Dane died on Thursday afternoon, his representatives announced in a statement. He first revealed in April that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease.
“He spent his final days surrounded by dear friends, his devoted wife [actor Rebecca Gayheart] and his two beautiful daughters, Billie and Georgia, who were the center of his world,” read the statement.
“Throughout his journey with ALS, Eric became a passionate advocate for awareness and research, determined to make a difference for others facing the same fight. He will be deeply missed, and lovingly remembered always. Eric adored his fans and is forever grateful for the outpouring of love and support he’s received. The family has asked for privacy as they navigate this impossible time.”
Dane played Dr Mark Sloan, or “McSteamy”, in Grey’s Anatomy, initially signed for just one episode before becoming a series regular for six seasons. He most recently appeared in the HBO drama Euphoria as Cal Jacobs, the father of Jacob Elordi’s character.
Dane will appear in the upcoming third season of Euphoria, having filmed it in a wheelchair due to his health.
“I feel fortunate that I am able to continue working and am looking forward to returning to set of Euphoria next week,” he told People in April after announcing his diagnosis. “I kindly ask that you give my family and I privacy during this time.”
Ellen Pompeo and Eric Dane in Grey’s Anatomy. Photograph: Scott Garfield/five
Dane was born in San Francisco in 1972. When he was seven, his father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “I never realised how cognizant and aware I was at the time until I had my own kids … [it] must have been devastating at the age of seven,” he once told an interviewer.
He dropped out of high school one month before graduation to take acting classes in Los Angeles, and made his onscreen debut on a 1991 episode of Saved by the Bell. Future roles included turns in The Wonder Years, Married … With Children, Charmed, Roseanne and medical drama Gideon’s Crossing before he was cast in Grey’s Anatomy, appearing in 135 episodes between 2006 and 2012.
Dane later appeared in films including X-Men: The Last Stand, Marley & Me, Valentine’s Day, Burlesque and Bad Boys: Ride or Die. He also starred in and produced five seasons of The Last Ship, a post-apocalyptic drama in which he played the captain of a US Navy warship looking for a cure to a global pandemic. The show went on hiatus in 2017 to give Dane time to address his depression.
ALS is the most common form of motor neurone disease, which means the terms are often used interchangably. It is a terminal degenerative disorder that causes people to lose the use of their limbs and ability to speak, swallow and eventually breathe independently.
There is no cure; those with motor neurone disease die, on average, 27 months after diagnosis, but some patients can live decades – like Stephen Hawking, who was diagnosed with a slow-progressing form of the disease at the age of 21 and lived to 76.
It is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease in North America, named for the Yankees baseball player who was diagnosed with the condition in 1939.
You must have heard the name of Dark Web. In the internet world, dark web is a place where only criminals surf. But what exactly is the dark web? An Indian content creator spent 48 hours on the dark web to find out. Its result will surprise you.
The dark world of the dark web was exposed with just one laptop (Image- File Photo)
What is the Dark Web and is it really that dangerous? This question comes to the mind of millions of people, especially when viral videos and stories are shared on social media. Recently, Indian content creator Achina Sirohi Mayya did an experiment which surprised everyone.
She spent 48 hours on the dark web and revealed what she saw in her YouTube video. Achina is the founder of India’s number one video mastery school named Aevy TV and she already makes videos on tech and content creation. But this time he decided to delve into the depths of the dark web, just out of curiosity. What was revealed was shocking.
What is dark web? The Dark Web is that part of the Internet that is not accessible through normal browsers like Chrome or Firefox. For this, Tor browser is required, which encrypts the user’s location and activity. The dark web is made up of sites with .onion domains, where surfing remains completely anonymous. But this anonymity makes it attractive to criminals. Achina told that he installed Tor, used VPN and then started roaming on .onion links. At first he found many sites that appeared to be scams – like Hitman for Hire, where anyone could pay money to kill someone. But most of them were fake, made just to defraud people.
black business happens Drugs marketplaces were again found on the dark web, where drugs like cocaine, heroin, LSD were being sold with cryptocurrency. Credit card data, hacking tools, malware and even illegal weapons were available. The most horrifying part was the content like child exploitation and revenge porn, seeing which Achina said that she was feeling traumatized. Achina warned in the video – “Most of the things on the dark web are scams, but the real crime that happens is very scary. People go here for privacy, like journalists or activists who want to avoid censorship, but criminals use it for wrong things.” He said that fake products are sold on many sites, such as stolen passwords or fake IDs, but nothing is received after payment. Real deals also take place at some places, but are constantly monitored by police and international agencies.
