited by the Bolsheviks who fought their way to victory in the even bloodier Russian civil war and established the Soviet Union in 1922. In Unfinished Empire, Ó Beacháin leads us from there through the territorial ambitions of Stalin, his heirs and successors, with a brief pause for the hectic and corrupt reign of Boris Yeltsin, followed by Putin's current Ukrainian bloodbath. READ MORE The conclusion he comes to, and it is shared by many of Russia's neighbours, is that Moscow is determined to reconstitute the Soviet Union in territory, if not in ideology, through force of arms in the Baltics and Poland, in the Caucasus and even in the steppes of central Asia. But there are strong reasons to believe that Russia does not now, and may never, have the military capacity to fulfil these ambitions. Most Russians may support the so-called special military operation in Ukraine. Some may support the reconquest of former colonies but most simply have rallied to the flag on being insistently told by a craven media that their country is under threat not only from Ukrainians but from 'the West'. Others should know better and I know two of them. Dmitry Trenin's defection from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to the pro-war ranks came as a shock, though when we last met over lunch in Dublin he spoke of his annoyance at a growing Russophobia in the West. Volodya Alexandrov, a charming man who was the Moscow office manager of a leading western newspaper , has to my great surprise taken to posting his support for the war on social media. [ The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine by Alexander Vindman – An unsparing critique of US 'crisis management' policy Opens in new window ] On the other hand I know many Russians who oppose the conflict in particular and Putin's policies in general. Some of them have fled to the West. One was killed when reporting the earlier Ukrainian conflict and another, my friend and colleague Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin, died a horrible death from poisoning at the hands of the Russian State. Had Ó Beacháin taken the time to mention the many decent Russians who have risked their lives in opposition to state power through the centuries and had he pointed out that many of his Russian imperialists were not Russians, his book might have given the impression of balanced research rather than polemic. He correctly describes the racism of many Russians towards the 'lesser breeds' of their former empire and towards foreigners in general. I have witnessed the continuous harassment of central Asian and Caucasian workers in Moscow by the police who immediately pounce on those with a darker-than-Russian complexion. One of my neighbours was a frequent victim but shocked the cops when he showed his passport; Michael Slackman, then of Newsday, is now the international editor of the New York Times. As for the non-Russian Russian imperialists, Catherine the Great, born Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst, was 100 per cent German and Stalin, born Iosif Djugashvili, was 100 per cent Georgian. Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu, accused of war crimes as Putin's defence minister, is from the Turkic Tuvan community in Siberia. In many cases those non-Russian leaders of the Soviet Union favoured those from their home regions. Stalin, the Georgian, looked to the Caucasus for associates including Sergo Ordzhonikidze, a friend from Georgian revolutionary days; the great Soviet survivor Anastas Mikoyan from Armenia; and, most evil of all, the merciless killer and torturer Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria from Abkhazia. As for Ukraine, Mikhail Zygar, in his book All the Kremlin's Men, writes: 'The 'Ukrainian Clans' inside the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were traditionally the most powerful. They can be said to have ruled the Soviet Union for decades.' Their main rivals were the clans from St Petersburg, whose successors are now in charge. Zygar's views are partially backed by Harvard's Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy, who has ranked the Ukrainian clans as the second most powerful Soviet political force. In a rare reference to events in which Russians were the victims, Ó Beacháin touches on a matter in which I have a personal interest, when he deals with the series of apartment bombings in Moscow and elsewhere in 1992 which cost 300 lives. I took the opportunity to ask Putin directly about what happened. I could see him tense up immediately. His face reddened with anger as he blamed Chechen rebels for the killings. It was when investigating these bombings as well as business corruption by former KGB officers that my colleague Yuri Shchekochikhin met his death by poisoning. He is buried near Boris Pasternak in the