Showing posts with label Conflict. Show all posts
Congress to double student loan interest rates
 |
| U.S. Capitol building.(Reuters / Kevin Lamarque) |
Seven million college students will see their student loan costs double on Monday, after a group of bipartisan lawmakers failed to agree on a plan to keep interest rates down.
The Senate adjourned for the July 4 recess on Thursday, but failed to keep interest rates on Stafford loans at the current 3.4 percent rate. The federally subsidized loans are set to expire on July 1, after which the interest rate cap will rise to 6.8 percent.
Congress’ Joint Economic Committee estimates that the average student will be paying $2,600 more starting July 1. On a $23,000 student loan repaid over 10 years, a student would be paying about $3,000 total interest.
“At one level it’s modest, but if you have an entry-level position or can’t find work, it starts to add up,” Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council of Education, told Fox News.
In order to keep interest rates down, lawmakers would have to extend the cap, set a new one, or find another way to keep rates low. A bipartisan group of senators introduced the “Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act”, which would have secured a 1.85 percent interest rate on undergraduate Stafford Loans, a 3.4 percent rate on graduate loans, and a 4.4 percent rate on PLUS loans that are issued to parents of students. But after paying little attention to the issue for the past 11 months, lawmakers failed to agree on this proposal and spent the past few weeks arguing about a solution.
“We’re tired of this being a political football,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said at a news conference with the co-sponsors of the bill. “This is a responsible program from the standpoint of the American taxpayer.”
Senate Democrats on Thursday advocated for a temporary one-year delay of the current Stafford loan rates, but Republicans opposed the idea, and the Senate adjourned for recess.
“Last year we kicked the can down the road and passed a one-year extension for only a small group of students… Why would we want to make the same mistake again and just kick the can down the road another year?” Burr told AP.
But Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) believes it would be best to extend current rates until Congress can come up with a better solution, to avoid the rise in interest rates.
“Students across this country would rather have no deal than a bad deal,” Reed said. “We’re at the point where we have to do our best to extend the 3.4 percent interest rate while we work on a good deal, not just any deal.”
Sen. Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate education panel, said lawmakers would consider a retroactive fix on July 10. The US government is already forecast to make a record $51 billion profit from the federal student loan program this year at current interest rates, which Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) described as “billions of dollars off the backs of our students.”If lawmakers fail to make a retroactive deal that would undo the impending spike in interest rates, US college students may find themselves unable to afford taking out a federal loan.
US-Japan war games off the California coast imitate Chinese invasion
 |
| Marines of the U.S. Marine Corps take part in a practice for a joint landing operation drill (Reuters / Lee Jae Won) |
The US and Japan are preparing for a possible Chinese invasion of the Senkaku Islands. Using a small island off the coast of California, US and Japanese forces are mimicking an armed invasion and an amphibious assault to prepare for a real-life scenario.
The unprecedented drills, code-named Dawn Blitz, are being conducted on San Clemente Island, which is 75 miles northwest of San Diego, the Christian Science Monitor reports. They began with an assault led by 80 US Marines and three MV-22 Osprey aircraft, and were followed by a Japanese counterattack using 1,000 troops and two warships. Although Japanese officials claim they are not preparing to target a third country, the exercises have made Chinese officials uncomfortable.
China and Japan have long disputed the Senkaku Islands, which are located in the East China Sea but which the Japanese government purchased from private owners in 2012. The islands are uninhabited, but believed to hold rich oil and gas deposits. The purchase triggered violent protests that tens of thousands of Chinese took part in, and harmed Sino-Japanese relations.
In the months after the purchase, the Chinese navy practiced military exercises near the islands, and joint US-Japanese naval drills subsequently occurred in the waters of the island chain. The latest drills off the California coast are only adding to tensions regarding the Senkaku Islands. Chinese officials reportedly objected to the drills, but their concerns were ignored by Washington, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
"We're aware of China's objections, but from a Japanese and US perspective, the object of the exercise is to build a powerful deterrent and demonstrate that the two forces are seamlessly connected – to show the Chinese that they are battle-ready," an official source familiar with Dawn Blitz told the Monitor on condition of anonymity. "There is nothing unusual in that."