I am working as a senior sub editor in News 18. The aim of the regional section is to introduce you to the events happening in the states which are being liked on social media. So that you don’t miss any viral content.
Actor Eric Dane, best known for his roles in TV series Grey’s Anatomy and Euphoria, has died aged 53.
His representatives said he died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), known also as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Dane announced his diagnosis last year, and had become an advocate for ALS awareness before his death.
“He spent his final days surrounded by dear friends, his devoted wife, and his two beautiful daughters, Billie and Georgia, who were the centre of his world,” said a statement.
Described as “determined to make a difference for others” with the disease, his representatives said he would be “lovingly remembered” and “deeply missed”.
“Eric adored his fans and is forever grateful for the outpouring of love and support he’s received,” they added.
What is ALS?
ALS is one of four main types of motor neurone disease, and the most common, according to the NHS.
It’s characterised by weakness in the arms and legs that can cause you to trip and drop things.
Any form of motor neurone disease gets worse over time, requiring ongoing care from specialists including physios and speech therapists, and is usually life-shortening.
There is no cure for motor neurone disease, with treatment focused on easing symptoms.
Dane starred in ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy from 2006 until 2012, and reprised his role in 2021. He was also celebrated for his part in HBO’s Euphoria.
Other appearances included Saved By The Bell, Gideon’s Crossing, Marley & Me, and X-Men: The Last Stand.
He was married to Rebecca Gayheart, a fellow actor and model.
His memoir is due to be published later this year.
Iran is rebuilding nuclear sites damaged in previous U.S. strikes and “preparing for war,” despite engaging in talks with the Trump administration, according to a prominent Iranian opposition figure.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said newly released satellite images also prove the regime has accelerated its efforts to restore its “$2 trillion” uranium enrichment capabilities.
“The regime has clearly stepped up efforts to rebuild its uranium enrichment capabilities,” Jafarzadeh told Fox News Digital. “It is preparing itself for a possible war by trying to preserve its nuclear weapons program and ensure its protection.”
Reconstruction activity appears to be underway at Iran’s Isfahan nuclear complex.(Planet Labs PBC/Handout via Reuters)
“That said, the ongoing rebuilding of Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities is particularly alarming as the regime is now engaged in nuclear talks with the United States,” he added.
New satellite images released by Earth intelligence monitor, Planet Labs, show reconstruction activity appears to be underway at the Isfahan complex.
Isfahan is one of three Iranian uranium enrichment plants targeted in the U.S. military operation known as “Midnight Hammer.”
The June 22 operation involved coordinated Air Force and Navy strikes on the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan facilities.
“These efforts in Isfahan involve rebuilding its centrifuge program and other activities related to uranium enrichment,” Jafarzadeh said.
The renewed movements come as Iran participated in talks with the U.S. in Geneva.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump warned that “bad things” would happen if Iran did not make a deal.
While the talks were aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, Jafarzadeh argues that for the regime, talks would be nothing more than a tactical delay.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “agreed to the nuclear talks as it would give the regime crucial time to avoid or limit the consequences of confrontation with the West,” according to Jafarzadeh.( Office of the Supreme Leader of Iran via Getty Images)
“Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei agreed to the nuclear talks as it would give the regime crucial time to avoid or limit the consequences of confrontation with the West,” he said.
Jafarzadeh also described the regime spending at least “$2 trillion” on nuclear capabilities, which he said “is higher than the entire oil revenue generated since the regime came to power in Iran in 1979.”
