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The Irish Sun
6 days ago
- Business
- The Irish Sun
The ‘spacious' home that's one of cheapest on Irish market – it comes with big garden & driveway among perks
TAKE a look at this "spacious" home that's one of the cheapest on the Irish market - and it comes with big perks. The affordable house is located in Castlerea, 10 A large driveway is at the side of the property Credit: 10 A warm wooden finish completes the staircase Credit: 10 There is a fireplace located in the living room Credit: 10 There is a garden to the rear of the property Credit: 10 With a large kitchen and dining space, the house is perfect for families Credit: 10 There is a large utility room with a bathroom on the ground floor Credit: This home is on the It is just a minute's walk from the nearest busy village with schools, pubs and shops on your doorstep. And it is also a 10-minute drive from larger towns like Castlerea and Ballaghaderreen. This property is new to the market and is a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home less than a two-hour drive from UCG and is ideal for college students. READ MORE IN MONEY The house is the last in a cul-de-sac and is number 11 in Woodlands, Loughglynn. When you first arrive, the house has a tarmac driveway to the side with a large garden to the front of the home, which is perfect for commuters. You are greeted with an average-sized hallway with tiled flooring, under-stairs storage, and a wooden staircase to the landing. To the right is a spacious living room with a bay window, fitted carpet, a rare open fireplace with a timber surround and a granite hearthstone. Most read in Money The room features double French doors into the kitchen, all made from a warm wooden finish for a cosy feel. It is complete with a fully fitted kitchen with tiled floor and tiled splashback with patio doors leading to your rear garden. Inside the three bed house on Irish market for €100k To finish off the ground floor, there is a large utility room with a worktop and is plumbed for a washing machine and/or dryer. The first bathroom is located in this room. This spacious house is perfect for starter The stairs lead to a large carpeted landing space with access to an attic and extra storage with a hot press. Bedroom one is complete with a fitted wardrobe and large en suite with an electric shower. The second bedroom is also fitted with a carpet, curtains, and built-in wardrobe. Bedrooms 3 and 4 are spacious and complete with storage, perfect for larger families, and all rooms have large windows to allow an ample amount of light in. The main bathroom features a bath and blue tiling with a frosted window for privacy. This is an ideal family home or investment opportunity in a peaceful yet accessible location. This house is listed on 10 The large landing has a hot press and access to an attic Credit: 10 There are 4 bedrooms on the 1st floor Credit: 10 There are two bathrooms on the second floor Credit: 10 The main bedroom is complete with an en suite Credit:
Black America Web
03-06-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Tulsa's 1st Black Mayor Proposes Reparations Plan For Descendants Of Race Massacre, But Will It Work In Trump's America?
Source: UCG / Getty Tulsa, Oklahoma's first Black mayor has proposed a reparations plan (of sorts) for the descendants of one of the most notorious and horrific race massacres in America's history, but can such a proposal come to fruition in a state that has, multiple times, denied reparations to the actual survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre? According to the Associated Press, the reparations proposal, which Mayor Monroe Nichols won't even officially call a reparations plan due to how politically polarizing the term is, wouldn't provide direct payments to citizens. Instead, Nichols characterized his proposal as one that would put the Tulsa community on the 'road to repair' by creating a private charitable trust with a goal to secure $105 million in assets, including $60 million 'to go toward improving buildings and revitalizing the city's north side,' AP reported. The mayor said his plan wouldn't require city council approval, but the city council would have to approve the transfer of any city-owned assets to the trust. 'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history,' Nichols said Sunday, announcing the proposal to an audience of several hundred people at the Greenwood Cultural Center, which is located in a district of North Tulsa that was decimated by the white mob in 1921. 'The massacre was hidden from history books, only to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off economic vitality and the perpetual underinvestment of local, state and federal governments.' 'Now it's time to take the next big steps to restore,' he declared. 'The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce,' Nichols told AP. 'So what was lost was not just something from North Tulsa or the Black community. It actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivaled anywhere else in the world.' Nichols, who signed an executive order earlier this year recognizing June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, acknowledged that a major hurdle that could get in the way of his plan is the war on all things diversity, equity and inclusion waged by the administration of President Donald Trump. 