The Education Department has opened an investigation into Harvard and Yale amid suspicions that the Ivy League schools failed to report about hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from foreign countries, some of which are openly hostile to the U.S.
Officials said in a letter this week that they are probing whether the universities accepted about $375 million from China, Iran, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In some cases, the schools actively sought out the foreign funding from sources potentially looking to steal research or “spread propaganda benefiting foreign governments,” according to Education Department documents. The funding did not, however, go towards reducing tuition costs for students. Universities are required by law to report gifts and contracts from foreign sources worth more than $250,000 per year.
Newsletter
20hours ago, 21 Feb, Friday
- 03:32
CDC issues new travel notices for Hong Kong and Japan
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new advisories on Wednesday for travelers going to Hong Kong and Japan in the wake of the deadly coronavirus spreading across the world.
The advisories are notably only a "level 1," a "watch," meaning travelers should exercise "usual precautions," unlike the "level 3" issued for China Jan. 27, which warns to "avoid nonessential travel."
China's "level 3" advisory excludes Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. In the new Japan and Hong Kong advisories, the CDC specifically mentions it "does not recommend canceling or postponing travel." According to the CDC, many cases of the new coronavirus have been associated with travel to or from mainland China, or close contact with a travel-related case, but multiple instances of community spread have been reported in Hong Kong.
Travelers going to Hong Kong or Japan should stay away from sick people and wash their hands with soap and water or use hand sanitizer with 60% to 95% alcohol, the CDC says.
2days ago, 20 Feb, Thursday
- 02:32
AI development should be regulated, says Elon Musk
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said advanced artificial intelligence development should be regulated, including AI created by his own companies. He tweeted the remark in response to an article published this week by MIT Technology Review about OpenAI (which Musk co-founded but has since left), describing how it has drifted from its initial purpose of developing AI safely and fairly to become secretive and preoccupied with raising money. When Musk was asked if he meant AI should be regulated by individual governments or on a global scale, for example by the UN, he replied: “Both.” This is far from the first time Musk has expressed concerns about the potential negative consequences of AI development. He’s previously described it as “our biggest existential threat” and “potentially more dangerous than nukes.” In 2018 he told Recode that he thought a government committee should spend a year or two “gaining insight about AI” then come up with regulations to ensure AI is developed and used safely. - 01:18
China Expels 3 Wall Street Journal Reporters as Media Relations Sour
HONG KONG — China on Wednesday said it would expel three Wall Street Journal reporters working in mainland China, in a significant escalation of Beijing’s pressure on the foreign news media.
At a daily news briefing on Wednesday, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the reporters’ credentials would be revoked in retaliation for a headline on an essay that ran in The Journal’s editorial pages earlier this month. The headline read, “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia.”
Chinese officials have “demanded that The Wall Street Journal recognize the seriousness of the error, openly and formally apologize, and investigate and punish those responsible, while retaining the need to take further measures against the newspaper,” Geng Shuang, the ministry spokesman, said in a transcript provided by the Chinese government.
“The Chinese people do not welcome media that publish racist statements and smear China with malicious attacks,” he added.
2days ago, 19 Feb, Wednesday
- 06:58
Ray Dalio And Bridgewater Donating $10 Million To Combat Coronavirus
The family charity of billionaire Ray Dalio and his hedge fund company Bridgewater Associates LP are donating $10 million to combat the spread of the coronavirus. According to Bloomberg, the money will go towards Peking University First Hospital, Union Hospital for Clinical Care, and three medical teams led by academics in Wuhan. Dalio and Bridgewater are joining a number of other companies and executives making large donations to combat the coronavirus. For example, the charitable foundation arm of Blackstone Group is donating $1 million to expand the distribution of supplies and provide aid to over 30 communities in China. And Citadel is donating $7.5 million for the cause. Plus UBS Group AG is committing $1 million to front line responders. Goldman Sachs will donate a total of $1 million to support medical efforts regarding the virus of the Chinese Red Cross, International Medical Corps. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation Emergency Response Fund, the memo said.