“Tehran is trying to salvage whatever has remained of its nuclear weapons program and quickly rebuild it,” he said. “It has heavily invested in the nuclear weapons program as a key tool for the survival of the regime.”
Satellite imagery taken on January 30, 2026, shows a new roof over a previously destroyed building at Natanz nuclear site.(2026 PLANET LABS PBC/Handout via Reuters)
Jafarzadeh is best known for publicly revealing the existence of Iran’s Natanz nuclear site in 2002, which led to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and intensified global scrutiny of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
“The insistence of the Iranian regime during the nuclear talks on maintaining its uranium enrichment capabilities, while rebuilding its damaged sites, is a clear indication that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has no plans to abandon its nuclear weapons program,” he said.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, led by Maryam Rajavi, exposed for the first time the nuclear sites in Natanz, Arak, Fordow and more than 100 other sites and projects, Jafarzadeh said, “despite a massive crackdown by the regime on this movement.”
Emma Bussey is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Before joining Fox, she worked at The Telegraph with the U.S. overnight team, across desks including foreign, politics, news, sport and culture.
India’s top telco, Reliance Jio, has announced plans to spend $110 billion on datacenters to run AI workloads and says it will use them to deliver services with the same “extreme affordability” it brought to the mobile communications market.
Jio launched its mobile network in 2016 and within half a year won 100 million subscribers by offering plans that included unlimited data at prices that significantly undercut competitors. It later introduced its own handsets, some that cost around $12, which helped it to become India’s number one telco three years after launch. It later cemented its position with a $27 smartphone created with help from Google, a rapid 5G rollout, and cheap subscriptions that bundle streamed content with carriage.
This is not speculative investment. It is not purchasing valuation
Indian authorities say the carrier now has 514 million subscribers and 51 percent of the Indian mobile comms market. India now enjoys some of the lowest mobile data costs in the world.
Company chairman Mukesh Ambani yesterday announced Jio’s intention to spend $110 billion on AI infrastructure over seven years.
“This is not speculative investment. It is not purchasing valuation,” he said in a speech at India’s AI Impact Summit. “This is patient, disciplined, nation-building capital designed to create durable economic value and strategic resilience for decades to come.”
Ambani added his belief that “the biggest constraint in AI today is not talent or imagination. It is scarcity and high cost of compute.” Jio will therefore build multiple gigawatts of datacenter capacity that Ambani said will operate with “the same reliability, quality, scale and extreme affordability that transformed connectivity.”
“India cannot afford to rent intelligence. Therefore, we will reduce the cost of intelligence as dramatically as we did the cost of data.”
Given Jio’s dominance of Indian mobile telecoms, the company could well do the same for consumer AI services.
That’s not necessarily bad news for western AI companies because Jio also announced a partnership that will see some of its products include OpenAI’s search service.
OpenAI, meanwhile, announced a formal presence in India to serve the 100 million users it already has there. The company also said it will build sovereign AI capabilities for India by using datacenters operated by Tata Group, a giant industrial conglomerate that has pledged it will build 100MW of AI infrastructure for OpenAI. Tata may scale that to 1GW.
India’s AI summit has certainly attracted plenty of attention, with 17 national leaders attending (plus three deputy leaders). OpenAI boss Sam Altman attended. So did Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who delivered an anodyne speech. Bill Gates cancelled his appearance – reportedly to ensure his presence in the Epstein files did not distract from the event.
Indian lawmakers have hailed the event as establishing the nation as an AI leader, a claim that’s a little hard to support, as while the nation remains a major source of technology talent and intends widespread use of AI in government services, it lacks significant AI infrastructure and has not yet produced a major company in the field.
Maybe Jio will fill that role, given its past successes. ®
The British Monarchy On Thursday (19 February 2026), former Prince Andrew was arrested by the police in the case related to Jeffrey Epstein, after which he was kept in custody for questioning for several hours. In British history, such action against a senior member of the royal family is considered very strange. The surprising thing is that Prince Andrew was arrested on the day of his 66th birthday.
