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Biden has already canceled $66 billion in student loans. Here’s how 3 people received debt relief | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
—

Even though the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, more debt will be canceled during his time in office than under any other president.

The Biden administration has already canceled a record $66 billion in student loan debt for nearly 2.2 million borrowers.

While his one-time student loan forgiveness program would have been far reaching, promising up to $20,000 of debt cancellation for eligible borrowers and wiping out roughly $400 billion overall, the Department of Education has made some lesser-known changes to existing student loan forgiveness programs.

The administration has made it easier for people to qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which grants relief for public sector workers after they’ve made 10 years of qualifying payments.

It has also made more people eligible for the borrower defense to repayment program that cancels student loan debt for borrowers who attended a school that may have misled them or violated certain state laws, as well as made loan discharges automatic for more borrowers who are permanently disabled.

Here’s how three people received student loan forgiveness due to the changes the Biden administration has made to existing federal programs.

Margo Myles, 52, got a letter from the Department of Education in late March saying that nearly $25,000 of her federal student loan debt had been canceled.

Myles had borrowed the money in the early 2000s to earn an associate degree in paralegal studies, but the education didn’t pay off. She found work in the legal field a few years after finishing school but was earning just $9 an hour – not enough to pay her bills and her student loans.

“I was trying to reorganize my life. For me, and for so many other students, this should have been a door,” Myles said of her degree program.

Instead, she defaulted on her student loans. The default dinged her credit and resulted in the garnishment of her federal tax refunds. Myles said she wasn’t allowed to request her academic transcript while her loans were in default, preventing her from enrolling elsewhere.

The Department of Education later found that schools owned by the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges – which include Myles’ alma mater, known at the time as Florida Metropolitan University – engaged in “widespread and pervasive misrepresentations” about students’ employment prospects, including guarantees they would find a job as well as the ability to transfer credits.

Under the borrower defense program, borrowers can apply for debt relief if they were misled by their college. Last June, the Department of Education announced that any student who attended a Corinthian-owned college would automatically qualify for the benefit. The move made 560,000 more borrowers eligible.

About nine months later, Myles learned that she was one of the qualifying borrowers and her debt was discharged. The Department of Education said it would request credit reporting agencies to repair her credit within 45 days, according to the letter she received.

Myles, who now lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and works in insurance, plans to continue her education by pursuing a bachelor’s degree and then a law degree.

“I’ve always wanted to go back to school. I don’t care if I’m 60 when I finish,” she said.

Applying for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was a yearslong, frustrating process for Paige Vass, a special education teacher in Virginia.

The PSLF program cancels remaining federal student loan debt for eligible government and nonprofit workers after they have made 120 qualifying monthly payments, which takes at least 10 years.

But the program has been riddled with problems. Many people reached 10 years of repayment believing they qualified for cancellation of their remaining debt, but instead found out that they had the wrong kind of loan or were making payments in the wrong kind of repayment plan.

Vass applied after teaching for more than 10 years, but her paperwork was returned several times, for things like having an incorrect date or a signature in the wrong place.

She decided to try applying one more time last year after the Biden administration temporarily expanded eligibility for the program with a one-year waiver.

“My fingers were crossed, but I also thought I might be chasing a unicorn,” Vass, 47, said.

“But I was like, I’ve got to try. This is a huge debt and a huge weight on our family,” she added. She and her husband, who is also an educator, have two children.

This spring, not only did Vass find out that she qualified for more than $30,000 in debt relief, but she is also set to receive a refund of about $5,000 because she had overpaid. Under the rules of the temporary waiver, she had made more payments than the 120 required for debt forgiveness.

The debt relief means she may be able to spend more time with her kids. In the past, when she’s owed hundreds of dollars for her student debt each month, she’s worked summer school, taught skiing and worked for the on-demand delivery company DoorDash for some extra cash.

