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  • Moscow says 700,000 children from Ukraine conflict zones now in Russia

    Moscow says 700,000 children from Ukraine conflict zones now in Russia

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    [1/2]A view shows a residential building destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 14, 2022. Picture taken with a drone. REUTERS/Pavel Klimov/File Photo

    July 3 (Reuters) – Russia has brought some 700,000 children from the conflict zones in Ukraine into Russian territory, Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said late on Sunday.

    “In recent years, 700,000 children have found refuge with us, fleeing the bombing and shelling from the conflict areas in Ukraine,” Karasin wrote on his Telegram messaging channel.

    Russia launched a full-scale invasion on its western neighbour Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow says its programme of bringing children from Ukraine into Russian territory is to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.

    However, Ukraine says many children have been illegally deported and the United States says thousands of children have been forcibly removed from their homes.

    Most of the movement of people and children occurred in the first few months of the war and before Ukraine started its major counter offensive to regain occupied territories in the east and south in late August.

    In July 2022, the United States estimated that Russia “forcibly deported” 260,000 children, while Ukraine’s Ministry of Integration of Occupied Territories, says 19,492 Ukrainian children are currently considered illegally deported.

    (This story has been refiled to fix typographical errors in paragraph 3)

    Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Michael Perry

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Harvard ‘legacy’ policy challenged on heels of affirmative action ruling

    Harvard ‘legacy’ policy challenged on heels of affirmative action ruling

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    July 3 (Reuters) – Three civil rights groups filed a complaint against Harvard on Monday, claiming its preferential policy for undergraduate applicants with family ties to the elite school overwhelmingly benefits white students, days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down its race-conscious admissions policies.

    The groups filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education claiming that Harvard’s preferences for “legacy” applicants violates a federal law banning race discrimination for programs that receive federal funds, as virtually all U.S. colleges and universities do.

    Last week, the Supreme Court said race-conscious policies adopted by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina to ensure that more non-white students are admitted are unconstitutional. The decision was a major blow to efforts to attract diverse student bodies and is expected to prompt new challenges to admission policies.

    Harvard College is the undergraduate school of Harvard University.

    The groups in Monday’s complaint said the Supreme Court ruling had made it even more imperative to eliminate policies that disadvantage non-white applicants.

    Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The groups are represented by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based nonprofit that describes itself on its website as working with “communities of color and immigrants to fight discrimination.”

    Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, the group’s executive director, said the Supreme Court last week made clear that any policies that disadvantage racial groups are unlawful by noting that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

    “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process,” he said in a statement.

    Students and pedestrians walk through the Yard at Harvard University, after the school asked its students not to return to campus after Spring Break and said it would move to virtual instruction for graduate and undergraduate classes, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., March 10, 2020. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

    Legacy policies, which are common at U.S. colleges and universities, have become increasingly controversial

    President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in remarks following las week’s Supreme Court ruling, said schools should consider eliminating legacy policies because they “expand privilege instead of opportunity.”

    Several prominent lawmakers from both parties made similar comments. Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, called legacy policies “affirmative action for white people” in a tweet.

    According to Monday’s complaint, nearly 70% of Harvard applicants with family ties to donors or alumni are white and are about six times more likely to be admitted than other applicants.

    About 28% of Harvard’s class of 2019 were legacies, the groups said in the complaint. That means fewer admissions slots were available for non-white applicants who are far less likely to have family ties to the school, they said.

    The groups are asking the Department of Education to investigate Harvard’s admission practices and order the school to abandon legacy preferences if it wants to continue receiving federal funding. Michael Kippins, one of the lawyers who filed the complaint, said in an email that Lawyers for Civil Rights has not ruled out filing a lawsuit against Harvard in the future.

    When the Supreme Court heard the Harvard and UNC cases last October, a lawyer for the group that had sued the schools argued that eliminating legacy preferences “would make Harvard far less white, wealthy, and privileged.”

    Conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas appeared to agree, pressing Harvard’s lawyer on why the school could not get rid of the legacy policy instead of granting separate preferences to non-white students.

    The lawyer, Seth Waxman, told the court that there was no evidence that ending legacy preferences would lead to a more diverse student body.

    Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Leslie Adler

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Daniel Wiessner

    Thomson Reuters

    Dan Wiessner (@danwiessner) reports on labor and employment and immigration law, including litigation and policy making. He can be reached at daniel.wiessner@thomsonreuters.com.

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  • Russian charged with war crimes may brief U.N. Security Council

    Russian charged with war crimes may brief U.N. Security Council

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    UNITED NATIONS, April 3 (Reuters) – Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, is likely to brief an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council this week, according to a note seen by Reuters on Monday.

    Russia, which holds the monthly rotating presidency of the 15-member body for April, told council members in a note that it plans to hold an informal meeting on Wednesday on Ukraine, focused on “evacuating children from conflict zone.”

    “Participants will hear ‘first hand’ information from the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights of the Russian Federation, as well as from children evacuated from the conflict area,” read the note.

    The commissioner is Maria Lvova-Belova. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova, accusing them of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, as well as the unlawful transfer of people to Russia from Ukraine since Moscow invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.

