Stamau123

Chinese antitrust regulators are investigating a US consortium’s deal for two ports in the Panama Canal zone, reportedly delaying the deal’s closing that was originally set for next week.

President Donald Trump has incorrectly claimed China controls the canal (Panama controls it, although China owns ports on both sides of the crucial maritime passage). Trump has threatened to have the United States once again take control of the canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The deal, led by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with an enormous pool of $11.6 trillion in assets, was announced earlier this month and was widely viewed as a way to ease tensions in the region. BlackRock agreed to lead a group that would buy Hong Kong firm CK Hutchison’s controlling interest in 43 other ports around the world, comprising 199 berths in 23 countries.

But China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, the top market regulator, said in answer to a question posed by the state-owned newspaper Ta Kung Pao that it had started an investigation into the deal “in accordance with the law to protect fair competition in the market and safeguard the public interest.” The same statement was reposted on Friday on the website of China’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office.

Following that announcement CK Hutchinson decided that “there will not be an official signing of the two Panama ports deal next week,” according to a report in the South China Morning Post, citing a source close to the Hong Kong firm.

BlackRock did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did CK Hutchinson.

The gathering was organized less than 24 hours after a graduate student was detained Tuesday night.

Students and local activists gathered on Wednesday evening at Powder House Park to protest the detainment of Tufts graduate student, Rümeysa Öztürk, by federal authorities on Tuesday. The protest was organized by Coalition for Palestinian Liberation, formerly known as the Coalition for Palestinian Liberation at Tufts, and other activist groups from the Greater Boston area.

The university confirmed Wednesday night that Öztürk — a doctoral candidate in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development — was moved to Louisiana after being detained on her way to an Iftar gathering for Ramadan at Tufts’ Interfaith Center. Her attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, previously filed a writ of habeas corpus to argue her release, and a judge ordered Öztürk to not be removed from Massachusetts for at least 48 hours without proper notice.

A video showing masked law enforcement officers approaching Öztürk on a Somerville street circulated widely online.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not clarified the charges being levied against Öztürk and did not respond to the Daily’s request for comment.

The roughly half dozen speakers ranged from Tufts undergraduate students to members of the Muslim Justice League, Palestinian Youth Movement and the Immigrant Justice Network of MA, who spoke about the need for individuals to know their rights and directed the crowd toward immigration resources.

Medical disinformation connected to the West Texas measles outbreak has created a new problem. Children are being treated for toxic levels of vitamin A.

Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock confirms it is treating children with severe cases of measles who are also suffering from vitamin A toxicity. According to the hospital, they have admitted fewer than 10 pediatric patients who were all initially hospitalized due to measles complications but have elevated levels of vitamin A that is resulting in abnormal liver function.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed the CDC to update its measles guidance to promote the use of vitamin A.

Kennedy, who has a history of spreading misinformation about vaccines, recommended in an article published March 2 on FOX News to take vitamin A under the supervision of a physician for those with mild, moderate and severe infections.

During a March 4 interview on Fox News, Kennedy suggested that therapies such as the use of cod liver oil — which contains vitamins A and D — were "working" in treating measles patients.

There are reports from the West Texas area that cod liver oil is in high demand and a big seller at area pharmacies.

But the hospital is informing the public to reduce consumption of vitamin A and has warned that excessive amounts of it may result in significant adverse effects.

There is no evidence that taking vitamin A will prevent measles.

Wall Street regulator begins interfacing with DOGE
Data access subject to checks, training, need to know
Democratic senators demand investigation by gov't auditor

WASHINGTON, March 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is beginning to bring on officials with billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, according to an email sent on Friday to department staff.

SEC staff were informed that the DOGE task force had contacted the regulator, and that they would be treated as staff for the purposes of network, system and data access. The SEC is establishing a liaison team with the "intent to partner" with DOGE, the email said. The memo was first reported by Reuters.

