'We will begin revoking visas': US confirms hardline stance on one nationality
The US government has further outlined its hardline stance on the students, with visas to be revoked for those linked to the Communist Party or studying in key sectors
The United States is poised to ramp up its scrutiny on Chinese students, with Senator Marco Rubio confirming plans to cancel visas for individuals linked to the Chinese Communist Party or pursuing studies in sensitive sectors.
Posting on his X (formerly Twitter) account, the influential Republican senator lifted the lid on the US administration's latest strategy to clamp down on foreign influence within crucial academic and technology realms.
In his statement, Rubio declared:
"The U.S. will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields."
This bold step indicates a significant turn in American policy towards educational ties with China, focusing particularly on exchanges deemed as potential national security threats, reports the Express.
Though details of the policy are still forthcoming, it is anticipated to have a laser focus on individuals engaged in high-stakes areas like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and progressive engineering; disciplines regularly highlighted in intelligence assessments as key arenas of competitive edge against China.
Amidst rising tension over fears of espionage and intellectual property theft by foreign entities ensconced in US academic institutions, this policy ushers in a heightened era of vigilance.
Just yesterday, Rubio dropped a bombshell, announcing an immediate halt on all student visa applications from the globe, putting British nationals in the mix and throwing countless aspirations into chaos.
The official remarked:
"Effective immediately, in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting, consular sections should not add any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued septel, which we anticipate in the coming days," as reported by Politico.
Concerned experts like Aaron Reichlin-Melnick from the American Immigration Council have voiced their worries, pointing to significant financial ramifications:
"Trump's decision to suspend student visa interviews threatens nearly $44 billion in economic contributions and over 370,000 jobs across the United States, according to NAFSA. If the United States stops taking foreign students, the economic impact would be catastrophic," as conveyed by Express US.
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The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
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There is the MCT (Morton Club Together) board and there is the Greenock Morton Football Club board (GMFC). MCT own 90 per cent of the club's shares. They have two representatives on the GMFC board. The problem is that neither of them told MCT about the embargo, which had been in place since mid-March. So the owners of the club only found out about it at the same time as the general public. This, understandably, caused a lot of consternation among MCT and the fanbase at large. It was felt the position of the two representatives had become untenable and they were asked to resign. When they didn't, MCT board members resigned in protest. Now let's introduce another player in this sorry mess: Dalrada. Founded by Brian Bonar, born in Greenock, the American-headquartered financial corporation has been the stadium and front-of-shirt sponsor since 2022 and has put around £1 million into the club over three years. However, it has been reported that payments were missed earlier this year, roughly around the time it was reported that Dalrada's stock price had plummeted. They've stepped between the warring board factions and offered a new sponsorship package of £540,000 per season, a not insignificant increase on the roughly £333,000 they've been spending already. So what's the problem? Well, two things. One, they want a seven-person GMFC board to be made up of two Dalrada representatives, two MCT members and three others who are agreed upon by all parties. The club's articles of association currently state that MCT representatives should always represent a majority on the board. And secondly, they insist the two current MCT representatives remain in place (though later stated through a Q&A that one of them would be a Dalrada representative) along with chairman John Laird, who isn't on the board but is another who has been called on to resign after the transfer embargo mess. 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And their only reason for trying to take greater control is that they want to see better governance after the farce witnessed at the end of the season. I doubt very highly that there are too many Morton supporters who will be swayed by what this writer thinks about the situation, but I have to say – this stinks to high heaven. If Dalrada are to be believed and they only want better governance of the club, then why are they insistent on the people essentially responsible staying on in their roles? It's all well and good wanting to know that your investment is in safe hands, but when it's folk who landed the club with a transfer embargo and didn't feel like telling the owners about it, there isn't much evidence to suggest they're the right people for the job. (In the Q&A the reason stated was that they didn't want to derail the promotion push. Aye, sure.) That argument is also undercut by Dalrada's actions themselves with all of this happening in late May/early June. 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MCT would have first refusal but fans would have to dig very deep to come up with that kind of money. If they didn't, their stake would be diluted. There's even some suspicious wording in the Q&A where it says if Dalrada ever decided to withdraw from the club then 'it would be expected' that the boardroom set-up would revert back. What kind of guarantee is that? It's very possible that Dalrada are only trying to sort everything out and have went about it in a cack-handed manner. But this is what fan ownership is all about: to be certain that your club is not going to fall into the hands of people who don't have its best interests at heart. Voting yes will elevate some short-term pain, but long-term it's really not worth the risk.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
