WORLD NEWS FLASH
UNITED STATES
Not even done with its first 100 days yet, the Trump Administration has dropped the hammer on more liberal education.
First, on April 11, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) referred its Title IX investigation into the Maine Department of Education (MDOE) to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for further enforcement action. Simultaneously, ED will initiate an administrative proceeding to adjudicate termination of MDOE’s federal K-12 education funding, including formula and discretionary grants.
These actions are a direct result of MDOE’s continued refusal to comply with Title IX. ED issued a noncompliance finding on March 19, and sent a final warning letter to the state on March 31.
“The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.
“The Maine Department of Education will now have to defend its discriminatory practices before a Department administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department. Governor Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom – be careful what you wish for. Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”
Following a directed investigation of MDOE, ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that MDOE has practices and policies that violate Title IX, including allowing males to compete in female sports and occupy women-only intimate spaces. MDOE refused to comply with OCR’s proposed Resolution Agreement to resolve its Title IX violations voluntarily.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. President Trump’s Executive Order Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports articulates United States policy, consistent with Title IX, to protect female student athletes from having “to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”
Then, on April 14, the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism released the following statement:
“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.
“The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable. The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable. It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support.
“The Joint Task Force to combat anti-Semitism is announcing a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60M in multi-year contract value to Harvard University.”
MASS SHOOTING UPDATE
Information from 4-15-2025
2025 Mass Shooting Stats: (Source: Mass Shooting Tracker, https://www.massshootingtracker.site/data/?year=2025)
- Total Mass Shootings: 95
- Total Dead: 125
- Total Wounded: 374
- Shootings Per Day: 0.90
- Days Reached in Year 2025 as of April 15: 105
WORLD
NATIONS REACT TO U.S. TARIFFS
Global trade could shrink by three percent as a result of the United States’ new tariff measures which in the longer term could reshape and boost as-yet untapped regional commercial links, a top UN economist confirmed on April 11.
“There will be shifting, I think, in supply chains, there will be a reassessment of global alliances. There will be geopolitical shifts and economic as well,” said Pamela Coke-Hamilton, head of the International Trade Centre (ITC).
Speaking in Geneva after the April 9 announcement by the White House of a 90-day pause on “reciprocal tariffs” for most countries with the exception of China, Mrs. Coke-Hamilton noted that exports from Mexico had already been “highly impacted” by earlier seismic changes to US trade policy.
“Countries like Mexico, China and Thailand, but also countries in southern Africa are among the most affected, alongside the US itself,” she said.
While the 90-day pause on the so-called reciprocal tariffs applies to imports from most countries and brings down rates to a still hefty 10 percent, tariffs on imports from China currently stand at 145 percent.
China, meanwhile, has raised tariffs against US exports – in effect import taxes on goods – to 125 percent.
Already, Mexico’s products for export have shifted away from markets such as the US, China, Europe and other Latin American countries to make “modest gains” instead in Canada, Brazil “and to a lesser extent, India,” the ITC chief insisted.
Other countries have followed suit, including Vietnam, whose exports “are redirecting away from the US, Mexico and China”, while “increasing substantially” towards the EU, Republic of Korea and others, said Mrs. Coke-Hamilton, whose UN specialized agency offers assistance to developing countries.
The problem for emerging economies is that they are less well equipped to “pivot” when faced with “instabilities”, the ITC chief explained, since they often lack the manufacturing diversity and ability to add value to raw commodities of more industrialized nations.
Especially vulnerable trading partners of the US include Lesotho, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Madagascar and Myanmar that are “the most exposed”, she continued.
Confirming that the World Trade Organization (WTO) had estimated that commerce between China and the US could drop by up to 80 percent if the highly unusual situation continues, the ITC Executive Secretary pointed out that they constituted only “three percent to four percent of world trade…(so) there is 96 percent out there that is still trading and that will trade.”
Nonetheless, the impact of the “indeterminate extension of 90 days on and on” has not been good for global commerce and “does not necessarily lend itself to stability,” Mrs. Coke-Hamilton continued.
“Irrespective of whether there is an extension, on and on, the fact that there is no stability, there is no predictability will affect trade and firms and decisions that are being made in real time.”
She added: “This would not be the first time that there have been tremors in the world economic system. We have seen it over the last 50 years in different dispensations. This one is probably a little more harsh, a little more tremulous.”
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL KNOCKS OUT HOSPITAL
“Al Ahli Hospital is out of service,” WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris told UN News, after the airstrike early on April 13. “The pharmacy was destroyed, many of the different buildings and services were destroyed.”
Some 40 patients whose condition is too critical to be moved from the health facility are continuing to receive care, while the 50 other remaining patients – including the child who died – were evacuated to other medical centers shortly before the attack began.
The situation remains critical and medical supplies of all kinds are now “desperately low,” WHO’s Dr. Harris said, before expressing deep concern for the safety of health personnel at the stricken hospital. Until Sunday’s strike, Al Ahli was the main hospital dealing with the casualties from Israeli airstrikes. Now, most casualties are sent to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The UN health agency says that only 21 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals now remain partially functional. Almost all of them have been damaged in the war, sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel in October 2023 in which some 1,250 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage.
Leading condemnation for the attack and repeating calls for a ceasefire, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted that hospitals have special protection under international humanitarian law: “Attacks on health care must stop. Once again we repeat: patients, health workers and hospitals must be protected. The aid blockade must be lifted.”
Aid teams highlighted how the hospital strike has already put “an immense additional strain” on the war-shattered enclave’s remaining partially operational hospitals.
