TECHNICALLY FULL EMPLOYMENT
Fewer Americans file for jobless aid

By MATT OTT

Hiring sign is displayed outside of a retail store in Vernon Hills, Ill., on Nov. 13, 2021. Fewer Americans applied for jobless aid last week with the number of Americans collecting unemployment at historically low levels. Applications for unemployment benefits fell by 11,000 to 200,000 for the week ending May 28, the Labor Department reported Thursday, June 2, 2022. First-time applications generally track the number of layoffs.

 (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans applied for jobless benefits last week as the U.S. job market remains robust despite four-decade high inflation and a myriad of other economic pressures.

Applications for jobless aid for the week ending June 18 fell to 229,000, a decline of 2,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. First-time applications generally mirror the number of layoffs.

The four-week average for claims, which smooths out some of the week-to-week volatility, rose by 4,500 from the previous week, to 223,500.

The total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits for the week ending June 11 was 1,315,000, up by 5,000 from the previous week. That figure has hovered near 50-year lows for months.

Much of the recent job security and wage gains that Americans have enjoyed recently has been offset by inflation levels not seen in four decades.

Earlier in June, the Labor Department reported that consumer prices surged 8.6% last month — even more than in April — from a year earlier. The Federal Reserve responded last week by raising its main borrowing rate — its main tool for fighting rising prices — by three-quarters of a point. That increase is on top of a half-point increase in early May.

Three weeks ago the government reported that U.S. employers added 390,000 jobs in May, extending a streak of solid hiring that has bolstered an economy under pressure. Though the job growth in May was healthy, it was the lowest monthly gain in a year and there have been signs that more layoffs could be coming, at least in some sectors.

Jobless claims applications the past few weeks, though still relatively low, have been the highest since the first weeks of 2022.

Online automotive retailer Carvana said last month that it’s letting about 2,500 workers go, roughly 12% of its workforce. Online real estate broker Redfin, under pressure from a housing market that’s cooled due to higher interest rates, said last week that it was laying off 8% of its workers.

Those cuts have extended to companies in the cryptocurrency sector with prices for bitcoin and other digital assets cratering in recent months.

Crypto trading platform Coinbase Global said last week it planned to cut about 1,100 jobs, or approximately 18% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring in order to help manage its operating expenses in response to current market conditions.

5.0 to 5.2 percent

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The Federal Reserve considers a base unemployment rate (the U-3 rate) of 5.0 to 5.2 percent as “full employment” in the economy. The recovery has now achieved that level, known technically as the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, or NAIRU. What is considered full employment percentage?

What Is Meant By Full Employment Level Of Output

SADDEST EYES EVER

Sound off! Trumpet is 1st bloodhound to win Westminster show

By JENNIFER PELTZ

Trumpet, a bloodhound, competes for best in show at the 146th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in Tarrytown, N.Y. Trumpet won the title. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (AP) — Now this hound has something to toot his horn about.

A bloodhound named Trumpet won the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Wednesday night, marking the first time the breed has ever snared U.S. dogdom’s most coveted best in show prize.

Rounding the finalists’ ring with a poised and powerful stride, Trumpet beat a French bulldog, a German shepherd, a Maltese, an English setter, a Samoyed and a Lakeland terrier to take the trophy.

“I was shocked,” said handler, co-breeder and co-owner Heather Helmer, who also goes by Heather Buehner. The competition was stiff, “and sometimes I feel the bloodhound is a bit of an underdog.”

After making dog show history, does Trumpet have a sense of how special he is?

“I think he does,” his Berlin Center, Ohio-based handler said.

After his victory, Trumpet posed patiently for countless photos, eventually starting to do what bloodhounds do best — sniff around. He examined some decorative flowers that had been set up for the pictures, not appearing to find anything of note.

Winston, a French bulldog co-owned by NFL defensive lineman Morgan Fox, took second in the nation’s most prestigious dog show.

“I’m just so proud of him and the whole team,” Fox said by text afterward.

Fox, who was just signed by the Los Angeles Chargers and has played for the Los Angeles Rams and the Carolina Panthers, got Winston from his grandmother, Sandy Fox. She has bred and shown Frenchies for years.

Morgan Fox grew up with one and says that as he watched Winston mature, he knew the dog was a winner in both appearance and character. He went into Westminster as the top-ranked dog in the country.

