Republicans in the US Congress announced an investigation into Harvard University on Thursday, accusing it of flouting civil rights law in an escalation of President Donald Trump’s attacks on elite institutions.The lawmakers wrote to the world-renowned education and research establishment demanding documents on its hiring practices, diversity programs and last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests.The letter — signed by House Oversight Committee chair James Comer and House leadership chair Elise Stefanik — came with Trump seeking unprecedented levels of control over the country’s oldest and wealthiest university.Comer and Stefanik castigated Harvard President Alan Garber for rejecting demands for supervision by the White House, which has canceled $2.2 billion in funding and threatened further reprisals.”Harvard is apparently so unable or unwilling to prevent unlawful discrimination that the institution, at your direction, is refusing to enter into a reasonable settlement agreement proposed by federal officials intended to put Harvard back in compliance with the law,” they told Garber. “No matter how entitled your behavior, no institution is entitled to violate the law.”Trump — furious at Harvard for rejecting oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant — told reporters the university’s conduct had been “horrific.”The president, who is in charge of every aspect of the federal government, said he was “not involved” in its fight with Harvard but had “read about it.” “I think what they did was a disgrace,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They’re obviously anti-Semitic and all of a sudden, they’re starting to behave.”Harvard is just the latest in a series of top universities and other institutions in the administration’s crosshairs.But while New York’s Columbia University bowed to less far-ranging demands, Harvard flatly rejected the pressure, saying it would not “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights.”Trump said Harvard should lose its government research contracts and tax-exempt status, while administration officials threatened to ban the school from admitting foreigners, who make up more than a quarter of the student body.Trump has also targeted Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Pennsylvania and Princeton universities, threatening each with freezes of between $175 million and $1 billion, according to US media.Republicans have said their campaign against universities is a response to what they call rampant anti-Semitism, following divisive protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept campuses last year.Columbia — an epicenter of the activism — agreed last month to oversight of its Middle Eastern studies department after being threatened with a loss of $400 million in federal funds.Harvard staff and students rallied against the Trump administration in a campus protest Thursday aimed at encouraging university leadership to hold the line, research fellow Avi Steinberg told AFP. “They actually want Harvard to make good on its promises to its students and its faculty to protect every single student on campus, to protect the faculty and especially faculty free speech,” he said.

A mass shooting allegedly carried out by the son of a local deputy sheriff with her old service weapon left two people dead at a university in Florida, police in the southeastern US state said Thursday.Five people were hospitalized when the gunman — identified as Phoenix Ikner — rampaged through Florida State University, shooting at students, before he was shot and injured by local law enforcement.The campus was locked down as gunfire erupted, with students ordered to shelter in place as first responders swarmed the site moments after the lunchtime shootings.Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil told reporters Ikner, 20, was a student at the university and the son of a an “exceptional” 18-year member of his staff.”Unfortunately, her son had access to one of her weapons, and that was one of the weapons that was found at the scene.He added that the suspect was part of Sheriff’s Office training programs, meaning “it’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.”Ikner was taken to hospital after being shot. His condition was not immediately known.Bystander footage aired by CNN appeared to show a young man walking on a lawn and shooting at people who were trying to get away.Witnesses spoke of chaos as people began running through the sprawling campus as shots rang out near the student union.”Everyone just started running out of the student union,” a witness named Wayne told local news station WCTV.”About a minute later, we heard about eight to 10 gunshots.”The eyewitness said he saw one man who appeared to have been shot in the midsection.”The whole entire thing was just surreal. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”Everything was really quiet, than all chaotic.”- ‘Make them take time’ -The two people who died were not students, police said, but refused to give further details.The university, a public institution with more than 40,000 students, cancelled all classes and told students who did not live on campus to leave.FSU President Richard McCullough said the university was working to support those affected by the attack.”This is a tragic day for Florida State University,” he said.”We’re absolutely heartbroken by the violence that occurred on our campus earlier today.”Student Sam Swartz told the Tallahassee Democrat he had been in the basement of the student union when shooting started. “Everyone started freaking out,” Swartz said, adding he had heard around 10 shots.A group of eight people huddled in a hallway and barricaded themselves with trash cans and plywood.”I remember learning to do the best you can to make them take time,” Swartz said, adding that mass shooters are “just trying to get as many people” as they can.Footage on social media showed a stream of young adults walking through corridors with their hands in the air as they evacuated the building.Mass shootings are common in the United States, where a constitutional right to bear arms trumps demands for stricter rules.That is despite widespread public support for tighter control on firearms, including restricting the sale of high-capacity clips and limiting the availability of automatic weapons of war.President Donald Trump called the shooting “a shame, a horrible thing,” but insisted that Americans should retain unfettered access to guns.”I’m a big advocate of the Second Amendment. I have been from the beginning. I protected it,” he said, referring to the part of the US Constitution gun advocates say protects firearm ownership.”These things are terrible, but the gun doesn’t do the shooting — the people do.”A tally by the non-profit Gun Violence Archive shows there have been at least 81 mass shootings — which it defines as four or more people shot — in the United States so far this year.

