Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday he’s donating $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, to boost financial aid for low- and middle-income students.

The Baltimore university said the contribution – the largest ever to any education institution in the U.S. – will allow Johns Hopkins to eliminate student loans in financial aid packages starting next fall. The university will instead offer scholarships that don’t have to be repaid.

 

University President Ronald Daniels said Bloomberg’s contribution will also let the institution permanently commit to “need-blind admissions,” or the principle of admitting the highest-achieving students, regardless of their ability to pay for their education.

 

“Hopkins has received a gift that is unprecedented and transformative,” he said in a statement, noting the prestigious school was founded in 1876 by a $7 million gift from Baltimore merchant Johns Hopkins that was, similarly, the largest gift of its kind at the time.  

 

By way of comparison, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Gates Millennium Scholars program in 1999 with a $1 billion commitment over 20 years. The Chronicle of Higher Education listed it as the largest private donation to a higher-education institution in the U.S. earlier this month.

 

Bloomberg said he expects the money will allow Hopkins to offer more generous scholarships and ease the debt burden for graduates.

 

“America is at its best when we reward people based on the quality of their work, not the size of their pocketbook,” he said in a statement. “Denying students entry to a college based on their ability to pay undermines equal opportunity.”

 

The 76-year-old founder of the global finances services and media company, Bloomberg L.P., is among the world’s richest people. He graduated from Hopkins in 1964, served as New York mayor from 2002 to 2013 and has for years weighed running for president, including in 2020.

 

 

 
…

your ad here

Confusion continues in Washington over what the Trump administration has concluded regarding the death of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi – and the implications for U.S.-Saudi relations. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, President Donald Trump has repeatedly deflected questions about the kingdom’s crown prince amid news reports the CIA believes Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing, last month in Turkey.
…

your ad here

Nearly halfway through his four-year term in the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump says he thinks of himself in the top rung of American presidents.

“I would give myself an A+,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Sunday. “Can I go higher than that?”

But the U.S. leader, in a White House interview taped Friday and aired Sunday, made a rare acknowledgement of an error in judgment, saying he should have gone last Monday to Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the country’s annual Veterans Day honoring those who have served in the U.S. armed forces or are currently serving in one of its military branches.

“In retrospect, I should have,” Trump told interviewer Chris Wallace. The U.S. leader, who has yet to visit U.S. troops in any war zones overseas, also said, “There are things that are being planned. I will be doing that.” He declined to say when such a visit might occur because of security concerns.

In the November 6 nationwide congressional and state elections, opposition Democrats took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years and captured key governor’s races in industrial states that were vital to Trump’s 2016 election as president. National political surveys show Americans disapprove of his White House performance by a 52.9 to 43.3 percent margin, according to an average of polls by Real Clear Politics.

But Trump took no blame for the losses because his name was not on the ballot, even though he told several political rallies ahead of the elections that voters ought to look at the voting that way, as a referendum on his policies and performance during the first 22 months of his presidency.

“I won the Senate and that’s historic, too,” Trump said. “That’s a tremendous victory.” Trump’s Republican party could add two seats to its current 51-49 majority bloc in the Senate, when two close contests are decided.

Trump said Republicans also “had a tremendous set of victories” by winning governorships in the southern states of Georgia and Florida and the midwestern state of Ohio, even as Democrats won governorships in other electoral battlegrounds, including the key midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin that had been held by Republicans.

As for the electoral losses, Trump said, “I didn’t run. My name wasn’t on the ballot. I had people that wouldn’t vote because I wasn’t on the ballot.”

Trump is already deep in planning for his 2020 re-election bid, while a long list of Democrats are considering whether to seek their party’s presidential nomination to oppose him.  

 

 
…

your ad here

Many of the nearly 3,000 Central American migrants who have reached the Mexican border with California via caravan said Saturday that they didn’t feel welcome in Tijuana, where hundreds more migrants were headed after more than a month on the road. 

The vast majority were camped at an outdoor sports complex, sleeping on a dirt baseball field and under bleachers with a view of the steel walls topped by barbed wire at the newly reinforced U.S.-Mexico border. The city opened the complex after other shelters were filled. Church groups provided portable showers, bathrooms and sinks. The federal government estimated the migrant crowd in Tijuana could swell to 10,000. 