“He’s a joy to be around,” Fox said by phone before Winston’s award. “He always walks around with as much of a smile on his face as a dog can have.”

The seven finalists also included Striker, a Samoyed that also made the finals last year; River, a big-winning German shepherd; MM the Lakeland terrier; Belle the English setter, and a Maltese that clearly was aiming for stardom: Her name is Hollywood.

After topping the canine rankings last year, Striker has lately been hitting a few dog shows “to keep his head in the game,” said handler Laura King.

What makes the snow-white Samoyed shine in competition? “His heart,” said King, of Milan, Illinois.

“His charisma shows when he’s showing,” and he vocally complains when he’s not, she said.

While he was quiet in the ring, an Alaskan Malamute provided a yowling — cheering? — soundtrack for a semifinal round featuring the Samoyed and other breeds classified as working dogs.

The competition drew more than 3,000 purebred dogs, ranging from affenpinschers to Yorkshire terriers. The goal is to crown the dog that most represents the ideal for its breed.

Usually held in winter at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, the show moved to the suburban Lyndhurst estate last year and this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Some dogs, such as golden retrievers, faced dozens of competitors just to win their breed and move on to the semifinals. Others were among few representatives of rare breeds

Ooma was the only Chinook that showed up. The sled-pullers are the official dog of the state of New Hampshire, but they’re rare nationwide.

“I would love to see a couple more” in the Westminster ring, said Ooma’s breeder, owner and handler, Patti Richards of West Haven, Vermont. “Without people who will show and breed, we’re in danger of losing our breed.”

Even for hopefuls that didn’t come away with a ribbon, the event was an opportunity to showcase dogs and all they can do.

Bonnie the Brittany is owner-handler Dr. Jessica Sielawa’s first show dog, and their teamwork extends beyond the ring.

Bonnie accompanies Sielawa to work at her chiropractic practice in Syracuse, New York, where “she’s really helped people with their emotional stress,” Sielawa said.

She plans to get her show dog certified as a therapy dog, too.

PHOTOS 3 of 23

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Title IX: NCAA report shows stark gap in funding for women

“It speaks to the business side of what college sports has become.”

By AARON BEARD

1 of 4

Vanderbilt posses with the trophy after their team won the NCAA's women's team tennis championships against Oklahoma, Tuesday, May 19, 2015, Waco, Texas. The number of women competing at the highest level of college athletics continues to rise along with an increasing funding gap between men’s and women’s sports programs, according to an NCAA report examining the 50th anniversary of Title IX. 

(AP Photo/LM Otero, File)


The number of women competing at the highest level of college athletics continues to rise along with an increasing funding gap between men’s and women’s sports programs, according to an NCAA report examining the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

The report, released Thursday morning and entitled “The State of Women in College Sports,” found 47.1% of participation opportunities were for women across Division I in 2020 compared to 26.4% in 1982.

Yet, amid that growth, men’s programs received more than double that of women’s programs in allocated resources in 2020 – and that gap was even more pronounced when looking at home of the most profitable revenue-generating sports: the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier within Division I that features the Alabamas, Ohio States and Southern Californias of the sports world.

“It tells you schools are investing a huge amount of money in the moneymakers,” NCAA managing director for the office of inclusion and lead report author Amy Wilson told The Associated Press, referring to football as the primary revenue-generating sport along with men’s basketball.

“It speaks to the business side of what college sports has become.”

The gender gap in funding approached nearly 3-to-1 ratios when examining expenditures for recruiting as well as compensation for head coaches and assistant coaches. And that gap isn’t new, even with increased expenditures for women across all three divisions.

The difference between median total expenses for men’s and women’s programs at FBS schools, in particular, has grown from $12.7 million in 2009 to $25.6 million in 2019.

Wilson said those discrepancies don’t automatically amount to a violation of Title IX, which ensures equity between men and women in education and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal funds. But they raise concerns when evaluating whether schools are providing equitable opportunities for, and treatment of, male and female athletes, and how they’re spending to achieve those goals.

“Yes, the numbers are stark. It’s not a little difference, it’s a big difference,” she said. “This milestone Title IX anniversary is an opportune time for recommitment to funding equitable participation opportunities, experiences, and financial aid for student-athletes in men’s and women’s athletics programs.”