'The fact that this lines up with a broader national conversation is a tough environment, but it doesn't change the work we have to do,' he said. Source: UCG / Getty Of course, Nichols would be right to be wary about Trump's overreaching administration medling in his city's affairs over nonsensical (and racist as hell) DEI concerns. This is, after all, the same administration that recently ended a wastewater settlement for a mostly Black Alabama town, falsely calling it 'environmental justice as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,' simply because environmental racism was addressed in the reaching of the settlement. Even more recently, Trump expressed his intention to end a Biden-era program to expand high-speed internet to underserved communities, including rural areas, falsely claiming it provides 'woke handouts based on race,' despite the fact that poor people from rural communites could absolutely be of any race (and would also include a significant portion of his MAGA cultists). But if Nichols is worried about Trump putting the kibosh on his proposal, he should be doubly worried about what his own state government might do. Last year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with lower courts in dismissing a lawsuit or reparations filed by 110-year-olds Viola Ford Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield Randle, the two remaining survivors of the massacre. Here's what I wrote about that previously: None of it is terribly surprising, of course. The same year the lawsuit seeking reparations was filed, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law another Republican white fragility bill prohibiting teachings in K-12 schools that include Critical Race Theory, a college-level academic framework that is not taught in K-12 schools, as well as any other race-based curriculum that causes 'discomfort, guilt, anguish or psychological distress' to (white) students. (Oklahoma wants to be Florida so bad.) Then, in 2022, Stitt called for an investigation into Tulsa Public Schools after claims that the school district violated the state's anti-CRT law, which was denounced by both the Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education and the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, of which Stitt had the caucasity to be a member of until he was booted from the commission for signing the law that would certainly whitewash the manner in which the Tulsa massacre could be taught—in Tulsa. So yeah — good luck to Mayor Nichols, and we hope his bare-minimum proposal becomes a reality in Tulsa, but he might be fighting an uphill battle in a state that, much like the current federal government, will always prioritize white nationalism, white supremacy and white people's eternally fragile feelings over racial justice. SEE ALSO: Op-Ed: Misogynoir Is Why Many Black Women Don't Care That Telvin Osborne's Killer Won't Be Charged Trump Admin To Settle Suit Claiming Program For 'Disadvantaged' Businesses Only Serves 'Women And Certain Minorities' SEE ALSO Tulsa's 1st Black Mayor Proposes Reparations Plan For Descendants Of Race Massacre, But Will It Work In Trump's America? was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
The Intercept
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Intercept
Andor Has a Message for the Left: Act Now
Support Us © THE INTERCEPT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Star Wars series shows a rebel movement struggling to be born, but has a clear lesson for fighting rising fascism. Photo illustration: Fei Liu / Photos: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images; Walt Disney Studios Star Wars has always been political, no matter what the MAGA types who cosplay as Imperial agents and scream about Disney shoving diversity into 'their Star Wars' say. The original trilogy showed a band of anti-imperialist fighters going up against a vicious pan-galactic state — based, according to its creator George Lucas, on the Vietnam War, with the Viet Cong 'rebels' going up against the United States 'Empire.' The prequels showed the transformation of the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire of the original trilogy. In 2018, during Donald Trump's first administration, James Cameron interviewed Lucas about Star Wars' anti-authoritarian messaging, highlighting a line spoken by Senator Padmé Amidala as Emperor Palpatine declares that the Republic is now an Empire: 'So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.' 'We're in the middle of it right now,' Lucas replies. Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney in 2012 and hasn't been involved in production since then, but Andor, the new series set in the universe, doubles down on its anti-authoritarian roots, focusing on the creation of the revolutionary Rebel Alliance. In the process, it gives us a glimpse into the messiness and conflict that often accompanies building a movement on the left, as activists fight over which political philosophies and strategies work best. And season two couldn't have come at a more opportune time as Trump and his second administration carry out Project 2025 and Democrats do… well, not much. Caution: spoilers ahead. 