London: A 28 year-old Indian student from Kerala died on the spot after being hit by a car which crashed into a bus stop in UK.
Athira Anilkumar Laly Kumari was pronounced dead at the scene of the collision, which occurred at the junction of Stanningley Road and Cockshott Lane in Leeds last week.
Athira was waiting at the bus stop when a black Volkswagen Golf hit her, as well as another pedestrian in his forties, who continues to recover in a hospital.
“Emergency services attended and found that two pedestrians had suffered serious injuries following the collision, which involved a Volkswagen Golf car and caused damage to a bus stop,” the West Yorkshire Police said.
The Golf driver, a 25-year-old woman, was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and has since been released on bail as enquiries continue into the collision.
Police said that the Golf had travelled on the Armley Gyratory before it drove down Stanningley Road towards Bradford.
Athira, who lived at Armley Road, was a student of Leeds Beckett University. Her relatives have been informed and they are working to bring the dead body, which is kept in the Bradford hospital mortuary, home, media reports quoted Leeds Malayalee Association as saying.
London: International students are likely to be restricted from bringing their spouses and children to the UK unless they study “high-value” degrees under government plans.
According to The Times, foreign students granted visas to study science, mathematics, and engineering can relocate to the UK with dependants.
A near-eightfold rise in the number of family members joining foreign students has left Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman worried.
According to new immigration figures, 490,763 students were given visas last year.
They were accompanied by 135,788 dependants — spouses and children — up from 16,047 in 2019.
Of these, India became the largest source of students with 161,000 students, including 33,240 dependents, coming to the UK last year.
Asylum backlog hit a record high, with more than 160,000 migrants waiting for decisions on their applications, the report said.
The government is yet to make a final decision on the contentious matter.
Braverman has drawn up proposals to reduce the number, which includes shortening the duration foreign students can stay in Britain post their course.
However, according to the Department of Education, the restrictions will bankrupt UK universities, which depend on foreign students for money.
According to estimates, international students add 35 billion pounds a year to the economy.
According to UK-based New Way Consultancy, foreign students and their dependents contributed to the UK economy not just through fees of 10,000 pounds to 26,000 pounds but also via an NHS surcharge of 400 pounds a year for the student and 600 pounds for a dependent.
It warned that curbs on graduate work visas will force Indian students to shift to countries like Australia and Canada, ultimately leading to the end of the student market in the UK.
More than 45,000 people crossed the Channel to the UK in small boats over the past year, according to government figures, with 90 crossing on Christmas Day alone.
A teenager assaulting his teacher’s aide in a high school in Florida
A 17-year-old was arrested for knocking his high school teacher’s aide after she took away his video game.
According to Fox News Digital, the incident was captured on the security camera where the 6’6″ and 270-pound teenager is seen hurling at the aid and knocking her down to the ground. He then proceeds to punch her in the face repeatedly before being pulled away. The victim lay on the floor for several minutes before waking up.
JUST IN: 6’6” 270 pound black male student attacks a white teacher at Matanzas High School for taking away his Nintendo Switch during class…
Video reveals the unconscious woman being brutally assaulted and struck in the head roughly 15 times. pic.twitter.com/pZAJzhaykv
Jaipur: Another coaching student in Rajasthan’s Kota committed suicide by hanging himself, police said on Friday.
The incident took place in Kunhadi area of the city, which is a hub for students preparing for various competitive examinations, on Wednesday night.
Abhishek, 17, a resident of UP’s Badaun, UP, was living in a Kota hostel for the last two years and was preparing for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET). He was not going to coaching for some time but was taking online classes from the hostel itself.
Police officials said that it was reported at 9 p.m. on Thursday that a student was not opening a room in Datar Residency for nearly 24 hours.
“We went to the spot and broke the door of the room. The student was found hanging from a noose. A suicide note has been found from the room.”
In the suicide note, Abhishek wrote: “I am apologising to you. I came to Kota on my own free will. No one pressurised me. Sorry Didi, Mummy Sorry Bhai, Sorry friends. Forgive me, I have lost. That’s why I want to die.”
On receiving information about Abhishek’s suicide, father Aram Singh reached Kota on Friday morning. He said parents know how they raise children and teach them, but the coaching institutes “discriminate”.
“That’s why children are committing suicide. Why is such a situation arising? What is the atmosphere that children are committing suicide,” he questioned.
Aram Singh said that there is pressure from coaching institutes but there is no pressure from parents. “My son never told that he was upset. He used to keep stress to himself.
“Had I known that he will commit suicide, I would have taken it from here before. I say that the government should pay attention. The government should formulate a policy, so that the incident of suicide in our society is stopped.”
