📌 Harvard Funds Frozen, AI For Dolphins, More

The Trump administration has said it is freezing over $2bn in federal funds for Harvard University.

The decision follows Harvard's rejecting a list of demands from the White House. The White House sent a list of demands to Harvard last week which it said were designed to fight antisemitism on campus. They included changes to its governance, hiring practices and admissions procedures.

Harvard rejected the demands on Monday and said the White House was trying to “control“ its community. It is the first major US university to defy pressure from the Trump administration to change its policies. protests against the war in Gaza and US support for Israel last year.

Harvard President Alan Garber said in a letter to the university community that Harvard did not “take lightly“ its obligation to fight antisemitism. “Although some of the demands … are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of [Harvard’s] ‘intellectual conditions.“

President Trump has accused leading universities of failing to protect Jewish students when college campuses around the country were roiled by protests against the war in Gaza and US support for Israel last year.

Harvard President Alan Garber said in a letter to the university community that Harvard did not “take lightly“ its obligation to fight antisemitism. “Although some of the demands … are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of [Harvard’s] ‘intellectual conditions.’“

Shortly after his letter was sent, the education department said it was freezing $2.2bn in grants and $60m in contracts to Harvard immediately. “The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable,“ it said.

The European Union will increase its support for the Palestinian Authority with a three-year 1.6 billion euro ($1.8 billion) package.

Dubravka Suica, the European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, said the financial support would go hand in hand with reforms of the Palestinian Authority, which has been accused by critics of corruption and bad governance.

“We want them to reform themselves because without reforming, they won't be strong enough and credible in order to be an interlocutor, not for only for us, but an interlocutor also for Israel,“ Suica said.

The EU is the biggest donor to the Palestinians and EU officials hope the Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, may also one day take responsibility for Gaza after the war between Israel and Hamas militants comes to an end.

A man was charged for sending threatening text messages to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her family.

The Justice Department announced Monday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Aliakbar Mohammad Amin, 25, of Georgia, and is being held on a federal charge of allegedly transmitting interstate threats.

“Bottom line, the FBI does not tolerate threats and will hold offenders fully accountable,“ FBI-Atlanta wrote in a post on Facebook, adding that President Donald Trump and the White House were also targeted with “threatening communications.“

Court documents show Amin is accused of writing, “You and your family are going to die soon“ and “I will personally do the job if necessary.“ Another text: “Death to America means death to America literally, Tulsi is living on borrowed time.“ Another, “Prepare to die, you, Tulsi, and everyone you hold dear.“

Federal agents said social media posts by Amin, between March 29 and April 1, also included images of a firearm pointed at a photograph of Gabbard. Agents said they found a firearm when they searched Amin's home.

Paul Brown, Special Agent in Charge of FBI-Atlanta, said: “Threatening to harm public officials is a criminal act that cannot be excused as political discourse.“

A specialist research group has teamed up with Google to use AI to communicate with dolphins.

The Wild Dolphin Project (WDP) has studied dolphins noninvasively since 1985 to track a community of Atlantic spotted dolphins. The WDP creates video and audio recordings of dolphins and correlates notes on their behavior.

WDP researchers want to investigate the structure and patterns of dolphin vocalizations to determine whether their communication rises to the level of a language. WDP has collected a massive, meticulously labeled data set, which Google says is perfect for analysis with generative AI.

DolphinGemma is based on Google's commercial Gemini models. Audio technology tokenizes dolphin vocalizations, enabling their sounds to be fed into the model as they're recorded. The model predicts the next token. The team hopes to tease out complex patterns to create a shared vocabulary.

No one expects DolphinGemma to make humans conversant in dolphin whistles immediately, but the system could enable basic interactions in time. While DolphinGemma has been trained on Atlantic spotted dolphin sounds, Google suggests it should be feasible to fine-tune it for other cetacean species.

An experimental daily weight loss pill will no longer be developed by Pfizer after a patient experienced a liver injury.

The patient’s liver enzymes “recovered rapidly“ after they stopped taking the pill, which is an oral GLP-1 drug called Danuglipron.

The patient had elevated liver enzymes, which often indicate damage to liver cells, but did not experience any liver-related symptoms or side effects, a Pfizer spokesperson said.

The announcement adds to a string of setbacks in the company’s bid to win a slice of the booming market for GLP-1s, which mimic gut hormones to tamp down appetite and regulate blood sugar.

Pfizer is among several drugmakers racing to bring a more convenient weight loss medicine to a space dominated by weekly injections.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the revocation of a migration program for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The ruling is seen as a blow to President Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown and a win for 500,000 people given temporary legal status under the CHNV Program. They were facing possible deportation after its scheduled end on April 24.

US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, Mass., issued a stay in the order, saying “the early termination, without any case-by-case justification, of legal status for noncitizens who have complied with DHS programs and entered the country lawfully undermines the rule of law.“

People on the program are allowed to enter the US by plane after being vetted. They must also have sponsors in the US before being provided protection from deportation and issued with work permits for two years.

“This ruling is a significant step toward justice for not only the hundreds of thousands of people who entered the US through this important process but for the American sponsors who welcomed them to their homes and communities,“ said Karen Tumlin of immigrant advocacy group Justice Action Center.

Trump administration officials said the judge “essentially ruled“ that the president “can't use his executive authority, the same authority Biden used, to revoke the parole that Biden granted.“ An administration spokesperson said, “It is pure lawless tyranny.“

State troopers took to the air to look for a missing toddler wearing only diapers in 40 degrees Fahrenheit at 8 p.m. near Detroit.

Jackson County state troopers used infrared heat-sensing technology in the hopes of detecting the toddler from above.

One minute, the child was in the family’s living room, and in the next, it had walked out undetected, with the door to the apartment unit open, Michigan State Trooper Brandon Franklin, a tactical flight officer, said.

After just 15 minutes of searching, the two men detected a small white-hot figure in a ditch by the highway. One of the troopers can be heard saying, “We got him!“ in camera footage released by Michigan State Police.

Awake and alert, the toddler was reunited with his parents. “Later on, it dropped below freezing,“ Franklin said. “So if no one would have found this child, the outcome would not have been the same, most likely.“