“There’s been so many changes and so many hardships for teachers over the last three years. To me (the loan forgiveness) felt like a statement on behalf of our country’s administration that says, ‘You are valuable and we appreciate what you do, and you do make a difference,’” Vass said.

Last year, Charles Goldenberg, a radiologist in New York City, got an email notifying him that his more than $340,000 in federal student loan debt had been canceled because he qualified for the PSLF program.

While in training, and making little money, Goldenberg was paying off his loans through an income-driven repayment plan, which lowered his monthly payments. But those payments hardly covered the interest accumulation, and his balance ballooned before the pandemic pause went into effect in 2020.

Now, at 42, Goldenberg said the student debt cancellation gives him the opportunity to move on with his life.

“And I think that’s the whole point of the PSLF program. You spend years of training and schooling above and beyond college, making less money than you would when you’re out of training. It’s not without sacrifice. It’s because you work for eligible employers … where you’re not going to be making the kind of money that I make now,” he added.

Goldenberg had been paying off some his loans for 19 years, but not every payment had counted toward the PSLF program until he consolidated his loans about two years ago.

Thanks to the one-year waiver put in place by the Biden administration, some payments he made earlier became eligible.

Applying for the relief had also been a long process for Goldenberg. His loan servicer had difficulty verifying that one of his employers, a nonprofit hospital in Miami, qualified for the program. He eventually found proof on the Department of Education’s website that the hospital did qualify.

Now that Goldenberg is done with training and is earning more money, his student loan payments would be much higher when the pandemic-related pause ends later this year than they were three years ago. He expects they would be $2,500 or more a month if not for the debt relief.

“Now I can use the money that I make for myself, for a mortgage, for family, for other expenses, for retirement. So it really opened up my financial future in a big way,” he said.

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April 12, 2021
China-based hackers breached US government email accounts, Microsoft and White House say | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

China-based hackers have breached email accounts at two-dozen organizations, including some United States government agencies, in an apparent spying campaign aimed at acquiring sensitive information, according to statements from Microsoft and the White House late Tuesday.

The full scope of the hack is being investigated, but US officials and Microsoft have been quietly scrambling in recent weeks to assess the impact of the hack, which targeted unclassified email systems, and contain the fallout.

The federal agency where the Chinese hackers were first detected was the State Department, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. The State Department then reported the suspicious activity to Microsoft, the person said.

The Department of Commerce, which has sanctioned Chinese telecom firms, was also breached. The hackers accessed Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s email account, one source familiar with the investigation told CNN. The Washington Post first reported on the access of the secretary’s account.

The Chinese hackers were detected targeting a small number of federal agencies and just a handful of officials’ email accounts at each agency in a hack aimed at specific officials, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

“Microsoft notified the (Commerce) Department of a compromise to Microsoft’s Office 365 system, and the Department took immediate action to respond,” a department spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.

The spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the targeting of Raimondo’s email account.

The hackers targeted email accounts at the House of Representatives, but it was unclear who was targeted and if the breach attempts were successful, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The breaches add to what is already one of the steepest cybersecurity challenges facing the Biden administration: limiting the ability of Beijing’s formidable hacking teams to access US government and corporate secrets.

“Last month, US government safeguards identified an intrusion in Microsoft’s cloud security, which affected unclassified systems,” National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said in a statement to CNN.

“Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerability in their cloud service,” Hodge said. “We continue to hold the procurement providers of the US Government to a high security threshold.”

The State Department “detected anomalous activity, took immediate steps to secure our systems, and will continue to closely monitor and quickly respond to any further activity,” a department spokesperson said on Wednesday.

US Capitol Police declined to comment, referring CNN to the FBI.

Hodge did not identify who was behind the hack, but Microsoft executives said in a blog post that the hackers were based in China and focused on espionage.

In response to the Microsoft and White House statements, the Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday accused Washington of conducting its own hacking operations.