4days ago, 18 Feb, Tuesday
1week ago, 15 Feb, Saturday
1week ago, 14 Feb, Friday
1week ago, 13 Feb, Thursday
- 12:42
Harvard head of Public Health: Coronavirus likely now ‘gathering steam’
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in US said Wednesday it is preparing for the new coronavirus, which has killed at least 1,115 and sickened more than 45,000 worldwide, to “take a foothold in the U.S”, according to latest report from CNBC. “There’s likely to be a period of widespread transmission in the U.S., and I hope we will avert the kind of chaos that some other places are seeing.” Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and head of the School’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, talked to the Gazette on Tuesday."And a couple of things are striking. One is that there are countries that really should be finding cases and haven’t yet, like Indonesia and maybe Cambodia. They are outside the range of uncertainty you would expect even given variability between countries. So our best guess is that there are undetected cases in those countries. Indonesia said a couple of days ago that it had done 50 tests, but it has a lot of air travel with Wuhan, let alone the rest of China. So 50 tests is not enough to be confident you’re catching all the cases. That’s one bit of evidence that to me was really striking. Second, I was reading The Wall Street Journal that Singapore had three cases so far that were not traced to any other case. Singapore is the opposite of Indonesia, in that they have more cases than you would expect based on their travel volume, probably because they’re better at detection. And even they are finding cases that they don’t have a source for. That makes me think that many other places do as well. Of course, we’re making guesses from limited information, but I think they’re pretty likely to be correct guesses, given the totality of information."
“At some point, we are likely to see community spread in the U.S. or in other countries,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on a conference call. “This will trigger a change in our response strategy.” The CDC said Tuesday that a mistake at a lab led U.S. health officials to release an infected coronavirus patient from a San Diego hospital. The patient had been evacuated from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, on a government-chartered flight last week. Jacob Wilson, a 33-year-old American evacuee from Louisiana who works at a tech start-up in Wuhan—the Chinese epicenter of the virus—told The Daily Beast he signed the petition in order to correct what he called “damn near criminal” and “irresponsible” actions by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials responsible for the base’s quarantine protocols. The petition asks that “everyone in the facility be tested;” that the evacuees be given masks and disinfectants; that hand sanitizers be available in public areas, including a playground; that they not be forced to gather in large groups; that town hall meetings be conducted via conference call; and that public areas be regularly disinfected throughout the day. Dr. Christopher Braden, a medical epidemiologist with the CDC, said last week that the federal agency was “doing everything possible” to care for the hundreds of American evacuees in their care under mandatory quarantine. But at least some experts suggested such problems would persist as long as there were looming uncertainties about viral transmission. On February 10th, Santa Clara County declares local health emergency. Two people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Santa Clara County, a county of about two million residents. The two cases are not related and the county says there is no evidence that there is a person to person spread of the new virus in the county. Both patients, a man and a woman, recently traveled to Wuhan, China and have stayed home since returning to the U.S. except to seek medical attention. The first patient is a Santa Clara County resident who had returned home from China on January 24. He traveled through San Jose airport, officials said. The county said he came into contact with “very few” people since returning to the U.S. from China and has been “self-isolating.” The second infected person is a visitor of Santa Clara County and traveled through SFO on January 23 to visit family. If the United States begins to see instances in several parts of the country in which a single case ignites four “generations” of human-to-human infection, Redfield said — meaning a person who contracted the virus infects a person, who infects another person, who then infects another person — then the CDC is likely to conclude containment of the virus has failed. “Once we get greater than three — so four or more is our view — [generations of] human-to-human transmission in the community … and we see that in multiple areas of the country that are not contiguous, then basically the value of all of the containment strategies that we’ve done now then really become not effective,” he said. “That’s when we’re in full mitigation.”
1week ago, 12 Feb, Wednesday
- 05:39
Malaysian securities commission issues guidance to enhance shareholder activism
The Securities Commission Malaysia (‘SC’) issued the Annual General Meeting Corporate Governance Checklist for Shareholders (‘AGM CG Checklist’) on 5 February 2020 with the aim of promoting meaningful dialogue between shareholders and the board of directors at annual general meetings (‘AGM’) of companies. According to the Chairman of the SC, the AGM CG Checklist is meant to guide shareholders on key issues they may need to consider or raise at an AGM before exercising their voting rights. Among these issues are the matters pertaining to the appointment of directors, approval of directors’ fees, appointment of auditors, contents of the annual report, and the adequacy of sustainability and anti-corruption measures adopted by a company. The AGM CG Checklist also provides guidance on matters to be considered by shareholders before and after an AGM. Although the AGM CG Checklist was developed for shareholders, the SC encouraged other stakeholders, such as consumers and potential investors, to use the checklist to understand and evaluate the performance, policies and practices of companies. The AGM CG Checklist was developed by the SC in collaboration with the Institutional Investors Council Malaysia and the Minority Shareholders Watch Group and its publication is one of the deliverables under the SC’s Corporate Governance Strategic Priorities (2017-2020).