Five suicide cases have come to fore in just last two months in Kota.
Chennai: The young scion of the Karunanidhi family and Tamil Nadu minister for Youth affairs and Sports, Udhayanidhi Stalin spoke to the Tamil student, who was allegedly attacked by ABVP students in JNU.
The Minister spoke to the victim through a video call while travelling in a car. The minister asked the student whether he was admitted in a hospital and whether he had sustained head injuries in the attack.
The student informed the minister that he was attacked by ABVP students.
It is painful to know that students from Tamil Nadu studying in #JNU were attacked by #ABVP political goons. They have also damaged the pictures of great leaders like Periyar & Karl Marx. This is highly condemnable. (1/3)
There were clashes in JNU between the SFI and ABVP students with both sides alleging the other to have perpetrated the attack.
While the ABVP leaders charged that the SFI students damaged a Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj photograph, which they had garlanded on his birth anniversary. The rivals, however, said that the ABVP students damaged the photographs of EVS Periyar and Karl Marx.
JNU turned into a war zone on Sunday with several students from rival factions getting injured. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had on Monday in a series of tweets condemned the attack on Tamil students in JNU. The BJP Tamil Nadu unit president, K. Annamalai had fired salvos against Stalin’s charges.
Mumbai: The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay has formed a panel to conduct a “parallel” probe into the death of a first-year B.Tech student amid allegations of caste bias and has urged its students to come forward if they have “relevant” information.
The panel is headed by Professor Nand Kishore and also has SC/ST Students Cell members, including faculty and students, a few student mentor coordinators and the in-charge chief medical officer of IIT Bombay hospital, said a statement by institute Director Subhasis Chaudhuri on Saturday.
Darshan Solanki (18), who belonged to a Scheduled Caste community, allegedly committed suicide by jumping off the seventh floor of a hostel building on the Powai campus of the IIT on February 12, but his family suspects foul play in his death and said he faced discrimination.
The Powai police are investigating the matter and have also visited Solanki’s home in Ahmedabad.
Highlighting that Prof. Nand Kishore was the chief vigilance officer of IIT Bombay till recently and is experienced “in these matters”, Chaudhari said that the committee is actively meeting everyone who might have relevant information.
“If you have any information that you believe may be relevant, please reach out to the committee by either meeting any of the committee members, or by emailing Prof. Nand Kishore or to the Powai Police,” Chaudhari appealed through the statement.
IIT Bombay and police are actively investigating the “environment, incidents, and reasons behind Darshan’s tragic death”, it said. The police have interviewed a large number of people, and also taken Solanki’s phone and laptop for forensic analysis, Chaudhari said.
In the statement, Chaudhari said IIT B is working towards changes in their UG curriculum, starting with the batch of 2022, to make it “more relevant and motivating to students, and to reduce some of the stress”.
Calling some media reports about the student’s death “premature”, Chaudhari said that “as the matter is sub-judice so we cannot comment on the causes until either police report or our inquiry committee report is ready”.
According to Chaudhari, IIT Bombay has an SC/ST students cell, where students can reach in case of issues including discrimination.
“We are working actively to create an inclusive campus where all students feel at home,” Chaudhari said.
He said they give strong warnings against any discrimination during new students’ formal orientation and also sensitise all students to not seek proxy information such as ranks in entrance exams. “We have a very strict policy on discrimination by faculty,” Chaudhari said.
Solanki’s family on Wednesday had claimed that he faced discrimination at the IIT B for belonging to an SC community and maintained that there was a strong possibility that he was “murdered”.
According to a police official, his parents had visited Mumbai to collect their son’s body. In their initial statements, they had not raised any objection to the probe or expressed doubt over the cause of their son’s death, said the official had said earlier.
Gujarat Congress MLA and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani has demanded a probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into Solanki’s death.
Noida: A 30-year-old employee of a private bank in Delhi was arrested in Greater Noida for allegedly raping an MBBS student and pressuring her to convert to Islam from Hinduism for marriage, police here said on Friday.
Besides the man, who lives in the Sangam Vihar area of Delhi, his 52-year-old father has also been arrested in connection with the case, the police said.
The complainant in the case is a 23-year-old MBBS student, currently enrolled in a medical college in Greater Noida but is originally from West Bengal, they said.
According to her, she and the accused had met on a social media site, where he hid his real identity so that he could become friends with her, which they did, and later they got into a physical relationship, police said.
“Eventually, she was sexually exploited by him and then forced into religious conversion, threatened and assaulted,” Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Greater Noida) Dinesh Kumar Singh said.