"Our intent will be to partner with the DOGE representatives and cooperate with their request following normal processes for ethics requirements, IT security or system training, and establishing their need to know before granting access to restricted systems and data," the staff email stated.

A spokesperson for the DOGE task force referred questions to the SEC, whose spokesperson confirmed it was beginning to onboard DOGE members. But the SEC declined to comment on what role, if any, Musk would play at the agency as part of DOGE or what data access the team would have. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As the nation's top markets regulator, the SEC is privy to swaths of nonpublic data from banks, public companies, private funds and others, including confidential information about initial public offerings and supervisory examination records.

A 24-year-old Tifton woman faces criminal charges after experiencing a miscarriage, raising concerns about the application of Georgia’s strict abortion legislation.

What We Know: Selena Maria Chandler-Scott was arrested and charged with concealing the death of another person and abandonment of a dead body following a medical emergency on March 20. According to police reports, emergency services responded to Brookfield Mews Apartments around 6 a.m. Thursday after receiving a call about an unconscious woman who was bleeding. Medical personnel determined she had suffered a miscarriage and transported her to Tift Regional Medical Center for treatment.

Police claim a witness reported that Chandler-Scott had placed the fetal remains in a bag and disposed of it in a dumpster outside the apartment complex. Officers later recovered these remains, which were sent for autopsy.

The Autopsy: According to the autopsy, the fetus was 19 weeks old at the time of the miscarriage. There were no signs of trauma and the fetus did not take a breath. The coroner’s office ruled it to be a occurring miscarriage. At 19 weeks, a fetus is about the size of a mango and lungs are just beginning to develop but are not fully developed yet.

In Context: Georgia’s “heartbeat law,” officially the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. The law also grants personhood status to embryos and fetuses, potentially exposing women who miscarry to criminal charges if authorities believe they contributed to the pregnancy loss or improperly handled fetal remains.

Reproductive rights advocates have warned that such laws could criminalize women experiencing pregnancy complications or miscarriages. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, miscarriages occur in about 10-20% of known pregnancies, with most happening in the first trimester.

What Should Women Who Miscarry Do?: We asked several Tifton Police Department and Tift County officials what women who miscarry should do with the remains of the fetus. So far, only Tift District Attorney Patrick Warren has answered and said typically miscarriages are not handled in this manner.

“There is no applicable case law on this issue as it is generally deemed a medical condition and prosecution is not warranted. Georgia courts have held that once a baby is ‘born alive and has had an independent and separate existence from its mother’ then what happens to the child (injury or death) will be subject to criminal prosecution,” Warren said.

Washington — A federal judge on Thursday blocked the government from deporting a Georgetown University researcher who was detained by immigration authorities earlier this week as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on activists across college campuses.

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national, is a postdoctoral associate who was studying and teaching at Georgetown on a student visa. The government cited his alleged "close connections" to a Hamas official as justification for revoking the visa, saying he was "actively spreading Hamas propaganda."

Attorneys for Suri filed a writ of habeas corpus and accompanying complaint challenging his detention in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday, one day after his arrest. CBS News obtained the documents on Thursday.

In an order later in the day, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said Suri "shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court issues a contrary order."

The complaint filed by Suri's attorneys said he was surrounded and detained by masked DHS agents as he was returning to his home in Rosslyn, Virginia, where he lives with his wife Mapheze Saleh and their three children, after breaking his fast for Ramadan on March 17.

"The agents identified themselves as members of the Department of Homeland Security and stated that the government had revoked his visa," the complaint said, adding that "the agents had face coverings and Ms. Saleh could only see their eyes."

Roughly two hours after his arrest, Suri called his wife to let her know that he was being sent to a detention center in Farmville, Virginia, his attorneys said. They added that they believe he is likely to be moved to a detention facility in Los Fresnos, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. As of Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement's online detainee locator showed Suri was being held at a detention facility in Louisiana. His lawyers have filed a motion seeking his return to Virginia.

