US President Joe Biden on Thursday canceled another $4.5 billion in student debt for over 60,000 borrowers, bringing the number of public service workers who have had their student loans canceled to over 1 million.
In total, the Biden-Harris Administration has approved $175 billion in student debt relief for nearly 5 million borrowers through various actions, the White House said in a statement.
Republicans have described the Democratic president’s student loan forgiveness approach as an overreach of authority and an unfair benefit to college-educated borrowers while others receive no such relief.
Earlier this month, St. Louis-based US District Judge Matthew Schelp, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Biden administration from “mass canceling” student loans and forgiving principal or interest under the plan, pending the outcome of the state’s lawsuit.
Biden cancels additional $4.5 billion in student debt
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Biden cancels additional $4.5 billion in student debt
- In total, the Biden-Harris Administration has approved $175 billion in student debt relief for nearly 5 million borrowers
- Republicans have described the Democratic president’s student loan forgiveness approach as an overreach of authority
Pakistani police fire tear gas at protesting students as anger spreads over alleged on-campus rape
- Sexual violence against women is common in Pakistan, but it is underreported because of the stigma attached to it in the conservative country
LAHORE: Pakistani police fired tear gas and charged at student protesters who ransacked a college building Thursday, as anger spread over an alleged on-campus rape.
Tensions have been high on college campuses since reports about the alleged rape in the eastern city of Lahore went viral on social media, and protests have broken out in four cities so far.
Sexual violence against women is common in Pakistan, but it is underreported because of the stigma attached to it in the conservative country, and protests about the issue have been rare.
Thursday’s violence started when hundreds of students demonstrated outside a campus in the city of Rawalpindi in Punjab province. They burned furniture and blocked a key road in the city, disrupting traffic, before ransacking a college building. Police responded by swinging batons and firing tear gas to disperse them, police official Mohammad Afzal said.
In a statement, police said they arrested 250 people, mostly students, on charges of disrupting the peace.
In Gujrat, also in Punjab province, a security guard died in clashes between student protesters and police on Wednesday. The police have arrested someone in connection with the death.
They also arrested a man who is accused of spreading misinformation on social media about the alleged rape and inciting students to violence.
Earlier this week, more than two dozen college students were injured in clashes with police in Lahore after they rallied to demand justice for the victim, who they alleged was raped on campus at the Punjab Group of Colleges.
Authorities, including the province’s chief minister and the college administration, denied there was an assault, as did the young woman’s parents.
The ongoing protests appear to have begun spontaneously. Student unions have been banned in Pakistan since 1984. The youth wings of several opposition parties have since expressed support.
On Thursday, Usman Ghani, the head of youth wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami opposition party, demanded an end to the ban on student unions, saying they might have helped resolve the matter without violence.
He said cases of sexual abuse at educational institutions are common.
“But the main thing is how you respond to make it sure that the attackers don’t get away without getting arrested.”
Hasna Cheema, from the rights group Aurat Foundation, said neither Pakistani police nor the media were trained to handle such sensitive matters.
“They turn things from bad to worse instead of solving them,” Cheema said.
The Sustainable Social Development Organization said last month that there were 7,010 rape cases reported in Pakistan in 2023, almost 95 percent of them in Punjab.
“However, due to social stigmas in Pakistan that discourage women from getting help, there is a high chance that due to underreporting the actual number of cases may be even higher,” it said.
This week’s protests come less than a month after a woman said she was gang-raped while on duty during a polio vaccination drive in southern Sindh province.
Police arrested three men. Her husband threw her out of the house after the reported assault, saying she had tarnished the family name.
More time and money needed to wipe out polio, global group says
- The coalition now hopes to declare an end to both the wild virus and the vaccine-derived variant by 2027 and 2029, respectively
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) needs more funds and has pushed back by three years its target to officially wipe out all forms of the disease, officials said on Thursday.
The coalition now hopes to declare an end to both the wild virus and the vaccine-derived variant by 2027 and 2029, respectively, compared with a previous deadline of 2026 for both forms.
Wiping out the paralysis-causing viral disease has been a global health aim for decades and while mass vaccination campaigns have helped reduce cases significantly since 1988, a complete eradication of polio has proved more difficult. The first missed target was in 2000.
“It’s always as you get to the end... that you say ‘Well, this is so hard,’” said Chris Elias, chair of the polio oversight board at GPEI and head of global development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation is one of the partners in the GPEI alongside the World Health Organization.
