Latest news with #Whi
Boston Globe
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Judge says government must release Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil
Khalil's lawyers challenged the legality of his detention, accusing the Trump administration of trying to crack down on free speech. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he has the power to deport Khalil because his presence in the U.S. could harm foreign policy. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz had ruled earlier that expelling Khalil from the U.S. on those grounds was likely unconstitutional. Advertisement In a new ruling Wednesday, the judge said that Khalil had shown that his continued detention is causing irreparable harm to his career, his family and his free speech rights. Farbiarz gave the government until Friday to appeal the decision. He also required Khalil to post a $1 bond before he is freed. 'The court's decision is the most significant vindication yet of Mahmoud's rights,' said Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CLEAR, a legal nonprofit and clinic at the City University of New York that represents Khalil. 'But we aren't out of the woods until Mahmoud is free and back home with his wife and child.' Advertisement Lawyers and spokespersons for the Justice Department, which is handling the case, didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Dr. Noor Abdalla, the wife of Mahmoud Khalil, spoke during an unofficial alternative graduation ceremony on May 18, at St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church in upper Manhattan. TODD HEISLER/NYT The judge's decision comes after several other legal residents targeted for their activism won custody in recent weeks, including another Palestinian student at Columbia, Rubio has cited a rarely used statute to justify the deportation of Khalil and others, which gives him power to deport those who pose 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.' Khalil isn't accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The government, however, has said that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views that the administration considers to be antisemitic and 'pro-Hamas,' referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Khalil, a 30-year-old international affairs graduate student, had served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia University who took over a campus lawn last spring to protest Israel's military campaign in Gaza. The university brought police in to dismantle the encampment after a small group of protesters seized an administration building. Khalil is not accused of participating in the building occupation and wasn't among the people arrested in connection with the demonstrations. But images of his maskless face at protests, along with his willingness to share his name with reporters, have made him an object of scorn among those who saw the protesters and their demands as antisemitic. The White House accused Khalil of 'siding with terrorists,' but has yet to give any evidence for the claim. Advertisement The Trump administration has said it is taking at least $400 million in federal funding away from research programs at Columbia and its medical center to punish it for not doing enough to fight what it considers to be antisemitism on campus. Some Jewish students and faculty complained about being harassed during the demonstrations or ostracized because of their faith or their support of Israel.
Japan Today
12-05-2025
- Business
- Japan Today
Trump signs executive order to demand pharma industry cuts prices
U.S. President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order, as he attends a press conference in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 12, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard By Steve Holland, Michael Erman and Patrick Wingrove U.S. President Donald Trump signed a wide-reaching executive order on Monday directing drugmakers to lower the prices of their medicines to align with what other countries pay that analysts and legal experts said would be difficult to implement. The order gives drugmakers price targets in the next 30 days, and will take further action to lower prices if those companies do not make "significant progress" towards those goals within six months of the order being signed. Trump told a press conference that the government would impose tariffs on companies if the prices in the U.S. did not match those in other countries and said he was seeking cuts of between 59% and 90%. "Everybody should equalize. Everybody should pay the same price," Trump said. Investors were skeptical about the order's implementation, and shares, which had been down overnight on the threat of "most favored nation" pricing, recovered and rose in early morning trade on Monday. The United States pays the highest prices for prescription drugs, often nearly three times more than other developed nations. Trump tried in his first term to bring the United States in line with other countries but was blocked by the courts. Trump's drug pricing proposal comes as the president has sought to fulfill a campaign promise of tackling inflation and lowering prices for a host of everyday items for Americans, from eggs to the gas pump. Trump said his order on drug prices was partly a result of a conversation with an unnamed friend who told the president he got a weight loss injection for $88 in London and that the same injection in the U.S. cost $1,300. If drugmakers do not meet the government's expectations, it will use rulemaking to bring drug prices to international levels and