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum has called the migrants’ arrival an “avalanche” that the city is ill-prepared to handle, calculating that they will be in Tijuana for at least six months as they wait to file asylum claims. U.S. border inspectors are processing only about 100 asylum claims a day at Tijuana’s main crossing to San Diego. Asylum-seekers register their names in a tattered notebook managed by migrants themselves that had more than 3,000 names even before the caravan arrived. 

While many in Tijuana are sympathetic to the migrants’ plight and are trying to assist, some locals have shouted insults, hurled rocks and even thrown punches at the migrants. 

It’s a stark contrast to the many Mexican communities that welcomed the caravan with signs, music and donations of clothing after it entered Mexico nearly a month ago. Countless residents of rural areas pressed fruit and bags of water into the migrants’ hands as they passed through southern Mexico, wishing them safe journeys. 

Alden Rivera, the Honduran ambassador in Mexico, visited the outdoor sports complex Saturday. Rivera expects the migrants will need to be sheltered for eight months or more, and said he was working with Mexico to get more funds to feed and care for them. He expects the migrant numbers in Tijuana to reach 3,400 over the weekend, with another 1,200 migrants having made it to Mexicali, another border city a few hours east of Tijuana. An additional 1,500 migrants plan to reach the U.S. border region next week. 

Rivera said 1,800 Hondurans have returned to their country since the caravan first set out on Oct. 13, and that he hoped more would make that decision. 

“We want them to return to Honduras,” Rivera said, adding that each migrant must weigh whether to go home, appeal for asylum in Mexico or wait in line to apply for asylum in the U.S. 

The Mexican Interior Ministry said Friday that 2,697 Central American migrants had requested asylum in Mexico under a program that the country launched on Oct. 26 to more quickly get them credentials needed to live, work and study in southern Mexico. 

Ivis Munoz, 26, has considered returning to Honduras. The coffee farmer called his father in Atima, Honduras, on Saturday to consult on his next move a few days after being attacked on a beach by locals in Tijuana. His father told him to stick it out. 

Munoz has a bullet in his leg. A gang member shot him a year ago in Honduras and threatened to kill him if he saw him again. Munoz said he found out later his girlfriend had been cheating on him with the gang member. 

He’s afraid to go home but feels unwelcome in Tijuana. 

Munoz was asleep on a beach in Tijuana with about two dozen other migrants when rocks came raining down on them around 2 a.m. Wednesday. He heard a man shout in the darkness: “We don’t want you here! Go back to your country!”  

Munoz and the others got up and ran for cover, heading toward residential streets nearby. As the sun rose, they hitched a ride on a passing truck to Tijuana’s downtown. Now he is staying at the sports complex. 

“I don’t know what to do,” said Munoz. He fears the U.S. won’t grant him asylum, and that he’ll get deported if he tries to cross into the country without authorization. 

Carlos Padilla, 57, a migrant from Progreso, Honduras, said a Tijuana resident shouted “migrants are pigs” as he passed on the street recently. He did not respond.  

“We didn’t come here to cause problems, we came here with love and with the intention to ask for asylum,” Padilla said. “But they treat us like animals here.” 

Padilla said he would most likely return to Honduras if the U.S. rejected his asylum request. 

The migrants’ expected long stay in Tijuana has raised concerns about the ability of the border city of more than 1.6 million to handle the influx. 

Tijuana officials said they converted the municipal gymnasium and recreational complex into a shelter to keep migrants out of public spaces. The city’s privately run shelters have a maximum capacity of 700. The municipal complex can hold up to 3,000; as of Friday night, there were 2,397 migrants there. 

Some business owners near the shelter complained Saturday of migrants panhandling and stealing. 

Francisco Lopez, 50, owns a furniture store nearby. He said a group of migrants took food from a small grocery a few doors down, and he worries that crime in the area will rise the longer the migrants stay at the shelter. 

Other neighbors expressed empathy. 

“These poor people have left their country and they’re in an unfamiliar place,” said Maria de Jesus Izarraga, 68, who lives two blocks from complex. 

As Izarraga spoke from her home’s front door, a man interrupted to ask for money to buy a plate of beans. He said he came with the caravan and had blisters on his feet. She gave him some pesos, and continued speaking: “I hope this all works out in the best possible way.” 

