US Senator Van Hollen meets wrongly deported man in El Salvador 

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By Daniel Trotta and Kanishka Singh, 

Reuters

Picture obtained from the X account of Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele, @nayibbukele, showing US Senator Chris Van Hollen (R) holding a meeting with Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a US resident wrongfully deported to his home country, at a hotel in San Salvador on 17 April 2025. Photo: AFP / Supplied

• Van Hollen posts image of meeting with Abrego Garcia
• El Salvador's leader indicates Abrego Garcia to remain there
• Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported by Trump administration

Democratic US Senator Chris Van Hollen met on Thursday (local time) with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador in a case that has pitted a defiant Trump administration against the courts and fanned the prospect of a constitutional conflict.

The senator posted on X an image of himself in El Salvador with Abrego Garcia, dressed in a collared shirt, jeans and a baseball cap, a day after being denied access to the notorious prison for gang members where he has been held.

"I said my main goal of this trip (to El Salvador) was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance," the senator wrote in his post, but giving no indication of Abrego Garcia's health or state of mind.

"I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love," Van Hollen added. "I look forward to providing a full update upon my return."

The US Supreme Court has directed the administration of President Donald Trump to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return after Washington acknowledged he was deported because of an administrative error.

In a statement apart from the ruling, liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the government had cited no basis for what she called Abrego Garcia's "warrantless arrest," nor for his deportation or imprisonment in El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia's lawyers say he has never been charged with, nor convicted of, any crime, and deny the Justice Department's accusation that he belongs to the criminal gang MS-13.

But the government has given no indication it plans to seek his return and said it had no authority to release a man from a foreign prison, raising the potential for a constitutional conflict should Trump defy the highest court.

In a statement after the meeting, White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai repeated the unproven accusation that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13.

"Chris Van Hollen has firmly established Democrats as the party whose top priority is the welfare of an illegal alien MS-13 terrorist," Desai said.

"It is truly disgusting. President Trump will continue to stand on the side of law-abiding Americans."

Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, told CNN the man belonged in prison, despite the Supreme Court directive.

"He's a citizen of El Salvador and he's in El Salvador. He's home," Homan said.

"I think we did the right thing, I think he is where he should be. Even if he came back ... he's going to be detained and he's going to be removed as per the order of removal."

Along with Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has deported to El Salvador hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, whom it says are gang members, under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, without presenting evidence and without a trial.

A US district judge, James Boasberg, has already threatened administration officials with criminal contempt charges over the deportations.

Boasberg said the administration demonstrated "wilful disregard" for his 15 March order barring the deportations to El Salvador under the 1798 act.

Salvadoran officials have also shown no interest in releasing Abrego Garcia.

During a meeting with Trump at the White House on Monday, El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, said he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia.

Bukele also posted pictures of the encounter with Van Hollen on social media, followed by a post saying he would remain in the custody of the Central American.

"Now that he's been confirmed healthy, he gets the honour of staying in El Salvador's custody," Bukele said.

Van Hollen, the US senator from Maryland, where Abrego Garcia lived, arrived on Wednesday in El Salvador to meet senior officials and advocate for his release, but was told by Vice President Felix Ulloa he could not authorize a visit or a telephone call with Abrego Garcia.

It was not immediately clear what changed to allow the senator's access.

Abrego Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at age 16 to escape gang-related violence, his lawyers said, and received a protective order in 2019 to continue living in the United States.

Representatives of Abrego Garcia and Van Hollen did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on the meeting.

- Reuters

GLOBALIZATION LIVES

Poland’s InPost takes over Yodel to create one of UK’s largest delivery firms

17 April 2025, 

Yodel bought up by rival consortium. Picture: PA

InPost, which has 10,000 parcel lockers in the UK, said the deal will help it ‘revolutionise’ the delivery market.

Polish parcel locker firm InPost has announced it is acquiring UK rival Yodel in a £100 million deal, combining the home delivery and collection networks to create one of the largest logistics groups in Britain.

