Bernard “Bernie” Kerik, who rose to national prominence after leading the New York police department through the September 11 terror attacks, died Thursday. He was 69.FBI Director Kash Patel announced Kerik’s death on X, saying he passed away “after a private battle with illness.”Lauding Kerik, Patel called him “a warrior, a patriot and one of the most courageous public servants this country has ever known.”Kerik was the tough-talking head of the New York police when Osama bin Laden’s hijackers struck the World Trade Center towers with commercial passenger jets in September 2001. In the traumatic days and weeks after the attack, Kerik, with his squat, muscular build, balding head and black moustache, became a familiar face to Americans across the country, as he helped then-mayor Rudy Giuliani guide New York through the crisis.He’d served as Police Commissioner for less than a year when his life and career were altered forever by the terror attacks that killed nearly 2,750 people, including 23 NYPD officers.When Giuliani’s second term ended shortly after the attacks, Kerik left office with him and continued their decades-long friendship and professional allegiance.Kerik’s rough upbringing was detailed in a memoir, “The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit.” Born in New Jersey to an alcoholic prostitute, he was abandoned by his mother and brought up by his father, and had a troubled childhood.Early on his career took him around the world, with a spell on a military police posting in South Korea and working as a security consultant for the Saudi royal family in Saudi Arabia. He later joined the New York Police Department, where he worked undercover in the narcotics division and helped bust 60 members of the notorious Colombian Cali drug cartel.After leaving the Police Commissioner role post-9/11, Kerik stayed active in Republican politics, taking on a tour of duty to Iraq to help train their law enforcement in 2003 for former president George W. Bush.He suffered another fall from grace after pleading guilty in 2009 to felonies, including tax fraud.He admitted to accepting $255,000 worth of renovations to his apartment from a construction firm — suspected of having mob ties — angling for government contracts.His plea helped him avoid a maximum potential sentence of up to 61 years behind bars. Instead, he was sentenced to four years in prison. He was released in 2013. Kerik received a presidential pardon in 2020, during President Donald Trump’s first term.He later teamed up with Giuliani to investigate debunked allegations of election fraud following Trump’s 2020 loss, and was among those subpoenaed by lawmakers over accusations of plotting to overturn the election in the January 6, 2021 attacks on the US Capitol.

On the campaign trail last year, then-candidate Donald Trump proposed handing US residency cards automatically to international students when they earn diplomas, bemoaning that they were leaving to form successful companies in China and India.Now back at the White House, Trump’s message has changed drastically.Hoping to crush an academic establishment he sees as his enemy, Trump has launched unprecedented actions against international students that experts warn are likely to decrease enrollment and could trigger a brain drain of top talent.In a matter of days, the Trump administration has sought to bar all foreign students from Harvard University, one of most prestigious US institutions, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has vowed to “aggressively” revoke visas to students from China, long the top source of students to the United States although recently eclipsed by India.Rubio has already yanked thousands of visas, largely over students’ involvement in activism critical of Israel’s offensive in Gaza but also over minor traffic violations and other infractions.”The US, historically, has a reputation around the world of having a very open atmosphere for scientific and technical research, and that draws a lot of people, especially people from countries that don’t necessarily have that kind of openness,” said Phoebe Sengers, a professor in information science and science and technology studies at Cornell University.She said it’s certain the number of international students will “plummet in the coming years.””The challenge with that is that students who would come here don’t just disappear. They will stay in their home countries or go to other countries where they can get a technical education, and they’re going to be building businesses in those countries and competing directly with our firms,” she said.- Universities as ‘enemy’ -US universities have long been reputed to be among the world’s best, and among the most expensive to attend.International students who pay full tuition are vital sources of revenue, as are federal research grants, which the Trump administration is also slashing.The State Department has justified its crackdown by pointing to “theft” of US technology by China, and Trump has spoken of making more spots for US-born students.But Trump’s inner circle has long made clear its intentions to battle universities — whose often left-leaning faculties, high costs and selectivity make them perfect foils for a presidency centered on countering elites and foreigners.Vice President JD Vance stated in no uncertain terms his hope to destroy the power of academe in a 2021 speech entitled, “The universities are the enemy.”Yet Vance himself rose from poverty to power through Yale Law School, one of the country’s most elite institutions.Universities have an outsized influence on the economy, with international students directly contributing $50 billion to the US economy in 2023, according to the US Commerce Department.Many top US entrepreneurs are immigrants who came as students, including Trump’s ally Elon Musk, with around half of the Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or their children.Krishna Bista, a professor at Morgan State University who studies international student mobility, said the tone set by the Trump administration “could deter even the most qualified applicants” from the United States.”It’s not just a visa issue — it affects students’ sense of safety, belonging and academic freedom,” he said.”Other nations are building policies to recruit talent — it’s irrational for the US to push it away.”The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology recently offered fast-track admissions to Harvard students whom Trump wants to force to transfer. – Growing competition -The United States across administrations has wooed international students, although the number also declined following the September 11, 2001 attacks due to greater curbs of all visas.A world-record 1.1 million international students studied in the United States in the 2023-24 academic year, according to a State Department-backed report of the Institute of International Education.But international students on average make up just under six percent of the US university population — far below Britain, the second top destination for international students, where the figure is 25 percent.The opportunity to change course may have already slipped away. “Even if everything was turned around tomorrow, our reputation as an open and welcoming society has already taken significant damage,” Sengers said.”It would take a concerted effort to bring things back to where they were four months ago.”