At around 8am on Thursday morning, police raided Andrew’s new residence on the royal Sandringham estate in Norfolk and took him into custody. “A 60-year-old man from Norfolk has been arrested on suspicion of abuse of public office,” Thames Valley Police said in an official statement. As per the rules in Britain, the police did not make the name public. By evening, police confirmed that the arrested person had been released pending investigation. Although the search operation in Norfolk has been completed, investigations are ongoing at another property in Berkshire, believed to be Andrew’s former residence Royal Lodge.
statement of king charles iii
King Charles III issued a written statement immediately after the incident. He said, ‘The law should be allowed to take its course.’ He also assured that Buckingham Palace will provide full cooperation to the police. Although the matter was serious, King Charles continued with his scheduled public appearances, including the opening of London Fashion Week. This was seen as an attempt to maintain the stability and normalcy of the monarchy. Andrew was stripped of his royal titles last year and was also removed from his official residence in Windsor. Despite this, he still remains at eighth place in the list of succession.
Controversy related to Jeffrey Epstein
Andrew’s name has been linked to the Jeffrey Epstein case for a long time. Recently unsealed documents claim he sent potentially confidential reports to Epstein when he was Britain’s trade envoy in 2010. These reports are said to include information related to official visits to Asian countries. Epstein was convicted in the US in 2008 of soliciting a minor for prostitution. He died in jail in 2019.
Legal consequences and possible punishment
In Britain, the allegation of Misconduct in Public Office is considered serious. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, the maximum punishment for this crime can be life imprisonment. At least nine British police forces are reviewing documents related to Epstein, many of which are said to be related to Andrew. Recently, after the files released by the US Justice Department, the scope of investigation has increased further.
The husband of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Donald Trump’s labor secretary, has reportedly been barred from the labor department’s headquarters in Washington after at least two female staff members accused him of sexually assaulting them, the New York Times, Politico and the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The allegations against Shawn DeRemer come as Chavez-DeRemer is under fire over allegations of misconduct.
According to the reports, DeRemer is accused of touching two women inappropriately at the labor department’s main building, which is named for Frances Perkins, the first woman ever to serve in the US cabinet. One of the incidents reportedly took place during working hours in December, and according to the Times, was recorded via security cameras in the office. The footage has reportedly been reviewed as part of a criminal investigation into the incident.
A police report reviewed by the Guardian shows DC’s Metropolitan police department received a complaint on 24 January about an incident on 18 December at the labor department’s offices. “The complainant reported a sexual contact against her will,” reads the report. The MPD would not confirm the suspect’s name.
Politico, citing an unnamed source, said security staff at the Francis Perkins Building were instructed in late January to deny DeRemer entry.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, DeRemer denied the allegations. “I have not done any of this, and I categorically deny these things. I will absolutely, categorically fight everything in this,” he said.
The labor department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Chavez-DeRemer, a former congresswoman who lost her seat representing part of the Portland metro area in 2024, was nominated to Trump’s cabinet shortly after he won the election. Since then, she has faced several controversies of her own.
In January, a security officer assigned to protect the labor secretary was reportedly placed on leave as officials investigate an alleged romantic relationship between them.
Two of the secretary’s top aides were also placed on leave as the department’s inspector general reportedly investigated allegations that Chavez-DeRemer drank in her office during work hours and used taxpayer funds to pay for personal trips to destinations such as Las Vegas. One of those trips was allegedly with a staffer she was reportedly having an inappropriate relationship with.
The labor department and Chavez DeRemer’s attorney have denied the allegations.
A biography of the secretary on the department’s website says she “and her high school sweetheart, Dr Shawn DeRemer, founded an anesthesia management company and several medical clinics across the Pacific north-west”.
Take the Central Line into the middle of London and just before the train arrives at Bank station, something strange happens
Rather than approaching in a straight line, the tunnel begins to twist and turn round dramatically. The angle of the curve is part of the explanation for why there is an enormous gap between the carriages and the platform at the station – bigger than nearly anywhere else on the network.
