Category World News

In a joint statement, a group of more than 20 mostly European foreign ministers called for the Israeli-led attacks on Palestinian aid seekers and called for the end of the Gaza war.

In a crucial case involving Harvard’s request to have $2.6 billion in federal funding returned, a federal court has begun hearings.

Steven Lehotsky, a Harvard lawyer, claimed at the hearing on Monday that the case involves the government trying to control Harvard’s “inner workings.” If not reversed, the funding cuts, he said, could cause lab closures, lost research, and deteriorated careers.

The administration of President Donald Trump has been imposing sanctions on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university as it files a number of demands on the Ivy League school, which it denigrates as a haven for anti-Semitism and liberalism, for months.

The administration’s main challenge is the administration’s refusal to comply with Harvard’s policy, which has been closely watched throughout higher education and beyond.

Allison Burroughs, a US District Judge, is presiding over Harvard’s lawsuits against the administration’s efforts to prevent it from hosting foreign students. She then temporarily stifled the administration’s efforts.

Harvard is requesting that she reverse a number of funding restrictions at Monday’s hearing. If the decision is upheld, it would revive Harvard’s extensive scientific and medical research program and hundreds of federally subsidized projects.

When an institution disobeys the president’s directives, the government has the authority to revoke research grants, according to Michael Velchik, a government lawyer. He claimed Harvard incidents were incompatible with Trump’s anti-Semitism policy.

Judge questions serve as the foundation for the government’s anti-Semitism findings.

Burroughs reacted by posing questions about how the government could “ad hoc” decide to cancel grants across Harvard without providing any evidence that any of the research was anti-Semitic.

She added that Harvard administrators “have taken enough steps or haven’t” to combat anti-Semitism because the government had “no documentation, no procedure” to “suss out.”

She stated at the hearing on Monday that the effects of that on constitutional law were “scatastrophic.” I don’t believe you can defend a contract violation based on unlawful speech suppression. Where is that incorrect?

According to Velchik, the decision to allocate billions of dollars for research funding is down to the government.

“Harvard asserts that the government opposes him.” That is not what I want, Velchik said. Harvard students are pro-Jewish, according to the government. Harvard professors are pro-Jewish, and the government is.

Following the rejection of a number of demands by a federal anti-Semitism task force in an April 11 letter, Harvard is accused by the Trump administration of staging a retaliation campaign against the university. The American Association of University Professors and its Harvard faculty chapter’s lawsuit has been joined by the university’s.

The April letter called for drastic changes to academic, admissions, and campus protests. For instance, the letter advised Harvard to review the viewpoints of faculty and students, admit more students, and appoint new professors if it was discovered that the campus lacked diverse viewpoints.

No government “should dictate what private universities can teach, who they can admit and hire, and what areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” according to Harvard President Alan Garber, who claimed the university had made changes to combat anti-Semitism.

Without the bench’s approval, Burroughs’ hearing on Monday came to an end. Later in writing, a decision is anticipated.

A number of sanctions have been used in Trump’s pressure campaign.

Trump’s administration reacted to the government’s demands the same day Harvard rejected the government’s demands. After Linda McMahon, head of education, announced in May that Harvard would no longer be eligible for new grants, the administration immediately began terminating contracts with Harvard.

Individual organizations started e-mailing out notices that the funding for Harvard had been frozen in correspondence. They cited a provision that permits the removal of grants when they no longer conform to government guidelines.

Harvard, which has the highest endowment in the country, is trying to self-fund some of its research, but it has been warned it can’t cover the full cost of the federal budget cuts.

The government “fails to explain how the termination of funding for research to treat cancer, support veterans, and improve national security addresses antisemitism,” the school claimed in court filings.

The Trump administration claims that the grants were being reviewed even before the April demand letter was sent, and that the cuts were not intended as retaliation. It asserts that the government has a wide discretion to revoke contracts for political reasons.

In Harvard’s conflict with the federal government, funding for research is just one. Additionally, Trump has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and made an effort to stop the school from hosting foreign students.

The most recent gruesome headline to emerge from Gaza is “Ten children a day losing a limb,” warns the UN-backed body.