InPost, which has 10,000 parcel lockers in the UK, said the takeover will help it “revolutionise” the UK delivery market and deepen its presence across Europe.

It has agreed to acquire 95.5% of Yodel’s parent company, Judge Logistics Ltd.

The debt-to-equity arrangement will see InPost converting an existing loan to the group, worth £106 million, into equity.

Payments business PayPoint will retain its existing 4.5% minority stake in Yodel.

The two delivery companies started working together at the end of last year through a “locker-to-door” service that saw Yodel handle the delivery of parcels from InPost lockers to customers’ homes.

InPost has about 10,000 parcel lockers in the UK (Alamy/PA)

The latest takeover comes several months after InPost snapped up UK logistics business Menzies Distribution for £60 million.

Liverpool-based Yodel was ranked the second-worst parcel firm at helping its customers, behind Evri, according to an Ofcom report in October.

The delivery firm performed “below average” on some aspects of its customer contact processes, contributing to a score of 38%, the regulator found.

InPost said after acquiring Yodel, which handles some 190 million parcels every year, its total share of the UK market will grow to about 8%.

Bringing together the delivery and locker services will create the third-largest independent logistics firm in the UK e-commerce market, behind Royal Mail and Evri, and excluding Amazon, the company said.

Neil Kusche, InPost UK’s chief executive, said: “This acquisition is a game-changer for InPost’s operations in the UK.

“Combining doorstep deliveries with our unrivalled locker network, we are reshaping the future of parcel delivery.

“We will be able to provide customers and e-commerce retailers with the reliability, flexibility, and efficiency they expect.”

By Press Association

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Fires Back As 'Trump Country' Banner Flown Over Packed Rally

The New York congresswoman let the crowd size speak for itself as her Fighting Oligarchy tour with Bernie Sanders rolled into another Republican area.


By Graeme Demianyk
17/04/2025 

HUFFPOST

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat, New York) waves to the crowd during a stop of the 'Fighting Oligarchy' rally at Folsom lake College in Folsom, Calif., Tuesday, April 15, 2025.
San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

At another packed anti-Trump rally, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat, New York) shrugged off a warning that they were entering “Trump country” as they found another huge audience in Republican territory.

Their nationwide Fighting Oligarchy tour has for weeks drawn massive crowds as the Vermont senator and New York congresswoman push progressive policies and condemn President Donald Trump over his handling of the economy and growing authoritarianism.

In recent days, the pair have spoken at sold-out venues in deep-red states, with 12,500 people on Monday filling an arena in Nampa, Idaho, a state Trump took by more than 35 percentage points in 2024.

On Tuesday, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez rolled into Republican-dominated Folsom in northern California, a city which sits within Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley’s district.

To underscore the point, a small plane was spotted overhead before the rally pulling a banner emblazoned with the words “Folsom Is Trump Country” in red letters.
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The more than 30,000 people gathered at Folsom Lake College’s athletic track may have disagreed. Ocasio-Cortez certainly did.

“I heard that someone started flying a plane with a banner that said, ‘This is Trump country,’” she said to the crowd, prompting a chorus of boos.

She continued, “It sure don’t look like it today. I don’t think this is Trump country. I think this is our country. ”

Sanders picked up the theme when handed the rhetorical baton.

“We are seeing unbelievable turnouts,” he said. “We were in Idaho — Idaho! — we had 12,000 people coming out in Idaho, the most conservative state in the country. We had 20,000 people in Salt Lake City, a Republican state.”

He added, “I think what the American people — Republicans, independents, Democrats — are saying [is], ‘Sorry, Mr. Trump, we don’t want your oligarchy. Sorry, Mr. Trump, too many men and women have fought and died to defend democracy. You’re not going to take us into authoritarianism.’”
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Next stop: Missoula, Montana, a state Trump has won in three consecutive elections.

 

Generative AI’s diagnostic capabilities comparable to non-specialist doctors

Meta-analysis of medical research with LLMs reveals diagnostic accuracy

Osaka Metropolitan University

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The use of generative AI for diagnostics has attracted attention in the medical field and many research papers have been published on this topic. However, because the evaluation criteria were different for each study, a comprehensive analysis was needed to determine the extent AI could be used in actual medical settings and what advantages it featured in comparison to doctors.