Why the curve? Why the gap? The main answer is: the tunnels have to go around the single most intriguing, and least visited place in central London: the Bank of England‘s vaults.
Far deep beneath the ground, right in the heart of the financial district, is a city within a city. Some 40% of the Bank’s floor space is to be found not above ground but under the earth, and at the heart of this underground network is the biggest gold storage facility in Europe.
Image:There is more gold in the vaults of the Bank of England than in the Fort Knox gold depository in the US.
There is more gold in the vaults here at the Bank of England than in Fort Knox – more than in any other single place in the world, save for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And now, for the first time, Sky News has been invited down into the vaults to see them for ourselves.
It almost goes without saying that the security measures to be granted access were thorough in the extreme. We had to pass through a number of gates and steel doors, to be stripped of our phones and any money on us, to turn our cameras off and agree not to divulge the precise mazy path we took from the Bank’s main lobby through to the vault. But once we finally reached the gold, the sight of it was breathtaking.
The Bank has 12 vaults, each of which holds thousands of bars of gold. We filmed in one of them – vault 4 – but caught glimpses of two of the other vaults beyond it, a hint of the vastness of this store of wealth. All told, there are more than 5,000 tonnes of gold in the Bank’s vault. While that’s about 1,000 tonnes short of the holdings in New York, in another sense, the Bank’s vaults are only the tip of a bullion iceberg, since the Bank is only one of a number of major vaults dotted around London.
That comes back to an important point: London remains the world’s capital for the trade in physical gold. Thanks in part to history, it remains the primary place in the world where countries, companies, and individuals trade the precious metal with each other in physical form.
The vast majority of the gold in the Bank’s vaults belongs not to the Bank of England (it owns only two bars for display) or even the UK government (we’ll come back to that in a moment) but to other countries. For this is where more than 60 central banks around the world store their gold, to enable them to trade it.
There are curios aplenty. I was shown bars of gold that were recovered from shipwrecks and explosions, the scars still visible on them. There are bars with the Soviet hammer and sickle still branded on them, though no Nazi swastikas. There were a few such bars here, but they were melted down some years ago.
Image:Vault 4 at the Bank of England
For the most part, you can trade the gold without it even leaving the vault. Each bar (they are all of standard size, 400 troy ounces, which works out at between 12 and 13 kilograms – which by the way makes them surprisingly heavy) has a serial number or bar code and when they get bought and sold, all that happens is the code is assigned to a different customer; the bar stays where it is. But sometimes, customers insist on moving the physical bar, and that’s where things get interesting.
The Trump effect
For early last year, a remarkable phenomenon took place. As investors fretted that Donald Trump might be about to impose tariffs on the movement of precious metals, as well as everything else, the price of gold in New York, normally pretty much identical to the London price, jumped higher. All of a sudden, there was an opportunity for anyone with the wherewithal to shift physical gold across from London to make a quick turn. So investors rushed to take gold bars out of the vaults here and fly them across to the US (via Switzerland where they were melted down from London dimensions to New York dimensions).
The idea of gold flying around the world might seem a little odd until you note that even in normal times many planes flying into and out of London Heathrow have a gold bar or two inside the cargo hold. This is how the gold market works – very much beneath the radar.
When that flurry happened a year ago, the Bank actually had trouble satisfying the urgent demand for bars, in large part because it’s simply not equipped for this kind of thing: there is only one gate through which bullion deliveries happen, and physically moving that much gold was an inordinate challenge. However, in the following months, the prices equalised and gold began to flow back into the Bank’s vaults. Their holdings, while a little lower than at the beginning of last year, began rising again.
Gold’s enduring importance
Only a little over 300 tonnes of gold in the vaults here belongs to Britain. It used to be considerably more but, in a decision which has been chewed over extensively since then, back in the late 1990s Gordon Brown opted to sell more than half of Britain’s reserves off. Back then the gold price was around $275 per ounce. Today the price is close to $5,000 (£3,714). A recent analysis found that the sale, which involved swapping the gold for bonds, resulted in a $47bn notional loss. The figure would likely be higher today, since gold prices have risen since then.
