Latest news with #CIS
Sky News AU
a day ago
- Business
- Sky News AU
‘Debt-funded largesse': Majority of voters depend on government income, new research finds, as public spending hits post-war high
More than half of Australian voters rely on government for most of their income—through wages, benefits or subsidies—according to new research by the Centre for Independent Studies. CIS economist Robert Carling has warned that such widespread dependence has fuelled unsustainable government spending and eroded economic resilience. In a new paper published on Wednesday, Leviathan on the Rampage, Mr Carling warned that federal spending alone has reached 27.6 per cent of GDP. This was up from 24-25 per cent of GDP in 2012-13 and has been fuelled by a 'program expansion in social services, defence and debt interest'. More than half of Australian voters rely on government for most of their income—through wages, benefits or subsidies—according to new research by the Centre for Independent Studies. Federal government programs spiral Mr Carling's report highlighted that a small group of rapidly expanding programs drive more than 60 per cent of the growth in federal spending since 2012–13. These programs include the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), aged care, Medicare, and defence. The NDIS has exceeded the entire federal government's expenditure on defence and will cost taxpayers $52 billion in 2025, compared to $51 billion for the defence budget. According to the federal budget 2025-26, the NDIS recorded the second highest annual growth in major payments, behind only interest. It has been projected to cost more than $64 billion by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, the federal budget has been projected to endure a decade of deficits and surge past $1 trillion of debt. Robert Carling is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies and a former World Bank, IMF and federal and state Treasury economist. Drawing on influential economist Frederic Bastiat's warning that 'the state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else', Mr Carling argues Australia has crossed a tipping point. 'Without a determined reset of expectations, Australia risks sliding into a European-style welfare state — slower growth, higher taxes and a culture where 'voting for a living' replaces 'working for a living'," he said. 'The honeymoon of debt-funded largesse is over.' The CIS report warns that even if current growth in some areas slows, debt interest costs are projected to rise by 9.5 per cent annually over the next decade. Meanwhile, over $100 billion in off-budget 'investments', including energy transition funds and student loan schemes, remain hidden from headline spending figures. Leaked treasury advice calls for tax hikes The findings come just days after leaked Treasury advice revealed the Albanese government has been advised to pursue 'spending reductions'. The independent Treasury said that Treasurer Jim Chalmers would need to find 'additional revenue and spending reductions' to ensure 'sustainable budget'. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley warned on Tuesday that 'clearly there is work going on to increase taxes'. 'We know this because of leaked Treasury advice that demonstrates that there will be a plan coming forward to tax Australians more,' she said. 'Now that's a broken promise if that happens, and we will hold them to account.' Treasurer defends long-term reform plan Treasurer Jim Chalmers has defended the government's fiscal plan and said the leaked briefing was not inconsistent with the government's stated priorities. 'The (upcoming economic reform) roundtable is all about building consensus on long-term economic reform, with a focus on … budget sustainability,' he said on Friday. 'It's an outstanding group of people who we believe will make a big contribution to the future direction of economic reform. 'While we can't invite representatives from every industry or organisation, everyone has the chance to have their say in this process with online submissions still open.'
Time of India
4 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Why are Edlow and Vaughan calling OPT illegal? Here's the real story
OPT faces mounting legal and political attacks, putting the future of 200,000 international graduates at risk. In the quietly panicked corridors of international education policy, a storm is gathering around the United States' Optional Practical Training (OPT) program—and for once, it's not hyperbole to say that the damage may already be done. The numbers are stark, the policy narrative even starker. According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) SEVIS 2024 report, over 194,554 international students received work authorisation under OPT last year. Of these, a staggering 95,384 secured extensions under the STEM OPT provision. And standing at the centre of this tectonic shift are Indian students, who account for nearly 98,000 of those OPT authorisations during the 2023–24 cycle, as confirmed by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. But now, the very scaffolding of this bridge—from academic promise to professional foothold—is under coordinated assault by voices both influential and ideological. Leading the charge are Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and Joseph Edlow, the newly confirmed Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Both have testified before Congress in 2025 that OPT is not only legally suspect but structurally dangerous. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Cardiologists Beg: Take These 4 Ingredients Before Bed to Burn Fat The Healthy Way Learn More Undo by Taboola by Taboola The rhetoric may be wrapped in legalese, but the intent is clear: Dismantle the post-study work rights that have long made U.S. degrees a prized aspiration for international—and particularly Indian—students. What's at stake is more than immigration. It is the erasure of a pipeline that has quietly underwritten America's dominance in global tech and innovation. Edlow and Vaughan 's case against OPT: Congress didn't sign it, so let's burn it At the core of the campaign to dismantle the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program lies a foundational dispute—not merely about visas or foreign labour, but about who gets to define the boundaries of lawful work in postsecondary America. And in this ideological contest, Jessica Vaughan and Joseph Edlow have emerged as the architects of what they frame as a long-overdue correction. Their argument is deceptively simple: OPT is not law—it is regulation. Worse, they claim, it is unregulated regulation, sustained not by statute but by administrative inertia and legal loopholes. In her detailed testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee in June 2025, Vaughan—Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)—delivered a withering critique of what she called 'the largest unregulated guest worker scheme in the United States.' Drawing from internal data sets provided by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, Vaughan revealed that over 540,000 work authorisations were granted under OPT and CPT (Curricular Practical Training) in FY2023 alone. This, she argued, was not just administrative generosity—it was regulatory anarchy. In her words, OPT had "spawned an industry of diploma mills, fake schools, bogus training programs, and illegal employment." According to her testimony, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP)—the body meant to oversee the legitimacy of these academic affiliations—was too chronically under-resourced to vet the scale of demand. The result, she concluded, was a parallel ecosystem of academic storefronts and training programmes designed not for learning, but for visa preservation and labour substitution. But perhaps her sharpest critique was constitutional in tone. OPT, she reminded the Committee, is not authorised by the US Congress. It was created as an extension of executive rulemaking, first formalised under the Bush administration and later expanded under Obama. 'There has never been a vote in Congress,' Vaughan noted, 'to allow hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates to work on US soil under this program. ' Edlow, a former Trump-era official brought back to restore 'legal fidelity' to immigration enforcement, seconded the legalistic rebuke. In multiple briefings before the Senate and in internal USCIS memoranda from April–June 2025, Edlow contended that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) makes no provision for post-completion work for F-1 visa holders. "The INA is unambiguous," he said. "Student visas are for study—not for work after graduation. " He took particular aim at the 2023 D.C. Circuit Court ruling, which upheld the legality of OPT and its STEM extension. The decision, Edlow claimed, rested on an 'erroneous reading of statutory intent'—one that unjustifiably enlarged the executive branch's power to define immigration eligibility criteria without congressional consent. In his congressional appearances and in internal DHS documents, Edlow has further proposed reorienting USCIS enforcement priorities. Specifically, he has called for an expanded role for the Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) directorate in vetting OPT applicants and employers—a move that signals a coming compliance-heavy era, where student employment records could be re-audited, revoked, or flagged for deportation if found wanting. Both Vaughan and Edlow converge on the same policy prescription, stated either in soft legalism or hard numbers: The OPT program must either be terminated outright or restricted so severely that it becomes operationally nonviable for most international graduates. In other words, OPT must be stripped of its current utility to ensure it cannot continue under the guise of administrative legitimacy. What really lies beneath Edlow and Vaughan's constitutional and legal arguments? Behind Edlow and Vaughan's polished legal rhetoric lies a deeper mission—one that has less to do with statutes and more to do with reshaping America's relationship with global talent. Woven beneath the testimony is a broader, more ideological belief that international student mobility has been hijacked by corporate interests, and that foreign graduates are now indistinguishable from guest workers, hired to circumvent wage floors, sidestep payroll taxes, and bypass labour market tests that would otherwise favour American graduates. To this end, Vaughan and Edlow's critique is not merely of OPT as policy, but of OPT as economic architecture—an invisible scaffold that supports tech giants, universities, and global talent mobility. For them, removing that scaffold is not disruption. It is restoration. Come, pay, tuition and leave What Edlow and Vaughan propose is more than a policy fix—it is a structural decoupling of education from employability, one that threatens to return the F-1 visa to a narrow, transactional instrument: come, pay tuition, and leave. It is this return to pre-globalisation thinking that most alarms educators and economists alike. And it is this version of 'legal clarity' that could leave hundreds of thousands of students—including the 98,000 Indian graduates currently working under OPT—on the edge of a bureaucratic cliff, with no safety net beyond the 90-day unemployment cap. TOI Education is on WhatsApp now. Follow us here . Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Malaysian Reserve
6 days ago
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
Tidal Cyber Launches Threat-Led Defense, Redefining Detection and Defense
