By Michelle Starr. Australian scientific research takes further hit as Government refuses to secure funding.
After last year's proposed budget redacted $111 million in funding from Australia's national science agency, the CSIRO, scientific research in Australia is set to take another funding blow to the tune of $150 million.
This National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme funding was set to come from Minister for Education and Training Christopher Pyne's higher-education reforms, which would see the deregulation of university fees and the privatisation of HECS governmental tertiary education loans, as well as a 20 percent cut in governmental funding to the higher education sector. More...

By Wu Po-hsuan, Wu Chang-hung, and Chen Wei-han. The National Immigration Agency (NIA) has suspended six universities for six months from inviting Chinese academics and students over violations of regulations concerning Chinese academic visits, raising concerns in academic circles on the prospects of cross-strait university exchanges.
National Taiwan University (NTU) and National Chengchi University (NCCU) are on the agency’s list of suspended institutions, the agency said. More...

By Tom Hennigan. More young Brazilians are arriving in Ireland to study science at third level, drawn by instruction in English and our location in Europe.
Despite the offer of a scholarship in Spain worth twice as much as one from Ireland, when it came to deciding where to do her doctoral research, Brazilian Sheila Castilho M de Sousa had no doubts about where to go.
“Ireland. It was an easy decision. Sometimes money isn’t everything,” says the computational linguist, who is now happily ensconced in Dublin City University. More...

By Jerry Lewis. Students and staff at the School of Oriental and African Studies – one of the UK’s top universities – voted, in a week of balloting, to boycott contacts with all Israeli academic institutions in line with the BDS campaign.
The results announced late Friday evening led to partying on the central London campus and a request to the university authorities to sever their links with Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. More...

By Safure Cantürk. The Higher Education Board (YÖK) decided to impose added measures to prevent those with foreign diplomas in medicine, law or engineering from automatically receive accreditation to practice their profession in Turkey. Those with diplomas from universities outside the top 500 worldwide will need to get a passing grade in the Higher Education Examination-Undergraduate Placement Examination (YGS- LYS) university entrance examinations. More...

A major university based in Beijing will open a campus in Tokyo in April, paving the way for Japanese and other students to earn a Chinese degree without studying in China.
The opening of Beijing Language and Culture University’s Tokyo college in the Ikebukuro district aims to tap Japan’s strong interest in learning Chinese, school officials said.
The Tokyo campus, which will target Japanese and non-Japanese high school graduates and exchange students in Japan, is the university’s second overseas branch, following one in Bangkok. More...

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Tuesday announced that the state would finance double the number of university courses on Islam in a bid to stop the influence of foreign funding of training of French imams.
In a speech in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, Valls said that improving home-grown Islamic education was essential to defeating the ignorance that makes “Islamist extremism and the far right feed off each other”.
His speech follows January’s Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks and comes amid concern about the influence of radical foreign imams on Muslims in France, which has Western Europe’s biggest Muslim community. More...