Image:Gordon Brown was chancellor when he decided to sell off 395 tonnes of UK gold reserves between 1999 and 2002.
“I think at that point there was a genuine debate about whether it’s sensible to have reserves – whether you can make them more useful,” said the governor, Andrew Bailey. “And I think the Gordon Brown debate was very much about how gold just sits in a vault – that it’s not useful in that sense. So I think you’ve got to put it into that context now.”
The governor said that recent events, including the spike in gold prices, had underlined the importance of the asset, and London’s part in its market.
“Gold is viewed as a flight-to-safety hedge against uncertainty in the state of the world – and that’s been true for quite a long time,” he said. “There is no question that the greater uncertainty around world events has again prompted that. But I think there’s something even more true at the moment: that if you look at the mix of what are viewed as the flight-to-safety assets, [there’s] gold, but dollar assets were also viewed [as safe havens].
“The dollar is somewhat the focus of attention at the moment in that much of that question around uncertainty in the world. So I think that’s putting even more emphasis at the moment on gold as the safe asset. So we’ve seen an even bigger price rise in gold.”
Image:Ed Conway speaks all things gold with Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey
In short, much of the recent rise in gold could be put down to the “Trump effect” with investors fretting about his economic policy, his trade war and the pressure he is trying to put on the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
History matters
All of which puts London’s bars in the spotlight. They are, in one sense, no stranger to politics and to controversy. After all, this is the repository of much of the world’s governmental wealth. So whenever regimes change and try to shift that wealth, London is often part of the conversation – as the ultimate custodian. Take Venezuela: the Maduro regime has been demanding the repatriation of its gold reserves – stored here at the Bank – for some years, taking the Bank of England to court over it. But since the government does not recognise the regime, it has thus far refused. A government decision – but one which places the Bank right in the middle of events.
Do such episodes underline the trust investors have in London as the safest, most logical place to put their gold? That’s a question some have been asking in recent years, especially after G7 nations seized overseas assets owned by the Russian government following the invasion of Ukraine.
Adrian Ash, director of research at Bullionvault, said: “London’s position as the world’s central hub for physical gold was only strengthened last year by the risk of President Trump imposing trade tariffs on US gold imports. Exports of gold bullion out of China are still effectively banned, making the metal’s No.1 consumer a dead-end for global flows. Shanghai and Beijing’s push to attract foreign gold holdings has so far failed to beat worries over property rights and the rule of law. Again, London stands out with its long history of political and legal stability.”
When it comes to gold, history matters. That’s part of the explanation for this continued wonder under the ground in London. An extraordinary warren of vaults with extraordinary wealth within them.
The University of Texas System’s Board of Regents on Thursday approved a rule requiring its universities to allow students to graduate without studying “unnecessarily controversial subjects.”
The rule, approved unanimously, also states that faculty must include the topics they plan to teach in their syllabi and follow that plan throughout the course, according to The Texas Tribune. When courses include controversial subject matter, instructors are directed to take a “broad and balanced approach” to the discussion.
The policy does not define what constitutes “controversial” or a “broad and balanced approach.” Board Chair Kevin Eltife said the lack of specifics was because the system wanted to create a policy that could work in the current politically charged environment.
The University of Texas System’s Board of Regents approved a rule requiring its universities to allow students to graduate without studying “unnecessarily controversial subjects.”(Getty Images)
“We are in difficult times,” he said, according to The Texas Tribune. “Vagueness can be our friend.”
Critics of the new rule argued that failing to define these terms would force administrators to interpret them on a case-by-case basis, which could lead to professors leaving out difficult material to avoid the risk of complaints.
“Will [administrators] be experts in the relevant disciplines or will they just seek to avoid unpleasant publicity?” Peter Onyisi, a University of Texas at Austin physics professor, said during public testimony from faculty, students and alumni who opposed the policy, according to The Texas Tribune.
Other speakers warned that limiting controversial topics would leave students unprepared for careers that require addressing complex political and social issues.
