Author: Fatimah Idera

Despite Western intelligence agencies’ fears about the authoritarian regime amassing health data, researchers from China are to be allowed access to half a million United Kingdom General Practitioners (GP) records. Preparations are under way to transfer the records to UK Biobank, a research hub that holds detailed medical information donated by 500,000 volunteers. One of the world’s largest troves of health data, the facility makes its information available to universities, scientific institutes, and private companies. A Guardian analysis shows one in five successful applications for access come from China. For the past year, health officials had been assessing whether extra…

A federal judge has ordered Bank of America to pay $540.3 million in a long-running Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation lawsuit accusing the second-largest U.S. bank of underpaying what it owed for deposit insurance. In a decision made public on Monday, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington, D.C., said the payment covers assessments from the second quarter of 2013 through the end of 2014, plus interest. Recall that the FDIC sued Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America for $1.12 billion in 2017, accusing it of reducing its deposit insurance contributions by failing to honor a 2011 rule that changed how…

Harvard had rejected numerous demands from the Trump administration that it said would cede control of the school to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist. Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the administration of President Donald Trump announced it was freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding to the school. The funding freeze comes after the Trump administration said last month it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.…

Britain said on Tuesday it could keep the country’s last steel blast furnaces burning for at least the next few weeks after securing a delivery of fuel – the latest step in a last-gasp government scramble to save domestic virgin steel production. The government had been racing to secure enough coking coal and iron ore to keep the loss-making furnaces running after passing emergency laws on Saturday to take operational control of the site in northeastern England from Chinese owners Jingye Group. The furnaces need to be constantly fuelled, can not easily be restarted if closed down, and are losing…

The United States has deported another 10 people that it alleges are gang members to El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday, a day before that country’s president is due to visit the White House. Salvadoran police officers escort an alleged gang member who was deported by the U.S. along with others the U.S. alleges are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison. Lawyers and relatives of the migrants held in El Salvador say they are not gang members and had no…

Facebook parent Meta Platforms faces a high-stakes trial in Washington starting on Monday following claims it built an illegal social media monopoly by spending billions of dollars to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp, in a case where U.S. antitrust enforcers seek to unwind the deals. The acquisitions more than a decade ago aimed to eliminate nascent competitors who could threaten Facebook’s status as the go-to social media platform for users to connect with friends and family, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission claims. It filed the case in 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term. The FTC seeks to force Meta to…

Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro has brushed off the insults from Elon Musk after a public spat over global tariffs, denying any dent in their relationship as the two officials in the US government. “It’s not an issue. Everything is fine, Elon Musk and I are great,” said Peter NavarroElon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO and DOGE baron – appointed to slash federal jobs and downsize the workforce and close Trump ally, earlier this month had called Navarro a “moron” after the trade adviser dismissed Musk’s push for “zero tariffs” between the U.S. and Europe. Navarro had called Musk…

South Korea’s acting President Han Duck-soo said on Monday U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to have directed talks on tariffs to begin immediately with South Korea, Japan, and India. Han also said he expected there to be a video meeting between the U.S. and South Korean officials on the proposed Alaska LNG project soon, Yonhap news said. The acting president had explained in detail South Korea’s stance on tariff negotiations to Trump and the U.S. president had been satisfied, Han was quoted as saying during a meeting of the economic security strategy task force. He also vowed to talk directly…

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he would meet the head of Myanmar’s junta in Bangkok this week to push for the extension of a ceasefire between the military government and rebel groups to help earthquake relief. As the chair of the regional the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc this year, Anwar said the meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on Thursday was being held on humanitarian grounds, as they continued to be no formal engagements between Myanmar and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Recall that Myanmar was hit by a devastating earthquake last month that…

Italy is no stranger to financial crises. During the mid-2000s when its economy ground to a halt, some of the country’s most prestigious banks were quickly overwhelmed by bad loans. Tens of billions of euros that had been lent to struggling businesses had to be written off, forcing a string of venerable names to raise emergency capital. Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank and an institution set up to provide charitable loans to the “poor or miserable”, eventually had to be nationalised. Yet it is private equity-backed life insurer Eurovita that occupies a particularly unique place…