How Trump's military parade draws comparisons to Russia, China
Up to 7,500 troops, 120 vehicles and 50 aircraft will take to the streets and skies of Washington, D.C. on June 14 to celebrate the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary. The event coincides with Trump's 79th birthday. It also marks a rare example of an official military parade taking place inside the United States. Trump's desire to hold a parade has been linked to his 2017 attendance of France's annual Bastille Day, which celebrates that nation's revolutionary history, values and culture. After marveling at the showcase of tanks and fighter jets along the Champs-Elysee in Paris, Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron he wanted to "top" it. "It was one of the greatest parades I've ever seen," he added a few months later. "It was military might." But the French parade is not at its core a display of military power, historians and military experts say. Countries from Iran to North Korea that regularly indulge in large military parades in front of the world's cameras do so in part to send aggressive political and propagandistic messages to adversaries at home and abroad. Tanks, cannons: Inside Trump birthday military parade "There's definitely a correlation between putting on a military parade and authoritarian regimes," said Markus Schiller, CEO of Munich, Germany-based company ST Analytics, an aerospace and security consultancy. "These parades are about sending message to other countries and also to domestic political rivals," he said. "You won't seen any parades like this in Germany or Norway or Australia because they cost a lot of money and everybody would just shake their heads and say, 'Why does the government need to do this?'" Trump has said the parade's cost will be a bargain. "It's peanuts compared to the value of doing it," he said. "We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we're going to celebrate it." Trump's military parade is not new idea: It's actually a retro one Parade enthusiasts: Russia, China, North Korea The U.S. government has sponsored military parades previously. Troops, tanks and war planes have also shown up at American presidential inaugurations, including those of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. The last high-profile military parade was in 1991, to commemorate the end of the Gulf War. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are among nations who routinely stage grand parades featuring military personnel and hardware such as missile systems, goose-stepping troops, tanks and other armored vehicles. On May 9, Russia's President Vladimir Putin hosted China's President Xi Jinping and more than 20 other world leaders as thousands of troops and columns of trucks carrying drones and other weapons paraded through Red Square. The highly choreographed annual event commemorates the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany. The drones, displayed for the first time, were an apparent reference to Russia's deadly use of them in Ukraine. Russia rehearses Victory Day parade: Putin flaunts military power amid Ukraine War According to a planning document seen by USA TODAY, the parade on June 14 and a series of related events in Washington, D.C., beginning the first week of June, will cost up to $45 million. On the day of the parade, there will be a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery and a festival on the National Mall featuring Army equipment displays and demonstrations. The day will culminate with a parade through the city and an enlistment ceremony presided over by Trump - and fireworks. The parade will salute the Army's heritage from the Revolutionary War to the present, with soldiers in period uniforms. 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France's Bastille Day - more than a parade Jean-Yves Camus is a defense expert at the Paris-based French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. He said the Bastille Day event that apparently captivated Trump's imagination is not "mainly about the army." He said the ceremony is not to everyone's tastes and "left-wing people" generally don't like it and so don't attend. Camus said the military aspect was "simply a glimpse" at France's different units and that while other nation might use parades to show off "strong leadership, if not autocratic leadership," that wasn't the case in France. "Macron will attend this year, and then the next year or year after that, there will be a new president." "Most people go because it's really very fascinating, and you have this very beautiful, wide avenue - the Champs-Elysee - to watch it from," Camus added. "The night before there are joyful events scattered all over Paris. People go dancing. There is music. You have, I would say, this profound sense of connection with history." Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman and Tom Vanden Brook
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
The shadowy rise of Trump's favorite ally: El Salvador's Nayib Bukele