ARLINGTON, Va., July 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Tidal Cyber, the global leader in defensive security and a pioneer in helping organizations operationalize MITRE ATT&CK, today announced the launch of its Threat-Led Defense approach, empowering cybersecurity teams to align detection and defense strategies directly to real-world adversary behavior. Built by former MITRE ATT&CK® experts and the co-founder of MITRE's Center for Threat-Informed Defense, Tidal Cyber's threat-led platform introduces a breakthrough level of specificity by mapping techniques and sub-techniques to operationalize adversary procedures. This shift transforms how organizations understand, measure, and act on threat exposure. Unlike traditional, reactive, or vulnerability-first approaches, Tidal Cyber delivers procedural-level granularity across the MITRE ATT&CK framework, offering unmatched visibility into the 'how' of attacker behavior. Their coverage mapping calculates residual risk for each technique and provides stack-specific visibility, highlighting exposures based on how real-world adversaries operate 'Cybersecurity has long been reactive, vulnerability-led, and compliance-driven,' said Rick Gordon, CEO and Co-Founder of Tidal Cyber. 'With Threat-Led Defense, we flip that model by putting adversary behavior at the center of defense. We give security teams the intelligence, specificity, and precision to identify exactly where they're exposed and how attackers actually execute TTPs. A threat-led defense first is the future of proactive cybersecurity, and we're proud to lead the charge.' Tidal Cyber's unified platform integrates adversary intelligence, procedural mapping, control validation, and compliance alignment into a single, intuitive interface. By connecting seamlessly with the defensive stack and aligning to frameworks such as MITRE D3FEND, CIS, and NIST, Tidal helps organizations prove readiness, reduce risk, and justify investments with measurable confidence. 'Detection engineering still relies too much on guesswork and static best practices,' said Frank Duff, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder of Tidal Cyber. 'We built the Tidal Cyber Platform to deliver operationalized, actionable insights tied to real adversary behavior and mapped to ATT&CK. When defenders have that level of context and precision, they can stop attackers before they succeed. That's the power of Threat-Led Defense.' With the launch of Threat-Led Defense, Tidal Cyber is redefining how modern security teams think about exposure, detection, and readiness. No longer bound by CVE counts, asset inventories, or checkbox compliance, Tidal Cyber provides a level of specificity not seen before. Organizations can now reduce risk proactively with the precision to answer the most important question in cybersecurity: 'Can I defend against the latest threat?' Learn More About Tidal Cyber Threat-Led Defense at contact@ About Tidal Cyber Tidal Cyber delivers the industry's only Threat-Led Defense Platform, purpose-built to operationalize TTPs and provide procedural-level threat insights across the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Founded by cybersecurity veterans with deep roots in ATT&CK development and cyber operations, Tidal empowers organizations to reduce risk, optimize controls, and align spend with real-world threats. Learn more at
Business Wire
16-07-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Infinedi-Owned CEA CAPA Education Abroad Acquires CIS Abroad, CISaustralia, and Barcelona SAE
PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Infinedi Partners, LP ('Infinedi') announced today that its portfolio company, CEA CAPA Education Abroad ('CEA CAPA' or the 'Company'), has completed the acquisition of CIS Abroad, CISaustralia, and Barcelona SAE (collectively, 'CIS') from their parent company Global Educators. CIS is a leading provider of education abroad and career readiness programs for U.S. and Australian undergraduate students across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. On an annual basis, CIS serves more than 4,000 students from over 200 colleges and universities, through one study center and numerous international university partners. On a combined basis, CEA CAPA serves more than 15,000 students annually from more than 450 U.S. and Australian universities. Its comprehensive educational and career readiness programs, available in 92 cities in 37 countries across Europe, Asia, Australia, Central and South America, and Africa, offers a differentiated breadth of offerings for students and sending partners. CEA CAPA's programs are delivered through its 17 study centers and partnerships with international universities, hospitals, law firms and local businesses. Jay Hegenbart, Founder and Managing Partner of Infinedi, commented, 'For colleges and universities, the acquisition of CIS brings a host of advantages, including access to a larger and more diverse set of study abroad opportunities across Europe, Asia, and Australia, and ultimately the ability to meet the individual needs of more students—particularly students in high-demand majors such as business, engineering, psychology, health sciences, and more. Universities will benefit from more consistent educational delivery through standardized models across an expanded global footprint, and continued assurance of high-quality academics, student support, and rigorous health and safety protocols across the world.' 'This integration brings together some of the best partnerships, innovative programs, locations, talent, and experience in the field of education abroad. It allows us to reach more students and have greater impact with more variety, quality, and care,' said Beth Stiller, Chief Executive Officer of CEA CAPA. 'Our desire is to not only bring our strengths and resources together, but to introduce new classes, study centers, and personalized pathways to help students achieve their academic and career goals.' 