Suri's attorneys said his "unjustified detention" violated his due process rights. They argued that the Trump administration's targeting of noncitizens for removal based on protected speech, namely his and his wife's views of Israel and Gaza, is "arbitrary and capricious" and constitutes viewpoint discrimination. They said that he has no criminal record and has not been charged with any crime.

The complaint alleged that the couple had "long been doxxed and smeared" online by an "anonymously-run blacklisting site" known as The Canary Mission. The site alleges that Saleh, who Suri's attorneys said is a U.S. citizen, "has worked for Hamas, expressed support for Hamas terrorism and called for Israel's destruction," according to a profile dedicated to her on the site. The Canary Mission, the complaint said, runs a blacklist of individuals who its creators believe support Palestinian rights and "is infamous for bullying, slandering, and defaming academics and students." The complaint also alleges that the couple were "smeared" by other websites.

The Columbine High School massacre has officially claimed another life - nearly 26 years after the US mass shooting.

The death last month of Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was left partially paralysed by two gunshot wounds in the attack, has been ruled a homicide by the Jefferson County Coroner's Office.

On 16 February this year, the 43-year-old woman died in her Denver home of sepsis - a reaction to infection.

And complications from the paralysis were a "significant contributing factor" in her death, forensic pathologist Dr Dawn B Holmes wrote in a 13-page post-mortem report.

Dr Holmes ruled that "the manner of death is best classified as homicide".

Robert Ehrlich was “falsely asserting his authority as mayor, demanding access to office space, and declaring that the entire Village staff was fired," said officials in Sea Cliff, New York.

The founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks lost his chaotic bid for mayor of a tiny New York community after he claimed he was the village leader and had the authority to replace the entire local government, officials said Thursday.

Elena Villafane, the incumbent mayor of Sea Cliff, defeated Pirate’s Booty Snacks founder Robert Ehrlich, 1,064-62, on Tuesday in the village, which is about 26 miles northwest of midtown Manhattan.

Villafane had been running unopposed for her third two-year term when Ehrlich jumped into the fray a week ago Monday.

That's when Ehrlich went to Village Hall and "presented a statement falsely asserting his authority as mayor, demanding access to office space, and declaring that the entire Village staff was fired effective immediately but could reapply for their jobs," the village said in a statement.

"While Village staff remained calm and professional throughout the incident, Ehrlich and his associates raised their voices, used profane language, made outlandish claims, and engaged in direct harassment of Village personnel," the statement said. "Despite multiple requests to leave, they refused, creating a hostile and disruptive environment that required police intervention."

The brazen assertions stunned village officials who said they'd never seen or heard from Ehrlich before in any civic context.

Vivian Jenna Wilson tells Teen Vogue she feels obliged to take stand for trans rights as Trump attacks community

Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s eldest child, has spoken out publicly about her father, saying that Musk* “definitely [did] a Nazi salute”* at two rallies in January and that he is part of a White House that’s “cartoonishly evil”.

In a new interview with Teen Vogue, her second interview with the media since she publicly denounced her father last year, Wilson, 20, said that the things her father has been doing in the federal government were “fucking cringe”.

“The Nazi salute shit was insane. Honey, we’re going to call a fig a fig, and we’re going to call a Nazi salute what it was,” Wilson said. “That shit was definitely a Nazi salute.”

Wilson entered the public eye last year after Musk spoke about her in a podcast, saying that he had been “tricked” into signing documents so that Wilson, who was 16 at the time, could receive gender-affirming medical treatment.

“I lost my son, essentially. They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead.” he said. Musk added that the experience made him vow “to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we’re making some progress”.

In an interview with NBC News last year, Wilson said that Musk had been largely absent in her life and that he was often cruel to her for showing feminine traits when she was growing up. She went to California court in 2022 to officially remove “Musk” from her name, saying in court filings she “no longer live[s] with or wish[es] to be related to my biological father in any way shape or form”.

