Latest news with #Trinity
Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Irish Times
A US animal lawyer in Wexford: ‘There's a real social cost here: if you're not fun, you're gonna pay'
Peter Brandt is an animal lawyer. So do the animals speak when hiring a brief? Jokes aside, he tells me about the 'long weird history of legal systems prosecuting animals, for example the mice, for eating crops in France . They would call the mice into court, and the mice wouldn't show up. It's bizarre.' His interest in law is highly specialised, primarily farm-animal-focused , involving suing enormous polluting farms, or mobilising citizens to change state laws, mandating minimum standards for dignified and humane lives for farm animals. From a legal family, he grew up around Seattle, later living in Portland . Interested in animal activism, he studied law. Animal law is also how he met his wife, Becky Jenkins. This is a tale of romance, and two animal rights lawyer-activists whose path together has meandered between Portland, Vancouver and now Wexford , Jenkins's hometown. They met at the law school where she was doing an advanced degree after law at Trinity; he was back at his alma mater talking about animal law. READ MORE He paints a picture of initially being a bit clueless. 'I'm really oblivious about these kinds of things. We would meet up at coffee shops. There's a lot of that in Portland. I was like, she has a lot of time to just meet up and hang out in coffee shops. Well, she's European, maybe that's more common.' She had her eye on him. 'I was really in the dark for quite a while.' Eventually they started dating. Her US visa was running out, and while she was back home sorting it, he visited a friend in London, leaving early to fly to Ireland in September 2019, where he met her family. She'd been misinformed about visa requirements, and couldn't return to the US, so she moved to Vancouver, Canada, a couple of hours from Portland, her apartment, dog – and Brandt. He drove back and forth. For a while during Covid, with regions closed, she couldn't move back to the US, while he couldn't move to Canada. They married at the US-Canadian border in late 2020, in Peace Arch Park, a limbo-like territory straddling both countries. Even married, moving to Canada was tricky. 'On my first attempt, I was turned back at the border late on a December night with my three cats in the car.' Eventually after a year together in Vancouver, they moved to Ireland in November 2021, settling near Wexford town, where her parents and wider family live. It's been eventful few years for Brandt. After all the cross-border drama and romance, what does he make of it? 'It's been pretty easy for me. I've been very fortunate. I speak the language. And showing up where we've got Becky's family and she has friends in Dublin and Wexford. Maybe I've been lucky but I tend to get along pretty well with people here. 'Frankly, if I was given the choice of meeting a few random Americans or a few random Irish people, I'll always choose the random Irish people. You never know what you're gonna get, but there's a sensibility here. People are better at a conversation. In America, and it's a generalisation but there's a tendency to hyper-literalism. People aren't as funny, and don't really value having a good story to tell, and being funny. There's a real social cost here: If you're tedious, if you're not fun, you're gonna pay. In America, that's not really penalised enough, I don't think.' Peter Brandt and his wife Becky Jenkins in Wexford. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw He sees differences in personal interaction. 'I think I resonate more with the self-deprecating humour here.' He's read Roddy Doyle. 'I'd seen all of Father Ted before I ever met Becky. I'm a huge Sharon Horgan fan.' 'No one's heard of animal law, even in America,' Brandt says; a couple of years ago he wrote a humorous memoir about life as an animal lawyer. With such a specialised field, living in a small country, he's continued to work remotely here as a contract attorney for US charities, including the Humane Society of the United States (recently renamed Humane World for Animals). While he's worked remotely since 2007, it can be trickier here: instead of starting at 7am, he works from 2pm, into the night. [ Why has Vancouver become so attractive for Irish immigrants? Opens in new window ] The job can be stressful, and the research tedious, so 'I can't do this work without a lot of coffee. But I have to stop drinking coffee. A night-time call at 9pm, with no caffeine, is a challenge. My whole way of living had to change.' He has since reduced supervising and administration, concentrating on writing and research, so it's more manageable. Jenkins has continued with activism, for Animal Rebellion Ireland, and is also an actor, doing plays and short films. Having lived in the US for seven years, her American accent comes in handy. 'One of the things I always liked about Becky was how she got into a lot of different things. When I first met her, she was in a poetry class, learning stand-up comedy, and animal law.' Since moving, 'a lot of my family and friends are contacting me, asking how can we move to Ireland?' His parents love visiting. 'Mom has a little bit of Irish heritage. Like every American who comes to Ireland, I have an Irish ancestor or two in there.' He recalls early on, hearing two guys chatting on the street. 'I said to Becky, spoken Irish sounds really unusual. And she's like, that's just a Wexford townie accent. I could not understand a thing they were saying.' I'm just happy to be here. Me and Rosie O'Donnell, part of the narrow end of the wedge He struggles to find negatives about his life here. 