US officials have consistently labeled China as the most advanced of US adversaries in cyberspace, a domain that has repeatedly been a source of bilateral tension in recent years. The FBI has said Beijing has a larger hacking program than all other governments combined.

China has routinely denied the allegations.

The hacking began in mid-May, when the China-based hackers used a stolen sign-in key to burrow their way into email accounts, according to Microsoft. The tech giant has since blocked the hackers from accessing customer emails using that technique, Microsoft said late Tuesday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in mid-June, but it was not immediately clear if the cyber-espionage campaign was connected to that high-stakes visit.

Some US officials credited the State Department with investing in more cyber-defense capabilities, allowing the agency to detect the suspicious activity earlier than in past advanced hacks.

The number of US organizations, public or private, impacted by the hacking campaign is in the “single digits,” a senior US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official told reporters on Wednesday.

“This appears to have been a very targeted, surgical campaign,” the official said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
Call of Duty to remain on Playstation following Activision Blizzard Microsoft merger | CNN Business

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CNN
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Microsoft

(MSFT) has signed an agreement with Sony

(SNE) to ensure “Call of Duty” remains available on PlayStation after Microsoft

(MSFT) closes its $69 billion Activision Blizzard

(ATVI) merger, the tech giant said Sunday.

The agreement could resolve long-standing complaints by Sony that the merger — which aims to make Microsoft the third-largest video game publisher in the world — threatens competition. Sony didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and @PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard,” said Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s Xbox head, in a tweet. “We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games.”

Sony had been among the loudest critics of the acquisition. Addressing the company’s concerns about the continued availability of “Call of Duty,” one of the industry’s most popular franchises, could help Microsoft overcome any remaining opposition to the deal and usher it to a conclusion.

In response to competition concerns from regulators around the world, Microsoft had already signed multiyear licensing agreements with rival companies including Nintendo and Nvidia, among others, to ensure Microsoft would not be able to restrict Activision titles from users of those businesses’ platforms and consoles.

On Sunday, Microsoft did not disclose the duration of the agreement with Sony.

“From Day One of this acquisition, we’ve been committed to addressing the concerns of regulators, platform and game developers, and consumers,” said Microsoft President Brad Smith in a tweet. “Even after we cross the finish line for this deal’s approval, we will remain focused on ensuring that Call of Duty remains available on more platforms and for more consumers than ever before.”

During a five-day hearing last month in federal court, Microsoft executives including CEO Satya Nadella testified properties such as “Call of Duty” would not be restricted from competitors following the deal’s close.

Last week, US District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley wrote in her opinion the US government had “not shown it is likely to succeed on its assertion the combined firm will probably pull Call of Duty from Sony PlayStation, or that its ownership of Activision content will substantially lessen competition in the video game library subscription and cloud gaming markets.”

Microsoft faces a contractual deadline of July 18 to close the merger with Activision, though the companies could mutually seek to extend that time frame.

Last week, Microsoft won two successive court victories when a federal district court and a US appeals court declined to temporarily block the merger from being consummated. The Federal Trade Commission had argued a preliminary injunction was necessary to prevent video game consumers from being immediately harmed by the deal, which regulators said would enable Microsoft to withhold “Call of Duty” and other popular titles from competing consoles and cloud gaming services.

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April 12, 2021
TSMC says skilled worker shortage delays start of Arizona chip production | CNN Business

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Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co slumped more than 3% Friday after the world’s largest contract chipmaker flagged a 10% drop in 2023 sales and said production due to start next year at its first plant in Arizona would be delayed.

On Thursday, TSMC

(TSM) reported a 23% fall in second-quarter net profit — its first year–on-year drop in quarterly profit since 2019 — as global economic woes take a toll on demand for chips used in everything from cars to cellphones.

“While the company’s declining revenue and profit were disappointing, its long-term growth prospects remain encouraging,” said Brady Wang, associate director at Counterpoint Research. “Despite facing macroeconomic headwinds, TSMC’s long-term outlook remains robust, supported by mega trends like 5G and high-performance computing.”

