������Ƶ

Winning admission to Harvard University fulfilled a longtime goal for Yonas Nuguse, a student in Ethiopia who endured a war in the country’s Tigray region, Internet and phone shutdowns, and the COVID-19 pandemic — all of which made it impossible to finish high school on time.
Now, it’s unclear if he will make it this fall to the Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He and other admitted students around the world are anxiously tracking the school’s feud with the Trump administration, which is seeking to keep it from enrolling international students.
On Thursday, Harvard challenged President Donald Trump’s latest move to bar foreign students from entering the US to attend the college, calling it illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of White House demands. In an amended lawsuit filed Thursday, Harvard said the president was attempting an end-run around a previous court order. Last month, a federal judge blocked the Department of Homeland Security from revoking Harvard’s certification to host foreign students.
Admission to Harvard, then months of uncertainty
Increasingly, the nation’s oldest and best-known university has attracted some of the brightest minds from around the world, with international students accounting for one-quarter of its enrollment. As Harvard’s fight with the administration plays out, foreign students can only wait to find out if they’ll be able to attend the school at all. Some are weighing other options.
For Nuguse, 21, the war in Ethiopia forced schools to close in many parts of the province. After schooling resumed, he then took a gap year to study and save money to pay for his TOEFL English proficiency test in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.
“The war affected me a great deal and when I found out the news that I was accepted to Harvard, I was ecstatic. I knew it was a proud moment for my family, teachers, mentors and friends, who were instrumental in my achievement,” he said.
The following months have been filled with uncertainty. On Wednesday, Trump signed a directive seeking to block US entry for Harvard’s international students, which would block thousands who are scheduled to come to the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for summer and fall terms.
Harvard’s court challenge a day later attacked Trump’s legal justification for the action — a federal law allowing him to block a “class of aliens” deemed detrimental to the nation’s interests. Targeting only those who are coming to the US to study at Harvard doesn’t qualify as a “class of aliens,” Harvard said in its filing.
“The President’s actions thus are not undertaken to protect the ‘interests of the United States,’ but instead to pursue a government vendetta against Harvard,” the university wrote.
In the meantime, Harvard is making contingency plans so students and visiting scholars can continue their work at the university, President Alan Garber said in a message to the campus and alumni.
“Each of us is part of a truly global university community,” Garber said Thursday. “We know that the benefits of bringing talented people together from around the world are unique and irreplaceable.”
Crackdown on international students affects interest in the US
The standoff with Harvard comes as the administration has been tightening scrutiny of student visas nationwide. Thousands of students around the country abruptly lost permission to be in the US this spring before the administration reversed itself, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last week the US would “aggressively revoke” visas for students from China.
While many admitted students say they’re waiting to find out if they can come to the US, prospective students still in high school are starting to look elsewhere, said Mike Henniger, CEO of Illume Student Advisory Services.
“It is one blow after another,” said Henniger, who works with colleges in the US, Canada and Europe to recruit international students. “At this point, international student interest in the US has basically dropped to nil.”
The future of Harvard’s roughly 7,000 international students has been hanging in the balance since the Department of Homeland Security first moved to block its foreign enrollment on May 22.
For many, the twists and turns have been exhausting. Jing, a 23-year-old master’s student, is currently completing an internship in China this summer, and unsure if he can reenter the US for the fall semester.
“It is tiring, we all feel numb now. Trump just makes big news headlines once every few days since he got back to the White House,” said Jing, who agreed to speak under his family name out of concern about retaliation from the Trump administration.
Jing said he is going to watch and see what happens for now, in case the move against international students is a negotiating tactic that does not stick.
The possibility that Trump could block foreign enrollment at other colleges only raises the uncertainty for students planning to pursue their education overseas, said Craig Riggs, who has been working in international education for about 30 years and is the editor of ICEF Monitor. He said he urges families to consult carefully with advisers and not to overreact to the day’s headlines.
“The rules under which students would make this huge decision to devote years of their lives and quite a bit of money to studying at Harvard have been shown to change quite quickly,” Riggs said.
An aspiring economist, Nuguse was the only student accepted to Harvard this year from Kalamino Special High School, which caters to gifted students from underprivileged backgrounds from across Tigray.
After receiving acceptances also to Columbia University and Amherst College, Nuguse chose Harvard, which he had long dreamed of attending. He said he hopes it will work out to attend Harvard.
Nuguse was granted a visa to study at Harvard, and he worries it might be too late to reverse his decision and attend another university anyway. He received an email from Harvard last week, telling him to proceed with his registration and highlighting a judge’s order in Harvard’s favor in the dispute over foreign enrollment.
“I hope the situation is temporary and I can enroll on time to go on and realize my dream far from reality in Ethiopia,” he said.

WASHINGTON: A Chicago-based private equity firm - controlled by a member of the family that founded American publishing company Rand McNally - has an "economic interest" in the logistics company involved in a controversial new aid distribution operation in Gaza.
McNally Capital, founded in 2008 by Ward McNally, helped "support the establishment" of Safe Reach Solutions, a McNally Capital spokesperson told Reuters. SRS is a for-profit company established in Wyoming in November, state incorporation records show. It is in the spotlight for its involvement with the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which last week started distributing aid in the war-torn Palestinian enclave. The foundation paused work on Wednesday after a series of deadly shootings close to its operations and has suffered from the departure of senior personnel.

"McNally Capital has provided administrative advice to SRS and worked in collaboration with multiple parties to enable SRS to carry out its mission," the spokesperson said. "While McNally Capital has an economic interest in SRS, the firm does not actively manage SRS or have a day-to-day operating role."
SRS is run by a former CIA official named Phil Reilly, but its ownership has not previously been disclosed. Reuters has not been able to establish who funds the newly created foundation.
The spokesperson did not provide details of the scale of the investment in SRS by McNally Capital, which says it has $380 million under management.
McNally Capital founder Ward McNally is the great great great grandson of the co-founder of Rand McNally. The McNally family sold the publishing company in 1997.
A spokesperson for SRS confirmed it worked with the foundation, also known as GHF, but did not answer specific questions about ownership.
GHF, which resumed aid distribution on Thursday, did not respond to a request for comment
While Israel and the United States have both said they don't finance the operation, they have pushed the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it, arguing that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
Israel blocked almost all aid into Gaza for 11 weeks until May 19, and has since only allowed limited deliveries in, mostly managed by the new GHF operation. This week GHF pressed Israel to boost civilian safety beyond the perimeter of its distribution sites after Gazan health officials said at least 27 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli fire near one of the food distribution sites on Tuesday, the third consecutive day of chaos and bloodshed to blight the aid operation.
The Israeli military said its forces on Tuesday had opened fire on a group of people they viewed as a threat after they left a designated access route near the distribution center in Rafah. It said it was investigating what had happened.
The U.N and most other aid groups have refused to work with GHF because they say it is not neutral and that the distribution model militarizes aid and forces displacement.
The SRS spokesperson said in a statement that under Reilly's leadership, "SRS brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts in security, supply chain management, and humanitarian affairs."
McNally Capital has investments in defense contracting companies. Among the firms it acquired was Orbis Operations, a firm that specializes in hiring former CIA officers. Orbis did not return calls for comment. Reilly used to work for Orbis.