'CEA CAPA's mission is to empower students to be thoughtful and thriving leaders through living and learning abroad. With this combination, we are excited to provide the broadest access to transformative global experiences for students and to offer even more value and support to higher education partners,' said Carter Harned, Partner at Infinedi. About Infinedi Infinedi is a private equity firm focused on innovative partnerships with founder-owned businesses and financial entrepreneurs. Based in New York, the firm was founded in March 2018 by Jay Hegenbart. Unlike many traditional private equity firms, Infinedi focuses exclusively on situations where it is the first private equity investor. Additional elements of the strategy include using less financial leverage and having investment durations longer than is typical. The firm's approach is solution-based, working with business owners to create tailor-made private equity investments oriented to maximize effectiveness for all stakeholders. Its investors include a diverse group of prominent institutional investors. Many of these organizations have known the principals for decades and have benefitted from their successful track record of investing. Infinedi is actively seeking new investment opportunities. Visit for more information. About CEA CAPA Education Abroad CEA CAPA Education Abroad is a leading provider of study abroad programs, international internships, and career development opportunities designed to meet the needs of students from a wide range of majors and career interests. CEA CAPA students earn credits toward their degree while learning to embrace different cultures, become better communicators, gain independence, and grow both personally and professionally. The organization is committed to increasing equitable access to education abroad. CEA CAPA's mission is to empower students to become thoughtful and thriving leaders through living and learning abroad. Through its study centers and university partner programs, CEA CAPA offers a broad depth and breadth of curricular options in 92 cities across 37 countries in Europe, Latin America, and Australia. In addition to its standard programming, CEA CAPA offers custom and faculty-led programs at each of its locations. Visit for more information. About CIS Since 2000, CIS Abroad has been delivering study abroad programs for US undergraduate students through international university partners in 29 destinations. CISaustralia, founded in 2013, is focused on delivering study abroad, volunteer abroad, and internship programs across the globe to Australian students. Barcelona SAE, founded in 2009, has exclusively focused on delivering study abroad programs for US undergraduate students through its study center and international university partner network within Barcelona, Spain. On an annual basis, CIS serves more than 4,000 students from more than 200 colleges and universities, through one study center and numerous international university partners.
Daily Express
16-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Express
Cement Industries Sabah makes RM25 million payout to shareholders
Published on: Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Published on: Wed, Jul 16, 2025 Text Size: Sumardi (third left) and Japlin (middle) posing with official representatives of Sedco, Sabah Ports Authority and Tasek Corporation Berhad showing mock cheques of their respective amount dividend payout for 2024 given by CIS here. Kota Kinabalu: Cement Industries (Sabah) Sdn Bhd (CIS) is pleased to announce a dividend payout of RM25 million to its shareholders for the financial year 2024, reflecting the company's solid financial performance and ongoing commitment to growth and good governance. CIS General Manager Sumardi Mohd Yusof presented the dividend while witnessed by its Chairman Datuk Japlin Akim along with the Board of Directors during the Company's 2nd Board Meeting of 2025. Advertisement Of the total dividend, CIS statement on Tuesday stated that Sabah Economic Development Corporation (SEDCO) and Sabah Ports Authority (SPA), representing the Sabah State Government's interests, collectively received RM17.5 million, while Tasek Corporation Berhad received RM7.5 million. This strong dividend performance is underpinned by CIS's audited net profit of RM36.7 million in FY2024, and continued positive momentum with RM33 million in net profit recorded for the first half of 2025. CIS's enhanced profitability and improved cement supply performance are the result of strategic actions undertaken over the past year, including: Strengthening of its tendering and procurement Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), encouraging open tender participation without prejudice to foster fairness and competition. Implementing enhanced corporate governance practices, including a transparent tendering committee and a board comprising independent technical professionals. Reinforcement of its management team by recruiting capable young professionals, while investing in ongoing leadership training and succession planning. Executing major plant upgrades and improving maintenance protocols, significantly reducing downtime and ensuring consistent cement supply to meet market demand. Delivering measurable results, substantial improvements in financial performance as well as competency of the CIS management team has led to this year's RM25 million dividend payouts to shareholders. The Board and Management of CIS, led by Sumardi and the newly appointed SEDCO Group General Manager, Datuk Ar. James Wong, reaffirm their commitment to strong, transparent, and accountable corporate governance. Looking ahead, CIS is confident in its ability to sustain profitability and continue delivering increased value to its shareholders, especially to the State of Sabah. * Follow us on our official WhatsApp channel and Telegram for breaking news alerts and key updates! * Do you have access to the Daily Express e-paper and online exclusive news? Check out subscription plans available. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express's Telegram channel. Daily Express Malaysia