consider a range of other measures, including importing medicines from other developed nations and implementing export restrictions, a copy of the order showed. Trade groups representing biotech and pharmaceutical decried the move. "Importing foreign prices from socialist countries would be a bad deal for American patients and workers. It would mean less treatments and cures and would jeopardize the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America," PhRMA CEO Stephen Ubl said in a statement. Ubl said the real reasons for high drug prices are "foreign countries not paying their fair share and middlemen driving up prices for U.S. patients." The order also directs the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to consider aggressive enforcement against what the government calls anti-competitive practices by drugmakers. "We're all familiar with some of the places where pharmaceutical companies push the limits to prevent competition that would lower their prices," one White House official said, pointing to patent protections and deals drugmakers make with generic companies to hold off on cheaper copies. The executive order is likely to face legal challenges, particularly for exceeding limits set by U.S. law, including on imports of drugs from abroad, said health policy lawyer Paul Kim. "The order's suggestion of broader or direct-to-consumer importation stretches well beyond what the statute allows," Kim said. The FTC has a long history of antitrust enforcement actions against pharmaceutical and other healthcare companies. Trump last month ordered the FTC to coordinate with other federal agencies to hold listening sessions on anticompetitive practices in the drug industry. On Monday, he was expected to ask the FTC to consider taking enforcement action, sources said. "President Donald Trump campaigned on lowering drug costs and today he's doing just that. Americans are tired of getting ripped off. The Federal Trade Commission will be a proud partner in this new effort," said FTC spokesperson Joe Simonson. Shares of major drugmakers, after initially falling during premarket trading, rallied on Monday, despite the wide-ranging order. Shares of Merck rose 5.2%, while Pfizer gained 3.2% and Gilead Sciences was up 6.7%. Eli Lilly, the world's largest drugmaker by market value, rose 2.4%. The executive order differed from what drugmakers had been expecting. Four lobbyist sources told Reuters they were expecting an executive order that called for "most favored nation" pricing on a subset of Medicare drugs. "Implementing something like this is pretty challenging. He tried to do this before and it was stopped by the courts," said Evan Seigerman, analyst at BMO Capital Markets. The White House officials did not specify any targets. Trump's order also directs the government to consider facilitating direct-to-consumer purchasing programs that would sell drugs at the prices other countries pay. It also orders the Secretary of Commerce and other agency heads to review and consider actions regarding the export of pharmaceutical drugs or ingredients that may contribute to price differences. The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump could be shipping deported migrants to Rwanda under newest proposal
Donald Trump's administration is in the 'early stages' of diplomatic talks with Rwanda aimed at using the country as an offshore site to house migrants deported from the US, the country's foreign minister said. Olivier J.P. Nduhungirehe made the news during an interview on Rwandan state television, and his remarks were first reported by The New York Times. The US over time has used a number of countries, including most recently El Salvador, as stopover locations to house deportees who are later transferred to their home countries or apply for asylum elsewhere. Rwanda's acceptance of US deportees would be of note especially given that the UK abandoned plans to do the same after a massive outcry over the humanitarian conditions under which migrants would be housed. Now, Trump could be on the verge of resurrecting that plan as he continues to deal with the logistics of America's immigration system — realities which are causing his administration, so far, to lag behind the deportation targets he vowed to meet on the campaign trail. Current analyses indicate that the administration is set to deport roughly 500,000 people this year, a drop from 2024. The Independent reached out to the State Department for comment on Mr Nduhungirehe's remark to Rwandan state TV — a spokesperson responded that the agency does not 'discuss the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments' but added that such conversations were 'vital to deterring illegal and mass migration and securing our borders.' 'U.S. partners and regional leaders are working closely with us to end the crisis of illegal and mass migration,' the agency spokesperson said. CBS News separately reported that the Trump administration has approached other foreign governments with similar overtures, including Angola and Equatorial Guinea. In order for the United States to deport a noncitizen, the federal government must reach an arrangement of some kind with the government of the citizen's home country or another nation willing to provide temporary custody. In most cases, the US has those agreements outstanding — in the case of nations with which the US has frostier ties, finalizing the details of deportation flights can take much longer. Some countries refuse to accept deportees altogether. Breaking from previous administrations, the second Trump presidency has leaned on the State