NEW YORK: The US government will review $9 billion of funding for Harvard University over alleged anti-Semitism on campus, authorities said Monday, after it cut millions from Columbia University, which has also seen fierce pro-Palestinian student protests.
President Donald Trump has aggressively targeted prestigious universities that saw bitter protests sparked by Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, stripping their federal funds and directing immigration officers to deport foreign student demonstrators, including those with green cards.
Officials would look at $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard and the government, as well as $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments to the prestigious Ivy League institution, the General Services Administration said in a statement.
Critics argue that the Trump administration’s campaign is retributive and will have a chilling effect on free speech, while its supporters insist it is necessary to restore order to campuses and to protect Jewish students.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy.”
“Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus,” she added.
Trump has also targeted New York’s Columbia University, initially putting $400 million of funding under review, detaining for deportation a graduate student linked to the protests, and seeking to arrest others.
Columbia then announced a package of concessions to the government around defining anti-Semitism, policing protests and oversight for specific academic departments.
They stopped short, however, of meeting some of the more strident demands of the Trump administration, which nonetheless welcomed the Ivy League college’s proposals.
“Today’s actions by the Task Force follow a similar ongoing review of Columbia University,” said Monday’s official statement.
“That review led to Columbia agreeing to comply with nine preconditions for further negotiations regarding a return of canceled federal funds.”
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump threatens $9 billion in Harvard funding over ‘anti-Semitism’
https://arab.news/zw2we
Trump threatens $9 billion in Harvard funding over ‘anti-Semitism’
- Critics argue that the Trump administration’s campaign is retributive and will have a chilling effect on free speech, while its supporters insist it is necessary to restore order to campuses and to protect Jewish students
Four journalists who were accused of working for Kremlin foe Navalny are convicted of extremism
- All four maintained their innocence, arguing they were being prosecuted for doing their job as journalists
- The closed-door trial was part of an unrelenting crackdown on dissent that has reached an unprecedented scale after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022
MOSCOW: A Russian court on Tuesday convicted four journalists of extremism for working for an anti-corruption group founded by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and sentenced them to 5 1/2 years in prison each.
Antonina Favorskaya, Kostantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger were found guilty of involvement with a group that had been labeled as extremist. All four had maintained their innocence, arguing they were being prosecuted for doing their jobs as journalists.
The closed-door trial was part of an unrelenting crackdown on dissent that has reached an unprecedented scale after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
The authorities have targeted opposition figures, independent journalists, rights activists and ordinary Russians critical of the Kremlin with prosecution, jailing hundreds and prompting thousands to flee the country.
Favorskaya and Kriger worked with SotaVision, an independent Russian news outlet that covers protests and political trials. Gabov is a freelance producer who has worked for multiple organizations, including Reuters. Karelin, a freelance video journalist, has done work for Western media outlets, including The Associated Press.
The four journalists were accused of working with Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption, which was designated as extremist and outlawed in 2021 in a move widely seen as politically motivated.
Navalny was President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest and most prominent foe and relentlessly campaigned against official corruption in Russia. Navalny died in February 2024 in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on a number of charges, including running an extremist group, which he had rejected as politically driven.
Favorskaya said at an earlier court appearance open to the public that she was being prosecuted for a story she did on abuse Navalny faced behind bars. Speaking to reporters from the defendants’ cage before the verdict, she also said she was punished for helping organize Navalny’s funeral.
Gabov, in a closing statement prepared for court that was published by the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said the accusations against him were groundless and the prosecution failed to prove them.
“I understand perfectly well ... what kind of country I live in. Throughout history, Russia has never been different, there is nothing new in the current situation,” Gabov said in the statement. “Independent journalism is equated to extremism.”
In a statement Karelin prepared for his closing arguments that also was published by Novaya Gazeta, he said he had agreed to do street interviews for Popular Politics, a YouTube channel founded by Navalny’s associates, while trying to provide for his wife and a young child. He stressed that the channel wasn’t outlawed as extremist and had done nothing illegal.
“Remorse is considered to be a mitigating circumstance. It’s the criminals who need to have remorse for what they did. But I am in prison for my work, for the honest and impartial attitude to journalism, FOR THE LOVE for my family and country,” he wrote in a separate speech for court that also was published by the outlet, in which he emphasized his feelings in capital letters.
Kriger, in a closing statement published by SotaVision, said he was imprisoned and added to the Russian financial intelligence’s registry of extremists and terrorists “only because I have conscientiously carried out my professional duties as an honest, incorruptible and independent journalist for 4 1/2 years.”