    “They cannot invite a credible briefer because they do not have any credibility on this issue,” Britain’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador James Kariuki told Reuters in a statement. “Russian leaders have been charged by the ICC with unlawfully deporting children from Ukraine to Russia. That is a war crime.”

    Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Monday that the meeting briefers would be announced shortly. Such meetings are held at U.N. headquarters, but not in the Security Council chamber, and briefings can be done virtually.

    ‘APRIL FOOL’S JOKE’

    Moscow has not concealed a program under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.

    Nebenzia told reporters last month that the informal meeting of Security Council members to be held on Wednesday had been planned long before the ICC announcement and it was not intended to be a rebuttal of the charges against Putin and Lvova-Belova.

    While a feature of Russia’s presidency, members do not need to be the rotating monthly president to hold such meetings.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to travel to New York to chair formal Security Council meetings later in the month on the Middle East and on “effective multilateralism through the defense of the principles of the U.N. Charter.”

    The 193-member U.N. General Assembly has criticized Russia for violating the founding U.N. Charter by invading its neighbor and called for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in line with the principles of the U.N. Charter.

    Given Russia’s Security Council presidency started on April 1, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told reporters on Monday: “It’s like an April Fool’s joke … We expect that they will behave professionally.”

    “But we also expect that they will use their seat to spread disinformation and to promote their own agenda as it relates to Ukraine, and we will stand ready to call them out at every single moment that they attempt to do that,” she said.

    Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Don Durfee and Bill Berkrot

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • After quake, Syrian schools silent as teachers, students perish

    After quake, Syrian schools silent as teachers, students perish

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    JANDARIS, Syria, Feb 12 (Reuters) – An eerie silence lay over the courtyard of Ramadan al-Suleiman’s nursery in northern Syria on Sunday as he picked his way through smashed cinderblocks, twisted metal and broken plastic swings.

    The modest nursery in the town of Jandaris – about 70 km (44 miles) from the city of Aleppo – once hosted 100 toddlers, whose dusty pictures now lay strewn among the debris caused by Monday’s devastating earthquake. Some of those children and teachers would not be coming back, Suleiman said.

    “We lost two of the female teachers from the important cadres at the school. We lost seven or eight students that we know of,” he told Reuters.

    They were among more than 2,600 people reported so far to have died in the earthquake in opposition-held parts of northern Syria. More than 3,500 were killed across Syria in total and nearly 30,000 in Turkey.

    Children’s education in Syria was already hard hit by the war that has raged since 2011. For years, schools would regularly shut because of fighting, mortar fire by rebel groups or air strikes by the Syrian government or Russia.

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    The earthquake destroyed more than 115 schools in Syria and damaged hundreds more, according to a United Nations update published Saturday.

    More than 100 others were being used as makeshift shelters to host thousands displaced by the earthquake, which brought apartment blocks and even tiny rural homes crashing down on residents’ heads.

    Suleiman has been trying to track down some of the nursery children from whose families he has not heard.

    “I went around to buildings where I know some of the students live – and 90% of them were destroyed. There are some pupils that I suspect are dead because we cannot reach their families at all,” he said.

    Jandaris was particularly devastated, with many concrete buildings pulverised.

    Rescuers across Syria, including in the north, have been pulling young children out from under the rubble – some of them miraculously alive even almost a week after the quake, but orphaned.

    Others did not make it.

    Mohammad Hassan said he still doesn’t know what happened to his seven-year-old daughter Lafeen’s friends and classmates.

    “We asked around and discovered that one of her teachers died, may God bless her soul,” Hassan told Reuters as Lafeen played quietly in his lap.

    “She is shocked, she asks me to go see if something happened to the kindergarten. I’m telling her nothing happened and I will take you there once it reopens.”

    Reporting by Khalil Ashawi; Writing by Maya Gebeily
    Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • It’s ‘now or never’ to stop Japan’s shrinking population, PM says

    It’s ‘now or never’ to stop Japan’s shrinking population, PM says

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    Jan 23 (Reuters) – Japanese Prime minister Fumio Kishida pledged on Monday to take urgent steps to tackle the country’s declining birth rate, saying it was “now or never” for one of the world’s oldest societies.

    Japan has in recent years been trying to encourage its people to have more children with promises of cash bonuses and better benefits, but it remains one of the most expensive places in the world to raise a child, according to surveys.

    Births plunged to a new record low last year, according to official estimates, dropping below 800,000 for the first time – a watershed moment that came eight years earlier than the government had expected.

    That most likely precipitated a further population decline in a country where the median age is 49, the highest in the world behind only the tiny city-state of Monaco.

    “Our nation is on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions,” Kishida said in a policy speech at the opening of this year’s parliamentary session.

    “It is now or never when it comes to policies regarding births and child-rearing – it is an issue that simply cannot wait any longer,” he added.

    Kishida said he would submit plans to double the budget for child-related policies by June, and that a new Children and Families government agency to oversee the issue would be set up in April.

    Japan is the third-most-expensive country globally to raise a child, according to YuWa Population Research, behind only China and South Korea, countries also seeing shrinking populations in worrying signs for the global economy.

