26/05/2025

MONDAY | MAY 26, 2025

READ OUR

HERE

8

Malaysian Paper

/thesun

Trump defends Harvard foreign students block

triggered waves of protests against Tesla in the US and Europe, leading to a slump in sales, with the carmaker reporting its first drop in annual deliveries last year. The amount of time Musk has spent at Tesla has concerned some investors. Looking to ease those worries, Musk told investors last month he would reduce his time with DOGE to a day or two a week from May. – Reuters UK renationalises first train operator under Labour reforms LONDON: Britain’s South Western Railways yesterday became the first private train operator to be returned to public ownership under the Labour government’s plans to renationalise the country’s much-maligned railways. Renationalising rail operators is among the key policies launched by Prime Minister Keir Starmer since his party’s return to government last July following 14 years in opposition. “Today is a watershed moment,” said Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander. Train passengers in Britain suffer from frequent cancellations, in addition to high ticket prices and regular confusion over which services they can be used on. The privatisation of rail operations took place in the mid 1990s under the then Conservative prime minister John Major, but the rail network remained public, run by Network Rail. Four of the 14 operators in England are already run by the state owing to poor performance in recent years, but this was meant to be a temporary fix before a return to the private sector. Labour triumphed over the Conservative party in elections last year with promises to fix ailing transport services. Legislation was approved in November to bring operators into public ownership when the contracts of private companies expire, or sooner in the event of poor management, and be managed by “Great British Railways”. Alexander said this will end “30 years of fragmentation”, but she warned that “change isn’t going to happen overnight”. “We’ve always been clear public ownership isn’t a silver bullet, but we are firing this starting gun in the race for a truly 21st-century railway, and that means refocusing away from private profit and towards the public good.” In an example of how passengers might not immediately notice much difference, South Western’s first service under public ownership yesterday was set to be a rail replacement bus. Government figures show that the equivalent of 4% of train services in Britain were cancelled as of April 26. Rail unions welcomed the state takeover. – AFP

o Threat to review US$9 billion funding

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump yesterday defended his administration’s move to block foreign students at Harvard after a judge suspended the action, branded by the top university as unlawful. “Why isn’t Harvard saying that almost 31% of their students are from foreign lands, and yet those countries, some not at all friendly to the United States, pay nothing toward their student’s education, nor do they ever intend to,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “We want to know who those foreign students are, a reasonable request since we give Harvard billions of dollars, but Harvard isn’t exactly forthcoming.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday revoked Harvard’s option to enrol foreign nationals, throwing the future of thousands of students and the lucrative income stream they provide into doubt. She had threatened last month to block international students at the school unless it turned over records on “illegal and violent activities” of visa holders. But a judge quickly suspended the move after the university sued to US

A student lays out a Harvard cap, mug, hoodie and admission letter on a table in Taipei on Saturday. The loss of foreign students could prove costly for the university. – REUTERSPIC

targeted a Harvard Medical School researcher for deportation. The loss of foreign nationals, more than a quarter of its student body, could prove costly to Harvard, which charges tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition. Harvard is the wealthiest US university with an endowment valued at US$53.2 billion in 2024. – AFP

It has also moved to revoke visas and deport foreign students involved in protests against the war in Gaza, accusing them of supporting Palestinian group Hamas. At Harvard, the government has threatened to put US$9 billion (RM38 billion) of funding under review, then went on to freeze a first tranche of US$2.2 billion of grants and US$60 million of official contracts. It has also

“stop the government’s arbitrary, capricious, unlawful and unconstitutional action.” The White House is cracking down on US universities on several fronts, justified as a reaction to what the administration says is uncontrolled anti-semitism and a need to reverse diversity programmes aimed at addressing historical oppression of minorities.

Australia airdrops supplies to stranded farmers SYDNEY: Helicopters were used yesterday to drop animal feed to farmers in New South Wales stranded by floods that have killed five and isolated tens of thousands in the country’s southeast. government is providing emergency fodder, veterinary care, management advice and aerial support for isolated stock,” said state Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty.

It said 43 helicopter drops and around 130 drops by other means had provided “isolated farmers with emergency fodder for their stranded livestock”. At their peak, the floods isolated around 50,000 people, submerging intersections and street signs in mid-north coast towns and covering cars up to their windshields, after fast-rising waters burst river banks. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday that conditions remained critical in flood-affected regions of New South Wales, as clean-up efforts began. – Reuters

Recovery is under way in the mid-north coast region of Australia’s most populous state after days of flooding cut off towns, swept away livestock and destroyed homes. At least 10,000 properties may have been damaged in the floods, which were sparked by days of incessant rain, authorities estimate. About 32,000 residents remained isolated due to floodwaters, which were slowly starting to recede, the state Emergency Services posted on social media. “The New South Wales

A resident in Ghinni Ghinni sobs as she reunites with her cat during her visit to their farm for the first time since it flooded on Tuesday. – REUTERSPIC

Musk to resume working ‘24/7’ at his companies BENGALURU: Elon Musk’s social media platform X was largely restored for most users after an outage that impacted tens of thousands of users in the United States on Saturday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com , following which he said that he is “back to spending 24/7” at his companies. according to Downdetector , which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources, including users. The number of outages has since gone below 500. “Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. Thousands of users in other countries such as Germany, Spain, France, India, Canada, Australia and Britain, also experienced issues with accessing the social media platform at the height of the outage, according to Downdetector data.

campaign and other Republicans last year, said on Tuesday he will cut his political spending substantially, signalling that he is shifting his attention back to his business empire amid growing investor concerns. He led the Department of Government Efficiency, which sought to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs and cancel billions of dollars in contracts and grants. However, his political views

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the outage. Musk, who spent nearly US$300 million (RM1.2 billion) to back President Donald Trump’s presidential

I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out,” Musk said in an X post.

At its peak, there were more than 25,800 incidents of people reporting issues with the social media platform,