Title IX compliance can be measured in multiple ways, including whether the overall program’s gender breakdown is proportionate to that of the general student body. And yet, the study found Division I athletics couldn’t match that standard when examining data from 2020; women accounted for 54% of the undergraduate student body in Division I compared to that aforementioned 47.1% rate.

“I think it’s enough of a gap that we need to ask ourselves: … are there opportunities that could be created and more teams that could be formed?” Wilson said.

Thursday’s Title IX anniversary comes at a time when the governing body for college sports recently updated its transgender policy, as well as facing criticism for failing to ensure equity for last year’s men’s and women’s basketball tournaments following a scathing outside review.


Other takeaways from the report:

LACK OF WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

Fewer women are filling head-coaching roles since President Nixon signed Title IX into law.

The percentage of women’s teams led by female coaches declined from better than 90% in 1972 to 41% in 2020 among all three divisions. There were fewer women’s teams at that time and the study attributes the decline to more men coaching women’s teams, enough to outnumber women’s coaches by the late 1980s, with no corresponding increase of women coaching men’s programs.

These low women-coaching-women numbers don’t surprise Richard Lapchick, director of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida. TIDES annually compiles report cards examining diversity hiring for college sports and professional leagues, with its most recent report on FBS schools released in January.

“Without movement,” Lapchick told the AP. “It’s as baffling as any statistic we report on. Usually there’s some marginal improvement on some issues. And this one is barely budging.”

As for athletic directors, women have accounted for roughly 20% or less of ADs dating to 1980 after dropping “drastically” and 23.9% in 2020, according to the study.

The outlier among women in leadership roles has been conference commissioners, with women outpacing men in acquiring those positions in the past five years and accounting for 31% of those roles for 2019-20, according to the study.

DIVERSITY CONCERNS

The report also noted a lack of women of color in those leadership roles.

The report found that roughly 16% of women working as head coaches of women’s teams and 16% of female athletics directors across all divisions were minorities in 2019-20. Those percentages have increased “slightly” from five years ago.

HIGH SCHOOL DROPOFFS

Going back to high-school athletics, the report found that girls participation numbers have yet to reach that of boys in the 1971-72 school year leading to the law’s implementation.

At the time, participation opportunities for boys measured at nearly 3.7 million, more than 264,000 higher than girls had as recently as 2019.

“I think it’s a reminder that for those who say, ‘Girls and women can play any sport they want, it’s 50 years after Title IX,’ the college data and the high school data shows there’s still pretty big participation gaps,” Wilson said. “And I don’t think it’s that they don’t want to play. I think we’ve got to think more about: what are the barriers to that access?”

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For more on Title IX’s impact, see AP’s full package: https://apnews.com/hub/title-ix

Video timeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdgNI6BZpw0

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Follow Aaron Beard on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/aaronbeardap

Black veteran groups seek policy agenda on racial inequities

By AARON MORRISON

Robert Dabney Jr. poses for a photo in Chicago, Monday, June 13, 2022. As a coalition of current and former military servicemembers hold the first-ever convening for Black veteran advocates in the nation's capital this month, they hope to draw attention to long-standing racial, economic and social inequities facing more than 2 million Black American veterans. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)


As a young man in Memphis, Tennessee, Robert Dabney Jr. wanted to blaze a path that could set his family up for a better life. So two weeks after high school graduation in 1998, at age 18, he joined the U.S. Army.

During nine years of service that included two tours in Iraq, Dabney was a combat medical specialist. But after he left the Army in 2007 and returned to Memphis, married with children, he struggled to see what he’d gained from his service.

“I had exchanged my youth, ambition and vigor for a future that is limited just because of my mental health,” said Dabney, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in 2013.

His experience seeking treatment through the veterans health care system was plagued with challenges, he said. After navigating the system as a Black veteran, he wondered if he might help others find more culturally competent services that the federal government seemed ill-equipped to provide.

Testimony like Dabney’s was being shared at the first-ever national policy conference for Black veterans in Washington on Thursday. Representatives from nearly 20 advocacy groups for service members of color were collaborating on a legislative agenda addressing longstanding racial, economic and social inequities facing more than 2 million Black American veterans.

“For many people from Black and brown (veterans) communities, we’re starting from a different place in life,” said Dabney, 42. “Being able to talk to people who started from that place, who have a mindset similar to yours as they went through the military, has a different meaning to us.”