“Don’t despair guys, sooner or later it will end and those who delivered the sentence will go behind bars,” Kriger said after the verdict.
Supporters who gathered in the court building chanted and applauded as the four journalists were led out of the courtroom after the verdict.
The Russian human rights group Memorial designated all four as political prisoners, among more than 900 others held in the country. That number includes Mikhail Kriger, Artyom Kriger’s uncle, a Moscow-based activist who was arrested in 2022 and is serving a seven-year prison sentence.
Mikhail Kriger was convicted of justifying terrorism and inciting hatred over Facebook comments in which he expressed a desire “to hang” Putin.
Superyacht that sank off Sicily killing seven to be raised
- Inquests into the deaths of Lynch and the other three British victims are being held in Ipswich in eastern England
- The retrieval operation was due to begin on April 26
LONDON: The superyacht “Bayesian” that sank off Sicily in August, killing British tech mogul Mike Lynch and six others, is to be raised and brought to shore next month, an investigator said on Tuesday.
The luxury 56-meter (185-foot) yacht was struck by a pre-dawn storm on August 19 as it was anchored off Porticello, near Palermo, and sank within minutes, killing Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and five others.
Lynch, the 59-year-old founder of software firm Autonomy, had invited friends and family onto the boat to celebrate his recent acquittal in a huge US fraud case.
Inquests into the deaths of Lynch and the other three British victims are being held in Ipswich in eastern England.
Simon Graves, a principal investigator for the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) — a British government organization that investigates maritime accidents involving British ships around the world — told a pre-inquest hearing that the Bayesian was going to be raised and expected to be on dry land by the end of May.
The retrieval operation was due to begin on April 26.
Inquests were opened and adjourned last October pending the completion of probes by both the UK investigators and a criminal inquiry by Italian prosecutors.
Graves said a MAIB interim report on whether there were any breaches of maritime legislation could be published online in four to six weeks, with the final report to follow in “months not weeks.”
Coroner Nigel Parsley said he was “in the hands of the criminal investigations” as to when a final inquest hearing date could be set.
There were 22 passengers on board, including 12 crew and 10 guests, when the yacht sank.
The inquest in the UK is examining the deaths of Lynch and his daughter, Hannah, 18, as well as Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, 70, and his 71-year-old wife Judy Bloomer, who were also British nationals.
The others who died were US lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht.
Angela Bacares, Lynch’s wife and Hannah’s mother, was among the 15 survivors.
Bangladesh restores ‘except Israel’ clause in passports after public pressure
- Bangladesh’s previous government dropped the wording in 2021 without public notice
- Immigration says it may take several weeks to finalize procedures to print it again
DHAKA: Bangladesh is reinstating the “except Israel” clause in its passports, the Department of Immigration said on Tuesday, after public pressure to reverse its removal by the previous government.
Bangladeshi passports carried the sentence “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel” until 2021, when authorities rolled out a new travel document and the phrase was removed without any public notice.
While authorities justified it by saying it was meant to “maintain international standard,” many people in the country — which has no diplomatic relations with Israel — questioned the move.
The new interim government, which took charge of Bangladesh in August after the ouster of its long-standing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has decided to undo her cabinet’s decision.
“We’ve received the government’s directive to reinstate the ‘except Israel’ clause in Bangladeshi passports. We are currently working to implement it,” Brig. Gen. Mohammed Nurus Salam, passports director at the Department of Immigration, told Arab News.
“For many years, our passports carried the ‘except Israel’ clause. But the previous government suddenly removed it. We were used to seeing ‘except Israel’ written in our passports. I don’t know why they took it out. If you talk to people across the country, you’ll see they want that line back in their passports. There was no need to remove it.”
Pressure to reinstate the clause has been mounting since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing deadly onslaught on Gaza, which began in October 2023.
Over 51,000 people have been killed, 116,000 wounded, and 2 million others face starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings while blocking humanitarian aid from entering.
A clear ban on travel to Israel in Bangladeshi passports was one of the key demands raised during a series of Gaza solidarity protests, which have been held regularly in Dhaka since last month after Israeli forces unilaterally broke a ceasefire agreement and resumed bombing hospitals, schools and tents sheltering displaced people.
The biggest such protest took place in Dhaka on Saturday, with about 1 million people taking to the streets to call on the international community to “take effective and collective action to end the genocide,” and especially on Muslim countries to immediately sever all economic, military, and diplomatic relations with Israel and to “impose commercial blockades and sanctions on the Zionist state” and begin active diplomatic efforts to isolate it on the international stage.