'All doubts aside, there is one glaring certainty. If we do not stand together, we will be crushed.' Like the U.S. Congress – and especially the Democrats – members of the Imperial Senate in the show have little actual power under Emperor Palpatine's unitary executive. Senators Mon Mothma and Bail Organa use parliamentary procedure and political dealmaking to fight against the Emperor's fascistic rule, but it becomes apparent that this strategy is futile. In Andor season two, Mothma tries to rally support against an extension of the Public Order Resentencing Directive (P.O.R.D.), an emergency directive from Emperor Palpatine that imposes harsher sentences on people for supposed crimes against the Empire. Senator Dasi Oran of Ghorman won't support the bill because he 'can't risk chafing the Emperor,' who is already singling out his planet for unknown reasons (the audience later learns that Ghorman contains a mineral critical to completing the Death Star). Other senators assert that security concerns are more important than civil liberties, or that the crime numbers can be manipulated and they 'believe what [they] feel.' 'All doubts aside, there is one glaring certainty. If we do not stand together, we will be crushed,' Mothma tells Oran, but his decision has been made. After season one, Gilroy said in an interview that he sees Mothma as 'sort of a Nancy Pelosi character… a powerful presence in the Senate but she's facing defeat after defeat after defeat as the Empire is taking over.' But in the background, Mothma is secretly using her family's money to fund a burgeoning insurgency, including Luthen Rael, a spymaster leading a covert Rebel network whose heist of 80 million credits from an Imperial garrison inspired the creation of the repressive P.O.R.D. law in the first place. Unfortunately, Pelosi's family fortune and ice cream freezer probably aren't being put to similar use right now. At first, Mothma is committed to keeping the Rebellion from breaking into open violence against the powers that be, despite pressure from more radical actors in her orbit. Saw Gerrera, who heads another rebel cell known as the Partisans, is willing to fight the Empire 'by any means necessary,' including through violence, as he says in the Star Wars book 'Reign of Empire: Mask of Fear.' Gerrera and his Partisans have appeared throughout the Star Wars timeline, and are the most far-left revolutionary characters in the Age of Rebellion. Gerrera is frequently used as a foil for Senators Mothma and Bail Organa (father of Leia), who prefer to work peacefully from inside the system to fight the Empire. While the senators came to rebel from a place of immense wealth and privilege, fighting more on philosophical grounds, Gerrera has had to fight for the freedom of his people since he was young. In a meeting among the three to discuss strategy in 'Mask of Fear,' Gerrera tells his counterparts, 'Democracy is a principle and people don't fight for principles, no matter what they say. They fight for land, for resources, for their lives… A democratic genocide isn't any more agreeable to its victims.' But a brutal massacre on Ghorman eventually pushes Mothma to armed resistance. On Ghorman, an underground movement known as the Ghorman Front has been percolating since the gruesome killing of hundreds of peaceful protesters in the planet's capital over a decade earlier. Over the course of the season, the show reveals that the Ghorman Front has been secretly sanctioned by agents within the Imperial Security Bureau, which allowed the rebels to steal Imperial weapons and put up a fight in order to manufacture consent across the galaxy for military crackdowns and the extraction of Ghorman's mineral resources. When the Empire moves mining equipment onto the planet, the people of Ghorman gather in the capital to protest. A local leader, Carro Rylanz, sees the Empire's provocation as the ruse it is, and urges his daughter Enza and the rest of the Ghorman Front to continue peaceful resistance. They ignore him and prep weapons for the demonstration anyway, with Enza Rylanz telling him, 'You can't keep screaming the same ideas expecting change!' But the empire takes matters out of the Front's hands. While the people chant, 'We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching!' and sing their national anthem, Imperial soldiers barricade them inside the plaza. An Imperial sniper perched on the roof sets off the violence with a false flag, purposefully killing an Imperial grunt and provoking an imperial attack, which forces the Ghorman Front to defend their people with arms. They are massacred. As news of the massacre makes its way to the Imperial Senate, Ghorman Senator Oran is arrested without charges. Mothma realizes the time to fight peacefully from the inside has passed; the Rebellion must escalate its tactics with military action. In a speech on the Imperial Senate floor about the death of objective reality that wouldn't be out of place on the U.S. Senate floor today, Mothma condemns the Ghorman Massacre as an 'unprovoked genocide.' 'When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest,' Mothma says. 'And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we've helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!' After her speech, Mothma flees to Yavin 4 where she will become the leader of the Rebel Alliance. Senator Organa stays behind to stall until the Rebellion is ready to go up against the Empire's military might. The parallels of the world of Andor to the United States' political reality in 2025 under Trump's second administration are clear. Rightwing think tanks and news have spewed propaganda for decades to make us question objective truth, leaving us vulnerable to the monster screaming the loudest. People speaking up against Israel's genocide in Gaza are being imprisoned without evidence or due process. Even politicians who dare go against Trump are targets for arrest now. What is it going to take for Democrats to do more than break floor speech records over things that don't matter and fight for the people they represent? Our democracy is giving way to authoritarianism, and we can't just wait for a Jedi to save us. We have to fight now. Or as Karis Nemik, one of the rebellion's freedom fighters, put it in a manifesto in the show's first season: 'The day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.' Join The Conversation