In addition to disparities in the military justice system, homelessness and unemployment, federal veterans benefits data show Black service members’ post-Sept. 11 disability claims have been granted at lower rates than their white counterparts. Advocates say racial inequality in veterans’ benefit access stifles or, worse, upends the lives of those who proudly served their country.

“The system isn’t accommodating us, we’re accommodating it,” said Victor LaGroon, chairman of the Black Veterans Empowerment Council, which organized Thursday’s conference. “We’ve got to have these systemic and legislative discussions because, until there’s full transparency and accountability, people are going to continue to skirt the issues.”

Slated speakers include the secretaries of the Veterans Affairs and Labor departments, as well as officials from some state and local veterans service agencies.

Richard Brookshire, a former Army combat medic who served in the Afghanistan War, said a major goal is to help the Black veterans community coalesce around “what’s actionable” in a broader agenda that also targets historic inequity dating back to Black veterans serving in World War II.

“There needs to be a critical mass in the Black veteran community to demand it,” said Brookshire, who co-founded the Black Veterans Project. “The seed has been planted and we’re going to begin to see the tree bear fruit.”

The Black Veterans Empowerment Council was formed in 2020 amid the national reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd by police, as a roundtable of Black veterans groups to advise the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Council members said part of their work has been acquiring data to prove how Black veterans have unequal access to the benefits system.

According to Veterans Benefits Administration records analyzed by the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School and reviewed by The Associated Press, there are statistically significant differences in disability claim outcomes for Black and white veterans. Although disability claim approval rates are low across the board, they are significantly lower for Black veterans.

Between 2002 and 2020, Black veterans had the lowest claim approval rate, at 30.3%, when compared to their non-Black counterparts. White veterans had 37.1% of their claims approved, while Hispanic veterans had an approval rate of 36% and Asian or Pacific Islander veterans had a rate of 30.7%.

Linda Mann, co-founder of the African American Redress Network at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, led a group of students that did an additional analysis on the benefits data. According to their findings, disparities in how Black veterans are rated on the severity of their condition amounted to lower disability compensation and decreased eligibility for other VA benefits.

These findings build on historic racial inequities in veterans benefits that stretch back to integration of the armed services in the late 1940s. Black service members who fought in World War II were either denied or prevented from taking full advantage of housing and educational benefits through the GI Bill. Black veterans of the Korean War had similar experiences with the program. Advocates say the generational effects of that discrimination, in terms of wealth, are still being felt today.

“What most people would usually say is we went through the civil rights movement and things are better,” Mann said, but that was not borne out by the Freedom of Information Act statistics the advocacy groups received.

“The continued inequity on the part of the military and VA tracked in not only the FOIA data that we looked at, but also in the practices and policies,” Mann said.

VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said the Biden administration’s focus on equity across the federal government has had significant implications for the agency’s approach in delivering benefits “to all veterans, and specifically to historically marginalized and underserved veterans.”

“We have used veterans’ voices as our North Star,” Hayes said in a statement.

Last year, the Black Veterans Project and the National Veterans Council for Legal Redress sued the VA over its Freedom of Information Act requests for benefits data by race. They won the access. In April, the White House released a summary of the VA’s equity action plan, in which the agency acknowledged race and gender disparities for veteran benefit access.

Dabney ultimately did blaze a better path for himself, going to college and becoming a hospital chaplain in Chicago. But it took overcoming a descent into alcoholism, infidelity and self-neglect before he found his calling.

After his diagnosis for PTSD and depression, he was connected to mental health counseling services through the VA at a community-based outpatient center near Chicago. The assigned counselor, a white woman, frustrated Dabney because he felt she could not relate to the complexities of his identities as a war veteran and a Black man from rough beginnings in Memphis.

“I got to the point where I would just say ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it,’” Dabney recalled. “Instead of me advocating for myself, I began to mold what I said based on what I thought that they could understand. In doing so, I wasn’t able to really open up and present my full self to them.”

He was ready to give up, but what he really needed was a peer encouraging him to stick with it, he said.

Now, Dabney manages a peer apprentice program at the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance in Chicago. The program helps other Black veterans through a network of peer-directed mental health resources.

“It’s those relationships that encourage individuals to seek further help, to seek help from clinicians,” Dabney said.

Walidah Bennett, founder and director of a multi-faith veterans initiative at DePaul University in Chicago is working to provide Black churches and clergy with resources to serve veterans in their congregations.