A research group led by Dr. Hirotaka Takita and Associate Professor Daiju Ueda at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Medicine conducted a meta-analysis of generative AI’s diagnostic capabilities using 83 research papers published between June 2018 and June 2024 that covered a wide range of medical specialties. Of the large language models (LLMs) that were analyzed, ChatGPT was the most commonly studied.

The comparative evaluation revealed that medical specialists had a 15.8% higher diagnostic accuracy than generative AI. The average diagnostic accuracy of generative AI was 52.1%, with the latest models of generative AI sometimes showing accuracy on par with non-specialist doctors.

“This research shows that generative AI’s diagnostic capabilities are comparable to non-specialist doctors. It could be used in medical education to support non-specialist doctors and assist in diagnostics in areas with limited medical resources.” stated Dr. Takita. “Further research, such as evaluations in more complex clinical scenarios, performance evaluations using actual medical records, improving the transparency of AI decision-making, and verification in diverse patient groups, is needed to verify AI’s capabilities.”

The findings were published in npj Digital Medicine.

###

About OMU 

Established in Osaka as one of the largest public universities in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University is committed to shaping the future of society through “Convergence of Knowledge” and the promotion of world-class research. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ and follow us on social media: X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

---

Journal

npj Digital Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s41746-025-01543-z 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

A systematic review and meta-analysis of diagnostic performance comparison between generative AI and physicians

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School will move to Canada in acquisition deal

(RNS) — The Evangelical Free Church long had an outsized role in evangelicalism and helped give birth to such institutions as The Gospel Coalition and Sojourners magazine. But declining enrollment and financial struggles have dogged the school for years.

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School logo. (Courtesy image)
Bob Smietana
April 8, 2025


(RNS) — A prominent but troubled evangelical seminary has agreed to be acquired by a Canadian university and move to British Columbia, the school’s leaders announced Tuesday (April 8).

The move comes after years of financial struggle and declining attendance at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School — known as TEDS — an Evangelical Free Church school whose alums have played an outsized role in shaping American evangelicalism.

Trinity will continue to hold classes at its Bannockburn, Illinois, campus north of Chicago during the 2025-2026 academic year but will move to the campus of Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, in 2026. Current faculty will get a contract for the coming year but it’s unclear how many will move to Canada in the future.

The school said current students will be able to complete their program through in-person and online options. Students who are U.S. citizens will still be eligible for federal financial aid, though the school said details about scholarships for students have yet to be determined.

Along with moving, TEDS will part ways with Trinity International University, its parent nonprofit, which will continue to run online classes and operate a law school in Santa Ana, California. Trinity International President Kevin Kompelien said that given the challenges in higher education, the divinity school needed to ally itself with a larger institution.

“I believe a school like TEDS will thrive best and accomplish our mission most effectively as part of a larger theologically and missionally aligned evangelical Christian university,” Kompelien said in a statement.
RELATED: Theological schools report continued drop in master of divinity degrees

Founded by Scandinavian immigrants, Trinity was born from a merger in the 1940s of the Chicago-based Swedish Bible Institute and the Minnesota-based Norwegian-Danish Bible Institute. Though affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church, a Minneapolis-based denomination with 1,600 churches, the school has long sought to influence the wider evangelical world. Longtime former dean Kenneth Kantzer, who led the school from 1960 to 1978 and helped it grow to national prominence, called TEDS “the Free Church’s love gift to the worldwide church of Christ.”

Among the school’s alumni are historian Randall Balmer, Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, New Testament scholars Scot McKnight and Craig Blomberg, disgraced evangelist Ravi Zacharias, Christian television host John Ankerberg and Collin Hansen, editor-in-chief of The Gospel Coalition. Longtime professor Don Carson also was one of the founders of The Gospel Coalition, helping launch the so-called Young, Restless and Reformed movement that led to a Calvinist revival among evangelicals. Kantzer went on to be editor of Christianity Today magazine. The school is also home to a number of centers, including the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding, named for a prominent evangelical theologian.