The exercises began just two days after President Obama met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a California summit on June 8. But even though some believe the US is in a tricky position, the official does not believe the US is in the wrong, since the US-Japan security treaty requires the country to help Japan deter any attacks on its territory.
"I don't think Dawn Blitz puts the US in a tricky position," the official said. "They started the drill just after the Obama-Xi summit to avoid any diplomatic repercussions. But the fact that Japan and the US went ahead with the exercise also sends a message – that they are on the same page when it comes to deterring possible Chinese aggression."
Lt. Gen. Koichi Isobe, Japan’s vice chief of staff, told reporters that Japan’s self-defense forces (SDF) need to develop the capabilities to ward off any attacks that might occur on the remote islands.
"The defense of remote islands is a pressing issue, but the SDF [Japan's self-defense forces] has just begun training to develop such capabilities, which are required of US Marines," Japan's vice chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Koichi Isobe, told reporters. "Japan needs to determine its defense strategy and procure necessary equipment and train SDF members for this purpose."
The US has publicly refused to take sides regarding the Senkaku Islands, but its training exercises with Japan may inadvertently cause a shift in its neutrality.
US mulls sending military training teams to Lebanon and Iraq
 |
| US soldiers board the last C17 aircraft carrying US troops out of Iraq at Camp Adder on the outskirts of the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.(AFP Photo / Martin Bureau) |
US military commanders are examining ways the US could bolster security in Syria’s neighboring countries, and have recommended sending military trainers to Lebanon and Iraq.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on Wednesday revealed US plans to strengthen military assistance in Lebanon and Iraq as the conflict in Syria begins to spill over its borders. Dempsey noted that Iraq is suffering the re-emergence of al-Qaeda. Terrorist fighters, including members of the al Nusra Front, are crossing from Iraq into Syria, he said.
"We've made a recommendation that as we look at the challenges faced by the Lebanese armed forces, the Iraqi security forces with a re-emerging al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Jordanians, that we would work with them to help them build additional capability," Dempsey told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
To strengthen US security assistance in the region, he recommends that the US accelerate arms sales and send military training teams to Lebanon and Iraq. He already asked Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the US Central Command, to consider small deployments in upcoming weeks, Dempsey spokesman Col. Edward Thomas told CNN.
Thomas said that “it’s in the realm of the possible” that training teams will be sent back into Iraq – a move that would mark the first significant deployment since the US withdrew its troops in 2011. Dempsey emphasized that the US was not sending combat troops into Lebanon or Iraq, but noted that a Patriot missile battery and about a dozen F-16 fighter jets had already been left in Jordan, bringing the total number of American forces in the country to 1,000.
"Militarily, what we're doing is assisting our partners in the region, the neighbors of Syria, to ensure that they're prepared to account for the potential spillover effects," Dempsey said during Pentagon briefing. "As you know, we've just taken a decision to leave some Patriot missile batteries and some F-16s in Jordan as part of the defense of Jordan. We're working with our Iraqi counterparts, the Lebanese Armed Forces and Turkey through NATO."
Syria’s two-year war has already killed more than 100,000 people, and both Iraq and Lebanon have witnessed an increase in violence as the Syrian conflict has divided supporters of President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian rebels.
Ali al-Moussawi, the media adviser for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, on Thursday told AP that Baghdad would be welcome to increased arms sales and US training teams to address instability in the region.
The US has long maintained that its involvement in the conflict would be limited. But if military commanders agree to send trainers to the region, the US would have a more direct role in addressing the violence along the Syrian border.
“When you say would we send the United States Army or the United States military into Lebanon, I'm talking about teams of trainers, and I'm talking about accelerating foreign military sales for equipment for them," Dempsey said, trying to reassure Americans that combat troops would not be deployed. "This is about building their capability, not ours."