'It's difficult to get a GP in Wexford. But for me, the positives so outweigh any of the negatives. I just have dumb little Larry David-type frustrations', like the 'tyranny of the duvet', where hotels have heavy duvets, without separate top-sheets or lighter options, so 'you're either too hot or too cold. It's like buying a car that goes 100 miles an hour, or zero, but there's nothing in between'. More seriously, he's lived in cities all over the US, but 'I've never had so much proximity to suicide as since I moved here.' He regularly hears about people who've died by suicide, and even witnessed an attempt in town. 'It's a small area, so people tend to know lots of people. That is horrible, and that's a real negative.' American cities tend to have more mental health resources available, 'though often limited ways of accessing them. I'd say in the circles I run in the United States, mental health is talked about more. There's not as much stigma. It wouldn't be uncommon to take time off work and actually say it was for mental health-related reasons.' While it's changing here, 'in my experience, this stuff is not talked about as much', with a just-tough-it-out attitude. Mind you, 'if I lived in Nebraska, people would not be talking about mental health. It depends where you are.' He observes 'there's a lot that is terrible about being a lawyer in the US', including that US 'lawyers have far and away more mental health and substance-abuse issues than the general population. For whatever reason, it's very hard on people.' He speculates it's because 'you're trained to spot the worst case scenario, all the time. Then it's hard to shut that off when you leave work.' [ 'Animals are so straightforward. They will love unconditionally. We almost don't deserve them' Opens in new window ] Here things can sometimes be 'a bit surface-level. You can meet somebody who's going through some fundamental crises in their life, and they might not tell you. Like, everything's fine. Then you find out later they were going through something. A lot of stuff is kept buried.' While he and Jenkins 'don't really make a lot of long-term plans', they're staying in Ireland. 'I'm just happy to be here. Me and Rosie O'Donnell, part of the narrow end of the wedge.' If you are affected by any of the mental health issues in this piece, please contact The Samaritans at 116 123 or email jo@ We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland. To get involved, email newtotheparish@
The Guardian
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Unholy Trinity review – Samuel L Jackson and Pierce Brosnan shine in bubbling potboiler of a western
From the moment he flashes a shit-eating grin at a man on the gallows, Samuel L Jackson makes a fine western antagonist here, if not quite rising to the heights of his blanket-blackmail sex act in The Hateful Eight. The fellow about to swing is Isaac Broadway (Tim Daly), who manages to communicate to his onlooking son Henry (Brandon Lessard) that he should seek revenge on one Sheriff Butler, who framed him for murder. But when Henry corners a different lawman, Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan), in a church in the Montana town of Trinity, he learns that someone got to the previous sheriff first. It turns out that papa Broadway, a maligned patriarch who built most of Trinity, was embroiled in a stolen Confederate gold racket – ripping off his gallows tormentor, the ex-slave St Christopher (Jackson), in the process. Add to that a Blackfoot seeking revenge (The New World's Q'orianka Kilcher), a fake priest (David Arquette), a smattering of local thugs, and before you can say 'sins of the father' (luckily, someone does), we have a bubbling potboiler on the go. While The Unholy Trinity is always robustly enjoyable, director Richard Gray and writer Lee Zachariah aren't the best at laying out their convoluted screed. Not only does it feel as if Henry and Gabriel are always skulking around the peripheries of their own story without clear agendas, it never settles down for long enough to hit on the emotional core of this homecoming. Forced into cahoots as they try to locate the gold and fend off the loitering St Christopher, it is only near the end that the childless sheriff and prodigal son start to bond – and the theme of surrogate family belatedly flares up. The muddy psychology shows in some diffident directing from Gray when handling quieter scenes; he is more at ease in brothel shootouts and the gallops across ravishing Montana prairies. The impressively arrayed cast also help to keep this enterprise buoyant, even if a silver-haired and affable Brosnan and Jackson, effortlessly mesmerising a saloon full of punters, are doing exactly what you would expect. If following The Unholy Trinity's various tracks is sometimes frustrating, it's still rare enough: a red-blooded and essentially satisfying western. The Unholy Trinity is on digital platforms now and available on DVD from 21 July.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Unholy Trinity review – Samuel L Jackson and Pierce Brosnan shine in bubbling potboiler of a western
From the moment he flashes a shit-eating grin at a man on the gallows, Samuel L Jackson makes a fine western antagonist here, if not quite rising to the heights of his blanket-blackmail sex act in The Hateful Eight. The fellow about to swing is Isaac Broadway (Tim Daly), who manages to communicate to his onlooking son Henry (Brandon Lessard) that he should seek revenge on one Sheriff Butler, who framed him for murder. But when Henry corners a different lawman, Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan), in a church in the Montana town of Trinity, he learns that someone got to the previous sheriff first. It turns out that papa Broadway, a maligned patriarch who built most of Trinity, was embroiled in a stolen Confederate gold racket – ripping off his gallows tormentor, the ex-slave St Christopher (Jackson), in the process. Add to that a Blackfoot seeking revenge (The New World's Q'orianka Kilcher), a fake priest (David Arquette), a smattering of local thugs, and before you can say 'sins of the father' (luckily, someone