But over the last decade, Trinity has fallen on hard times. In 2015, the divinity school had 1,182 students — the equivalent of 753 full-timers — making it one of the nation’s larger seminaries. By the fall of 2024, that had dropped to 813 students and 403 full-time equivalents.

In 2023, the university shut down its on-campus programs, leaving it with too much property and not enough students. The university ran a $17.3 million deficit in 2023, according to its latest financial disclosure to the IRS, after shutting down its in-person undergraduate program. Trinity’s 2024 audit shows a $7.6 million deficit, with a similar deficit expected this year. A $19 million long-term loan is also coming due in 2026.

The entire Trinity campus is currently under contract, and the school hopes to close on that sale in October. After the sale is complete, Trinity will lease back part of the campus for the rest of the academic year and use the proceeds to pay off the $19 million loan. About 100 students currently live on campus and their leases will become month to month for the upcoming academic year.

A university spokesman said many details of TWU’s acquisition of TEDS remain to be sorted out, such as what happens to the Henry Center and other centers at the school and how many professors will move to Canada. The two schools are doing due diligence in hopes of finalizing the acquisition by the end of 2025.

Trinity Western will not take on any of TED’s financial obligations as part of the merger. The Canadian school’s president said the merger will lead to a “stronger combined future.”

“We are privileged to continue a longstanding legacy of evangelical scholarship and expand the impact of a global Christian education,” TWU President Todd F. Martin said in a statement. “We are driven by the same heartbeat for the gospel, and together, we can do even more to serve the Church and societies worldwide.”

Historian Joey Cochran, a TEDS alum, said news of the move to Canada is another sign that evangelicalism in the Midwest is on the decline. Institutions like TEDS, he said, once helped shaped the movement, but now most of the power has shifted to the South, he said, pointing out that Baptist seminaries in the South dominate theological education, with nearly 20,000 students enrolled in the six seminaries run by the Southern Baptist Convention or at Liberty University. That’s more than a quarter of the 74,000 seminary students in the U.S., according to data from the Association of Theological Schools, which includes Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish graduate schools of theology.

“We are seeing, in real time, the Southern-ification of evangelicalism,” said Cochran.

Mike Woodruff, pastor of Christ Church, a multisite evangelical church based in Lake Forest, Illinois, not far from the TEDS campus, said news of the move and merger is sad but not unexpected.

“Most graduate schools in theology are struggling,” he said. “It’s just a very different world.”

Woodruff said his church had hired grads from TEDS in the pasts and that professors from TEDS have taught in the church’s programs. The school’s presence will be missed, he said.

“It’s a loss,” he said.

Mark Labberton, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, said Trinity, like many seminaries, including Fuller, has faced serious headlines in recent years, like nearly all institutions of higher learning. While the school had outsized influence, it was tied to a smaller denomination, so had fewer resources to draw on. And while many TEDS graduates were known for their ability to innovate and influence, the school itself was less so.

“It would be known for faithfulness but not creativity alongside faithfulness,” said Labberton.

Ed Stetzer, dean of the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, said TEDS was often referred to as the “Queen of the Seminaries” and was well respected for its influence in theological education. News of the move and the school’s troubles is unsettling, he said.

“It’s a jarring moment in theological education, and a sign of the times,” he said. “Seminary education is in trouble — and more closures and mergers are coming, unless seminaries and churches find new and innovative ways to partner.”

David Dockery, a former Trinity International University president who now leads Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, said he has hope for the future of TEDS. The school has reinvented itself before, moving from Minneapolis to downtown Chicago and later to the Chicago suburbs.

“This in many ways will be Trinity 4.0,” he said. “It now has an opportunity for a new and next phase, and I pray God’s blessings upon them as they make this important transition.”

Dockery said the combination of theological excellence and Scandinavian piety — from its Free Church founding — helped TEDS gain global influence. “That combination made for a marvelous institution that attracted some of the best scholars in the evangelical world,” he said.

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