But Elias said the progress made in recent decades showed they have both the tools and the will to finish the job.
In an interview with Reuters, Elias said the initiative still hoped to interrupt transmission of the wild form of polio next year, but would then need to wait two years to check there were no new cases before officially declaring the disease wiped out.
Wild polio is now only endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which reported 54 cases this year. The vaccine-derived strain is more spread out and in harder-to-reach geographies, Elias said, and there have been 179 cases this year.
The latter form of polio can occur when children are immunized with a vaccine containing a weakened version of the live virus. They are protected, but the weakened virus excreted by these immunized children can spread and mutate among an unvaccinated population.
The GPEI’s oversight board said it now needs $6.9 billion in total funding, compared with the $4.8 billion previously required.
Donors have committed $4.5 billion so far, but an additional $2.4 billion is required for “urgent and vital tactical shifts” in the approach, the GPEI said.
These include focusing more on local strategies and leadership, as well as countering misinformation in areas where routine immunization is a challenge.
Elias said he was sure it could be done.
“We have succeeded in interrupting polio virus transmission everywhere. We just haven’t succeeded everywhere at the same time ... so it’s a little bit like whack-a-mole.”
Vietnamese real estate tycoon sentenced to life for billions in fraud in government graft crackdown
- Truong My Lan was already convicted in April by the same Ho Chi Minh City court of fraud amounting to $12.5 billion
- The trials were broken into two parts due to the number of allegations against the real estate tycoon
HANOI: A Vietnamese real estate tycoon was convicted Thursday of fraudulently obtaining property worth billions of dollars and sentenced to life in prison, in a case that has been a centerpiece of the government’s crackdown on corruption.
Truong My Lan was already convicted in April by the same Ho Chi Minh City court of fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product — in a separate case and sentenced to death by lethal injection.
The trials were broken into two parts due to the number of allegations against her, and Thursday’s verdict adds to Lan’s legal troubles as she awaits the appeal of her death sentence to be heard.
Vietnam has handed down more than 2,000 death sentences in the past decade and executed more than 400 prisoners. It is a possible sentence for 14 different crimes but is generally only applied in cases of murder and drug trafficking.
“Standing here today is a price too expensive for me to pay. I consider this my destiny and a career accident,” the VNexpress online newspaper quoted Lan, the chairwoman of property developer Van Thinh Phat, as telling the judges in her closing statement last week.
“For the rest of my life, I will never forget that my actions have affected tens of thousands of families.”
Nguyen Hieu, a schoolteacher whose life savings of $36,000 is tied up in illegal bonds issued by Lan’s company, said the life sentence was fair.
“She deserves the punishment,” he said, adding that he hoped the death sentence from the first trial is commuted so that Lan has the opportunity to pay back her victims.
All other 33 co-defendants were found guilty of various charges and received sentences ranging from two to 23 years in prison. They included Chu Nap Kee, Lan’s husband, who was sentenced to two years for money laundering.
In addition to obtaining property by fraud, Lan was also convicted of money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfer charges, according to state-run media.
She was accused of raising $1.2 billion from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally through four companies, according to state media reports.
She was also found guilty of siphoning off $18 billion obtained through fraud and for using companies controlled by her to illegally transfer more than $4.5 billion in and out of Vietnam between 2012 and 2022.
It was not immediately clear if Lan would appeal the verdict and no date has yet been set for her appeal of her death penalty conviction to be heard.
In the April conviction, she was found to have orchestrated financial fraud amounting to $12.5 billion for illegally controlling a major bank allowing loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion, according to state media reports.
Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022.
The Communist Party’s “blazing furnace” campaign has also touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics.
Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign. Since 2016, thousands of party officials have been disciplined, including former President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and the former head of parliament, Vuong Dinh Hue, both of whom resigned.
In all, eight members of the powerful Politburo have been ousted on corruption allegations, compared to none between 1986 and 2016.
The anti-corruption drive began in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2018 that authorities began scanning the private sector. Since then, several owners of Vietnam’s fast-growing businesses have been arrested.
The campaign had been the hallmark of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s top politician. who died earlier this year at age 80.
The ideologue had called corruption a grave threat to the party and vowed that the campaign would be a “blazing furnace” in which no one was untouchable.
In another high-profile case, business tycoon Trinh Van Quyet was found guilty in August of defrauding stockholders of nearly $150 million by falsely inflating the value of his company.
The Hanoi People’s Court sentenced Quyet to 21 years in prison and convicted 49 co-defendants on a variety charges, with sentences ranging from probation to multiple years in prison.