does), we have a bubbling potboiler on the go. While The Unholy Trinity is always robustly enjoyable, director Richard Gray and writer Lee Zachariah aren't the best at laying out their convoluted screed. Not only does it feel as if Henry and Gabriel are always skulking around the peripheries of their own story without clear agendas, it never settles down for long enough to hit on the emotional core of this homecoming. Forced into cahoots as they try to locate the gold and fend off the loitering St Christopher, it is only near the end that the childless sheriff and prodigal son start to bond – and the theme of surrogate family belatedly flares up. The muddy psychology shows in some diffident directing from Gray when handling quieter scenes; he is more at ease in brothel shootouts and the gallops across ravishing Montana prairies. The impressively arrayed cast also help to keep this enterprise buoyant, even if a silver-haired and affable Brosnan and Jackson, effortlessly mesmerising a saloon full of punters, are doing exactly what you would expect. If following The Unholy Trinity's various tracks is sometimes frustrating, it's still rare enough: a red-blooded and essentially satisfying western. The Unholy Trinity is on digital platforms now and available on DVD from 21 July.
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Business Standard
a day ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Property sales by NRIs: Experts explain tax rules & life without indexation
For many non-resident Indians (NRIs), real estate has long been a preferred investment back home. But selling the property could be tricky for the uninitiated, especially after the recent changes introduced in the Finance Act, 2024. While the government has simplified long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax by introducing a flat rate, the removal of indexation benefits and mandatory tax deduction at source (TDS) on the full sale value have added fresh challenges. What are the current tax rules? The tax liability for NRIs selling property in India depends on how long they've held the asset. 'If the property is held for 24 months or less, the gains are treated as Short-Term Capital Gains (STCG) and taxed at the applicable income slab rates, which could go up to 30 per cent,' says Ritika Nayyar, partner at Singhania & Co. 'For properties held beyond 24 months, the gains are considered Long-Term Capital Gains (LTCG) and taxed at a flat 12.5 per cent from July 23, 2024 onwards, but without indexation benefits,' she noted. 'Properties held for over 24 months now attract a flat 12.5 per cent long-term capital gains tax plus applicable surcharge and cess. However, the key change is the removal of indexation benefit, meaning inflation is no longer factored in to adjust the purchase price,' says Sudeep Bhatt, director strategy, Whiteland Corporation, a real estate company. 'Importantly, the buyer must deduct tax at source (TDS) and issue a TDS Certificate. That said, exemptions are available if the capital gains are reinvested in another property or specified bonds,' he adds. SR Patnaik, partner (head-taxation), Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, adds, 'Earlier, NRIs could opt for a 20 per cent tax rate after adjusting their purchase price for inflation using indexation. That option is now gone, which means those who've held property for many years could see a higher taxable gain despite the lower headline rate.' Why is TDS deducted on the full sale value? One of the biggest pain points for NRIs is tax deduction at source (TDS). Under Section 195 of the Income Tax Act, the buyer of the property must deduct TDS on the entire sale price, not just on the profit. 'The TDS rate is 12.5 per cent (plus surcharge and cess) for LTCG and up to 30 per cent for STCG,' explains Nayyar. This can lead to significant cash flow issues, as the deducted amount often exceeds the actual tax liability. 'NRIs can apply in advance for a certificate of lower or nil TDS from the tax department to avoid excessive deduction,' advises Adil Altaf, managing director at Trinity, a real estate developer. Real-life example To explain how this works, Altaf shares an example: 'If an NRI sells a property in India in August 2025 for Rs 3 crore that was purchased in 2010 for Rs 1 crore: The capital gain is Rs 2 crore. At a flat 12.5 per cent tax rate (without indexation), the base tax comes to Rs 25 lakh. Adding a 10 per cent surcharge and 4 per cent cess, the total tax liability is about Rs 29 lakh. However, under Section 195, the buyer must deduct TDS on the full sale value, not just the gain: The applicable TDS rate, including surcharge and cess, is around 14.95 per cent. This means a TDS deduction of approximately Rs 44.85 lakh on the Rs 3 crore sale price. 'The NRI can claim a refund of the excess TDS by filing an income tax return or avoid high deduction by applying for a lower TDS certificate in advance,' Altaf added. How can NRIs reduce their tax outgo? There are some strategies NRIs can use to ease the tax burden. According to Nayyar, 'Under Section 54, LTCG is exempt if the money is reinvested in another residential property in India within specified timelines. Section 54EC also allows exemption if gains are invested in certain bonds within six months, subject to a limit of Rs 50 lakh.' Patnaik cautions, 'The conditions for these exemptions are stringent. NRIs should plan the reinvestment carefully and keep all documentation in place to avoid denial of exemption claims.' The indexation blow The removal of indexation benefits is particularly harsh for NRIs who bought property many years ago or inherited it. 'Without indexation, the original purchase price cannot be adjusted for inflation, leading to steeper taxable gains,' says Altaf. Nayyar suggests NRIs 'evaluate potential tax liability before finalising a sale and explore exemptions or a lower TDS certificate to avoid unnecessary cash flow crunches.'
