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"Israel just made all the Middle East happy tonight." — Israeli-Lebanese Christian journalist Jonathan Elkhoury, X, September 27, 2024. "As a Lebanese, this is one of the happiest days in Lebanon's history.... As a human being who holds peace before my eyes, this is the most important day for our region. Nasrallah and Hezbollah have terrorized the Lebanese people since the 1980s.... Every Lebanese and every decent human being should feel joy at the downfall of one of the greatest evils of our time. Now, we have a real chance to look forward... and sitting down with Israelis and the...

President Jiang Zemin gets an update on China´s Terfenol-D project. The U.S. Navy spent millions of dollars to develop Terfenol-D in the early 1980s, and intelligence experts estimate that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has devoted extensive resources to try to steal it. Insight has learned that these PRC efforts have paid off. The spy target is an exotic material made up of two types of rare-earth metals called lanthanides, terbium and dysprosium, plus iron (FE). The NOL stands for Naval Ordnance Laboratory. Hence the name Terfenol-D. Those who have worked with this exotic material call it almost magical....

A Romanian national pleaded guilty on Monday to charges related to his role in a “swatting” ring that targeted dozens of public officials, including a former US president. Going by the aliases “Plank,” “Jonah” and “Cypher,” 26-year-old Thomasz Szabo took part in a years-long conspiracy to place bogus 911 calls, claiming emergencies were taking place at the homes of top government officials, and make bomb threats against government buildings and houses of worship, according to Justice Department. Szabo and a co-conspirator, 21-year-old Serbian national Nemanja Radovanovic, allegedly targeted about 100 people, including members of Congress, governors, cabinet-level executive branch officials...

A California man was charged Monday with operating a ring of illegal test-takers who helped dozens of Middle Eastern nationals obtain U.S. student visas by passing proficiency and college-placement exams for them. Eamonn Daniel Higgins, 46, of Laguna Niguel made an appearance in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud as immigration agents arrested 16 of his suspected clients who remained in Southern California... The allegations revealed a potentially dangerous security breach in the country's student visa system and underscored the vulnerability of a tracking process that relies on schools to verify...

3 in 4 parents of college-age students also oppose men in women’s spaces A majority of parents with college-age students want universities to stop prioritizing race in hiring and scholarship decisions ... The results showed a majority of parents “are at odds with our country’s higher education institutions on several contentious issues that are consistently in today’s political dialogue,” according to a news release. Defending Education works to rid education of ideological agendas. In the poll, which involved parents of 15- to 21-year-old students, 54 percent said universities should not prioritize a student’s race when awarding scholarships, and 57 percent...

he Trump administration’s campaign against higher education has proceeded on so many fronts, and at such breathtaking speed, that it is hard for individual elements of it to capture the news cycle for long. But one especially notable development occurred in the first week of May, when Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote a letter to the president of Harvard, Alan Garber, announcing that his institution would be cut off from future government grants. This followed the extraordinary list of demands that the administration issued (by mistake?) to Harvard a month earlier. The more recent McLetter is worth reading for...

A senior at Northeastern University filed a formal complaint and demanded a tuition refund after discovering her professor was secretly using AI tools to generate notes. The professor later admitted to using several AI platforms and acknowledged the need for transparency. The incident highlights growing student concerns over professors using AI, a reversal of earlier concerns from professors worried that students would use the technology to cheat. Some students are not happy about their professor’s use of AI. One college senior was so shocked to learn her teacher was using AI to help him create notes that she lodged a...

CodeSignal Ranks Ranks Top U.S. Universities in Coding A San Francisco company whose General Coding Assessment is widely used by major technology companies ranked Carnegie Mellon No. 1 this year and last year, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was No. 2.San Jose State University has shot past Stanford and UC Berkeley to a top-10 spot in a ranking of U.S. universities based on a standardized computer coding test. The school leapt to the No. 9 spot this year in rankings by CodeSignal, a San Francisco company whose General Coding Assessment is widely used by major technology companies to evaluate...

You and I have to pay more taxes so elite universities that willfully break the law discriminating against Jews, whites and Asians can get tax exemptions. It's a slap in the face. Yet Harvard alum Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is trying to turn the tables, accusing the Trump administration of "weaponizing" the IRS to strip Harvard of its 501c3 tax exempt status. Truth is, Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status because it's guilty of illegally allowing the civil rights of Jewish students to be trashed. The case against Harvard is a slam dunk. Numerous other universities where Jewish students are...

