Keith Duggan

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Keith Duggan

What had started as a coronation in Washington for Elon Musk ended on Wednesday night with a brief post on X, the social media platform he owns, and a muted goodbye to his time a special government employee. The honour conferred on him by Donald Trump, so he could serve as both symbol and wrecking-ball-in-chief to the waste and fraud the Trump administration has promised to rip from the federal bureaucracy, started with fireworks and finished with a tweet.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Keith Duggan

If social media posts tell a tale, then US president Donald Trump woke up on Memorial Day morning in a foul mood. Little wonder. His golfing weekend had been destroyed by updates about the three-day bombardment of Ukraine by Russia, killing at least 12 people and making a mockery of the two hours Trump had spent on the phone with Vladimir Putin last week, leading him to predict that the Russian president is “ready to end it”.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Keith Duggan

Heady days in New York City, with the Knicks basketball team enjoying their best summer in a quarter of a century and George Clooney chief among the true-blue celebrities to be seen in midtown Manhattan. Since March, Clooney has been a fixture in and around the Winter Garden theatre, where he has brought his enduring winsomeness and a garish black dye-job to the role of Edward R Murrow, the 1950s CBS anchor who was, in that fractious decade, regarded as the most trusted man in America.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Keith Duggan

Tariffs of 50 per cent will be imposed on all imports to the United States from the EU from the start of next month, Donald Trump said on Friday. The threat comes amid impatience in Washington at the pace of negotiations for a trading template agreeable to his administration. In a post on Truth Social, the US president attacked the EU for what he alleged were unfair trade practices and he said negotiations over a new deal were failing.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Keith Duggan

A US aircraft carrying deportees described by a US Homeland Security official as “barbaric” and “violent” to North Africa against the directions of a US federal court judge stopped at Shannon Airport on route to its destination. Flight-tracking date obtained by the New York Times traced a Gulfstream jet owned by a private company that stopped off at Shannon after leaving an airport in Harlingen, Texas, on Tuesday.