Man in his 70s appears in court charged with historical sex offences
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South Wales Argus
11 minutes ago
- South Wales Argus
'Trump will never get his Nobel Prize'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended allowing the transfer of millions of dollars to Hamas-run Gaza despite criticism from within his own government, including the education minister Naftali Bennet. For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group. Donald Trump has said his administration is now exploring the possibility of normalising relations with Syria - his comments coming shortly after he met Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa. The extraordinary encounter, unthinkable just months ago, was short but significant. "I think he has got the potential," Trump remarked after his meeting in Riyadh, 37 minutes long, with the former Syrian fighter, formerly linked to al-Qaeda, the same group that attacked the twin towers. The $10m US bounty on his head was only lifted in December. Or is it just another outlet to moan about Starmer? If Palestine becomes a safe place to live and work, many millions will return. Trump will never get his Nobel Prize, and both he and Israel will be on the wrong end of history. Andrew Nutt Bargoed
The Independent
41 minutes ago
- The Independent
Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding freeze
Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio's research is literally frozen. Collected from millions of U.S. soldiers over two decades using millions of dollars from taxpayers, the epidemiology and nutrition scientist has blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers within the university's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The samples are key to his award-winning research, which seeks a cure to multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. But for months, Ascherio has been unable to work with the samples because he lost $7 million in federal research funding, a casualty of Harvard's fight with the Trump administration. 'It's like we have been creating a state-of-the-art telescope to explore the universe, and now we don't have money to launch it,' said Ascherio. 'We built everything and now we are ready to use it to make a new discovery that could impact millions of people in the world and then, 'Poof. You're being cut off.'' Researchers laid off and science shelved The loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in federal funding at Harvard has meant that some of the world's most prominent researchers are laying off young researchers. They are shelving years or even decades of research, into everything from opioid addiction to cancer. And despite Harvard's lawsuits against the administration, and settlement talks between the warring parties, researchers are confronting the fact that some of their work may never resume. The funding cuts are part of a monthslong battle that the Trump administration has waged against some the country's top universities including Columbia, Brown and Northwestern. The administration has taken a particularly aggressive stance against Harvard, freezing funding after the country's oldest university rejected a series of government demands issued by a federal antisemitism task force. The government had demanded sweeping changes at Harvard related to campus protests, academics and admissions — meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment. Research jeopardized, even if court case prevails Harvard responded by filing a federal lawsuit, accusing the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university. In the lawsuit, it laid out reforms it had taken to address antisemitism but also vowed not to 'surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.' 'Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus," the university said in its legal complaint. 'But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts, the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical, scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to do with antisemitism.' The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the demands were sent in April. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel federal contracts for policy reasons. The funding cuts have left Harvard's research community in a state of shock, feeling as if they are being unfairly targeted in a fight has nothing to do with them. Some have been forced to shutter labs or scramble to find non-government funding to replace lost money. In May, Harvard announced that it would put up at least $250 million of its own money to continue research efforts, but university President Alan Garber warned of 'difficult decisions and sacrifices' ahead. Ascherio said the university was able to pull together funding to pay his researchers' salaries until next June. But he's still been left without resources needed to fund critical research tasks, like lab work. Even a year's delay can put his research back five years, he said. Knowledge lost in funding freeze 'It's really devastating,' agreed Rita Hamad, the director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research Center at Harvard, who had three multiyear grants totaling $10 million canceled by the Trump administration. The grants funded research into the impact of school segregation on heart health, how pandemic-era policies in over 250 counties affected mental health, and the role of neighborhood factors in dementia. At the School of Public Health, where Hamad is based, 190 grants have been terminated, affecting roughly 130 scientists. 'Just thinking about all the knowledge that's not going to be gained or that is going to be actively lost," Hamad said. She expects significant layoffs on her team if the funding freeze continues for a few more months. "It's all just a mixture of frustration and anger and sadness all the time, every day." John Quackenbush, a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the School of Public Health, has spent the past few months enduring cuts on multiple fronts. In April, a multimillion dollar grant was not renewed, jeopardizing a study into the role sex plays in disease. In May, he lost about $1.2 million in federal funding for in the coming year due to the Harvard freeze. Four departmental grants worth $24 million that funded training of doctoral students also were cancelled as part of the fight with the Trump administration, Quackenbush said. 