As TSMC steps up its global expansion, the company said production at its first plant in Arizona will be delayed until 2025 due to a shortage of specialist workers.

“While we are working to improve the situation, including sending experienced technicians from Taiwan to train the local skilled workers for a short period of time, we expect the production schedule of N4 process technology to be pushed out to 2025,” TSMC chairman Mark Liu said Thursday.

TSMC’s total investment in the US project amounts to $40 billion.

The company said its position as the largest manufacturer of artificial intelligence chips and high demand for AI have not offset broader end-market weakness as the global economy recovers more slowly than it had expected.

“The short-term frenzy about the AI demand definitely cannot extrapolate for the long term. Neither can we predict the near future — meaning next year — how the sudden demand will continue or flatten out,” Liu said.

Still, the company’s earnings of 181.8 billion Taiwan dollars ($5.85 billion) for the quarter ending in June beat forecasts.

“We see TSMC well-positioned for a strong growth outlook in 2024,” Goldman Sachs said in a research note. “We believe the US expansion delay is also well-expected by investors.”

Other analysts, too, were upbeat on TSMC, thanks in part to strong demand for AI, which currently accounts for around 6% of the company’s revenue.

“We expect a solid 2024-onward outlook on the back of its leading position in AI chip manufacturing,” Citi Research analysts said in a note.

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April 12, 2021
Pro-Chinese online influence campaign promoted protests in Washington, researchers say | CNN Politics

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CNN
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A Chinese marketing firm likely organized and promoted protests in Washington last year as part of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing influence campaign, according to new research.

The Chinese firm also used a network of over 70 fake news websites to promote pro-China content in an example of the more aggressive efforts by pro-China operatives to influence US political debate in recent years, according to security firm Mandiant, which analyzed the activity.

One of the protests was against a US government ban on goods produced in China’s Xinjiang region, where US officials have accused the Chinese government of systematic repression of the Uyghurs. The other protest was on the sidelines of a June conference on international religious freedom, Mandiant said.

One of the protests only attracted roughly a dozen people but it showed the scope and ambition of the pro-China efforts.

The hired protesters, who included self-proclaimed musicians and actors in the Washington, DC, area, apparently had no idea they were being enlisted in a pro-China influence campaign, the Mandiant researchers said.

The campaign backed by the Chinese firm, Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd., is “intended to sow discord in US society,” Ryan Serabian, a senior analyst at Mandiant, told CNN.

In both cases, protesters carry placards and chant slogans about racial discrimination and abortion in the US. Haixun, the Chinese firm, distributed videos of the protesters online to further the influence campaign, according to Mandiant.

Shanghai Haixun Technology did not respond to a request for comment.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he was unaware of the details of the research. “China has always adhered to non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs,” Liu said in an email to CNN.

The Washington Post first reported on the Mandiant research.

In the runup to the 2016 US presidential elections, Russian operatives used social media to organize protests on American soil as part of Moscow’s election interference, according to US intelligence officials. Such divisive tactics are no longer confined to the Russians, according to election security experts.

During the 2022 US midterm elections, pro-China propagandists showed signs of engaging in “Russia-style influence activities” that stoke American divisions, FBI officials told reporters last year. The FBI pointed to Facebook’s shutdown of accounts originating in China that posted memes mocking President Joe Biden and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

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April 12, 2021
Apple faces $1 billion UK lawsuit by app developers over App Store fees | CNN Business

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More than 1,500 app developers in the United Kingdom brought a £785 million ($1 billion) class action lawsuit against Apple Tuesday over its App Store fees.

Revenues at Apple

(AAPL)’s services business, which includes the App Store, have grown rapidly in the last few years and now hover around $20 billion per quarter.

However, the commissions of 15% to 30% that the company charges some app makers for using an in-app payment system have been criticized by app developers and targeted by antitrust regulators in several countries.