Outside the complex, lines of migrants snaked along the street to receive donations of clothes and coolers full of bottled water being dropped off by charity groups and others looking to help the migrants. 

Felipe Garza, 55, acknowledged that many in his hometown don’t want to help as he and other volunteers from his church handed migrants coffee and rolls at the impromptu municipal shelter. “It’s uncomfortable to receive such a big multitude of people, but it’s a reality that we have to deal with,” he said. 

Garza surmised that if the Central Americans behave, Tijuana will embrace them just as it did thousands of Haitians in 2016. Those Haitians have since opened restaurants and hair salons and enrolled in local universities. 

Police officer Victor Coronel agreed but wondered how much more the city can take. “The only thing we can do is hope that President [Donald] Trump opens his heart a little,” said Coronel. 

Trump, who sought to make the caravan a campaign issue in last week’s elections, took to Twitter on Friday to aim new criticism at the migrants. 

“Isn’t it ironic that large Caravans of people are marching to our border wanting U.S.A. asylum because they are fearful of being in their country — yet they are proudly waving … their country’s flag. Can this be possible? Yes, because it is all a BIG CON, and the American taxpayer is paying for it,” Trump said in a pair of tweets. 
…

your ad here

U.S. President Donald Trump visited California on Saturday to get a close-up look at the widespread damage that raging wildfires have inflicted on the state. 

“Nobody would have ever thought this could have happened,” he said to reporters after walking through burned-out ruins in the Northern California town of Paradise.  

The death toll rose to 76 Saturday with more than 1,300 people unaccounted for. The county sheriff pleaded with fire evacuees to check the roster of people reported missing and to call in if they are safe. At least 9,700 homes were destroyed.

The blaze known as the Camp Fire is now the deadliest in California history. More than 5,500 firefighters were still trying to bring it under control. It is 55 percent contained.

Trump was accompanied on his visit by Paradise Mayor Jody Jones, California Gov. Jerry Brown, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom and Federal Emergency Management Agency head Brock Long. 

He pledged to the California officials the support of the federal government, saying, “We’re all going to work together.” He vowed also to work with environmental groups on better forest management and added, “Hopefully, this is going to be the last of these because this was a really, really bad one.” 

But when asked whether the fire had changed his mind on climate change, Trump said, “No, no.” He said he believed a lot of factors were to blame. 

The president also visited a local command center in Chico, Calif., and praised the firefighters and other first responders. “You folks have been incredible,” he said, adding that those battling the flames were “fighting like hell.” 

More than a week after the blaze erupted and raced through Paradise, it has burned about 590 square kilometers and is about 50 percent contained, officials said. 

​Woolsey Fire 

Late in the afternoon, Trump landed in Southern California, where the Woolsey Fire has burned nearly 390 square kilometers. Fire officials said the blaze had been about 60 percent contained by Friday. Evacuated residents were returning to the area. 

En route to Southern California, Trump told reporters he had not discussed climate change with Brown and Newsom, both of whom accompanied him on the flight. 

“We have different views,” Trump said. “But maybe not as different as people think.” 

On the same issue, Brown told reporters, “We’ll let science determine this over a longer period of time. Right now we’re collaborating on the most immediate response, and that’s very important.” 

Newsom added, “Once the cameras are gone, the press is gone, the rest of us are gone, we need to make sure we’re there for the folks that have been impacted by these fires the next year or two, five, 10 as we rebuild the communities.” 

Before leaving Washington Saturday morning, Trump suggested the fire damage could have been mitigated if state officials had acted more responsibly. 

“We will be talking about forest management. I’ve been saying for a long time. This could have been a lot different situation. …There’s no question about it,” Trump told reporters at the White House.   

Mike Levin, a Democrat who recently won a midterm election to represent Southern California’s 49th District, posted a tweet Saturday that was directed at Trump. In addition to appealing for more federal assistance, the congressman-elect told Trump that finding fault was unwarranted. 

While in Southern California, Trump was also to meet with family and friends of victims of a Nov. 7 mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, in which a gunman killed a dozen people in a bar before committing suicide. 

Before boarding Air Force One for the return flight to Washington, Trump told reporters, “This has been a tough day when you look at all of the death from one place to the next.”
…

your ad here