“Accordingly, an FIR was lodged leading to the arrest of Mohammad Akhlaq and (his father) Mohammad Moin. Further investigation in the case is underway,” Singh said.
A case has been lodged under Indian Penal Code sections 323 (assault), 504 (insult to provoke breach of peace), 506 (criminal intimidation), 354c (voyeurism), 376 (rape) and under provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, the police said.
Dankaur Police Station In-charge Sanjay Kumar Singh told PTI that the aspiring doctor had first come across Akhlaq during her coaching days on a social media site where he had identified himself as Aditya Sharma.
“It was only in 2021 that both came face to face and she found out his real name. The accused told her that he had not revealed his real name, fearing she would stop interacting with him,” Singh said.
The accused also hid from her that he was married with two children. She approached the police recently only after she found out he was married, the officer said.
“When informed about the matter, the father of the accused advised him to ask the girl to convert so that he could do a second marriage,” Singh told PTI.
Both accused were picked up from their Delhi home for questioning and later arrested. They are currently in judicial custody, the officer added.
In addition, majority non-white neighborhoods accounted for more applications per capita than did majority-white ZIP codes.
Borrowers in blue states were generally more likely to sign up for the program than borrowers in red states, where many Republican officials have railed against its legality and cost. Congressional districts won by Democrats averaged about 57,000 applications for debt relief while GOP-won districts averaged 50,000 applications.
The new details come as Biden’s debt relief program, which offers up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness, remains stuck in legal limbo. The Supreme Court later this month will hear oral arguments in two cases brought by Republican-led states and a conservative group, which argue that Biden’s debt cancellation is illegal.
POLITICO examined the ZIP codes associated with each of approximately 23.6 million applications for Biden’s debt relief that were received by the Education Department between Oct. 14 and Nov. 11, when the program was frozen in response to a court ruling. The department provided the data in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
POLITICO’s analysis matched application ZIP codes with U.S. Census Bureau estimates of per-capita income, college attendance and racial demographics, as well as the results of the 2022 midterm elections.
Lower-income areas applied at a higher rate
Critics of Biden’s debt relief program, including many Republicans, have decried it as a handout to wealthy Americans who don’t need the help. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C,), who has led the GOP charge against the plan as chair of the House education committee, has blasted the program as a “transfer of wealth from working class Americans to privileged college graduates.”
The White House, meanwhile, claims that about 90 percent of the benefits will go to families earning less than $75,000. When he announced the program, Biden said it was targeted to “working and middle-class people hit especially hard during the pandemic.”
It’s impossible to know the precise income of the tens of millions of borrowers who applied for debt relief because the Education Department didn’t collect that information. On the application, borrowers were required only to self-certify that their annual income fell below the program’s $125,000 limit for individuals and $250,000 for couples.
The per-capita income of the ZIP codes where applicants live is one proxy for estimating their income. Most people, however, earn more or less than the average of their neighborhood.
POLITICO’s analysis found that more than 98 percent of applications came from ZIP codes where the average income is under $75,000. About two-thirds were from neighborhoods with an average income below $40,000.
Applications from higher-income ZIP codes were more rare. Less than 1 percent of the total applications came from the wealthiest ZIP codes where per-capita income is more than $100,000 — roughly corresponding to the portion of Americans who live in these ZIP codes.
Applications from lower-income areas comprised a greater share of the population of adults who attended at least some college compared to applications from higher-income areas.
For example, about 60 percent of those college-educated adults live in neighborhoods where the per-capita income is less than $40,000. But those areas accounted for a greater share, 66 percent, of the applications for student debt.
There were more applications per capita in majority non-white neighborhoods
The NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus and other proponents of student debt cancellation have argued it will help narrow the nation’s persistent racial wealth gap.
Overall, about 15 million applications came from majority-white neighborhoods, while about 8.6 million applications were from ZIP codes that are majority non-white, the POLITICO analysis found. But the number of applications per capita was higher among majority non-white ZIP codes than it was in majority white ZIP codes.
In Georgia, for example, about 43 percent of the total population lives in ZIP codes that are majority non-white. But those areas accounted for about 54 percent of the student debt relief applications.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) was one of the most prominent Democrats pushing Biden to cancel student debt and ran on the issue during his close reelection bid last fall — even as Democrats in other close races distanced themselves from the program.
Several Atlanta-area ZIP codes, the state’s Democratic strongholds, had particularly high volumes of applications. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) represents the eastern suburbs of Atlanta in a majority-Black district that had among the highest number of applicants of any congressional district in the country.
