
Names written on children's bodies speak to the fears of Gazan parents amid the Israel-Hamas war
The bodies of three children lie on a steel tray inside what appears to be a Gaza hospital morgue, one leg of their trousers pushed up to reveal writing in black ink on their skin.
2023-10-23 15:21

Zelensky says Ukraine’s Black Sea assault ‘will go down in history’
Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine’s success in the battle for the Black Sea “will go down in history books”, as he rallied troops in his nightly video address. “Ukraine’s success in the battle for the Black Sea will go down in history books, although it’s not being discussed much today,” he added. Mr Zelensky also warned against expecting instant success in Ukraine’s counter-offensive campaign as Russian forces showed signs of amping up fresh attacks on different sections of the frontline. “We live in a world that gets used to success too quickly. When the full-scale invasion began, many people around the world did not believe that Ukraine would survive," the war-time president said in his nightly video address. He added: "Glory to all those who do not retreat, who do not burn out, who believe in Ukraine just as they did on February 24, and who have been fighting unwaveringly." The war frontline along Ukraine’s east and south has seen little along the 1,000 km span this year despite Kyiv’s counter-offensive push which Russia has resisted by mining vast swathes and throwing in battalions of men in the siege. Mr Zelensky lauded his troops for diminishing Russian military strength in the Black Sea, adding that if there’s greater support from Ukraine’s allies, they could inch closer to victory over Russian forces. "When we ensure even more security to the Black Sea, Russia will lose any ability to dominate in this area and expand its malign influence to other countries," Mr Zelensky said. The full extent of the damage that Ukraine has done in recent months to the Russian Black Sea Fleet remains unclear. Even claims made by the Russian defence ministry of success in destroying the weapons comes with little evidence. The losses on both sides, of personnel and equipment, have been guarded as a state secret. On the battlefield front, signs of struggle have persisted. The Ukrainian president said his meeting with senior commanders considered sectors engulfed by the fiercest fighting in the east and northeast, including the key areas of Avdiivka and Kupiansk, where Russia has been on the offensive in recent weeks. Russia has concentrated its military might on Avdiivka, an eastern Ukrainian town in Donetsk, which officials said is bracing for a new wave of attacks after witnessing steady assaults since mid-October. "The enemy is bringing in forces and equipment. Our boys are preparing for a new wave," Vitaliy Barabash, head of the military administration in Avdiivka, told national television. The town with its vast coking plant was briefly captured in 2014 when Russian-backed separatists seized chunks of land in the east, but Ukrainian forces have since put up fortifications. Ukraine’s ground forces said on Tuesday that Russian forces were also focused on Kupiansk - a city in the northeast overrun by Russia in the early days of the invasion, but recaptured by Ukrainian forces last year. Alongside, Russia claimed that its forces had conducted successful attacks near the town of Bakhmut - a largely destroyed town captured by Russian forces in May. Read More If Putin dies, this is what would happen in Russia Ukrainian troops advance as Putin air defences ‘struck in Crimea’ - latest Hungary bans teenagers from visiting World Press Photo exhibition over display of LGBTQ+ images AI Safety Summit: Five key questions More than 40% of Ukrainians need humanitarian help under horrendous war conditions, UN says Watch: Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin testify on Biden’s $106 billion request
2023-11-01 12:56

Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s plan to cancel student loan debts
The US Supreme Court has struck down President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel student loan debts for millions of Americans, reversing his campaign-trail promise as borrowers prepare to resume payments this summer. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the 6-3 decision from the court’s conservative majority on 30 June. The ruling, which stems from a pair of cases challenging the Biden administration and the US Department of Education, argues that the president does not have the authority to implement sweeping relief, and that Congress never authorised the administration to do so. Within 30 minutes on the last day of its term, the court upended protections for LGBT+ people and blocked the president from a long-held promise to cancel student loan balances amid a ballooning debt crisis impacting millions of Americans. Under the plan unveiled last year, millions of people who took out federally backed student loans would be eligible for up to $20,000 in relief. Borrowers earning up to $125,000, or $250,000 for married couples, would be eligible for up to $10,000 of their federal student loans to be wiped out. Those borrowers would be eligible to receive up to $20,000 in relief if they received Pell grants. Roughly 43 million federal student loan borrowers would be eligible for that relief, including 20 million people who stand to have their debts canceled completely, according to the White House. Roughly 16 million already submitted their applications and received approval for debt cancellation last year, according to the Biden administration. The long-anticipated plan for debt cancellation was met almost immediately with litigation threats from conservative legal groups and Republican officials, arguing that the executive branch does not have authority to broadly cancel such debt. Six GOP-led states sued the Biden administration to stop the plan altogether, and a federal appeals court temporarily blocked any such relief as the legal challenges played out. Lawyers for the Biden administration contended that he has the authority to broadly cancel student loan debt under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, which allows the secretary of education to waive or modify loan provisions following a national emergency – in this case, Covid-19. Justice Roberts wrote that the law allows the secretary to “waive or modify” existing provisions for financial assistance, “not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.” The Supreme Court’s final decision of its 2022-2023 term also comes one day after another major education ruling, as the same conservative majority upended decades of precedent intended to promote racially diverse college campuses, what civil rights groups and the court’s liberal justices have derided as the court’s perversion of the 14th Amendment and the foundational concept of equal protection. Moments before its decision in the student debt plan, the Supreme Court decided a case involving a website designer who refused to cater to same-sex couples, but the case did not involve any such couple. Likewise, the case at the centre of the court’s decision on student loans involved an independent loan servicer in Missouri that did not want to be associated with the lawsuit. The six GOP-led states that led the challenge – Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina – opposed the Biden administration’s plan for a range of reasons that amount to “just general grievances; they do not show the particularized injury needed to bring suit,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. “And the States have no straightforward way of making that showing – of explaining how they are harmed by a plan that reduces individual borrowers’ federal student-loan debt,” she added. “So the States have thrown no fewer than four different theories of injury against the wall, hoping that a court anxious to get to the merits will say that one of them sticks.” She admonished a decision in which “the result here is that the Court substitutes itself for Congress and the Executive Branch in making national policy about student-loan forgiveness.” “The Court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversies,” and by deciding the case, the court exceeds “the permissible boundaries of the judicial role,” Justice Kagan wrote. Since March 2020, with congressional passage of the Cares Act, monthly payments on student loan debt have been frozen with interest rates set at zero per cent. That Covid-19-pandemic era moratorium, first enacted under Donald Trump and extended several times, was paused a final time late last year – until the Education Department is allowed to cancel debts under the Biden plan, or until the litigation is resolved, but no later than 30 June. Payments would then resume 60 days later. The amount of debt taken out to support student loans for higher education costs has surged within the last decade, alongside growing tuition costs, increased private university enrollment, stagnant wages and GOP-led governments stripping investments in higher education and aid, putting the burden of college costs largely on students and their families. The crisis has exploded to a total balance of nearly $2 trillion, mostly wrapped up in federal loans. Millions of Americans also continue to tackle accrued interest without being able to chip away at their principal balances, even years after graduating, or have been forced to leave their colleges or universities without obtaining a degree at all while still facing loan repayments. Borrowers also have been trapped by predatory lending schemes with for-profit institutions and sky-high interest rates that have made it impossible for many borrowers to make any progress toward paying off their debt, with interest adding to balances that exceed the original loan. One analysis from the Education Department found that nearly 90 per cent of student loan relief would support people earning less than $75,000 per year. The median income of households with student loan balances is $76,400, while 7 per cent of borrowers are below the poverty line. That debt burden also falls disproportionately on Black borrowers and women. Black college graduates have an average of $52,000 in student loan debt and owe an average of $25,000 more than white graduates, according to the Education Data Initiative. Four years after graduating, Black student loan borrowers owe an average of 188 per cent more than white graduates. Women borrowers hold roughly two-thirds of all student loan debt, according to the American Association of University Women. Mr Biden’s announcement fulfilled a campaign-trail pledge to wipe out $10,000 in student loan debt per borrower if elected, though debt relief advocates and progressive lawmakers have urged him to cancel all debts and reject means-testing barriers in broad relief measures. In November 2020, the president called on Congress to “immediately” provide some relief for millions of borrowers saddled by growing debt. “[Student debt is] holding people up,” he said at the time. “They’re in real trouble. They’re having to make choices between paying their student loan and paying the rent.” ReNika Moore, director of the Racial Justice Program with the ACLU, among civil rights groups that filed briefs with the Supreme Court to defend the loan cancellation plan, said the “one-two punch” to end affirmative action and block debt relief will lock Americans out of economic oppurtunity and worsen wealth equality. “We urge the Biden administration and the Department of Education to move quickly to explore other pathways to ease the debt load on student loan borrowers once payments resume after a pandemic-related pause, including new executive action under the Higher Education Act, a law that allows for student loan relief for certain groups,” she added. Read More Supreme Court allows Colorado designer to deny LGBT+ customers in ruling on last day of Pride Month Biden condemns Supreme Court striking down affirmative action: ‘This is not a normal court’ Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers searing civil rights lesson in dissent to affirmative action ruling The Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action is ugly and frustrating – but no surprise
2023-07-01 01:57

California’s Newsom Sees Budget Deficit Deepening to $32 Billion
California is facing a deeper deficit than projected at the beginning of the year as the fortunes of
2023-05-13 07:25

Matthew Perry's 1997 'SNL' appearance revisited as show pays special tribute after 'Friends' star's death
Matthew Perry, the former 'Friends' star, passed away on October 28, 2023 and 'Saturday Night Live' honored him during a Halloween-themed episode
2023-10-29 19:29

With Xi and Putin absent from G20, Biden presses support for Ukraine and an overseas investment plan to counter China
President Biden was hoping to convince the world's largest economies to rally behind Ukraine during Saturday's Group of 20 summit in India while also pressing his case for American investment in the developing world.
2023-09-09 15:27

Czech president approves plan introducing budget cuts, taxes. Labor unions call for protests
Czech President Petr Pavel has signed into law an economic package of dozens of measures introducing budget cuts and increased taxes designed to keep the ballooning budget deficit under control
2023-11-22 20:16

Trump floats serving as House speaker for 'short period of time' if needed until GOP settles on leader
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that, if needed, he would be open to serving as speaker of the House for a "short period of time" until Republican lawmakers settle on a candidate who could garner enough votes to serve as their leader.
2023-10-06 07:49

Authorities swoop on Chinese restaurant that challenged customers to eat 108 dumplings
A restaurant in China that challenged its customers to eat more than 100 dumplings in return for a free meal has fallen foul of authorities, who are investigating whether it has violated the country's anti-food waste law.
2023-07-09 11:20

Saudi crown prince meets Iran's foreign minister as relations thaw
DUBAI (Reuters) -Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on Friday in the highest-level
2023-08-18 21:15

'Fox & Friends' hosts share their doubts about the looming attempt to impeach President Joe Biden
Kilmeade was especially unhappy with Congressman Gaetz's strategy to impeach Biden with no planning
2023-09-07 17:47

American families of IS victims sue cement maker Lafarge over Syria payments
ZURICH The families of U.S. aid workers and soldiers killed or injured by Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front
2023-07-28 18:27
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