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Nobel winners call on world leaders to step back from nuclear brink
Humanity is "heading in the wrong direction" on the one threat that "could end civilization in an afternoon," warned an assembly of Nobel laureates, nuclear experts, and diplomats gathered at the University of Chicago to mark the 80th anniversary of the planet's first nuclear explosion in 1945 when the U.S. conducted the Trinity test in New Mexico. Although Russia didn't nuke its neighbor, the brutal war of attrition continues in Ukraine. Two nuclear-armed countries, India and Pakistan, attacked each other in May. The U.S. and Israel, which both have nuclear weapons, bombed Iran in June to destroy its nuclear program. Popular support for building nuclear weapons grows in countries like Japan and South Korea. Against this backdrop, more than a dozen Nobel Prize winners and numerous nuclear experts signed a "Declaration for the Prevention of Nuclear War" on July 16 with recommendations for world leaders to reduce the increasing risk of nuclear conflict. More: 80 years later, victims of 'first atom bomb' will soon be eligible for reparations "Despite having avoided nuclear catastrophes in the past, time and the law of probability are not on our side," the declaration says. "Without clear and sustained efforts from world leaders to prevent nuclear war, there can be no doubt that our luck will finally run out." The declaration emerged from days of discussion and debate, said assembly leader David Gross, a University of California, Santa Barbara, physicist and 2004 Nobel Prize winner. "We are calling on our leaders in the world to consider our suggestions and heed our warnings," Gross said. Longtime Vatican diplomat and nuclear advisor Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi argued that faith leaders should embrace a role in providing world leaders with independent moral and ethical assessments of nuclear policy and technology. International agreements key to reducing risk The declaration and speakers at its unveiling spoke extensively of the crucial role diplomacy and treaties played in building trust between countries with nuclear weapons and shrinking their arsenals after the Cold War. Clock ticks on nuke treaties But a key treaty remains unenforced, and the last remaining arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia expires in February 2026. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, or CTBT, is a 1996 international agreement that aims to ban explosive nuclear tests. Although the CTBT Organization, headquartered in Vienna, Austria, successfully detects even underground nuclear tests (and identifies when suspicious seismic events aren't test explosions), the treaty is not in force. Nine more countries, including the U.S. and Russia (which de-ratified the CTBT in 2023), must formally approve the treaty before it becomes binding international law. At the assembly, CTBTO leader and former Australian diplomat Robert Floyd joined the Nobel winners in calling the international community to formally approve the testing ban. Floyd argued that if countries with nuclear weapons resumed testing to build more destructive nukes, it could lead "other states to develop nuclear weapons and ... a renewed global nuclear arms race." The declaration also highlighted the need for the U.S., Russia, and China to enter arms control discussions. The 2010 New START treaty, which limits American and Russian nuclear weapons deployments and enables the rivals to verify the other's cooperation, expires in February 2026. AI and the atom bomb Artificial intelligence and its role in nuclear weapons matters also weighed heavily. The declaration emphasized the "unprecedented and serious risks posed by artificial intelligence" and implored "all nuclear armed states to ensure meaningful and enhanced human control and oversight over nuclear command and control." Tomasi, the Vatican's representative, said scientists, disarmament experts and faith leaders need to study "the ethical implications of emerging technologies," such as AI, on "nuclear stability." World leaders, including former President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, generally agree that humans - and not AI algorithms - should control nuclear launch buttons. But debate rages over the ideal, and safe, extent of integrating AI into other nuclear functions such as early warning, targeting, and communications. A February 2025 report from the Center for a New American Security think tank on AI nuclear risk warned that "overreliance on untested, unreliable, or biased AI systems for decision support during a crisis" could potentially lead decision-makers down an escalatory path during a nuclear crisis. Ultimately, argued Nobel winner Gross, progress in reducing the risks of nuclear weapons hinges on popular pressure on world leaders. "The main motivation for the advances in reducing the risk of Armageddon was the fear of many ... people throughout the world who demanded (action) from their leaders," Gross said. Davis Winkie's role covering nuclear threats and national security at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
