World

US President Donald Trump defended on Sunday his administration’s move to block foreign students at Harvard after a judge suspended the action, described by the top university as unlawful.“Why isn’t Harvard saying that almost 31 per cent 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 ability to enrol foreign nationals, throwing the future of thousands of students and the lucrative income str...

The property market in the Middle East, particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, is attracting more interest and capital from Hong Kong and mainland China.Hong Kong-based Gaw Capital spent more than US$150 million on a residential building in Abu Dhabi, the capital, two weeks ago. And last week Black Spade Capital, the family office of casino billionaire Lawrence Ho Yau-lung, invested in IFCX, a Hong Kong-based real estate brokerage focused on real estate in markets including the Middle East.Meanwhile, Chinese buyer inquiries for UAE properties rose by 28 per cent in the first quarter from a year ago, according to data from property technology firm Juwai IQI.Foreign investors bought more than US$2 billion of real estate in Abu Dhabi in 2024 – a 125 per ...

A cryptocurrency investor has been arrested and charged with kidnapping a man and keeping him locked up for weeks in an upscale Manhattan flat, where authorities said he was beaten, shocked and led to believe that his family was in danger if he did not give up his bitcoin password.John Woeltz, 37, was arrested on Friday night after the victim escaped from the eight-bedroom town house and flagged down a traffic officer on the street for help, according to prosecutors.Woeltz was arraigned on Saturday on charges of kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a firearm, court records show. He was ordered held without bail, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed on Saturday.His lawyer, Wayne Gosnell, said on Saturday in an email that he h...

European leaders are racing to figure out how to keep Ukraine supplied with weapons as US President Donald Trump appears to be walking away from the war. One option: buy American.Europe has neither the stocks of arms nor the capacity to make them in large enough volume as it becomes clear that the US will not be delivering any more. The White House has also refused Europe’s appeals to keep up the push to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to an immediate ceasefire by stepping up sanctions.Instead, the Kremlin seems to be stalling on peace talks promised to Trump as it prepares for a summer offensive, according to people familiar with the matter. A proposal that is gaining more credence is to purchase more American systems – and then send those weapons to Ukraine, said people fam...

For several years, Chinese officials have been talking about “changes unseen in a hundred years” without elaborating what they have in mind. Looking at the drastic changes to the world order since Donald Trump returned to the White House, one can only conclude that the Chinese have spoken with uncanny prescience.There have indeed been many changes to the international system in recent years, starting with a rapid deterioration of US-China relations since Trump’s first term as US president. A body of opinion was formed in political circles that China was taking advantage of America and embarking on a “hundred-year marathon” to supplant the US as a global leader.In the West, some argue there is an imbalance in China’s economy, and that the country’s rise is a source of disruption or “distort...

US President Donald Trump used the first military commencement address of his second term on Saturday to congratulate West Point cadets on their academic and physical accomplishments while veering sharply into politics, taking credit for America’s military might while boasting about the “mandate” he says he earned in the 2024 presidential election.“In a few moments, you’ll become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history,” Trump said at the ceremony at Michie Stadium.“And you will become officers of the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known. And I know, because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military. And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before in my first term.”Wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, the Republi...

Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s revenge thriller It Was Just an Accident won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, handing the festival’s top prize to a director who had been banned from leaving Iran for more than 15 years.Cate Blanchett presented the award to Panahi, who three years ago was imprisoned in Iran before going on a hunger strike. The crowd rose in a thunderous standing ovation for the filmmaker.The win for It Was Just an Accident extend one of the most unprecedented streaks in film: the indie distributor Neon has backed the last six Palme d’or winners.Neon, which acquired It Was Just an Accident for North American distribution after its premiere in Cannes, follows its Palmes for Parasite, Titane, Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall and Anora.The...

The bodies of 79 people killed by Israeli strikes have been brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday – a toll that does not include hospitals in the battered north that it said are now inaccessible.The dead over the past day in Israel’s renewed military offensive included nine of a doctor’s 10 children, horrified colleagues and the health ministry said.Alaa Najjar, a paediatrician at Nasser Hospital, was on duty at the time and ran home to find her family’s house on fire, said Ahmad al-Farra, head of the hospital’s paediatric department.Najjar’s husband was severely wounded and their only surviving child, an 11-year-old son, was in critical condition after Friday’s strike in the southern city of Khan Younis, Farra said.The dead children ranged in a...

A Syrian government delegation visited a notorious camp in the Kurdish-administered northeast that hosts families of suspected Islamic State group jihadists, the new authorities’ first visit, both sides said Saturday.Kurdish-run camps and prisons in the northeast hold tens of thousands of people, many with alleged or perceived links to Isis, more than five years after Isis’s territorial defeat in Syria.Kurdish administration official Sheikhmous Ahmed said “a tripartite meeting was held on Saturday in the Al-Hol camp” that included a government delegation, another from the US-led international coalition fighting IS, and Kurdish administration members.Al-Hol is northeast Syria’s largest camp, housing some 37,000 people from dozens of countries, including 14,500 Iraqis, in dire conditions.Dis...

French taxi drivers will next week step up protest actions, including paralysing access to Paris airports and the French Open tennis championship, in an increasingly acrimonious stand-off with the government, their main federation said on Saturday.French taxi drivers have over the last week blocked roads at points across the country in a row with the government about payments for transporting patients which for many cab drivers form a major part of their businesses.Meanwhile grievances against ride-hailing services such as Uber and Bolt have been aired again, with taxi drivers seeing them as a poorly-regulated threat to their livelihood.Sector representatives are due to attend a crunch meeting at the ministry of transport from 1500 GMT Saturday which, in a sign of the seriousness of the si...