Since the war broke out in October 2023, according to the article, “134, 105 people, including over 40, 500 children, have received new war-related injuries.”

Real children who have lost a portion of their bodies, their childhood, and their dreams are hidden behind these shocking statistics.

Osama, one of my 12-year-old relatives, is one of them. He twice escaped death, but each time he lost a significant portion of his family before he could only remain.

He and his mother, grandmother, and sisters were at his grandparents’ house for the first time. Everyone except Osama was killed when an Israeli airstrike hit the home.

When Israel bombed it the second time, he was at a school instead of a home. All seven of his uncles and father were killed. Despite losing his leg, Osama still lived.

To check on him, my father and I went to Al-Aqsa Hospital. A young patient waved us at the hospital’s entrance as he presented the child with his plastic bag of water and handed it to us. His other hand had to be amputated. The hospital’s admissions room was horrifying inside. On beds and on the floor, there were dozens of amputees.

Osama was lying in his bed, we discovered. He sobbed the majority of the time during the visit. He struggled with every movement.

His face hurts beyond recognition, as I witnessed. A child who lost his mother, father, and his siblings was now completely alone, dealing with the trauma and pain of an amputation.

He had to rely heavily on his family’s charity. Someone was constantly looking for a wheelchair for him, and he was cared for and supported.

However, taking care of a wounded child who can’t even use the restroom alone in a war can be overwhelming, even for those who care about him. They are barely surviving, not because they don’t want to help.

Osama was aware of that. He yelled, “I want to play with mama and baba and go to heaven.” His words have broken my heart.

Living in an unfair society means losing one’s limb. For every move, step, or simple activity, assistance is required. It also means being constantly feeling different, being criticized or unfazed, and not being able to play alongside other children while they run and play. Many people, like Osama, must deal with this alone without the support of their parents, siblings, and sisters.

Osama must feel something, I can’t begin to comprehend.

But I am aware of how I felt just as I was able to avoid an amputation.

Our home was attacked in June of last year, and my family and I suffered injuries in addition. My hand and other body parts were covered in shrapnel, among them. I was taken to the hospital without incident.

When I first learned that I needed urgent surgery, I was concerned that my hand might not grow.

My right hand was it. the pen I use to record my dreams. the one with which I put my books in my notebooks. the one I use to communicate with my mother, hold my phone, and text friends and distant relatives.

Without it, how could I exist? How could I continue to write, interpret, and dream in the midst of all this destruction?

I also experienced Osama’s feelings at the time: Death would be simpler than losing a portion of my body.

In the hospital, I sobbed a lot. Fear of a life in which I might no longer feel whole, in addition to the pain I experience.

My hand was saved from an amputation by the operation, but the shrapnel remained inside. They were unable to remove it because it was too close to the nerve and feared harm. They vowed that it would continue there indefinitely.

A piece of body shrapnel that resembles a mind-altering piece of pain. I still have a portion of the war inside. My body contains a piece of destruction.

I spent two weeks in the surgery unit, which is specialized in limb fracture cases involving amputation and limb fracture. Not a single morning went by without I waking up to the groans of a woman who was writhing in pain from a wound that refused to heal or the scream of a child crying from the agony of an amputation.

A woman in her 50s had lost both of her arms in front of my bed. She was unable to even put a piece of bread in her mouth. Her daughter fed her with a spoon like a child and sat next to her. Her eyes cried out because of the intolerable sense of helplessness, not just from the physical pain.

She sat still as I watched her. I never forget what she portrayed. The soul is destroyed when a person is stripped of their most fundamental abilities, such as eating, washing themselves, and walking.

War doesn’t just end lives. It is a stealer.

It plagiarizes people’s lives, their homes, their loved ones, and even their limbs.

When you survive, the pain doesn’t end. It begins when you are forced to live in a body that will never be the same, with what is missing, what is broken, and what is broken.

And if losing a body part sometimes seems easier than losing it all, resistance in its purest form can be found in the life we lead afterwards.

One person has been killed and seven others have been injured in Russia’s largest aerial assault on Kyiv in recent months, according to Ukraine. A shelter used by a metro station was hit by a strike that also sparked fires, including at a kindergarten. Rory Challands of Al Jazeera reports from Kyiv.