    Other countries are also coming to grips with ageing and shrinking populations. Last week, China reported that its population dropped in 2022 for the first time in 60 years.

    Reporting by Sakura Murakami; Editing by John Geddie and Gerry Doyle

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Virginia school official knew 6-year-old who shot teacher may have had gun

    Virginia school official knew 6-year-old who shot teacher may have had gun

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    Jan 13 (Reuters) – At least one administrator at the Virginia school where a 6-year-old boy shot a teacher last week was aware the boy may have had a gun, but no weapon was found when the boy’s backpack was searched before the shooting, school officials said on Friday.

    Superintendent George Parker told parents at Rickneck Elementary School during a virtual meeting on Thursday that a school administrator learned the boy may have had a gun, according to Michelle Price, a spokeswoman for Newport News Public Schools. The information was first reported by Virginia’s WAVY TV.

    The administrator has not been identified nor is it clear exactly how they learned the boy may have had a gun.

    Once alerted, school officials searched the boy’s backpack, but did not find the gun. Why the gun was not found at that time has not been explained. The shooting took place about 2-1/2 hours after the boy’s backpack was searched.

    Abigail Zwerner, a 25-year-old teacher, was shot a week ago by the young student. Police hailed the teacher as a hero earlier this week for managing to evacuate students from her classroom even after she was shot. Police on Friday said Zwerner’s last known condition was stable.

    The boy who shot Zwerner was in the custody of the Newport News Department of Human Services, police said.

    Police said the investigation is continuing and once complete, they will present findings to the Commonwealth’s Attorney in Newport News, who would make any decision regarding possible charges against the boy’s mother.

    The mother legally purchased the 9 mm Taurus handgun, police have said, but could face misdemeanor charges if it’s found she did not properly secure the weapon in her home.

    The boy took the handgun from his home, placed it in his backpack and removed it while Zwerner was teaching class, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said earlier this week. The boy pointed the gun at the teacher and fired once. Zwerner was shot through the hand and into the chest.

    After the shot, another woman who works at the school rushed into the classroom and held the boy down while Zwerner escorted the estimated 16 to 20 students out, Drew said. When police arrived, they found the gun on the floor.

    Parker previously told reporters the school was unprepared for a 6-year-old bringing a gun to school and firing it, saying this marked only the third time since 1970 that a child aged 6 or younger had discharged a weapon at a U.S. school.

    The Newport News school board on Thursday announced that metal detectors would be installed in every school in the city following the shooting.

    Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Three members of University of Virginia football team slain in shooting, suspect in custody

    Three members of University of Virginia football team slain in shooting, suspect in custody

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    Nov 14 (Reuters) – A suspect in a shooting at the University of Virginia that left three members of the University of Virginia football team dead was in custody on Monday, hours after he allegedly opened fire on a bus full of students returning from a field trip.

    University police said during a news conference that the suspect, student Christopher Darnell Jones, 22, was arrested hours after the shooting that unfolded at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday (0330 GMT on Monday) at the school in Charlottesville, Virginia, attended by 25,000 students.

    Minutes after the shooting, school officials issued alerts on social media telling students and staff to shelter in place with one tweet saying to “RUN HIDE FIGHT.” The sprawling campus remained on alert throughout the night and morning as law enforcement officers conducted a massive manhunt for Jones.

    University President Jim Ryan identified the slain students as Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis and D’Sean Perry.

    Chandler and Perry died on the scene, while Davis died of his wounds at a hospital. Two other students were wounded and taken to UVA Medical Center, where one is in good condition and another in critical condition, University Police Chief Tim Longo said.

    The shooting unfolded on a bus full of students after it pulled into a parking garage on campus, Ryan said. The students had just returned from a class field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C.

    Jones was armed with a handgun, Longo said.

    Jones, who was apprehended off campus, was held on three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, Longo said. It was unclear how he was taken into custody.

    [1/6] A handout picture shows college football player Lavel Davis Jr. who was killed in a shooting attack at the University of Virginia, in this undated handout. University of Virginia/Handout via REUTERS

    ‘HEARTBROKEN’

    Jones, who was listed as a player on the school’s football team in 2018, came to the attention of the University of Virginia’s threat assessment team in the fall of 2022, according to Longo. In September 2022, the Office of Student Affairs reported to the team that it received information Jones had made a comment about possessing a gun to a person that was unaffiliated with the university, though no threat was made.

    During an investigation, the person said they never saw the gun, and Jones’ roommate reported that he never saw the presence of a weapon.

    The investigation was later closed because the witnesses would not participate with the process, he said.

    Ryan said in a letter posted on social media hours after the shooting that he was “heartbroken,” and added that classes were canceled for the day.

    “This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia,” he wrote.

    The shooting was the latest episode of gun violence on U.S. college and high school campuses. The bloodshed has fueled debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the United States, where the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms.

    A 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, about 150 miles (241 km) southwest of Charlottesville, left 33 people dead, including the shooter, and 23 injured in one of the deadliest college mass shootings in U.S. history.

    (This story has been corrected to add Davis’ name in fifth paragraph)

    Reporting by Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Toby Chopra, Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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