Trump says US colleges could lose accreditation over ‘antisemitic propaganda’ if he’s elected

Trump says US colleges could lose accreditation over ‘antisemitic propaganda’ if he’s elected
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appears via a live satellite video feed during the Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership summit in Las Vegas on Sept. 5, 2024. (Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Trump says US colleges could lose accreditation over ‘antisemitic propaganda’ if he’s elected
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Attendees react after a live satellite video speech by Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump during the Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership summit in Las Vegas on Sept. 5, 2024. (Las Vegas Sun via AP)
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Updated 06 September 2024
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Trump says US colleges could lose accreditation over ‘antisemitic propaganda’ if he’s elected

Trump says US colleges could lose accreditation over ‘antisemitic propaganda’ if he’s elected
  • Speaking remotely to a crowd of Jewish donors in Las Vegas, Trump also warned that his rival Kamala Harris would abandon Israel if she becomes president
  • “You’re not going to have an Israel if she (Harris) becomes president,” the Republican presidential nominee said without providing evidence for such a claim

LAS VEGAS: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Jewish donors on Thursday that US universities would lose accreditation and federal support over what he described as “antisemitic propaganda” if he is elected to the White House.
“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said, speaking remotely to a crowd of more than 1,000 Republican Jewish Coalition donors in Las Vegas.
Protests roiled college campuses in spring, with students opposing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and demanding institutions stop doing business with companies backing Israel.
Republicans have said the protests show some Democrats are antisemites who support chaos. Protest groups say authorities have unfairly labeled their criticism of Israel’s policies as antisemitic.
The Association of American Universities, which says it represents some 69 leading US universities, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the United States, the federal government does not directly accredit universities but has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that give colleges accreditation.
In his speech, Trump also said he would ban refugee resettlement from “terror infested” areas like Gaza and arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the college student protesters.
Under both Trump and Biden, similar numbers of Palestinians were admitted to the US as refugees. From fiscal year 2017-2020, the US accepted 114 Palestinian refugees, according to US State Department data, compared with 124 Palestinian refugees from fiscal year 2021 to July 31 of this year.
While Trump sketched out few concrete Middle Eastern policy proposals for a second term, he painted a potential Harris presidency in cataclysmic terms for Israel.
“You’re going to be abandoned if she becomes president. And I think you need to explain that to your people... You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president,” Trump said without providing evidence for such a claim.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s speech.
Harris has hewed closely to President Joe Biden’s strong support of Israel and rejected calls from some in the Democratic Party that Washington should rethink sending weapons to Israel because of the heavy Palestinian death toll in Gaza.
She has, however, called for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling the situation there “devastating.”
Health authorities in Gaza say more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault on the enclave since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks led by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
Some 1,200 Israelis were killed in the surprise attack and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
The subsequent assault on Gaza has displaced nearly its entire 2.3 million population, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.

Wish list for Trump
The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund says it is spending some $15 million to support Trump by helping bring out Jewish voters in battleground states.
The network has been financially supported by Sheldon Adelson, the late American casino mogul, and his Israeli-born widow Miriam Adelson. RJC members gathered this week for their annual conference at The Venetian Resort, which was developed by Sheldon Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands Corp. Miriam Adelson is also the lead financier of a super PAC spending group that has said it is looking to raise over $100 million to support Trump.
In a half-dozen Reuters interviews at the conference, attendees broadly voiced three priorities for a potential second Trump term: Expanding the Abraham Accords, pursuing a tougher line on Iran, and either reforming or defunding the United Nations.
The Trump administration in 2020 helped broker the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and Arab nations.
But US-backed plans to normalize ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel were put on ice last year as war escalated between Israel and Hamas.
RJC chairman Norm Coleman, who is also a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia in Washington, told Reuters he was still hopeful the Abraham Accords could be expanded under Biden. “But if it’s not done, I would hope that President Trump would do what he did before and play a role in bringing the region together,” Coleman said.


British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead

British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead
Updated 16 sec ago
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British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead

British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead
  • Starmer said he would set out a “plan for change” as the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, a halving of serious violent crime, lower energy bills and less ill health

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will set more detailed targets in the coming week to achieve the government’s five main goals on areas including growth, health care, crime and green energy, as his party approaches five months in power.
Labour won a sweeping majority in Britain’s lower house of parliament in July, taking power for the first time in 14 years, but has fallen just behind the opposition Conservative Party in some recent opinion polls.
Starmer said he would set out a “plan for change” as the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, a halving of serious violent crime, lower energy bills and less ill health.
“Mission-led government does not mean picking milestones because they are easy or will happen anyway. It means relentlessly driving real improvements in the lives of working people,” Starmer said in a statement released by his office.
Government ministers and officials would be told to focus on these goals rather than individual ministries’ traditional priorities, Starmer’s office added.
Labour has not had an easy start in office. Ministers say the previous government concealed the extent of problems in areas such as prisons and the immigration system, contributing to what finance minister Rachel Reeves said was a 22 billion pound ($28 billion) black hole in public finances.
Conservatives dispute this and say much of the cost overrun reflected Labour decisions to increase pay for public-sector workers and standard in-year spending variations.
Reeves announced 40 billion pounds of tax rises in her first budget last month — up from around 8 billion pounds in Labour’s pre-election plan — on top of higher borrowing to halt a fall in public investment planned by the previous government.
Businesses have complained that they will bear the brunt of the tax rises and will probably cut investment or jobs and need to raise prices as a result.


Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France

Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France
Updated 8 min 20 sec ago
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Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France

Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he intends to nominate real estate developer Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France.
Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post, calling Charles Kushner “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker.”
Kushner is the founder of Kushner Companies, a real estate firm. Jared Kushner is a former White House senior adviser to Trump who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka.
The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations.
Prosecutors alleged that after Charles Kushner discovered his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities in an investigation, he hatched a scheme for revenge and intimidation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife, prosecutors said.
Kushner eventually pleaded guilty to 18 counts including tax evasion and witness tampering. He was sentenced in 2005 to two years in prison — the most he could receive under a plea deal, but less than what Chris Christie, the US attorney for New Jersey at the time and later governor and Republican presidential candidate, had sought.
Christie has blamed Jared Kushner for his firing from Trump’s transition team in 2016, and has called Charles Kushner’s offenses “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was US attorney.”
Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children were married in 2009.


France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia

France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia
Updated 30 November 2024
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France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia

France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia
  • The artifacts currently stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday

ADDIS ABABA: France on Saturday began the return of some 3,500 archeolo-gical artifacts to Ethiopia, which Paris held since the 1980s for study.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot handed over two prehistoric stone axes, bifaces, and a stone cutter to Ethiopia’s Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa during a visit to the National Museum in Addis Ababa.
The tools are “samples of nearly 3,500 artifacts from the excavations carried out on the Melka Kunture site,” a cluster of prehistoric sites south of the capital excavated under the direction of a late French researcher, Barrot said.
France and Ethiopia hold a longstanding bilateral agreement to cooperate in archeology and paleontology.
The artifacts stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday.
“This is a handover, not a restitution, in that these objects have never been part of French public collections,” said Laurent Serrano, culture adviser at the French Embassy.
“These artifacts, which date back between 1 and 2 million years, were found during excavations carried out over several decades at a site near the Ethiopian capital,” he added.


Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece

Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece
Updated 30 November 2024
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Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece

Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece
  • UNHCR representative: ‘Counting lives lost at sea cannot become a norm’

ATHENS: The UN refugee agency has voiced concern at a rise in deaths of migrants trying to reach Greece by sea in small boats from Turkiye, following two fatal shipwrecks this week.

The UNHCR said in a statement Friday that 17 people have died in such accidents this month, while the total so far this year is at least 45 deaths.

Some 56,000 people have illegally entered Greece since Jan. 1, mostly by sea. That’s a five-year high, and the number has already exceeded government estimates of some 50,000 arrivals by the year’s end in October.

The UNHCR representative in Greece, Maria Clara Martin, said the migrant deaths “highlight the urgent need for long-term responses and safer and credible alternatives” for people fleeing conflict, persecution, violence, or human rights violations.

“Counting lives lost at sea cannot become a norm — we should not get used to it,” she said.

The UN agency said that this week’s two fatal accidents off the eastern Aegean Sea island of Samos, which is close to the Turkish coast, saw a mother lose three of her children, while another survivor lost his wife and daughter.

Greek authorities have attributed this year’s rise in migrant arrivals to conflicts in the Middle East. 

While there’s been a surge in people attempting the long and dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to the southern Greek island of Crete, most migrants pay smuggling gangs to ferry them from Turkiye to the eastern Aegean islands.

On Friday, the Greek coast guard said it arrested a 17-year-old Turkish youth on suspicion of having landed 16 migrants — including three children — on the eastern island of Chios.

Tunisia and Libya have become vital departure points for migrants, often from other African countries, who risk perilous Mediterranean Sea journeys in the hopes of reaching better lives in Europe.

Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the crossing. Italy, whose Lampedusa island is only 150 km from Tunisia, is often their first port of call.

In the latest incident reported on Friday, two unidentified bodies were recovered off Tunisia’s eastern coast after a migrant boat capsized, with one person still missing and 28 rescued.

The boat had set sail from Teboulba, a coastal town some 180 km south of Tunis.

In late October, the bodies of 15 people believed to be migrants were recovered by authorities in Monastir, eastern Tunisia.

And in late September, 36 would-be migrants — mainly Tunisians — were rescued off Bizerte in northern Tunisia.

Since Jan. 1, at least 103 makeshift boats have capsized, and 341 bodies have been recovered off Tunisia’s coast, according to the Interior Ministry.


Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute

Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute
Updated 30 November 2024
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Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute

Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute
  • Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991

NAIROBI: Kenya’s President William Ruto said on Saturday he and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni would help mediate a dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia, threatening the region’s stability.

Landlocked Ethiopia, which has thousands of troops in Somalia to fight Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, has fallen out with the Mogadishu government over its plans to build a port in the breakaway region of Somaliland in exchange for possible recognition of its sovereignty.

Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991.

The spat has drawn Somalia closer to Egypt, which has quarreled with Ethiopia for years over Addis Ababa’s construction of a vast hydro dam on the Nile River, and Eritrea, another of Ethiopia’s foes.

Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991.

“Because the security of Somalia ... contributes significantly to the stability of our region, and the environment for investors, business people, and entrepreneurs to thrive,” he told a news conference.

Several attempts to resolve the feud in Ankara, Turkiye, failed to make a breakthrough.

Ethiopia’s government and foreign affairs spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Somalia’s foreign minister could not immediately be reached by Reuters.

The government of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubbaland state said earlier it was suspending relations and cooperation with the federal government in Mogadishu following a dispute over regional elections.

Jubbaland, which borders Kenya and Ethiopia and is one of Somalia’s five semi-autonomous states, reelected regional president Ahmed Mohammed Islam Madobe for a third term in elections on Monday.

However, the national government based in Mogadishu, led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, opposed the election, saying it was held without federal involvement.