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What the No Tax on Tips Act Means for Workers and Businesses
Man selecting 20% tip while using a handheld credit card scanner at a restaurant in Queens, New York. Credit - Lindsey Nicholson—UCG/UniversalMillions of American service workers—from bartenders and barbers to delivery drivers and nail techs—are one step closer to keeping their tips tax-free. In a rare show of bipartisan unity, the Senate has unanimously passed the No Tax on Tips Act, a sweeping proposal that would overhaul how tipped income is taxed in the U.S. If signed into law, the bill would exempt up to $25,000 in tips from federal income taxes. The bill, a signature campaign promise of President Donald Trump, now moves to the Republican-controlled House, where it enjoys broad support. 'We are one step closer to eliminating taxes on tipped wages for hardworking Americans,' Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement following the bill's Senate passage. 'Working Americans— from servers, to bartenders, delivery drivers, and everything in between— work hard for every dollar they earn and are the ones who deserve tax relief, not the ultra-rich.' The effort to eliminate taxes on tips quickly gained traction during the 2024 campaign, with polling indicating majority support for the proposal across the country, though Americans are mixed on the potential outcomes of the policy. The idea has also drawn criticism from a number of economists and labor advocates. Here's what the bill would mean for workers and businesses. The No Tax on Tips Act would revise the IRS Code to eliminate the income tax on tips. Employees who 'traditionally and customarily received tips on or before December 31, 2023,' would therefore be exempt from paying taxes for up to $25,000 earned tip income. That includes waiters, bartenders, and delivery drivers. Beauty service workers—such as barbers, estheticians, and nail technicians—would also benefit, though the full list of eligible occupations would only be listed by the U.S. Treasury Secretary 90 days after the bill's passage. To qualify for the tax deduction, employees must have earned less than $160,000 for the 2024-2025 tax year. Should the bill become law, this income qualification will be adjusted for inflation. The exemption would impact only a small fraction of the country's workforce. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that some 4 million people worked in tipped occupations in the U.S. in 2023, representing about 2.5% of all U.S. workers. Others, such as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), estimate tipped workers to make up a slightly higher percentage of about 5% And despite the proposal's broad appeal, economists say that curtailing taxes on tips may harm workers in the service industry. Already, 37% percent of tipped workers do not pay federal income tax because they earn so little. Experts fear that the new policy would incentivize employers to keep base wages stagnant. The tax change may also affect their eligibility for other programs, such as the child tax credit and earned income tax credit, or reduce their contributions to Social Security. The No Tax on Tips Act could further impact the nature of tipping culture in the U.S. Experts warn businesses could potentially encourage tipping requests, or make them mandatory, in order to pay their workers less. Research shows that 72% of Americans already feel they are being asked to tip workers more frequently, per a Pew Research Center report. The No Tax on Tips Act also expands the business tax credit for the portion of payroll taxes that businesses might previously have paid on certain employee tips. The National Restaurant Association voiced its support for the bill in January, praising the potential benefits for workers and saying they could have a positive impact for employers as well. 'Eliminating taxes on tips would put cash back in the pocket of a significant number of workers in the restaurant and foodservice industry and could help restaurant operators recruit industry workforce,' the organization said in a statement. 'Tax policy plays a major role in the success of the restaurant industry, so we'll continue to work with Congress on this and other common-sense tax policy that will stimulate investments and improvements in restaurants of all sizes and help operators make greater investments in their workforce and communities.' Contact us at letters@
Vox
17-05-2025
- Health
- Vox
How the US turned the tide on drug overdose deaths