'I'm in a position where I have to really think about, 'Can I revive this research?'' he said. 'Can I restart these programs even if Harvard and the Trump administration reached some kind of settlement? If they do reach a settlement, how quickly can the funding be turned back on? Can it be turned back on?' The researchers all agreed that the funding cuts have little or nothing to do with the university's fight against antisemitism. Some, however, argue changes at Harvard were long overdue and pressure from the Trump administration was necessary. Bertha Madras, a Harvard psychobiologist who lost funding to create a free, parent-focused training to prevent teen opioid overdose and drug use, said she's happy to see the culling of what she called 'politically motivated social science studies.' White House pressure a good thing? Madras said pressure from the White House has catalyzed much-needed reform at the university, where several programs of study have 'really gone off the wall in terms of being shaped by orthodoxy that is not representative of the country as a whole.' But Madras, who served on the President's Commission on Opioids during Trump's first term, said holding scientists' research funding hostage as a bargaining chip doesn't make sense. 'I don't know if reform would have happened without the president of the United States pointing the bony finger at Harvard," she said. 'But sacrificing science is problematic, and it's very worrisome because it is one of the major pillars of strength of the country.' Quackenbush and other Harvard researchers argue the cuts are part of a larger attack on science by the Trump administration that puts the country's reputation as the global research leader at risk. Support for students and post-doctoral fellows has been slashed, visas for foreign scholars threatened, and new guidelines and funding cuts at the NIH will make it much more difficult to get federal funding in the future, they said. It also will be difficult to replace federal funding with money from the private sector. 'We're all sort of moving toward this future in which this 80-year partnership between the government and the universities is going to be jeopardized,' Quackenbush said. 'We're going to face real challenges in continuing to lead the world in scientific excellence.'
The Guardian
41 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Assault on Sudan's Zamzam refugee camp may have killed more than 1,500 civilians
More than 1,500 civilians may have been massacred during an attack on Sudan's largest displacement camp in April, in what would be the second-biggest war crime of the country's catastrophic conflict. A Guardian investigation into the 72-hour attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on North Darfur's Zamzam camp, the country's largest for people displaced by the war, found repeated testimony of mass executions and large-scale abductions. Hundreds of civilians remain unaccounted for. The magnitude of likely casualties means the assault by the RSF ranks only behind a similar ethnic slaughter in West Darfur two years ago. The war between the Arab-led RSF and Sudanese military, which broke out in April 2023, has been characterised by repeated atrocities, forcing millions from their homes and causing the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Until now, reports about the attack on Zamzam between 11 and 14 April had indicated that up to 400 non-Arab civilians were killed during the three-day assault. The UN has said 'hundreds' died. However, a committee set up to investigate the death toll has so far 'counted' more than 1,500 killed in the attack, which occurred on the eve of a British government-led conference in London intended to bring peace to Sudan. Mohammed Sharif, part of the committee from Zamzam's former administration, said the final total would be significantly higher, with many bodies still not recovered from the camp, which is now controlled by the RSF. 'Their bodies are lying inside homes, in the fields, on roads,' Sharif told the Guardian. An atrocity expert with decades of experience in Darfur, who has interviewed scores of survivors from Zamzam, believes up to 2,000 people may have been killed. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they added that the levels of violence were striking even when viewed alongside the genocidal slaughter of ethnic African groups in Darfur during the 2000s by the Arab militias who would later become the RSF. 'Every single testimony from everyone who escaped knew family members who were killed. That's something I've never seen before.' Abdallah Abugarda, of the UK's Darfur Diaspora Association, said that about 4,500 members of his organisation knew a friend or relative killed in the attack. At least 2,000 Zamzam residents, he said, remain missing. 'The massacre at Zamzam, home to displaced people for over 20 years, is one of the most heinous crimes in recent global history. Yet no global outrage has followed,' added Abugarda. Claire Nicolet, deputy head of emergencies for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said the attack had targeted 'one of the most vulnerable people on earth'. Those who survived, she said, had faced 'widespread looting, sexual violence and other attacks while on the road and appalling living conditions in transit displacement sites'. Large numbers of women were abducted and remain missing. Sharif said they knew of more than 20 who had been taken to Nyala, an RSF stronghold 160km from Zamzam. Last month, the International Criminal Court said it had 'reasonable grounds' to conclude that war crimes and crimes against humanity were unfolding in Darfur. In Geneina, West Darfur's capital, more than 10,000 people – mainly Masalit and other non-Arab Sudanese – are believed to have been killed by the RSF and allied militias over two months from mid-April 2023. An episode of fighting during November that year in a suburb of El Geneina killed more than 800, according to the UN. The Sudanese military has also been accused of myriad war crimes, in particular the massacre of civilians in indiscriminate bombing raids.