“People will definitely welcome this new decision. It reflects the feelings of the people of this country,” Salam said, but he was not able to specify when the new passports will be available.
“There are some technical challenges involved with this change. Currently, we import e-passports from Germany under a government-to-government agreement … It may take another week to finalize the necessary procedures. In the meantime, we are exploring whether there’s any option to modify the existing stock of printed booklets.”
Italy’s Meloni to meet Trump amid US-Europe trade tensions
- Meloni is walking a tightrope between her ideological affinity to the president and her ties with European allies
- French government ministers have warned that the nationalist Italian leader might undermine EU unity by going alone to Washington
ROME: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is heading to the White House for a meeting on Thursday with President Donald Trump, seeking to ease tensions over US tariffs on European goods and position herself as a bridge between Washington and Brussels.
Meloni is walking a tightrope between her ideological affinity to the president and her ties with European allies, who have criticized Trump’s tariff hikes and his decision to exclude the EU from talks with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
While Meloni is under pressure at home to protect Italy’s export-driven economy, which last year ran a 40 billion euro ($45.4 billion) trade surplus with the US, she must also be seen to defend the interests of the whole 27-nation EU bloc.
French government ministers have warned that the nationalist Italian leader might undermine EU unity by going alone to Washington, but the European Commission, which has responsibility for negotiating trade accords, has welcomed Meloni’s trip.
Trump’s abrupt decision last week to pause most global tariffs for 90 days has relieved some of the pressure on Meloni, meaning that she won’t feel the need to return with a deal, but rather to create the right environment for an accord.
“She is no longer traveling amid an open clash involving the EU. She is going as a de facto mediator,” said Lorenzo Castellani, a political analyst at Luiss University in Rome.
ROME’S AMBITIONS
Meloni was the only EU leader invited to Trump’s inauguration in January and this week’s meeting will take place the day before she hosts Vice President JD Vance in Rome — back-to-back talks that could be crucial to furthering Italian ambitions to play a pivotal role in transatlantic relations.
“If she facilitates negotiations with Trump without penalizing Europe, she will emerge much stronger,” said Castellani.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has so far not been granted an audience with Trump, meaning that she has to rely on others to promote EU interests.
A Commission spokesperson said Meloni and von der Leyen had been in regular contact ahead of the White House meeting.
Both leaders have called for all of Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs to be scrapped for the EU, and Meloni is expected to push for a “zero-for-zero” deal on industrial tariffs between the two sides.
French officials fear Trump is seeking to divide and conquer Europe, and worry Meloni could play into his hands.
“We need to be united because Europe is strong if it’s united,” Marc Ferracci, the French minister for industry and energy, told FranceInfo radio. “If we start having bilateral talks, of course it’ll break this momentum.”
CHINA
While Trump has frozen many tariffs, he has maintained a wall of levies on China and some analysts say this might bring China and Europe closer together.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week, and urged greater engagement with China in order to defend globalization and to oppose “unilateral acts of bullying.”
Rome has distanced itself from his comments.
“The great clash underway is not between the US and Europe, but between the US and China,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told Reuters in an interview.
Trump and Meloni may also discuss defense and Castellani said Meloni might promise to hike defense spending in future.
Italy’s defense budget was 1.49 percent of GDP last year even as Trump is pushing NATO allies to lift military spending to 5 percent of GDP.
Ukraine moves to fire Sumy official over strike comments
- The government moved to dismiss Sumy governor Volodymyr Artyukh, an official said
- Artyukh’s dismissal was linked to quotes he gave the Suspilne news outlet
KYIV: Ukraine on Tuesday moved to dismiss the governor of the Sumy region after he made comments implying a deadly Russian strike in his border territory had targeted a military gathering.
Two Russian ballistic missiles killed 35 people and wounded more than 100 others in Sumy city on Sunday in one of the single-worst attacks in Ukraine in months.
The government moved to dismiss Sumy governor Volodymyr Artyukh, an official said on social media, after he was criticized for comments that appeared to confirm a military award ceremony was taking place during the attack in Sumy on Sunday.
A senior Ukrainian official confirmed to AFP that Artyukh’s dismissal was linked to quotes he gave the Suspilne news outlet, in which he said he was “invited” to the awards event but did not organize it.
The Kremlin said Monday its forces targeted a gathering of army commanders and accused Ukraine of using civilians as a “human shield.”
The Ukrainian official, who spoke anonymously to speak candidly about the issue, said it had been “clear” for some time that Artyukh was a “a very mediocre manager.”
“He really screwed up,” the official said, adding: “And this story is actually the last tragic straw.”