“Mass casualty events are now the norm and those hospitals that are treating trauma patients are doing so amid severe shortages of critical supplies, including critical medicine,” Olga Cherevko from the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, told UN News.
It has now been seven weeks since crossings were closed to all relief supplies meant for the people of Gaza, and nearly a month since Israeli bombardment resumed in the enclave amid disagreement between Israel and Hamas over the terms of a ceasefire extension that include the release of all hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
According to OCHA, more than 390,000 people have been displaced since Israeli bombing began again on March 18.
In recent days, top UN officials have rebuffed Israeli assertions that there was enough food to feed all Palestinians, insisting that they were “far from the reality on the ground.” The global body’s top emergency relief official, Tom Fletcher, also stated that aid teams are “deliberately blocked from saving lives in Gaza,” leading to further civilian deaths.
According to the Gazan health authorities, well over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed and 115,688 Palestinians injured during the conflict. This includes 1,449 people killed and 3,647 injured since the escalation of hostilities on March 18.
“Supplies that we had are rapidly running out and we’re running out of food of medicine, of shelter and every other life-critical item if the situation does not change immediately,” Ms. Cherevko stressed. “The catastrophe that is in Gaza will become worse and the needs of the people will become even higher. This cannot continue. Civilians must be protected and the crossings must be reopened immediately.”
INDIA
MUMBAI BOMBING SUSPECT EXTRADITED
On April 9, the United States extradited convicted terrorist Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen and native of Pakistan, to stand trial in India on 10 criminal charges stemming from his alleged role in the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Rana’s extradition is a critical step toward seeking justice for the six Americans and scores of other victims who were killed in the heinous attacks.
Rana, 64, is charged in India with numerous offenses, including conspiracy, murder, commission of a terrorist act, and forgery, related to his alleged involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks committed by Laskhar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), a designated foreign terrorist organization. Between November 26 and 29, 2008, ten LeT terrorists carried out a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks in Mumbai. They infiltrated the city by sea and then broke into teams, dispersing to multiple locations.
Attackers at a train station fired guns and threw grenades into crowds. Attackers at two restaurants shot indiscriminately at patrons. Attackers at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel gunned people down and detonated explosives. Attackers also shot and killed people at a Jewish community center. When the terror finally subsided, 166 victims, including six Americans, were dead, along with all but one of the LeT terrorists. Hundreds more were injured, and Mumbai sustained more than $1.5 billion in property damage. The attacks were among the most horrific and catastrophic in India’s history.
India alleges that Rana facilitated a fraudulent cover so that his childhood friend David Coleman Headley (Headley), a U.S. citizen born Daood Gilani, could freely travel to Mumbai for the purpose of conducting surveillance of potential attack sites for LeT. As India alleges, Headley had received training from LeT members in Pakistan and was in direct communication with LeT about plans to attack Mumbai. Among other things, Rana allegedly agreed to open a Mumbai branch of his immigration business and appoint Headley as the manager of the office, despite Headley’s having no immigration experience.
On two separate occasions, Rana allegedly helped Headley prepare and submit visa applications to Indian authorities that contained information Rana knew to be false. Rana also allegedly supplied, through his unsuspecting business partner, documentation in support of Headley’s attempt to secure formal approval from Indian authorities to open a branch office of Rana’s business. Over the course of more than two years, Headley allegedly repeatedly met with Rana in Chicago and described his surveillance activities on behalf of LeT, LeT’s responses to Headley’s activities, and LeT’s potential plans for attacking Mumbai.
After the attacks were complete, Rana allegedly told Headley that the Indians “deserved it.” In an intercepted conversation with Headley, Rana allegedly commended the nine LeT terrorists who had been killed committing the attacks, saying that “(t)hey should be given Nishan-e-Haider” – Pakistan’s “highest award for gallantry in battle,” which is reserved for fallen soldiers.
India’s pending proceedings against Rana are not the first proceedings in which Rana has been accused of conspiring to commit violent acts of terrorism. In 2013, Rana was sentenced to 14 years in prison following his trial conviction in the Northern District of Illinois for conspiring to provide material support to LeT and to a foiled LeT-sponsored terrorist plot in Copenhagen, Denmark. As part of those same criminal proceedings, Headley pleaded guilty to 12 federal terrorism charges, including aiding and abetting the murders of the six Americans in Mumbai and later planning to attack a Danish newspaper, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
In June 2020, the United States acted on a request for Rana’s extradition submitted by the Republic of India, which Rana contested for almost five years. On May 16, 2023, a U.S. magistrate judge in the Central District of California certified Rana’s extradition to India. Rana then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California denied on August 10, 2023.
On August 15, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that decision. The Supreme Court likewise denied Rana’s petition for certiorari on January 21, 2025. The Secretary of State issued a warrant ordering Rana’s surrender to Indian authorities. Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit denied Rana’s application for a stay of extradition, and on April 7, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Rana’s application for a stay of extradition.
On April 9, the U.S. Marshals Service executed the Secretary’s surrender warrant by surrendering Rana to Indian authorities for transportation to India. Rana’s extradition is now complete.
The extradition litigation was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys John J. Lulejian and David R. Friedman and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Bram M. Alden of the Central District of California and Deputy Director Christopher J. Smith, Associate Director Kerry A. Monaco, and former Associate Director Rebecca A. Haciski of the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs. The U.S. Marshals Service and attorneys and international affairs specialists in the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs provided support to this extradition. The FBI’s Legal Attaché Office in New Delhi also provided assistance.
