Columbia University said Wednesday it will pay $200 million to the US government after President Donald Trump threatened to pull federal funding over what he said was its unwillingness to protect Jewish students.In a sweeping deal that will restore the prestigious New York institution’s federal monies, Columbia has pledged to obey rules that bar it from taking race into consideration in admissions or hiring, among other concessions.”Columbia University has reached an agreement with the United States government to resolve multiple federal agency investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws,” a statement said, adding that the $200 million would be paid over three years.The university will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it said.”Under today’s agreement, a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 will be reinstated and Columbia’s access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored,” the statement said.The promise of the federal funding spigot reopening offers relief for the university, which was under growing financial pressure, despite a comfortable endowment and a reputation it can bank on.The agreement also represents a victory for Trump, who has repeatedly claimed elite universities brainwash students against his nationalist ideas with left-wing bias.Thanking Columbia for “agreeing to do what is right,” Trump warned in a social media post that “numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust… are upcoming.”The centuries-old Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is also in a fight with the administration over Trump’s threats to rip away federal funding, and Wednesday’s carefully worded agreement — in which Columbia admitted no wrongdoing — could offer a framework for future deals.”This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman said.”The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track. “Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.”- Disciplinary actions -Under the settlement, Columbia will maintain a security force to prevent demonstrations in academic spaces, such as those that rocked the campus last year when pro-Palestinian protestors clashed with law enforcement and occupied university buildings. The school also agreed to “promptly provide” federal authorities with any requested information on “disciplinary actions involving student visa-holders resulting in expulsions or suspensions, and arrest records that Columbia is aware of for criminal activity, including trespass or other violation of law.”Columbia found itself at the center of a firestorm last year over claims of anti-Semitism triggered by campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.Some Jewish students claimed they were intimidated and that authorities did not act to protect them.The school announced a wave of various student punishments on Tuesday, including expulsions and degree revocations, against nearly 80 students involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement that has called on the university to divest from Israel.”Our institution must focus on delivering on its academic mission for our community,” Columbia said in a statement about student protests on its campus. “Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of University policies and rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences.” While the university appears to be acquiescing to the Trump administration’s demands to quash student protest, one of the most prominent leaders of the US pro-Palestinian campus protests is still raising his voice.Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate active in campus demonstrations, has sued the Trump administration for $20 million over his arrest and detention by immigration agents.Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States who is married to a US citizen, missed the birth of his son while being held in a federal immigration detention center in Louisiana. He called the lawsuit a “first step towards accountability.”

The power company whose lines are suspected of starting one of the deadly fires that ravaged Los Angeles this year said Wednesday it would compensate victims even without any formal finding it was at fault.Southern California Edison — which faces multiple costly lawsuits over the huge blazes — said it would establish a fund that would offer payouts to those who lost their homes or whose health was affected.It gave no figure for the size of the fund, and no precise timeline, but such a system could allow the company to avoid some of the bumper legal battles it is expected to face.Two enormous fires that erupted in January killed 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 homes and buildings around Los Angeles. Investigations are still ongoing to determine the causes of two separate blazes that ravaged the affluent neighborhood of Pacific Palisades and parts of Malibu, and the city of Altadena, a more modest suburb located in the mountains to the northeast.For several months, the finger of blame has been pointing at a Southern California Edison (SCE) powerline as the root of the Eaton Fire that consumed Altadena. Several videos and witness accounts suggest that the equipment produced sparks that could have caused the fast-moving conflagration.Victims “shouldn’t have to wait for the final conclusions in the Eaton Fire investigation to get the financial support they need to begin rebuilding,” said Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, SCE’s parent company. “Even though the details of how the Eaton Fire started are still being evaluated, SCE will offer an expedited process to pay and resolve claims fairly and promptly.”This allows the community to focus more on recovery instead of lengthy, expensive litigation.”The fund will cover homeowners and tenants whose homes were damaged or destroyed, as well as business owners whose property was damaged or whose business was interrupted, a statement said.It will also pay out for personal injuries and offer compensation to family members of those who died in the fire.California’s changing climate — a result of humanity’s unchecked use of fossil fuels over the last 150 years — is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events, including wildfires.But SCE’s powerlines have frequently been pinpointed as the source of ignition in large blazes.That has included the 2018 Woolsey Fire, which killed three people and ravaged the mountains behind Malibu.Last May, the utility also agreed to pay $82.5 million to settle lawsuits related to the Bobcat Fire, a blaze that burned nearly 116,000 acres (47,000 hectares) in the San Gabriel Mountains in 2020. 