“My district is a prime example of why the relief is so important,” he said in an interview, noting that about half of his constituents have a bachelor’s degree but “many others” have debt but no degree. He noted the median household income of the district, which is about $69,000, according to the Census Bureau.
“That’s not wealthy,” Johnson said, pushing back on GOP criticism of the program. “That is doing everything you can to keep your head above water.”
Politically speaking, Johnson said, canceling student debt “was a powerful lever” to drive Democratic turnout across Georgia last fall. “I think it was one of the reasons that people turned out to vote for Raphael Warnock” even as other statewide races, notably the gubernatorial contest, went for Republicans, he said.
“People are looking forward to that relief,” Johnson said. “They know that it came from national Democrats, that it was a Biden initiative.”
The debt relief program is more popular in blue states
The White House launched the application for student debt relief during the 2022 midterm election campaign, and Biden promoted the application in several speeches in the weeks leading up to Election Day.
The applications skewed toward congressional districts won by Democrats, according to POLITICO’s estimates. About 52 percent of applications came from Democrat-won districts; 48 percent were from GOP-won districts.
In the typical Democratic district, the number of applications was a greater share of the population that attended college than it was in the typical Republican district.
Nationally, about 63 percent of federal student loan borrowers estimated to be eligible for relief had applied for the program or were in line to automatically receive relief, according to the POLITICO analysis of Education Department data.
That sign-up rate was higher in many blue states where Democrats heavily promoted the administration’s debt relief application. In Vermont and Massachusetts, for example, about 68 percent of eligible borrowers raised their hand for relief.
Many GOP states, by contrast, had participation rates that were lower than the national rate. That includes Republican-led states where officials are suing to block the plan, such as Arkansas (57 percent) and Missouri (59 percent). Wyoming had the lowest share of eligible borrowers: about 55 percent apply for the program.
Methodology
This is a snapshot of about 23.6 million out of a total of 25 million applications because the Education Department has not yet — or is unable to — match the remaining applications with ZIP codes of borrowers, or has masked applications counts in ZIP codes where fewer than 100 applications were filed. There may be duplicates in this pool of applications if people submitted multiple applications.
The data analysis was based on ZIP code-aggregated data provided by the Education Department. We crossed the ZIP codes with approximately equivalent Census Bureau-defined ZIP code tabulation areas using a crosswalk compiled by the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Demographic data used for this analysis is mostly from the 2021 Census Bureau American Community Survey five-year estimates. In some cases, the surveys did not provide median income estimates for certain ZCTAs.
To align the ZCTAs with congressional districts, we used the Geocorr tool created by the Missouri Census Data Center. Because ZCTAs sometimes overlap congressional districts, the portion of applications assigned to those districts were weighted by the portion of population living in each congressional district in these estimates.
The Education Department has determined these applications were submitted by real federal student loan borrowers. It matched applications received on StudentAid.gov last fall to ZIP codes it has on file for student loan borrowers. It has not yet determined that these borrowers actually qualify for relief (whether they have the correct type of federal student loan, whether they took out the loan before July 2022, etc.). In other words, they are just applications, not approvals. Before the program was shut down, the department had begun issuing approvals and approved approximately 16 million borrowers for relief by Nov. 11.
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#25M #Americans #signed #Bidens #student #debt #relief
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Ahmedabad/Mumbai: The family of an IIT-Bombay student who allegedly committed suicide has claimed he faced discrimination at the premier institute for belonging to a Scheduled Caste community and suspected foul play in his death, while the Mumbai police on Wednesday said they have started recording statements of his hostel mates as part of their probe into the case.
In Mumbai, the police citing initial probe said the student, Darshan Solanki (18), had spoken to his father in Ahmedabad for around 30 minutes before ending his life on Sunday, but did not mention anything about facing caste discrimination at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
The IIT Bombay administration on Tuesday rejected charges of caste bias in the institute and said initial inputs from the deceased’s friends suggested there was no discrimination.
A senior police official involved in the probe said the student’s parents had not raised any objection on investigation or expressed doubt over their son’s suicide when they came to Mumbai on Monday to take possession of his body.
However, in Ahmedabad the family of the student claimed he faced discrimination at the premier institute for belonging to an SC community and that there was a strong possibility that he was “murdered”.
Darshan Solanki, a first-year student of BTech (chemical), died allegedly after jumping off the seventh floor of a hostel building on the Powai campus of the IIT on Sunday (Feb 12).
His family members, who live in the Maninagar area of Ahmedabad city, claimed though Darshan Solanki faced “discrimination for being a Dalit”, he could not have taken his own life.