Lan and her family established the Van Thinh Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shifted from a state-run economy to a more market-oriented approach that was open to foreign investors. She started out helping her mother, a Chinese entrepreneur, sell cosmetics in Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to the state media outlet Tien Phong.
Van Thinh Phat became one of Vietnam’s richest real estate companies, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers. This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry.
Lan’s first trial shocked many Vietnamese.
Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam’s economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam is trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to diversify supply chains away from China.
Bangladeshi tribunal issues arrest warrant for former PM Hasina
- International Crimes Tribunal begins trial over recent student protest killings
- Chief prosecutor says arrest warrants issued for 46 people, including Hasina’s ministers
Dhaka: A special tribunal in Dhaka issued an arrest warrant on Thursday for former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and began trial procedures in cases related to the killings of hundreds of people during recent student protests that forced her to step down and flee.
Initially peaceful student demonstrations started in Bangladesh in early July, triggered by the reinstatement of a quota system for the allocation of civil service positions.
Two weeks later, they were met with a violent crackdown by security forces, which according to UN estimates left more than 600 people dead. The deaths led to a nationwide uprising, which in early August forced Hasina to resign and leave for neighboring India, ending her 15 years in power.
The names of 46 people linked to the protest killings were in the arrest warrant issued by the International Crimes Tribunal, its chief prosecutor, Tajul Islam, told reporters in Dhaka.
Besides Hasina, he mentioned the names of her Awami League secretary general Obaidul Quader, former law minister Anisul Huq, former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, and former foreign minister Hasan Mahmud.
The tribunal, he said, will hear 70 cases related to the July-August violence.
“Most of the main perpetrators are fugitives now, so we can’t disclose their names until they are arrested. But it’s confirmed that former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and those who were at the topmost level are accused in many of the cases,” Islam told Arab News.
“We are trying to complete the trial process of the most important crimes related to the prime accused as quickly as possible.”
Established in 2010 during Hasina’s rule, the International Crimes Tribunal is a domestic court responsible for investigating and prosecuting suspects of the 1971 genocide committed by the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators during the Bangladesh Liberation War. It also has jurisdiction over other war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The crimes Hasina has been charged with will fall under the purview of crimes against humanity according to the ICT Act 1973, and that’s why these cases are being tried in the International Crimes Court instead of as simple murder cases in regular courts,” said Jyotirmoy Barua, advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.
“I think that is why the authorities considered that this is the best court to try her for the crimes that took place during the student-led protests ... If proven guilty, this court may award capital punishment to the accused.”
EU’s Borrell questions US giving Israel one month to improve Gaza situation
- Israel must take steps over the next month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid
BRUSSELS: The EU’s foreign policy chief on Thursday appeared to criticize the United States giving Israel one month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, saying that during that time, too many people would die.
“The US has been saying to Israel that they have to improve humanitarian support to Gaza, but they gave one month delay. One month delay at the current pace of people being killed. It’s too many people,” Josep Borrell told reporters ahead of a European Union leaders’ summit.
Israel must take steps over the next month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid, US officials said on Tuesday, in the strongest such warning since Israel’s war with Hamas began a year ago.
Israel launched its operation on the Palestinian enclave a year ago, after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israeli towns by Hamas-led fighters who killed 1,200 people and captured 250 hostages.
After a year of Israeli assaults that have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, hundreds of thousands of residents have come back to ruined northern areas. Israel sent troops back earlier this month to root out fighters it said were regrouping for more attacks. Hamas denies operating among civilians.
Borrell has been a critical voice in the EU regarding Israel’s ongoing operations. The bloc is divided on how to handle its response beyond urging for a ceasefire.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said the bloc was not doing enough and he would continue to work with Spain to change the dynamics among the 27-nation bloc.
“Europe has not yet used every lever at its disposal to bring a ceasefire,” he said.
Speaking on arrival in Brussels German Chancellor Olaf Scholz underscored the differences in Europe saying that Israel’s security should not be compromised and appeared to take a swipe at French President Emmanuel Macron, who has called for countries to stop supplying offensive weapons that can be used by Israel in Gaza.
“All criteria must be respected, such as international law. When it comes to monetary aid, which must go to Gaza, it’s about preventing the war from escalating further,’ he said.
“However, it is clear that supporting Israel also means that we are constantly ensuring Israel’s defense capability, for example by supplying military goods or weapons.”