“He was cold,” she told NBC News. “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.”

By law, Wilson had to get her father, whom she had not spoken to for months at that point, to sign off on her receiving gender-affirming medical treatment, since she was a minor at the time.

“I was constantly having mental breakdowns in the middle of class. I could not get through days. I didn’t want to wake up, I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to rot, pretty much. It was like, I cannot do this,” she said. “If I stay in the closet anymore, this is going to take me down a very destructive path.”

Wilson, who is currently a student in Tokyo, said that she felt obligated to talk about trans issues as someone who transitioned as a minor.

“There’s so much villainization of that, and I would really like to raise awareness of the fact that trans care for minors, especially puberty blockers, is really important,” she said. “Maybe stop demonizing these literal children or the people around these children who are just trying to help them feel comfortable in their own skin.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this report incorrectly identified Badar Khan Suri as a professor.

A researcher at Georgetown University was detained by federal immigration agents on Monday night.

Badar Khan Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s School of Service and teaches a course on “Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia” at the school’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He was granted a visa to legally continue his studies in the U.S., the university told WTOP in a statement.

Khan Suri is an Indian national and completed his doctorate in New Delhi in 2020, according to his staff bio.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a post on X that Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.”

She added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri’s activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable.”

Hassan Ahmad, Suri’s attorney, told CNN that his client is in Louisiana awaiting his hearing in immigration court and that he spoke to him Wednesday night.

“I will say that seeing our government abduct and jail another innocent person is beyond contemptible,” Ahmad said in an email to CNN. “And if an accomplished scholar who focuses on conflict resolution is whom the government decides is bad for foreign policy, then perhaps the problem is with the government, not the scholar.”

Online court documents for Suri were not accessible as of Wednesday evening.

• Lira plunges 12% to all-time low of 42 to the dollar
• Imamoglu faces charges of corruption and aiding PKK
• CHP calls detention a coup attempt against next president
• Erdogan's govt denies criticism, says judiciary independent
• Next election scheduled for 2028 but could come sooner

ISTANBUL, March 19 (Reuters) - Turkey detained Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the main rival of President Tayyip Erdogan, on charges of corruption and aiding a terrorist group in what the main opposition party on Wednesday called "a coup against our next president".

The move against the popular two-term mayor caps a months-long legal crackdown on opposition figures across the country which has been criticised as a politicised attempt to hurt their electoral prospects and silence dissent.

Turkey's lira currency crashed as much as 12% to an all-time low, opens new tab of 42 to the dollar in response, underscoring worries over the eroding rule of law in the major emerging market and NATO member country that Erdogan has run for 22 years.

Imamoglu, 54, who leads Erdogan in some opinion polls, was to be named his Republican People's Party's (CHP) official presidential candidate within days. He now faces two separate investigations that also include charges of leading a crime organisation, bribery and tender rigging.

WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday allowed the takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace by tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, after USIP accused members of Musk's team of occupying the building by force.

The emergency ruling came after members of Musk's team on Monday gained access with the help of police officers to USIP, an independent, nonprofit organization funded by the U.S. Congress and whose Washington headquarters sits just across the street from the U.S. State Department.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said while she was troubled by the way DOGE had entered USIP with armed police, she was not going to order a temporary halt to DOGE's actions because there was too much confusion in the institute's emergency lawsuit.

"I have to say I am offended on behalf of the American citizens," Howell said, referring to the way in which DOGE had entered USIP. She said USIP staff had been treated "abominably."

Howell said, however, that USIP had not met the high bar for a temporary restraining order, but she wanted to have another hearing on the issue.

After a dramatic standoff in which a handful of USIP staff initially locked all the doors to the building to prevent DOGE agents getting access on Monday, the agents, with the help of police, expelled the institute's president, several staffers and an attorney from the building.

Howell described as "terrorizing" the use of armed law enforcement.