The University of Louisville has agreed to pay nearly $1.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a former professor after he was fired for criticizing sex change surgeries and hormone therapies for children. Dr. Allan Josephson worked for nearly 15 years as the chief of the University of Louisville’s Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology. In his lawsuit, Josephson asserts that he successfully revitalized the underperforming department during his tenure, earning exemplary marks in his annual performance evaluations from 2014 to 2016. In spite of his professional accolades, the complaint alleges that he was demoted in 2017,...

At least three dozen more international students and recent alumni of pristine California universities have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration as it continues to zero in on anti-Israel protesters. Stanford University and several colleges part of the University of California system all confirmed to NBC News members of their school communities were caught up in the ongoing crackdown that began last month with the high-profile detainment of Columbia University alum and activist Mahmoud Khalil. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last month he’s pulled back 300 visas from foreign students, claiming they should be kicked out of...

After decades of partnership with the U.S. government, colleges are facing new doubts about the future of their federal funding. President Donald Trump’s administration has been using the funding spigot to seek compliance with his agenda, cutting off money to schools including Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. All the while, universities across the country are navigating cuts to grants for research institutions. The squeeze on higher education underscores how much American colleges depend on the federal government — a provider of grants and contracts that have amounted to close to half the total revenue of some research universities,...

On March 24, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill laying groundwork for major higher education improvements after more than a century of U.S. universities undermining American moral and intellectual virtues. The law vaults Utah toward competing with Florida for the best higher education reforms that support American self-governance. Senate Bill 334 requires “every student at Utah State University to take a full year-and-a-half course in Western civilization and an additional one-semester course in American civics,” writes Stanley Kurtz, co-author of a model bill inspiring this law. These new core courses will be taught by professors employed by a new...

A new report from a nonprofit and nonpartisan government watchdog is shedding light on the tens of billions of dollars that have poured into U.S. universities in recent years, including $20 billion to some of the most prestigious universities in the country. The report, produced by Americans for Public Trust and released this week, found that $60 billion in foreign gifts and contracts were funneled into American colleges and universities, including $20 billion alone to elite schools like Harvard, Yale, and others. Within that total, $795 million came from nations that are long-standing adversaries to the United States, including China,...

President Trump on Saturday demanded a “full-throated” apology from Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) before his administration can settle its dispute with the state for defying his executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. The University of Maine System (UMS) backed down earlier this week and promised to follow the executive order on transgender competition, but Trump suggested the dispute over federal funding won’t be resolved until Mills’ mea culpa. “While the State of Maine has apologized for their Governor’s strong, but totally incorrect, statement about men playing in women’s sports while at the White House House...

The University of Pennsylvania has laid off its communications lecturer—who published a slew of anti-Semitic cartoons—just a year after standing by him, citing the school’s "bedrock commitment to open expression." The dismissal coincided with the Trump administration’s decision to freeze $175 million in federal funding to the school. The Annenberg School for Communication lecturer, Dwayne Booth, announced his unemployment in a Patreon post on Friday. Booth said "the reason for the termination was budgetary," but accused universities nationwide of being "way too complicit" with a "largely Republican-led effort" to target left-wing voices. "I was informed that the reason for the...

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has faced calls to respond after the Trump administration cut funding to seven Australian universities. The administration's move came after US agencies asked Australian researchers to justify why they should continue receiving American research grants. The surveys they received asked several questions including whether the researchers had received funding from China, and if their university had recognised only two sexes - male and female.

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that “Columbia didn’t do enough” to combat antisemitism but the Trump administration cutting off $400 million in funding to the school “is outrageous. It’s just aimed at the universities. If you have some instance where someone didn’t do something about antisemitism and should have, go after that person or that group, but this is aimed at hurting universities, and I think it’s spreading and I think it’s very, very wrong.” Host Chris Hayes asked, “Do you think this is a good faith attempt to deal...

Last month, the National Institutes of Health lobbed a bombshell at universities that receive NIH grants by proposing to slash billions of dollars in overhead payments they receive to support cutting-edge research on their campuses. But on 5 March a federal judge in Massachusetts defused the bomb before it could explode. In response to a lawsuit brought by 22 states and a coalition of research organizations, U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley issued an injunction that prevents NIH from implementing the rule change, which would lower the rate to a flat 15%—far below what NIH has previously negotiated with many...

Lt. General Keane, Leo Terrell Transcript linked.