But that's just part of the story. Bukele rose to near-total control of El Salvador on a tide of support from the very gang he's credited with defeating, according to a U.S. federal indictment, the Treasury department, regional experts, and Salvadoran media. In March, Trump's Justice Department dropped terrorism charges against Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, an alleged top MS-13 leader, and returned him to El Salvador before he could potentially reveal Bukele's deals in an American courtroom. Lopez-Larios, one of MS-13's self-styled "12 Apostles of the Devil," isn't the only person with potentially damaging information on Bukele. USA TODAY has learned that a former president of El Salvador's national assembly - who is also familiar with gangland negotiations - was seized by U.S. immigration officers in March and awaits deportation to his homeland, where he was convicted in absentia for illicit gang dealings. Bukele's deal with MS-13 Leaders of MS-13 negotiated with Bukele ahead of his 2019 presidential landslide and gave him a sometimes violent get-out-the-vote effort in 2021 legislative elections, the U.S. Justice Department has alleged. The 2021 victory gave Bukele's Nuevas Ideas party a legislative supermajority that allowed the term-limited president to cull the country's supreme court, oust the attorney general, and blow through El Salvador's constitution to run for and win a second term. In return, MS-13 leaders received prison privileges, financial benefits - and a ban on extraditions to the United States, U.S. prosecutors, Salvadoran media, and people familiar with the negotiations told USA TODAY. An examination of Bukele's past shows how a gifted young politician, who once described himself as "a radical leftist," rose to power with the help of a Communist guerilla commander, Venezuelan oil money - and a winning deal with MS-13's bloodstained leadership. "There are serious allegations that Bukele purchased peace by making deals with the gangs that Trump says he's at war with," said former Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., who once headed the State Department's democracy and human rights office. "We are grateful for President Bukele's partnership and for CECOT - one of the most secure facilities in the world - there is no better place for these sick criminals," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, referring to the prison holding thousands of MS-13 detainees and hundreds of Venezuelans deported from the U.S. Jackson didn't address questions about Bukele's collusion with MS-13. The Salvadoran embassy did not return a message seeking comment. Trump's 'Vulcans' The most important U.S. source on Bukele's MS-13 ties is a task force created during Trump's first administration. Joint Task Force Vulcan was launched in 2019. It was staffed by bloodhounds from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA and others with one mission: "To destroy MS-13, a vile and evil gang of people," Trump said at the time. Vulcan tore into the task. While winning terrorism and drug indictments against MS-13's Ranfla, or board of directors, investigators discovered a group that was closer to an armed insurgency than a traditional street gang. Drugs? Of course. Human trafficking? Naturally. But also: Trained strike battalions, rocket launchers, and power over life and death stretching from New York's Long Island to Central America, prosecutors said. The U.S. lawmen also found Faustian bargains had been made with MS-13 by El Salvador's old-guard political parties, who were desperate to lower a stratospheric murder rate - and by Nayib Bukele, the self-styled reformer who had promised to clean things up. Comandante Ramiro Bukele, the son of a businessman, dropped out of college and worked in advertising before he gained the attention of the FMLN, the political party of El Salvador's former communist insurgents. In 2011 he won the mayoralty of Nuevo Cuscatlan, just outside the capital. Despite a population of just 8,000, Bukele used the town as a megaphone. Exploiting social media in ways new to El Salvador, he was seen as a progressive newcomer and caught the eye of the man who would serve as his political godfather. Jose Luis Merino was a Communist guerilla commander during El Salvador's bitter 12-year civil war and became a deputy minister for foreign investment after FMLN won the presidency in 2009. Merino was the party's main link to the governments of Hugo Chavez and, later, Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, which used oil money to support leftist movements across the region. Some of that cash went to the young mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlan - Bukele has acknowledged that businesses he controlled received $1.9 million originating from a Venezuelan-Salvadoran oil company that experts say was controlled by Merino. He described the funds as legitimate commercial loans. Audits later determined the oil company had doled out $1 billion in unrecovered loans to entities related to Merino, according to a 2020 report. Merino is among several Bukele associates - including Bukele's chief of cabinet, his press secretary, his gang reintegration coordinator, and his prisons director - placed under U.S. sanctions for corruption and "actions that undermine democratic processes or institutions" during Joe Biden's administration. In 2016, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then a Republican senator from Florida, called Merino a key enabler of a leftist Colombian narco-insurgency, blasting Bukele's patron as "a top-notch, world-class money launderer, arms smuggler for the FARC." Rubio accused Merino of "millions of dollars of laundering for the FARC as well as corrupt Venezuelan officials." Bukele was elected mayor of San Salvador in 2015, a traditional springboard to the presidency, and broke with the FMLN two years later. Merino, whose nom de guerre was Comandante Ramiro, abandoned his old comrades and backed Bukele, who was elected president in 2019. Bukele's MS-13 ties El Salvador's leaders had been making deals with the gangs for years, trading leniency in prison and on the streets for a reduction