Robyn Bedell Zalewa grew up and spent all her adult life in the United States, but is part of a little-known chapter of Greek history — the adoption of some 4,000 infants during the Cold War.Always knowing she came from Greece, she rediscovered her long-lost sister Sophia, who lives in the Athens area, and regained her Greek nationality two years ago.Connecticut-based Robyn goes by the name of Joanna when in Greece.There’s just one snag.Her sister Sophia only speaks Greek, so the siblings communicate through an online translator tool.”What hurts me the most is not being able to have a conversation with Sophia,” the 68-year-old told AFP.At the close of the Second World War and a brutal occupation by Nazi Germany, Greece was consumed by civil strife between royalists and communists that saw fighting continue until 1949.With thousands of Greek families plunged into disaster and poverty, an adoption movement gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s, which saw babies and children sent abroad for adoption, mainly in the United States.Gonda Van Steen, director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London, told AFP that Greece “was the main country of origin of children adopted in the US in the early 1950s”.”American childless couples were willing to pay any price for a healthy white newborn,” said Van Steen, who has conducted extensive research and authored a book on the subject.Greek-American Mary Cardaras campaigned for years so that children born in Greece, who are now in their sixties or seventies, could retrieve their birth nationality.”What followed (the first adoptions in Greece) was a tsunami of international adoptions,” she said, citing in particular China, Vietnam, Russia and especially South Korea, where at least 140,000 children were adopted by foreign parents between 1955 and 1999.- ‘A better life’ -In Greece, the biological mothers of adopted children were often impoverished widows, some of whom had been raped, or faced social stigmatisation for having a child out of wedlock.”They saw no other solution than to give the child away for him or her to have ‘a better life’,” Van Steen said.Greece simplified in May the process of obtaining birth documents to specifically enable individuals adopted until 1976 to regain Greek nationality.On the terrace of an Athens café, Bedell Zalewa proudly pulls her Greek passport and identity card from her handbag.Even though she had her adoption certificate — not all children did — she began the process well before new regulations were implemented and had to wait a long time before regaining Greek citizenship.”I always knew I had been adopted in Greece,” said the pensioner who was born in Messini, in the Peloponnese region, before being adopted in Texas.”What I’ve wanted my entire life is to find my family,” said Bedell Zalewa, her eyes welling up.Her story is one of a tenacious search for one’s roots.Bedell Zalewa found her brothers and sister and even met her biological mother before she passed away.As the youngest of five, she was apparently given up for adoption because her widowed mother was too poor to raise her.The ties she has forged in Greece encourage her to stay there whenever she can.Cardaras, the retired journalist who was adopted in the Chicago area and lived for a long time in California, also always knew that she was of Greek origin.She kept her Greek birth passport, which was originally revoked when she left the country as a baby.- Faces on the street -When she returned to her native country for the first time on a summer vacation in 1972, she remembers looking “at every woman’s face” on the street.”I wondered… if she was my mother,” she said.Everything felt familiar to her: “The smells, the atmosphere, I was completely at home.””But it was only when my (adoptive) parents died that I really began to question the first months and years of my life,” Cardaras said.Now settled in Athens, she is taking Greek classes and is making progress in understanding her native language.Better access to Greek nationality constitutes a deeply emotional breakthrough for adoptees with fragmented backgrounds.One of them recently shared their experience on social media.”At 12:47 PM Greek time, I received a message announcing that I am now reinstated as a Greek citizen! I am overwhelmed with emotion, thrilled, and on cloud nine!” Stephanie Pazoles wrote on Facebook.