writers' cemetery at Peredelkino. I went to his grave with another friend, Andrei Mironov, who survived torture by the KGB and confinement in a Gulag prison. He had been arrested so often in the Putin era that most Moscow policemen knew him by name. Andrei supported Ukrainian independence, was an unquestioned admirer of the Maidan demonstrations but ironically lost his life when decapitated by a Ukrainian shell in 2014 near the eastern town of Sloviansk. Ó Beacháin's conflation of Russia and the Soviet Union is particularly evident in dealing with the mass rape by Red Army soldiers of perhaps millions of women and girls. The historian Antony Beevor's vivid description of the barbaric fate of these women is quoted. But the Red Army included Ukrainians, Belarusans, central Asians and soldiers from the Caucasus as well as Russians. Beevor's view that the frontline Soviet soldiers in Berlin, unlike those who came behind, often behaved with great kindness to German civilians is not deemed worthy of mention. All in all, if one ignores the exceptions mentioned above, Ó Beacháin gives fair warning of the dangers posed by Putin and the possibly even greater dangers from some of his likely successors. In Putin's Sledgehammer, Rondeaux concentrates on the abhorrent behaviour of Russia's mercenary forces in Ukraine and carefully distinguishes between these contract soldiers and the raw, barely-trained conscripts who found themselves in the front lines. She goes on to deal with the rise and dramatic fall of the Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin from petty criminal to celebrity chef who wined and dined George W Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel at the G8 summit in St Petersburg, his move from cookery, and cooking the books, to the sphere of private armies, his short-lived rebellion against the Kremlin and his death in a not-so-mysterious air crash. [ Yevgeny Prigozhin obituary: From 'Putin's chef' to thorn in his side Opens in new window ] Rondeaux's academic research and old-fashioned journalistic doorstepping, delving into Wagner's involvement in the massacres of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha and Irpin, is a key section of the book. 'One telling sign,' she writes, 'that the Russian soldiers who stormed into Bucha that spring were no ordinary soldiers was a corpse, booby-trapped with explosives that was discovered after Ukrainian forces seized the town.' This was a vile Wagner trademark from its earlier campaigns in Libya, where Wagner, now sinisterly rebranded as Russia's 'Afrika Corps', supports rebel leader Khalifa Haftar . Rondeaux's evidence in this case has been supported by German military intelligence, which intercepted radio communications in Bucha and came to the conclusion that Wagner 'played the leading role' in the massacres. In Irpin, the town's deputy mayor Angela Makeevka spoke to Rondeaux of the raw conscripts being replaced by a different type of soldier: 'There were Buryatis, Kadyrovtsi, Wagnerovtsi [ethnic Buryats from Siberia, Chechen troops loyal to the pro-Putin dictator Ramzan Kadyrov and Wagner mercenaries]. You could tell them apart because of the insignia they wore on their shoulders. They had better uniforms. They had better weapons and they had night-vision goggles. They carried themselves with more confidence.' They also carried themselves with the utmost brutality and have continued to do so. Rondeaux combines vivid journalistic clarity and unbiased academic reflection in Putin's Sledgehammer. Her work is a welcome addition to the growing library on Putin's Russia. Further reading In Putin: His Life and Times (The Bodley Head, 2022) Philip Short details the rise of a mid-ranking KGB officer to the controller of Russia's vast nuclear arsenal. He also details the changing political and personal stances of a man once regarded as a much-needed agent of stability in the chaotic Russia of the 1990s. It is a daunting read of 854 pages but a necessary one for those determined to avoid superficial judgments. Prof Serhii Plokhy of Harvard in The Gates of Europe (Penguin, 2015) provides a sympathetic and detailed history of his native land. He is, all the same, critical of hasty and declamatory statements from Ukrainian politicians in the excitement of the Maidan days that gave Russia and its supporters in the Donbas the excuse to break away from the rest of the country. All the Kremlin's Men by Mikhail Zygar (Public Affairs, 2016) is a Who's Who, often in their own words, of those who have served Vladimir Putin. It's a must-read in order to understand the mentality of those who have brought themselves into Kremlin's darkest recesses. Zygar, founder of the now defunct anti-regime TV Dozhd, has paid the price for his work. He lives in exile in Germany and has been sentenced to prison in his absence.