Apple has previously said that 85% of developers on the App Store do not pay any commission and that it helps European developers access markets and customers in 175 countries around the world through the App Store.

The UK lawsuit at the Competition Appeal Tribunal is being brought by Sean Ennis, a professor at the Centre for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia and a former economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, on behalf of 1,566 app developers.

He is being advised by law firm Geradin Partners.

“Apple’s charges to app developers are excessive and only possible due to its monopoly on the distribution of apps onto iPhones and iPads,” Ennis said in a statement.

“The charges are unfair in their own right and constitute abusive pricing. They harm app developers and also app buyers.”

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April 12, 2021
Twitter threatens to sue hate-speech watchdog group | CNN Business

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Washington, DC
CNN
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Elon Musk has called himself a free-speech absolutist and has praised “even my worst critics.” But now Twitter has threatened to sue a nonprofit known for sharply criticizing the platform for its handling of hate speech and misinformation.

In a July 20 letter shared publicly Monday, Twitter threatened to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate, accusing the group of a campaign to hurt Twitter by driving away its advertisers. The CCDH has published numerous reports about various social media companies’ approach to everything from vaccine misinformation to online racism and antisemitism.

The letter by Alex Spiro, an outside attorney representing Twitter owner Musk, alleges that CCDH has made “inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter and its operations” through its reports, which he argued lack scientific rigor.

To back up his claim, Spiro cited one report in which CCDH staff flagged tweets from 100 Twitter Blue subscribers to the platform as being harmful and found that after several days, the company had not taken action on the vast majority of it. The resulting CCDH report said Twitter had failed to act on “99% of Twitter Blue accounts tweeting hate.”

“This article leaves no doubt that CCDH intends to harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform with incendiary claims,” Spiro wrote to CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed, adding that Twitter is investigating whether it can sue the nonprofit for making false descriptions of the company.

CCDH tweeted Spiro’s July 20 letter along with the organization’s reply to Twitter — which Musk has since rebranded as X — that called the legal threat “ridiculous.”

“These allegations not only have no basis in fact (your letter states none), but they represent a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online, to conduct research and analysis regarding the drivers of such disinformation, and to publicly release the findings of that research, even when the findings may be critical of certain platforms,” wrote CCDH’s attorneys in a response dated Monday.

Spiro didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since taking over Twitter, Musk has slashed roughly 80% of the company’s staff, including many working on the platform’s content moderation teams.

In December, Twitter shuttered its Trust and Safety Council comprised of outside experts on online safety, human rights, mental health, suicide prevention and child sexual exploitation.

Reports from multiple groups, including CCDH but also the Anti-Defamation League as well as researchers from Tufts University and the University of Southern California, have pointed to observed increases in hate speech.

Musk claimed that impressions of hate speech — which he described as based on a list of “bad words” — declined in the month following his takeover.

But concerns about the platform’s handling of hateful content under Musk last year have persisted, prompting many brands to pause their advertising on Twitter and contributing to sharp financial losses at the company.

Despite claiming in April that most of Twitter’s advertisers had returned, Musk acknowledged this month that Twitter’s ad revenue remains down by 50% and that the company is still cash-flow negative.

In addition, Twitter has made changes to its platform restricting how third parties can access its data, a move that has drawn widespread criticism from academic researchers who study extremism and other online harms. The changes, which require researchers to pay hefty fees, could inhibit studies on how misinformation, harassment and spam spread on Twitter, experts have said.

Threatening lawsuits has become a favored tactic for Musk as Twitter faces continued pressure. Earlier this month, Twitter threatened to sue Facebook-parent Meta over the launch of its competing app, Threads, accusing the company of copying Twitter’s product through trade secret theft. In May, Spiro sent a letter to Microsoft accusing it of over-using its ability to download tweets from the platform as Musk stepped up his criticism of the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant as a perceived rival in artificial intelligence technology.

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April 12, 2021