The rule states that faculty must include the topics they plan to teach in their syllabi and follow that plan throughout the course.(Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
“The job market is really tough right now, ask any undergrad,” David Gray Widder, a professor in UT-Austin’s School of Information, said during public testimony. “We can’t do this to our students.”
Allen Liu, a civil rights attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, also suggested that the rule could lead to “viewpoint discrimination” and discourage instruction about slavery, segregation and other topics connected to Black history.
The UT System had a rule for at least a decade giving faculty freedom in the classroom while also stating that they “are expected not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter that has no relation to his or her subject,” The Texas Tribune reported.
University of Texas System Board of Regents Chair Kevin Eltife said the rule’s lack of specifics was because the system wanted to create a policy that could work in the current politically charged environment.(Sara Diggins/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
In the past year, public universities in Texas have been pressured by Republicans at the state and federal level to root out what has been described as liberal bias.
Under a new state law, regents appointed by the governor have increased oversight of classroom instruction, hiring and discipline.
A gender identity lesson at Texas A&M University last fall that ignited conservative backlash also led the Texas A&M and Texas Tech systems to adopt policies restricting instruction on race, gender and sexuality, although the UT System’s new rule does not explicitly ban those topics.
The United Nations announced that the United States has paid approximately $160m towards its nearly $4bn in outstanding dues.
The payment goes towards the UN’s regular operating budget, according to spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
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But the shortfall comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump has openly questioned its commitment to the UN and has slashed money earmarked for the international body.
Still, on Thursday, Trump appeared to endorse funding the UN during the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace in Washington, DC.
“We’re going to help them money-wise, and we’re going to make sure the United Nations is viable,” Trump said. “And I think it’s going to eventually live up to its potential. That will be a big day.”
The UN has indicated that the US owes about $2.196bn to its regular budget, including $767m for the current year. Another $1.8bn is owed for the UN’s peacekeeping operations.
A financial crisis
For years, the UN has faced a financial crisis, with a growing shortfall of contributions. Each of the organisation’s 193 member states is required to contribute, based on its economic ability.
Poorer countries could be asked to contribute as little as 0.001 percent of the UN’s regular budget. Wealthier countries could reach the maximum contribution amount of 22 percent.
But unpaid dues have already forced the UN to slash its spending and reduce its services.
In a stark warning last month, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cautioned that the international body faces an “imminent financial collapse” unless its financial rules are overhauled or all 193 member nations pay their dues.
Guterres revealed that the UN’s regular operating budget could be depleted as early as July, a scenario that would severely jeopardise its global operations.
The US is the largest donor to the UN, as the world’s largest economy. But it currently owes billions in unpaid dues.
UN officials have stated that the US accounts for approximately 95 percent of the arrears to the organisation’s regular budget.
‘Empty words’
Since returning to the White House for a second term in January 2025, Trump has elevated concerns that US dues might go unpaid.
The Republican leader has repeatedly criticised the UN as ineffective, even articulating that sentiment at September’s UN General Assembly.
“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Trump asked the assembly. “All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words.”
Throughout his second term so far, he has cut foreign aid spending and withdrawn from international commitments. In January, for instance, his government pulled out of 31 UN programmes, including its democracy fund and a body that works on maternal and child health.
But on Thursday, at his Board of Peace meeting, Trump appeared to take a warmer stance towards the UN, saying he planned to work “very closely” with the organisation.
“Someday, I won’t be here. The United Nations will be,” he said, seeming to endorse its longevity.
Trump also acknowledged the organisation’s financial distress: “They need help, and they need help money-wise.” He did not mention the US arrears.
While the Board of Peace establishment was meant to oversee the Gaza ceasefire, many see it as an attempt by Trump to rival the UN Security Council’s role in preventing and ending conflicts around the world.
Critics have described the board, which Trump chairs, as a “parallel system” that risks undermining the UN’s authority and operations.
Trump himself appeared to position his Board of Peace as an oversight body for the UN in Thursday’s remarks.
The Board of Peace, he said, “is going to almost be looking over the United Nations and making sure it runs properly”.
