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At first, the bar association for immigration attorneys began receiving inquiries from a couple students a day. These were foreigners studying in the U.S., and they’d discovered in early April their legal status had been terminated with little notice. To their knowledge, none of the students had committed a deportable offense.In recent days, the calls have begun flooding in. Hundreds of students have been calling to say they have lost legal status, seeking advice on what to do next.“We thought it was going to be something that was unusual,” said Matthew Maiona, a Boston-based immigration attorney who is getting about six calls a day from panicked international students. “But it seems now like it’s coming pretty fast and furious.”The speed and scope of the federal government’s efforts to terminate the legal status of international students have stunned colleges across the country. Few corners of higher education have been untouched, as schools ranging from prestigious private universities, large public research institutions, and tiny liberal arts colleges discover status terminations one after another among their students.At least 790 students at more than 120 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials. Advocacy groups collecting reports from colleges say hundreds more students could be caught up in the crackdown. Students apparently targeted over minor infractions Around 1.1 million international students were in the United States last yeara source of essential revenue for tuition-driven colleges. International students are not eligible for federal financial aid, and their ability to pay tuition often factors into whether they will be admitted to American schools. Often, they pay full price.Many of the students losing their legal status are from India and China, which together account for more than half the international students at American colleges. But the terminations have not been limited to those from any one part of the world, lawyers said.Four students from two Michigan universities are suing Trump administration officials after their F-1 student status was terminated last week. Their attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, Ramis Wadood, said the students never received a clear reason why.“We don’t know, and that’s the scary part,” he said.The students were informed of the status terminations by their universities via email, which came as a shock, Wadood said. The reason given was that there was a “criminal records check and/or that their visa was revoked,” Wadood said, but none of them were charged or convicted of crimes. Some had either speeding or parking tickets, but one didn’t have any, he said. Only one of the students had known their entry visa was revoked, Wadood said.Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges.But many students say they don’t fall under those categories. Students have filed lawsuits in several states, arguing they were denied due process.In New Hampshire, a federal judge last week granted a temporary restraining order to restore the status of a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth College, Xiaotian Liu. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Wisconsin issued a similar order, ruling the government could not take steps to detain or revoke the visa of a University of Wisconsin-Madison gradate student. In a break from past, feds cancel students’ status directly At many colleges, officials learned the legal immigration status of some international students had been terminated when staff checked a database managed by the Department of Homeland Security. In the past, college officials say, legal statuses typically were updated after colleges told the government the students were no longer studying at the school.The system to track enrollment and movements of international students came under the control of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after 9/11, said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators. She said recent developments have left students fearful of how quickly they can be on the wrong side of enforcement.“You don’t need more than a small number to create fear,” Aw said. “There’s no clarity of what are the reasons and how far the reach of this is.”Her group says as many as 1,300 students have lost visas or had their status terminated, based on reports from colleges.The Department of Homeland Security and State Department did not respond to messages seeking comment.Foreigners who are subject to removal proceedings are usually sent a notice to appear in immigration court on a certain date, but lawyers say affected students have not received any notices, leaving them unsure of next steps to take.Some schools have told students to leave the country to avoid the risk of being detained or deported. But some students have appealed the terminations and stayed in the United States while those are processed.Still others caught in legal limbo aren’t students at all. They had remained in the U.S. post-graduation on “optional practical training,” a one-year periodor up to three for science and technology graduatesthat allows employment in the U.S. after completing an academic degree. During that time, a graduate works in their field and waits to receive their H-1B or other employment visas if they wish to keep working in the U.S.Around 242,000 foreigners in the U.S. are employed through this “optional practical training.” About 500,000 are pursuing graduate degrees, and another 342,000 are undergraduate students.Among the students who have filed lawsuits is a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student who is supposed to graduate on May 5, with a job offer to join the faculty. His attorney Charles Kuck said the student was likely targeted for termination because of an unpaid traffic fine from when the student lent his car to a friend. Ultimately, the violation was dismissed.“We have case after case after case exactly like that, where there is no underlying crime,” said Kuck, who is representing 17 students in the federal lawsuit. He said his law firm has heard from hundreds of students.“These are kids who now, under the Trump administration, realize their position is fragile,” he said. “They’ve preyed on a very vulnerable population. These kids aren’t hiding. They’re in school.”Some international students have been adapting their daily routines.A Ph.D. student from China at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said she has begun carrying around her passport and immigration paperwork at the advice of the university’s international student office. The student, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities, said she has been distressed to see the terminations even for students like her without criminal records.“That is the most scary part because you don’t know whether you’regoing to be the next person,” she said. __Seminera reported from Raleigh, N.C., and Keller reported from Albuquerque, N.M. The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Annie Ma, Makiya Seminera and Christopher L. Keller, Associated Press
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Yes, Spotify is down. Spotify users are reporting service outages on the music streaming desktop and mobile app. As of 8:50 a.m., U.S. users started experiencing technical issues with the app, with around 323 reports. By 9:05 a.m., reports had risen to more than 20,000 outages, and are about 40,000 outage reports at the time of publishing. Technical issues are mainly reported in the U.S. and Europe, with some additional reports in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, United Arab Emirates, and Israel. “We are aware of the outage and working to resolve it as soon as possible,” a Spotify spokesperson told Fast Company in a statement. “The reports of this being a security hack are completely inaccurate. For ongoing updates regarding this issue, please reference our @SpotifyStatus X channel.” Spotify issued an acknowledgement of the situation earlier at 8:45 a.m. via social media saying, “We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!” The technical issues appear to impact the search option on the mobile and desktop app, with a message saying “couldn’t load the page.”