Bloomberg
24-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Russia Rejects Raiffeisen Appeal Against €2 Billion Court Order
Raiffeisen Bank International AG lost its appeal of a court decision ordering it to pay more than €2 billion ($2.3 billion) of damages to a company formerly owned by sanctioned Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. A commercial appeals court in St. Petersburg denied Raiffeisen's attempt to reverse an earlier court order to pay Rasperia Trading Ltd. damages for a failed transaction, according to a bank spokesperson who confirmed a report from the Austria Press Agency.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ukrainian court freezes Russian oligarch Deripaska's assets worth nearly $50 million
A Ukrainian court has frozen the assets of Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska worth Hr 2.1 billion (nearly $50 million), the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced on Jan. 29. Deripaska, formerly Russia's richest man and founder of the Basic Element industrial group and the Rusal aluminum company, was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 and the U.K. in 2022 following Russia's full-scale invasion. Ukraine nationalized some of Deripaska's business assets already in February 2023. In the latest move, the court immobilized a large consignment of industrial products and raw materials stored in the warehouses of the Mykolaiv Alumina Plant, which the Russian oligarch previously owned. The consignment included almost 500,000 tons of bauxite and alumina produced before the outbreak of full-scale war, the SBU said. The seized materials were the main component to produce aluminum at Deripaska's Russian Rusal plants, according to the SBU. Deripaska owned these assets through a subsidiary registered in a European Union country. The company was a formal customer of the plant's products, which were then re-exported to Deripaska's Russian enterprises. In 2023, Ukrainian law enforcement authorities blocked the shipment of raw materials. Deripaska reportedly manufactures products for the Russian military-industrial complex, including components for Iskander ballistic missiles, drones, and radar systems. In February 2024, the SBU charged Deripaska in absentia with financing actions aimed at overthrowing Ukraine's constitutional order, seizing state power, and changing Ukraine's state border. Since 2018, Deripaska has been under U.S. sanctions as a person close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who finances his projects. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the billionaire was also stripped of his Cypriot citizenship, which he received in 2017. Read also: Trump's stance on Ukraine, Russia — what we know from his first week in office We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
EU prepares sanctions against Russian aluminium, 15 banks and shadow fleet, Bloomberg reports
The European Union is proposing a gradual ban on imports of Russian aluminium as part of a large-scale package of sanctions ahead of the third anniversary of the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Source: Bloomberg with reference to its sources Details: The package also includes sanctions that will exclude about 15 banks from the SWIFT system and measures against more than 70 shadow fleet vessels involved in the transport of Russian oil. The plan stipulates that European buyers will be able to import Russian aluminium under quotas for one year before the ban takes full effect. The plans require the agreement of all member states to implement and are subject to change before being formally submitted. There have been calls for a ban on Russian aluminium since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, and shipments to the EU have been steadily declining as producers look for alternative suppliers. However, some buyers and member states have so far resisted such measures, arguing that it would be difficult to replace some key products. Pressure for tougher measures against Russia's steel sector has increased in recent months. Last year, the US and the UK banned Russian metals from trading on the London Metal Exchange, which initially caused sharp price fluctuations and led to a restructuring of global trade flows. According to UN Comtrade, the EU imported about 320,000 tonnes of unprocessed aluminium from Russia in the first 11 months of 2024, accounting for 6% of total imports. Meanwhile, supplies to China have increased significantly. Background: Rusal, a company belonging to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, plans to cut metal production by 250,000 tonnes due to the difficult economic situation. Russian aluminium giant Rusal fears that up to 36% of its sales could be at risk due to sanctions imposed by the US and UK. Russian aluminium giant Rusal said that the US and UK sanctions will not affect its metal exports, as they do not affect the company's global logistics solutions, access to the banking system and production system. Support UP or become our patron!