“I strongly believe that my son was murdered. Hours before his death, he had called us but he talked normally and gave no indication that he was under any tension. However, when he came home during Makar Sankranti (in mid-January), he informed his aunt that other students were keeping distance from him. They were upset because Darshan made such progress (in academics),” said his mother Tarlikaben Solanki.
The deceased student’s father Rameshbhai Solanki alleged the institute as well as hospital authorities had tried to cover up the matter and performed a post-mortem on the body even before he reached Mumbai.
“I do not think it was a case of suicide. If you fall from the seventh floor, you will sustain many injuries. But, when I saw my son’s face after the post-mortem, I did not see any injuries. How is that possible? Moreover, the PM (post-mortem) was done in a haste and that too without our permission. I was allowed to see only his face after the PM,” claimed Rameshbhai Solanki.
Darshan Solanki’s sister Jahnvi said the IIT-B management kept changing its stand about the reasons behind her brother’s death.
“His body was not shown to my parents, neither before nor after the PM. Earlier, the institute told us that he fell down the stairs. Then, the principal told us that my brother jumped from the building. Do they think we are fools? It seems that my brother was murdered,” said Jahnvi Solanki.
The late student’s aunt Divyaben said Darshan Solanki once told her other pupils had started maintaining distance from him upon learning he belonged to an SC community.
“In January, he told me that other students were jealous of him. They used to ask Darshan how come you are studying for free while we have to spend a lot of money?’. They used to taunt him and ask him how he secured admission. Darshan was harassed there. But, he could not have taken his life due to such tension. It seems he was first murdered and then thrown off the building,” she claimed.
However, the Mumbai police said Darshan Solanki’s parents, who visited the IIT campus in suburban Powai after the incident, in their initial statements had not raised any objection on probe or expressed doubt over their son’s suicide.
Darshan Solanki had spoken for half an hour with his father before ending his life, but during the conversation he had not said anything about facing discrimination in the institute, said the police official.
He said statements of more than a dozen persons have been recorded so far as part of probe to ascertain what led the student to take the extreme step.
Darshan Solanki had told his father he will be visiting home on February 15, said the official.
“The police are thoroughly investigating the case and each and every aspect will be examined to know the exact cause of the suicide,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Union Minister of State for Social Justice Ramdas Athawale visited the IIT B campus and demanded a thorough probe into Darshan Solanki’s death.
Athawale said Darshan Solanki had called his father on Sunday and informed him that except for one paper, all his other first semester exams went well.
Meanwhile, a student collective at the IIT Bombay demanded the resignation of the institute’s director in the backdrop of the alleged suicide and allegations he was facing caste discrimination.
The Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC) also sought that a report of the SC/ST Cell of the IIT Bombay, which it claimed talks about lack of institutional support for Dalit and tribal students in the campus, be made public.
In a statement, the APPSC, said, “We demand resignation of the institute director in the light of these new facts and hope the administration will start the much needed learning process, at least now. Data prepared by the SC/ST Cell points towards the lack of institutional support for SC/ST students at the IIT B.”
The student body alleged the IIT-B administration has not appointed any SC/ST counsellors even after its complaints and said this shows blatant disregards towards the pupils.
However, the institute on Tuesday said it takes utmost precautions to make the campus as inclusive as possible and it has a zero tolerance for any discrimination by faculty.
Caste identity is never disclosed to any one (whether students or faculty) once the admission is done and the institute sensitises students to not seek proxy information such as ranks in entrance exams, it said in a statement.
The institute gives strong warnings against discrimination right from the time students enter the IIT campus. While no steps can be 100 per cent effective, discrimination by students, if at all it occurs, is an exception, the statement said.
Hyderabad: Muslim Students Federation (MSF), a student organisation at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has alleged that the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) employed Islamophobic slogans against them at the University’s general body meeting on Wednesday.
Speaking to Siasat.com, Mohammed Muhsin said that after protests from the ABVP, the yearly held University General Body Meet (UGBM) which sheds light on the work done by the UoH Students Union, was cancelled. As all students present were leaving the Amphitheatre on campus, MSF claims to have been attacked by cadres of the ABVP.
“There were around 100 of us and around 300 ABVP members. They started shouting slogans like Goli maaron saalon ko (Shoot the traitors) and also asked us to ‘Go to Pakistan’,” said Muhsin, the president of MSF and a PhD Management studies student at the university.
MSF is the student organisation of the Indian Union Muslim League party.
The MSF also issued a statement titled “Stand against ABVP hooliganism in HCU” in which they stated that despite the hate, the campus security did nothing to deescalate the situation.
Despite repeated attempts, Siasat.com received no response from the ABVP.