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Cloud-based designer platform Figma on Tuesday confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the United States, more than a year after a $20 billion deal to be acquired by Adobe was shelved due to regulatory roadblocks. Figma had been widely considered as a candidate to go public after antitrust regulators in Europe and Britain blocked Adobe’s deal in December 2023 in what would have been one of the biggest acquisitions of a software startup. Last year, Figma was valued at $12.5 billion after it closed a deal to allow its employees and early investors to sell their stake to new and existing investors. The U.S. IPO market, which made a strong comeback last year from a slew of high-profile listings, has been rattled by market volatility stemming from tariff-related uncertainty, with companies adopting a wait-and-see approach before proceeding with their stock market debuts. “Sentiment for the IPO market is relatively low and has been dampened by heightened market volatility stemming from a lack of policy clarity. Over the past few months, we saw a string of tech startups filing to go public, but many subsequently put their IPO plan on hold,” said Kaidi Gao, senior VC analyst at PitchBook. Figma, a design platform with both free and paid offerings, is used to create, share and test designs for websites, mobile apps and other digital products, boasts customers such as Adobe, Uber, Spotify and Alphabet’s search-engine giant Google. The company, co-founded by tech executive Dylan Field in 2012, is cash flow positive and has expanded its offerings to include a broader platform for team collaborations with artificial intelligence features. Jaiveer Shekhawat, Reuters
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Navigating bedtime with a teenager is, in many homes, a nightly battle with a constant refrain: Get off your phone! Go to bed!Research shows that today’s teenagers are more sleep-deprived than ever before. Adolescents need between eight and 10 hours of sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But nearly 80% of American teenagers aren’t getting that, and experts say it’s affecting important areas like mental health and school attendance.Bedtime routines aren’t just for toddlers. Teenagers need them, too, says Denise Pope, an expert on child development and a senior lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.Experts in adolescent sleep say a few small changes to how parents and teens approach sleep can make a dramatic difference. Try a tech-free bedtime routine for teens The first step to setting up a better bedtime routine is dealing with technology. Separate children from their devices at night. Phones, tablets, streaming services, and video games aren’t the only things keeping kids up at night, but experts agree they are a major factor in delaying sleep.“Get the temptation out of the bedroom,” Pope says. If the phone is within arm’s reach, it’s hard to ignore when notifications buzz. Many teens say they fall asleep while scrolling, or reach for their phone if they have trouble sleeping, and end up scrolling for hours. Be prepared for excuses. “My phone is my alarm clock” is something a lot of parents hear. The solution: Buy an alarm clock. Put screens away an hour before bedtime. Exposure to light prevents the release of melatonin, the hormone released by the brain that makes us feel drowsy.Then, replace screens with a new wind-down routine. Try to get to bed around the same time each night and start winding down at least 30 minutes before. During that time, silence notifications, take a warm shower, read a book. To get an idea of what your teen’s bedtime should be, try an online ” bedtime calculator,” such as the one from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Avoid caffeine and energy drinks in the afternoon and evening. The best sleep environment is a cool, dark, quiet room. In noisy households, earplugs and a sleep mask can help. If a bedroom is too warm, it can affect getting to sleep and staying asleep, says adolescent sleep expert Kyla Wahlstrom. Know the signs of sleep deprivation in teens Some of the telltale evidence of sleep deprivation: being irritable, grumpy, short-tempered, emotionally fragile, unmotivated, impulsive and more likely to see the world and oneself through a negative lens. A sleep-deprived teen also may fall asleep during the daytime, in the car or in class.“We often blame adolescents for being lazy or unruly or having bad behavior, much of which could be attributed to the fact that they are chronically sleep-deprived,” says Wendy Troxel, a clinical psychologist who has conducted numerous studies on adolescent sleep. How do you tell the difference between a sleepy teen and a cranky-but-well-rested one? One key sign is what sleep expert Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse calls “zombie mornings.”“If your teen hits snooze five times, takes forever to get out of bed, asks you for a big cup of coffee first thing in the morning, most likely they are running on empty,” says Fong-Isariyawongse, a neurologist at the University of Pittsburgh. Extreme mood swings are another sign. Sleep is critical for emotional processing, which is why sleep-deprived teens are more likely to be irritable, anxious or depressed. A sleep-deprived teen may fall behind in school, because sleep is essential for learning and memory consolidation. Teens who sleep less are more likely to make bad choices when it comes to drug or alcohol use, drowsy or reckless driving and risky sexual behavior. Does your teen sleep until lunchtime on weekends? “Most likely they are not getting enough sleep during the week,” says Fong-Isariyawongse. It’s fine to sleep in a bit, but try to limit it to a couple hours. Otherwise, it throws off the body clock and makes it harder to wake up when the new school week begins. Why should teenagers care? Show them the science Explain to your teens why sleep matters, and that it’s not just nagging parents who say so. The data on mental health and sleep is vast. Many studies show that depression, anxiety and the risk of suicidal thinking go up as sleep goes down. Beyond mood, sleep deprivation affects physical and athletic ability. That’s why several NFL and NBA teams have hired sleep coaches. Teens who are sleep-deprived sustain more physical injuries, because they take more risks, their judgment is impaired, and reflexes and reaction times are not as fast. Teens who get more sleep perform better in sports, and when they do get injuries, they have a quicker recovery time. More teenage car accidents come from drowsy driving than driving under the influence of alcohol, studies show. Teens who say they get less than eight hours of sleep a night are more likely to text while driving, not wear a seat belt, drink and driveor get in a car with a driver who has been drinking.As any parent knows, telling their teenager to go to sleep does not always work. You need to get their buy-in.