US President Donald Trump on Thursday celebrated a temporary reprieve for his aggressive tariff strategy, with an appeals court preserving his sweeping import duties on China and other trading partners — for now.The short-term relief will allow the appeals process to proceed, after the US Court of International Trade on Wednesday barred most of the tariffs announced since Trump took office, ruling that he had overstepped his authority.Welcoming the latest twist in his legal skirmishes over his trade policies, Trump lashed out at the Manhattan-based trade court, calling it “horrible” and saying its blockade should be “quickly and decisively” reversed for good.”Backroom ‘hustlers’ must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!” Trump said in a long rant on his Truth Social platform in which he again painted himself as a target of a biased judicial system.Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has moved to reconfigure US trade ties with the world while using levies to force foreign governments to the negotiating table.But the stop-start tariff rollout, impacting both allies and adversaries, has roiled markets and snarled supply chains.Prior to Thursday’s decision from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, known as an administrative stay, the White House was given 10 days to halt affected tariffs.The Trump administration called the ruling “blatantly wrong,” expressing confidence that the decision would be overturned on appeal.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the judges “brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump.”Leavitt said the Supreme Court “must put an end” to the tariff challenge, while stressing that Trump had other legal means to impose levies.A separate ruling by a federal district judge in the US capital found some Trump levies unlawful as well, giving the administration 14 days to appeal.- ‘Hiccups’ -Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told Fox Business that “hiccups” sparked by the decisions of “activist judges” would not affect talks with trading partners, adding that three deals are close to finalization.Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro told reporters after the appellate stay that the administration had earlier received “plenty of phone calls from countries” who said they would continue to “negotiate in good faith,” without naming those nations.Trump’s import levies are aimed partly at punishing economies that sell more to the United States than they buy.The president has argued that trade deficits and the threat posed by drug smuggling constituted a “national emergency” that justified the widespread tariffs — a notion the Court of International Trade ruled against.Trump unveiled sweeping duties on nearly all trading partners in April, at a baseline 10 percent — plus steeper levies on dozens of economies including China and the European Union, which have since been paused.The US trade court’s ruling quashed these blanket duties, along with those that Trump imposed on Canada, Mexico and China separately using emergency powers.But it left intact 25 percent duties on imported autos, steel and aluminum.Beijing — which was hit by additional 145 percent tariffs before they were temporarily reduced to make space for negotiations — reacted to the trade court decision by saying Washington should scrap the levies.”China urges the United States to heed the rational voices from the international community and domestic stakeholders and fully cancel the wrongful unilateral tariff measures,” said commerce ministry spokeswoman He Yongqian.Asian markets rallied Thursday, US indexes closed higher while Europe closed slightly down.- ‘Extraordinary threat’ -The trade court was ruling in two separate cases — brought by businesses and a coalition of state governments — arguing that the president had violated Congress’s power of the purse.The judges said the cases rested on whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) delegates such powers to the president “in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.”The judges stated that any interpretation of the IEEPA that “delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional.”Trump warned on Truth Social that if he were forced to defer to Congress on tariffs, Washington’s politicians “would sit around D.C. for weeks, and even months” while preventing him from protecting the country from “Economic and Financial harm.”Analysts at London-based research group Capital Economics said the case may end up with the Supreme Court, but would likely not mark the end of the tariff war.burs-ft/nl