Department to streamline those efforts. A report from the Migration Policy Institute in April described the Trump administration as having 'situated immigration enforcement at the heart of its dealings with Mexico, Canada, and other countries in the Western Hemisphere and beyond, marking a sharp shift in U.S. foreign policy.' At the same time, the administration hasn't yet shown the same understanding of the benefits of pursuing those same kinds of relationships domestically. While embracing extremist hardline rhetoric on migration and demonizing both individual migrant cases and their Democratic critics, the White House has spurned any notion of forging alliances with local municipality leaders — many of whom are Democrats — to actually increase the effectiveness of immigration enforcement. The administration has also dug in its heels over the issue of focusing deportations on those with criminal backgrounds, a key promise Trump made during the election cycle. Rather than address that criticism, White House officials have shifted back and forth between smearing individuals without criminal records as gang members and terrorists, while accusing Democrats of supporting those gangs. The president's popularity on the issue of immigration has plummeted since he took office, a devastating development for Republicans given that it was one of two issues, the other being the economy, where he enjoyed a clear advantage over his Democratic critics in terms of voter trust. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published at the end of April found that nearly two thirds of Americans said uncontrolled migration was an issue of concern for them. Yet the share of respondents who approved of Trump's actions was just 45 percent, lower than the 46 percent opposed to them. The president previously enjoyed a double-digit advantage on this issue in Reuters polling taken over the final two weeks of the election. El Salvador's housing of noncitizens from Venezuela has in particular become an area of controversy for the administration given that in some cases men with no criminal backgrounds have been sent abroad to be housed in the country's notorious CECOT megaprison, the site of many alleged rights violations. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also faced blowback for deporting several young children — all with U.S. citizenship — including one suffering from cancer.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump could be shipping deported migrants to Rwanda under newest proposal
Donald Trump's administration is in the 'early stages' of diplomatic talks with Rwanda aimed at using the country as an offshore site to house migrants deported from the US, the country's foreign minister said. Olivier J.P. Nduhungirehe made the news during an interview on Rwandan state television, and his remarks were first reported by The New York Times. The US over time has used a number of countries, including most recently El Salvador, as stopover locations to house deportees who are later transferred to their home countries or apply for asylum elsewhere. Rwanda's acceptance of US deportees would be of note especially given that the UK abandoned plans to do the same after a massive outcry over the humanitarian conditions under which migrants would be housed. Now, Trump could be on the verge of resurrecting that plan as he continues to deal with the logistics of America's immigration system — realities which are causing his administration, so far, to lag behind the deportation targets he vowed to meet on the campaign trail. Current analyses indicate that the administration is set to deport roughly 500,000 people this year, a drop from 2024. The Independent reached out to the State Department for comment on Mr Nduhungirehe's remark to Rwandan state TV — a spokesperson responded that the agency does not 'discuss the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments' but added that such conversations were 'vital to deterring illegal and mass migration and securing our borders.' 'U.S. partners and regional leaders are working closely with us to end the crisis of illegal and mass migration,' the agency spokesperson said. CBS News separately reported that the Trump administration has approached other foreign governments with similar overtures, including Angola and Equatorial Guinea. In order for the United States to deport a noncitizen, the federal government must reach an arrangement of some kind with the government of the citizen's home country or another nation willing to provide temporary custody. In most cases, the US has those agreements outstanding — in the case of nations with which the US has frostier ties, finalizing the details of deportation flights can take much longer. Some countries refuse to accept deportees altogether. Breaking from previous administrations, the second Trump presidency has leaned on the State Department to streamline those efforts. A report from the Migration Policy Institute in April described the Trump administration as having 'situated immigration enforcement at the heart of its dealings with Mexico, Canada, and other countries in the Western Hemisphere and beyond, marking a sharp shift in U.S. foreign policy.' At the same time, the administration hasn't yet shown the same understanding of the benefits of pursuing those same kinds of relationships domestically. While embracing extremist hardline rhetoric on migration and demonizing both individual migrant cases and their Democratic critics, the White House has spurned any notion of forging alliances with local municipality leaders — many of whom are Democrats — to actually increase the effectiveness of immigration enforcement. The administration has also dug in its heels over the issue of focusing deportations on those with criminal backgrounds, a key promise Trump made during the election cycle. Rather than address that criticism, White House officials have shifted back and forth between smearing individuals without criminal records as gang members and terrorists, while accusing Democrats of supporting those gangs. The president's popularity on the issue of immigration has plummeted since he took office, a devastating development for Republicans given that it was one of two issues, the other being the economy, where he enjoyed a clear advantage over his Democratic critics in terms of voter trust. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published at the end of April found that nearly two thirds of Americans said uncontrolled migration was an issue of concern for them. Yet the share of respondents who approved of Trump's actions was just 45 percent, lower than the 46 percent opposed to them. The president previously enjoyed a double-digit advantage on this issue in Reuters polling taken over the final two weeks of the election. El Salvador's housing of noncitizens from Venezuela has in particular become an area of controversy for the administration given that in some cases men with no criminal backgrounds have been sent abroad to be housed in the country's notorious CECOT megaprison, the site of many alleged rights violations. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also faced blowback for deporting several young children — all with U.S. citizenship — including one suffering from cancer.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Cancer death rates declining, new report says, but diagnosis rates are on the rise for women
A new report on cancer in the US shows a steady decline in overall deaths from 2001 through 2022. The rate of diagnoses among men fell from 2001 through 2013 and then stabilized through 2021 but these incidence rates among women increased slightly every year between 2003 and 2021. Those trends were interrupted in 2020, when cancer incidence rates fell significantly, the report shows, possibly because of disruptions in medical care related to the Covid-19 pandemic. After 2020, they returned to expected levels. 'Because fewer cancers were diagnosed in 2020, especially through screening, we may see a larger percentage of cancers diagnosed at a late stage in future years,' the report says. The 2024 Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer was published Monday in the journal Cancer. It's based on data from cancer registries funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute, and it's released by those institutions, the American Cancer Society and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. 'Overall, cancer incidence and death rates continue to decline, representing changes in risk factors, increases in screening utilization, and advances in treatment,' the researchers write. 'However, sustained disparities by race and ethnicity emphasize the need to fully understand the factors that create these differences so that they can be mitigated.' Fewer people in the US are using tobacco, helping lower incidence and death rates for smoking-related cancers like lung, bladder and larynx, the report says. And these sustained declines in lung cancer have been a major contributor to the overall improvements in cancer death. However, incidence rates are on the rise for several other cancers, including those linked with excess weight, such as pancreas and kidney cancers; uterine, breast and liver cancers among women; and colon and rectal cancers among adolescents and young adults. Previously published research has shown that cancer diagnoses are shifting from older to younger adults and from men to women. Middle‐age women now have a slightly higher cancer risk than their male counterparts, and young women are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease as young men, according to an American Cancer Society report published earlier this year. The new report shows that incidence rates among women have risen 0.3% each year. The largest observed increase among women was for stomach cancer, which the researchers say may be largely due to a change in the classification of tumors by the World Health Organization. Rates of breast cancer diagnoses are also gradually increasing, driven mostly by types of cancer that have been associated with factors like obesity, alcohol use and age when someone gives birth for the first time. The data continues to show large racial disparities. For example, Black women have a 40% higher rate of death from breast cancer than White women, and their rate of death from uterine cancer is double that of White women. Differences in access to care and less use of diagnostic procedures and treatment may account for some of the difference, the researchers say. 'One additional potential risk factor disproportionately affecting Black women is the use of chemical hair relaxers, which may be associated with an increased risk of uterine cancer among postmenopausal women.' Changing habits such as stopping tobacco use, staying at a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables, avoiding alcohol and protecting skin can all reduce risk of cancer. Screening can help find and treat cancers early, before they spread. Screenings are available and recommended for certain people for breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, cervical cancer, endometrial cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer.
