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Court blocks Trump’s ban on foreign students at Harvard

BOSTON: A federal judge on Monday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing his plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard University. US District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued an injunction barring Trump’s administration from carrying out its latest bid to curtail Harvard’s ability to host international students amid an escalating fight pitting the Republican president against the prestigious Ivy League school. The preliminary injunction extends a temporary order the judge issued on June 5 that prevented the administration from enforcing a proclamation Trump signed a day earlier that cited national security concerns to justify why Harvard could no longer be trusted to host international students. She ruled after Friday’s announcement that his administration could announce a deal with Harvard “over the next week or so” to resolve the White House’s campaign against the university, which has waged a legal battl...
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Former India spinner Dilip Doshi dies aged 77

Indian spin great Dilip Doshi has died aged 77, with former cricketers praising a man they said had been a “gentleman to the core”. Doshi died in London on Monday, Indian media reported. The left-arm spinner was already in his thirties when he made his Test debut in 1979, and finished with 114 wickets in 33 matches. Doshi also played 15 one-day internationals for India between 1980 and 1982. Cricket veteran Sachin Tendulkar said Doshi was a “warm-hearted soul”, adding that he “will miss those cricketing conversations”. Former all-rounder Ravi Shastri said that Doshi was “a gentleman to the core and a fine, fine bowler”. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) also paid tribute to the former spinner. A bespectacled Doshi carried forward the Indian spin legacy started by the famous quartet of Bishan Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Srinivas Venkataraghavan and Bhagwath Chandrasekhar. Doshi bamboozled world batsmen and played English County cricket, with a long stint with N...
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UK plans to increase control over Google in search

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Tuesday it was proposing to designate Google with “strategic market status” to give it greater control over how the United States tech giant operates search services, according to a report by Reuters . According to a press release by the CMA, Britain’s competition regulator, Google search accounts for more than 90 per cent of all general search queries in the UK — with millions of people relying on it as a key gateway to the internet and more than 200,000 businesses in the UK relying on Google search advertising to reach their customers. The CMA said that steps it could take include making it easier for users to access different search providers and ensuring fair ranking principles for businesses appearing on Google search. It also proposed more transparency and control for publishers whose content appeared in search results if it goes ahead with the designation in October. Google will be the first company designated since ...
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America’s (many) wars in the Middle East

The year 1990 marked the beginning of America’s “endless wars” in the Middle East. It commenced with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait — before that, US military operations in the region had been short-term or temporary. In the years that followed, ‘coming back home’ for the superpower has become increasingly difficult. Over two decades on, the US once again stood at one of its “ biggest and riskiest foreign policy gamble ”, as Reuters described it. On June 21, the US military bombed Iran’s nuclear sites on the orders of President Donald Trump, directly joining Israel’s war on its regional arch-nemesis. “Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,” Trump said in a televised address from the White House, adding that they targeted the crucial underground nuclear enrichment plant of Fordow along with facilities at Natanz and Isfahan. “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the M...
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Fact check: Viral videos do not show US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities

Posts from multiple users on social media platforms since Sunday were sharing two videos, claiming they showed the United States’ attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. However, the videos do not show the US attacks but different instances from 2024. A US airstrike on Sunday, codenamed “Operation Midnight Hammer”, targeted and “totally obliterated” Iran’s primary nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, President Donald Trump announced. Iran has condemned the strikes as a “barbaric violation” of international law and warned of “everlasting consequences”, including potential unilateral action such as closing the Strait of Hormuz. On Sunday, an Indian user on X shared a video claiming it showed a US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The footage featured a massive explosion at night, with towering flames and a large plume of smoke rising into the sky. The caption read: “Video footage of the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has emerged. The intensity and ...
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Indian activists seek to save child brides

When wedding season comes in India, the phone of child rights activist Tatwashil Kamble never stops ringing with appeals to stop girls from being married off due to poverty. Kamble said he has helped stop thousands of illegal marriages in India, where nuptials before the age of 18 are banned. “The elders of the village think: ‘How dare we come to stop a marriage in their village!’” said Kamble, who has been campaigning for more than a decade in western Maharashtra state. Many families are motivated by poverty to marry off their daughters, so that the girls can start earning their own living. When activists have sought to stop marriages, “it has led to physical altercations,” according to Kamble. Sometimes they are able to stop the nuptials from taking place, or, if they arrive too late, then the bride is taken to a shelter and supported in deciding on her own future. India accounts for one in three of the world’s child brides , according to the UN children’s agency, with at least...
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Passengers, not profits: Who is to blame for the Air India plane crash?

The Air India flight AI 117, operated by a B787-8 Dreamliner, crashed on June 12, killing all but one of the 242 souls on board and over 30 people on the ground. As investigators attempt to piece together what went wrong and come up with a reasonable explanation for why the plane would have crashed soon after takeoff, one can only hope that commercial interests, and pressure from Boeing, the plane manufacturer, will not hinder an independent investigation. This is essential to restore passenger confidence and ensure flight safety in the future. To put this in context, ever since Boeing “ shifted from an engineering culture to a sales culture,” there have been serious concerns about quality control even as extensive flight tests prior to certification have been reduced. Unsafe surroundings The Air India flight AI 171, bound for London, crashed within 36 seconds of takeoff from Ahmedabad, after attaining a height of 625 feet, just 1.5 kilometres from the airfield. It crashed int...
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