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In your briefing today:

• Donald Trump has imposed heavy sanctions on Russia’s biggest oil companies - a signficant change in strategy from the White House

• Keir Starmer has backed calls for disgraced Prince Andrew to appear before MPs

• Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen take to the European stage tonight

• A look at the ongoing reformation of American higher education

📣 Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil firms, Rosneft and Lukoil, because of “Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.

The measures, announced overnight, are a big change of policy by the Trump administration: the first time it has imposed direct costs on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

They also indicate frustration in the White House that Putin is not more willing to talk about ending the war, and come after the US called off a summit between Trump and Putin. (Guardian) (Sky News)

• David Blevins: These are no slap on the wrist - they’re a punch to the gut of Moscow’s war economy (Sky News)

• Will the US sanctions on Russian oil be effective? (Guardian)

• Flows of Russian oil to India are expected to fall to near zero as a result of the sanctions (Bloomberg £)

• EU summit aims for new Russia sanctions and a plan to use Moscow’s assets to help Ukraine (AP)

📣 France is backing away from its commitment to police the English Channel, with France’s new “maritime doctrine” - which would see patrol boats attempt to intercept small boats bringing migrants across to the UK - dismissed as a “political stunt” and “much blah-blah”. (The BBC has the exclusive)

• A man deported under the government’s “one in, one out” deal with France has returned to Britain by small boat. (Mail)

📣 Keir Starmer has backed calls for Prince Andrew to be brought in front of MPs to give evidence to a select committee inquiry over his living arrangements, after it emerged the disgraced royal is living in a 30-room Windsor mansion for only peppercorn rent. (Independent)

• The exterior of Royal Lodge is showing wear and tear, and Prince Andrew’s tenancy is contingent on his looking after the mansion. Could the state of the building allow him to be “smoked out”? (The Mail has the exclusive)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Sandie Peggie’s legal team says it is “seriously concerned” about the content of secret briefings prepared by NHS Fife for Scottish Government ministers. The briefings, uncovered through FOI requests, contain unredacted details about the nurse, including references to her occupational health appointments. (The Herald (£) has the exclusive)

• A tribunal has heard claims an engineer was “gaslit for years” over her concerns about a transgender colleague using female-only toilets. (Mail)

📣 A radioactive fragment found near Dounreay was the most radioactive to be detected in the last three years, the site’s operator has admitted. (BBC)

📣 Who is going to stump up for Trump? The Scottish Government wants London to foot the £24 million bill for visits to Scotland by the US President and his Vice President. But the Treasury says the bill should be met by the Scottish Government. (Mail)

📣 A gangster had a gun and magazine full of bullets left for him on the Roseburn cycle path in Edinburgh, close to a nursery and school. Liam McDermid was spotted using a metal detector to try and find the cache - and admitted being involved with serious organised crime. (Daily Record)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 The UK child grooming gangs inquiry faces fresh turmoil after the only remaining candidate to be its chair withdrew his application, blaming “political opportunism” and “a lack of trust”. (Guardian)

📣 The US national debt has hit $38 trillion - and has just seen the fastest accumulation of $1 trillion ever, outside the pandemic. (AP)

📣 King Charles and Queen Camilla will meet Pope Leo today in Rome, in a symbolic display of unity between the Church of England and the Catholic Church. (BBC)

SPORT

⚽️ Another evening of big scores in the Champions League last night, with Chelsea thumping Ajax 5-1 in a penalty-strewn match in London and Liverpool routing Frankfurt in Germany. In the biggest clash of the night, Real Madrid edged a 1-0 win over Juventus thanks to Jude Bellingham’s strike.

• A night of bold calls for Liverpool’s Arne Slot pays off (BBC)

• Three teenagers score for Chelsea as Ajax captain sees red (BBC)

• Alonso: Bellingham is one of the most complete players in the world (BBC)

• 🎥 See all the highlights at TNT Sports.

⚽️ All the attention has been on Rangers and their hunt for a new manager… but the fan unrest at Parkhead, and Celtic’s poor form on the pitch, sees Brendan Rodgers under more pressure tonight as his team faces Sturm Graz away. New Rangers head coach Danny Rohl takes his side away to face SK Brann.

• Brendan Rodgers defends comparing his players to a Honda Civic (Sun)

• Celtic’s game kicks off at 8pm tonight, and is on TNT Sports 2

• Winger Theo Aasgaard is ready to shine for Rangers in a freer role (Record)

• Rangers kick off against SK Brann at 5.45pm, on TNT Sports 2

⚽️ Aberdeen face AEK Athens tonight in the UEFA Conference League with manager Jimmy Thelin saying it’s important his team find a way to show their qualities away in Europe, as they’ve started to do in the league. (BBC)

• Aberdeen should beware the card-happy ref in Greece - he’s handed out 42 yellows and five reds in only nine games this season… (Record)

• Aberdeen’s game kicks off at 5.45pm tonight, and is on TNT Sports 3.

IDEAS
Trump drives a reformation of US higher education

🗣️ Higher education in the US is facing tumultous change.

The system is in crisis: a fundamental problem of too few students, caused by a falling birthrate, has coincided with with the Trump administration’s crackdown on student visas and anti-immigration talk.

That, combined with street seizures and student deportations, is putting off the foreign students who often pay full tuition to live their American dream.

Meanwhile a planned sharp increase in taxes on endowments (£), coming in next year, mean many universities are having to adopt austerity measures to balance the books.

While the biggest tax bills will land with the most prestigious universities, which have vast endowments on which they’ll pay a total of more than $1 billion over the next five years, the impact of all this will be more widespread.

Many smaller colleges didn’t really recover from the Covid era: these latest blows are sending some over the edge.

The New York Times warns (🎁 gift link) that a “trickle of shutdowns could soon become a flood” and looks at the often picturesque small colleges which are closing their doors, leaving current students high and dry, alumni bereft and towns facing the loss of institutions which held their communities together.

Towns would gather for concerts, cheer on the sports teams and sell students products and services. Suddenly, no more.

“It felt like a death,” one alumni says of the death of her college. “The beauty of liberal arts colleges was, they taught you how to think, how to function in a civilized world, not just training for a job,” she said.

The struggle isn’t just around taxation. It’s an ideological battle, too, with universities having to either accept a Trump “compact” to support the administration’s conservative agenda, or miss out on big chunks of funding. Some universities are refusing to sign up.

Over at The Wall Street Journal (🎁 gift link) we can see that realignment of American education play out in a new league table of US universities. Its Editorial Board accuses top universities, “from Harvard to Columbia to Northwestern”, of betraying their commitment to free inquiry on campus.

They highlight a new ranking system, which claims to “better capture excellence in key tenets of a college education”, and which also echos the Trump administration’s focus on reform of diversity, equality and inclusion practices.

The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal rankings don’t award points for compliance with DEI. Indeed, such programmes lose points.

Instead, they place higher value on a demonstrated commitment to ideological pluralism, a “vibrant and inclusive campus social life” and student tolerance for “controversial speakers”. Most of all, the rankings take a look at what’s being taught, to see if the university is “providing excellence or coasting on a fancy reputation”.

That new approach yields some controversial results.

No Ivy League school - the traditional top dogs of US university education - make the top 10 (Columbia does best, at a lowly 34th. Harvard is at 37). Excellent, but less heralded, institutions top the list: Florida, the University of Texas, North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“The outrages of cancel culture and antisemitism have brought a rare gust of accountability to campus,” says the Wall Street Journal.

But it’s an academic reformation that threatens to blow away some bastions of small town American life.

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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