in homicides that reached a high of 6,656 in 2015. Bukele took the deals to new heights. A 2022 U.S. federal indictment based on Vulcan's work alleged MS-13 leaders held talks with all of the country's political parties "including without limitation negotiations in connection with the February 2019 El Salvador presidential election" - in which Bukele took 85% of the vote. After Bukele's victory, his administration met secretly with imprisoned MS-13 leaders. MS-13 members who were not incarcerated were brought into prison meetings with government ID cards "identifying them as intelligence or law enforcement officials," the indictment said. In those talks, gang leaders "agreed to provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in upcoming elections," the U.S. Treasury department said, while announcing sanctions on Bukele's top negotiators. MS-13 demanded an end to extraditions, shortened sentences, and control of territory. In return, the gang agreed to "reduce the number of public the impression that the government was reducing the murder rate," the indictment says. "In fact, MS-13 leaders continued to authorize murders where the victims' bodies were buried or otherwise hidden." Human rights groups found that, even as El Salvador's official murder rate fell, reported disappearances went up - a trend that started before Bukele was elected president. Bukele, who sold himself as a trailblazer, used the same playbook as his predecessors - only more effectively, people familiar with the operation said. The Salvadoran president's gang associations go back to his time as mayor of the capital, San Salvador. El Faro newspaper reported on a December 2015 phone call that police intercepted between two MS-13 members in which one brags that he's prepping for a meeting with top aides to San Salvador's mayor - Bukele - at a shopping mall Pizza Hut."Monday at 10 at Multiplaza, we're all meeting up," one says. "The mayor already said 'Yeah.'" After the meeting, El Faro reported, police stopped the two Bukele aides and released them without arrest. The cozy dealings appeared to end in March 2022, when three days of violence took 87 lives in the tiny Central American country. Bukele declared a temporary state of emergency that's been renewed every month since, and El Salvador's prison population swelled to 110,000; many of these detainees have been charged with "illicit association." The devil's 'apostle' and the former mayor One person who, prosecutors allege, knows plenty about Bukele's deals with MS-13 is Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, an original member of the gang's "12 Apostles of the Devil." Until recently, Lopez-Larios was based in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn awaiting trial on charges that included plotting terrorist attacks in the United States. But on March 11, John Durham, then-interim U.S. attorney for New York's Eastern District, asked federal Judge Joan Azrack to drop the charges. Durham, who earlier led the Vulcan task force, cited "sensitive and important foreign policy considerations." Six days later, Lopez-Larios was seen among dozens of Venezuelans being dragged off a deportation flight and processed in El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison. The White House hailed his deportation. "It's very telling that the price Bukele demanded" for imprisoning U.S. deportees at CECOT "was the return of these MS-13 leaders who were poised to testify in court," Malinowski said. (Trump has touted a reported $6 million payment to Bukele's administration for holding the deportees as a bargain.) Another top MS-13 leader, Elmer "Crook de Hollywood" Canales-Rivera, remains in U.S. custody, though people familiar with the case fear he too could be returned before trial. The Bukele administration secretly freed Canales from a Salvadoran prison in November 2021, gave him a handgun, and dropped the alleged terrorist at the Guatemalan border, U.S. prosecutors said. Task Force Vulcan tracked Canales to Mexico. He was captured and deported to the U.S. where he awaits trial. A person familiar with the case said that, like Lopez-Larios, Canales was directly involved in negotiations with Bukele - describing him as Bukele's crown jewel. Another Bukele opponent who may soon return to El Salvador is Norman Quijano, who served as president of the national assembly and is a former mayor of San Salvador. Quijano fled El Salvador in 2021, hours before his parliamentary immunity expired, and sought political asylum in the United States. He was convicted in absentia of seeking support from MS-13 and the Barrio 18 gang in a failed 2014 run for president with the conservative ARENA party. Now 78, Quijano is the highest-ranking Salvadoran official convicted of gang ties in prosecutions that experts say have targeted the opposition while sparing Bukele's associates. A person familiar with Quijano told USA TODAY the politician had paid for gang support in his 2014 run - but he was outbid by Bukele's then-party, the FMLN, which paid more than double what Quijano could raise. Quijano lost by a whisker with 49.89% of the vote. Quijano was tried by Salvadoran Judge Godofredo Miranda. In February 2020, Miranda ruled in a separate case that he could "infer" the FMLN's 2014 gang negotiations "particularly impacted the election for mayor of San Salvador at the time," which Bukele won before later breaking with the party. "It is therefore mandatory to verify the existence of any close contacts between the MS gang and the current Cabinet," the judge wrote of Bukele's presidency. ICE agents arrested Quijano on March 6, days before the Trump administration dropped charges against MS-13 leader Lopez-Larios. Quijano is being held at a Texas detention facility. His attorney couldn't be reached; family members did not reply to calls and messages seeking comment.