“Kids need to be educated about sleep, and their brain health and emotional health, and how it all ties together,” says Wahlstrom. “Tell your kids, ‘You’ll do better in school, better in sports, you’ll look better after a good night’s sleep.’ Because until they want to help themselves, they won’t do it.” The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Jocelyn Gecker, AP Education Writer
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The U.K. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a woman is someone born biologically female, excluding transgender people from the legal definition in a long-running dispute between a feminist group and the Scottish government.Several women’s groups that supported the appeal celebrated outside court and hailed it as a major victory in their effort to protect spaces designated for women.“Everyone knows what sex is and you can’t change it,” said Susan Smith, codirector of For Women Scotland, which brought the case. “It’s common sense, basic common sense and the fact that we have been down a rabbit hole where people have tried to deny science and to deny reality and hopefully this will now see us back to, back to reality.”The ruling brings some clarity in the U.K. to a controversial issue that has roiled politics as women, parents, LGBTQ+ groups, lawmakers, and athletes have debated gender identity rights.Five judges ruled unanimously that the U.K. Equality Act means trans women can be excluded from some single-sex spaces and groups, such as changing rooms, homeless shelters, swimming areas, and medical or counseling services provided only to women.The ruling means that a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes.But Justice Patrick Hodge said its ruling “does not remove protection from trans people,” who are “protected from discrimination on the ground of gender reassignment.” Trans rights advocates condemn the judgment The case stems from a 2018 law passed by the Scottish Parliament stating there should be a 50% female representation on the boards of Scottish public bodies. Transgender women with gender recognition certificates were to be included in meeting the quota.“Interpreting ‘sex’ as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ . . . and, thus, the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way,” Hodge said. “It would create heterogeneous groupings.”Hannah Ford, an employment lawyer, said that while the judgment will provide clarity, it would be a setback for transgender rights and there would be “an uphill battle” to ensure workplaces are welcoming places for trans people.“This will be really wounding for the trans community,” Ford told Sky News.Groups that had challenged the Scottish government popped the cork on a bottle of champagne outside the court and sang, “women’s rights are human rights.”“The court has given us the right answer: the protected characteristic of sexmale and femalerefers to reality, not to paperwork,” said Maya Forstater of the group Sex Matters. In 2022, an employment tribunal ruled that she had been the victim of discrimination when she lost out on a job after posting gender-critical views online.The British government welcomed the ruling, saying it would provide clarity and confidence for women.“Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government,” it said. Harry Potter author backed legal challenge For Women Scotland had argued that the Scottish officials’ redefinition of woman went beyond Parliament’s powers. But Scottish officials then issued new guidance stating that the definition of woman included someone with a gender recognition certificate.FWS successfully sought to overturn that.“Not tying the definition of sex to its ordinary meaning means that public boards could conceivably comprise of 50% men, and 50% men with certificates, yet still lawfully meet the targets for female representation,” the group’s director Trina Budge said previously.The challenge was rejected by a court in 2022, but the group was granted permission last year to take its case to the Supreme Court.Aidan O’Neill, a lawyer for FWS, told the Supreme Court judgesthree men and two womenthat under the Equality Act “sex” should refer to biological sex and as understood “in ordinary, everyday language.”“Our position is your sex, whether you are a man or a woman or a girl or a boy is determined from conception in utero, even before one’s birth, by one’s body,” he said. “It is an expression of one’s bodily reality. It is an immutable biological state.”The women’s right group counted among its supporters author J.K. Rowling, who reportedly donated tens of thousands of pounds to back its work. The Harry Potter writer has been vocal in arguing that the rights for trans women should not come at the expense of those who are born biologically female.Opponents, including Amnesty International, said excluding transgender people from sex discrimination protections conflicted with human rights laws.Amnesty submitted a brief in court saying it was concerned about the deterioration of the rights for trans people in the U.K. and abroad.“A blanket policy of barring trans women from single-sex services is not a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim,” the human rights group said. Brian Melley, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui, Associated Press
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