Netflix on Thursday reported quarterly profit of $2.9 billion as revenue grew 13 percent with help from recent subscription price hikes.The streaming television service said it was “off to a good start in 2025″ on revenue of $10.5 billion in the recently ended quarter. Shares in the Silicon Valley-based company were up more than four percent in after-market trades.Revenue grew due thanks to slightly higher subscription and ad earnings, along with the timing of some expenses, according to Netflix.Netflix early this year raised premium and standard memberships in the United States two dollars more per month, to $25 and $18 respectively, while a standard ad-supported tier increased by one dollar.In a bid to boost sputtering growth, the company launched an ad-subsidized offering in late 2023 around the same time as a crackdown on sharing passwords.The streaming service had announced in January that a top priority would be growing its ad business.Netflix has been steadily improving its ad platform as viewers continue to turn away from traditional television to streaming shows on demand.”We’re executing on our 2025 priorities: improving our series and film offering and growing our ads business; further developing newer initiatives like live programming and games; and sustaining healthy revenue and profit growth,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders.Netflix forecast revenue growth of 15 percent in the current quarter, crediting its lineup of shows and films along with improvements to its ad platform.”We remain optimistic about our 2025 slate with a lineup that includes returning favorites, series finales, new discoveries and unexpected surprises designed to thrill our members,” Netflix told shareholders.Netflix touted hits including its  “Adolescence” series that has logged some 124 million views, and the Spanish-language film “Counterattack” from Mexico.Netflix said in February it would spend $1 billion over four years producing films and series in Mexico, in a boost to that government’s efforts to attract investment in the face of US tariff threats.Investors view Netflix as a rare haven in a stock market roiled by US President Donald Trump’s stop-start  tariff plans targeting dozens of trade partners.This quarter marks a shift by Netflix to stop reporting subscriber numbers along with its earnings figures.The company, considered by analysts as the leading video streaming service, finished out last year with more than 300 million subscribers.

Salvadoran soldiers on Thursday barred a US senator who is in the country to seek the release of a man wrongfully deported by President Donald Trump’s administration from visiting the prison where he is held.On the second day of his trip to El Salvador, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen tried to make his way to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) outside the capital San Salvador to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The car he was traveling in was stopped by soldiers, he said, about three kilometers (1.8 miles) from the complex holding thousands of Salvadoran gangsters, and now also nearly 300 migrants expelled from the United States. “We were told by the soldiers that they had been ordered not to allow us to proceed,” the senator later told reporters. He said the goal had been to check on the health and well-being of Abrego Garcia, who “has had no communication with anybody on the outside,” including his wife and lawyers. He said the man had been “illegally abducted” and was now the subject of “illegal detention” in the same prison built to hold members of gangs who had previously threatened his family.Abrego Garcia, 29, was arrested in Maryland last month and expelled to El Salvador along with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans who were deported shortly after Trump invoked a rarely-used wartime authority. Trump administration officials have claimed he is an illegal migrant, a gang member and involved in human trafficking, without providing evidence. Abrego Garcia had enjoyed a protected status in the United States, precluding his deportation to El Salvador for his own safety. A federal judge has since ordered he be returned, but the administration — despite admitting an “administrative error” in his deportation — contends he is now solely in Salvadoran custody. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who met Trump in Washington on Monday, said he does not have the power to send the man back. – Cots without mattresses -On Wednesday, Van Hollen met Salvadoran Vice President Felix Ulloa, who denied him permission to see the prisoner or even talk to him by telephone. Asked why Abrego Garcia was being held at all, Ulloa told him “that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador, the government of El Salvador, to keep him at CECOT,” the senator recounted.Bukele had built the CECOT to hold gang members rounded up in an iron-fisted anti-crime drive welcomed by most Salvadorans but widely denounced for violating human rights. CECOT inmates are confined to their cells for all but 30 minutes a day, denied visits, forced to sleep on stainless steel cots without mattresses, and subside on a diet of mostly beans and pasta.