Penn’s president resigns after
testimony about antisemitic rhetoric
The president of the University of Pennsylvania, M. Elizabeth Magill, resigned Saturday, four days after her testimony at a congressional hearing in which she seemed to evade the question of whether students who called for the genocide of Jews should be disciplined. The announcement followed months of intense pressure from Jewish students, alumni and donors, who claimed that she had not taken their concerns about antisemitism on campus seriously. Magill, who had been president since 2022, is expected to serve until the university settles on an interim president and to remain at Penn as a faculty member, according to Scott L. Bok, chair of the board of trustees, who also announced his resignation.
Multiple people injured after severe weather strikes Tennessee, officials say
Clashing air masses fueled severe weather Saturday, including powerful storms that struck Tennessee, leaving multiple people injured, and set up the likelihood of heavy rains and strong winds that will affect the Northeast on Sunday, officials said. Three weather-related injuries were reported in Dresden, Tennessee, on Saturday, said Ray Wiggington, the emergency management director for Weakley County. At least one mobile home was flipped over. Tornado watches and warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings were posted in parts of Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee on Saturday, and the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for Sunday in parts of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York.
Musk says he may
bring conspiracy theorist back to X
Elon Musk said Saturday that he would consider allowing right-wing provocateur and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to return to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Jones was banned from Twitter in 2018 after posting harassing messages, a month after Facebook and YouTube also suspended his accounts. Jones, who was ordered last year to pay $1 billion to the families of eight victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting after promoting the claim that the massacre was a hoax, said he hoped Musk would reinstate his account. On Saturday, Musk responded to a user on X who said it was time to bring Jones back. “Ok,” Musk wrote.
7 deaths tied to small magnets found in
toys, U.S. warns
A federal safety agency warned this past week that small, powerful magnets have been linked to seven deaths after they were ingested, announcing one company’s voluntary recall of a toy set that contained such magnets and issuing warnings about six other companies with similar toys. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Thursday that it was aware of seven deaths, including two outside of the United States, and about 2,400 emergency-room visits between 2017 and 2021 linked to ingesting the small, high-powered magnets. The commission provided no additional information about the names of the companies that made the products linked to the deaths and injuries.
Fears of a NATO withdrawal rise as Trump seeks a
return to power
Donald Trump has made it clear that he sees NATO as a drain on U.S. resources by freeloaders. Yet as he runs to regain the White House, Trump has said little about his intentions. His campaign website contains a single cryptic sentence: “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” That vague line has generated enormous uncertainty among European allies and American supporters of the country’s traditional foreign policy role. Some European diplomats said alarm was rising that Trump’s return could mean a broad American retreat from the continent and a gutting of the Atlantic alliance.
Why fears of a
broader Middle
East conflict are growing in Iraq
Just south of Baghdad, the urban sprawl gives way to glimpses of green. But few risk spending much time there. Not even the Iraqi military or government officials venture without permission. That’s because this stretch of Iraq, known as Jurf al-Nasr, is controlled by an Iraqi militia, Khataib Hezbollah, linked to Iran and designated a terrorist group by the United States. The militia uses it to assemble drones and retrofit rockets. Those weapons have then been distributed for use in attacks by Iranian-linked groups across the Middle East — putting this former farmland at the center of fears that the war in the Gaza Strip could grow into a wider conflict.
By wire sources