is an editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate, tech, and world teams, and is the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. The Trump administration has proposed major cuts to naloxone distribution, which could take the most potent tool for stopping overdose deaths out of the hands of those who need it most. Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images In 2020 and 2021, before I came to Vox, I worked as the future correspondent at Axios — yes, that was the actual job title — and I found myself writing almost solely about the Covid-19 pandemic, or major trends that appeared to be driven by the pandemic. One of those trends was an alarming rise in drug overdose deaths. The trajectory was already bad before Covid: Between the widespread prescription and misuse of legal opioids and then the introduction of the ultra-powerful drug fentanyl to the illicit drug supply, overdose deaths in the US began taking off in the early 2010s. But the closure of treatment facilities during the pandemic and the isolation of users led to a sudden spike in deaths: In the year leading up to September 2020, as I wrote in April 2021, more than 87,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, a higher total than any 12-month period of the opioid epidemic up to that point. Despair, and then hope After publishing that piece, I received a letter from a reader, who said her son had been one of those 87,000 deaths. She begged me to give this issue more coverage, to remind my readers that behind the Covid pandemic, there was a shadow epidemic of drug deaths, of lost sons and daughters and husbands and wives. People had to stop closing their eyes to the toll of death and pain. In the years that followed, the toll only continued to grow, however, with deaths reaching 110,000 in 2023. There seemed to be no answer for one of the worst public health crises in a generation. But now, at long last, we finally appear to be turning the corner on the drug overdose crisis. Provisional figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Vital Statistics System released this week show that some 27,000 fewer Americans died of a drug overdose in 2024 than in 2023. That year-on-year drop is the steepest single-year decline since the government first began keeping track of overdose deaths 45 years ago. It means that drug deaths are now finally coming back down to pre-pandemic levels — and that we can make progress on what can seem like the most intractable social ills. 27,000 lives To put that 27,000 drop in deaths into perspective, think of it this way: It adds up to three lives saved every hour for an entire year. What's remarkable about the rapid drop in overdose deaths is just how widespread the trend is. Forty-five states recorded declines in deaths, with Ohio and West Virginia — two states that have suffered more than almost any other from the opioid epidemic — leading the way. Only a handful of states, mostly in the Northwest, where the epidemic started later, experienced increases. While synthetic opioids, which mostly means fentanyl, are still responsible for the vast majority of overdose deaths, deaths from such drugs are falling faster than any other, declining by 36 percent year over year. Reversing the overdose epidemic One of the biggest factors behind the decline is the growing availability of naloxone, an opioid antagonist. If administered in the immediate aftermath of an overdose, naloxone has been shown to be close to 99 percent effective in preventing death. The key is speed — even the fastest emergency medical responders may not make it to the scene in time to save someone suffering an overdose. But recent policies to make naloxone available over the counter, and to advise users to have it on hand, have made it possible to bring back thousands of people who otherwise would have died. While the pandemic directly led to a significant spike in overdose deaths, policies that came out of Covid have helped curb the toll, including telehealth access to medicine-based treatment options for addiction like buprenorphine. All of these programs have been paid for in part by the billions of dollars in opioid-settlement cash from drug companies like Johnson & Johnson, which began flowing to state and local governments in 2024. Tougher enforcement on fentanyl has played a role as well. Lastly — and less positively — the sheer number of overdose deaths in the past few years has depleted the number of people at highest risk. Like an infectious disease epidemic that slows down as it begins to run out of new people to infect, the overdose epidemic burned so hot and killed so many that drug users who were left were less vulnerable to fatal overdoses. What comes next The news isn't all good. While synthetic opioids like fentanyl appear to be in a steep decline, deaths actually rose last year from stimulants like meth and cocaine, with production of the latter surging to new highs. The increase in deaths in a handful of states like Alaska and Washington demonstrates that in some parts of the country, at least, there are still populations that remain highly vulnerable to fatal overdoses. Most worryingly, the Trump administration's draft budget proposes major cuts to naloxone distribution, which could take the most potent tool for stopping overdose deaths out of the hands of those who need it most. Still, we should recognize this new data for what it is — evidence that, with effort, we can reverse the course of one of the biggest public health threats the US faces. Thousands of people are alive today who, if nothing had changed since I was writing about this epidemic in 2021, might have suffered a worse fate. Drug addiction is a horrible disease that can destroy futures, families, and lives. But where there is life, there is hope. Every overdose victim brought back by a spray of naloxone has another chance to change their future, and ensure that they won't become another statistic. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