Bennett’s son, Saad Muhammad, a veteran of the Iraq War, died by suicide in 2013, and in the 10 years since his death, she has established 15 community sites for veterans in crisis. Suicide rates among Black veterans have been on the rise, increasing from 11.8% to 14.5% between 2001 and 2019, though rates remain highest among white veterans, according to the VA’s 2021 annual report on veteran suicide prevention.

“Had we had the community spaces that we have today, it could have been very helpful to my son,” Bennett said.

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AP writer Larry Fenn in New York contributed.

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Morrison is a New York-based member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

The AP Interview: Estonian PM says Russia not weary of war
By DASHA LITVINOVA and HARRIET MORRIS

Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tallinn, Estonia, Wednesday, June 22, 2022. Kallas called European unity on the war in Ukraine “a negative surprise” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Still, she told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday, one shouldn’t underestimate Moscow’s military capabilities, because “they are in this for the long haul.”

 (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)


TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The West should not underestimate Russia’s military capabilities in Ukraine, Estonia’s leader told The Associated Press, saying that as the war enters its fifth month, Moscow’s forces are in it for the long haul.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in an interview Wednesday that Europe should ensure that those committing war crimes and attempted genocide are prosecuted, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin escaped punishment for annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and supporting an insurgency in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that killed over 14,000 people even before this year’s war began.

“I’ve heard talks that, you know, there is no threat anymore because they have exhausted themselves. No, they haven’t,” she said of the Russian military, which failed to take Kyiv in the early stages of the war and is now concentrating its firepower in the east.

“They have plenty of troops still who can come (to fight) — They are not counting the lives that they are losing. They are not counting the artillery that they are losing there. So I don’t think that we should underestimate them in the longer term to still keep this up,” Kallas said, despite the low morale and corruption troubling Moscow’s forces.

Kallas praised the unity that Europe has shown in punishing Russia for the invasion that began Feb. 24, even though she said it was clear from the beginning that it would be “more and more difficult over time” to hang together.

“First, we did the sanctions that were relatively easy. Now we move to sanctions that are much more difficult. But so far, we have managed to get the unity, even if we have different opinions,” she said in the interview in Stenbock House, a government building where she has her office and holds Cabinet meetings..

“This is normal for democracy. We debate, we discuss, and then we get to the solution. So far, it has been a negative surprise to Putin that we are still united,” Kallas said.

The unity was displayed again Thursday when the European Union granted Ukraine candidate status, binding it more to the West. It set in motion a membership process that could take years or even decades.

Estonia, which shares a 294-kilometer (about 180-mile) border with Russia, has taken a hard-line stance over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Kallas has criticized other European leaders for talking to Putin and has advocated for isolating Moscow completely, leaving the decision on how to end the war up to Ukraine.

As the war has dragged on, some in the West have suggested reaching a negotiated peace deal with Russia — even if it meant that Ukraine would give up territory. Kallas has warned against it.

In her comments to the AP, she pointed out that this is exactly what happened after Moscow annexed Crimea, backed the separatists in the industrial Donbas and seized territory in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

“For us, it is important to not make that mistake again like we did in Crimea, Donbas, Georgia,” she said. “We have done the same mistake already three times saying that, you know, negotiations, negotiated peace is the goal. ... The only thing that Putin hears from this is that ‘I can do this because no punishment will follow.’

“And every time, every next time will be with more human suffering than the last one was,” she added.

In Ukraine, those committing war crimes and “conducting or trying to conduct genocide” should be prosecuted.

Sanctions against Russia will take effect over time, she said, and one just needs to have “strategic patience.”




Kallas defended criticism that the sanctions appear to hurt ordinary Russians while failing to deter Putin so far.

“And I still think that, you know, the effects should be felt by the Russian population as well, because if you look, the support for Putin is very high,” she said.

Kallas added that Russian soldiers are bragging about war crimes they commit “to their wives and to their mothers. And if the wives and mothers say that ‘This is OK what you are doing there’ ... I mean, this is also the war that Russia and Russian people are holding up in Ukraine,” she said.

On the domestic front, the 45-year-old Kallas is fighting for her political future as Estonia’s two-party government led by her center-right Reform Party fell apart early June as she kicked out junior partner Center Party following disputes over welfare and spending issues amid rampant inflation in the Baltic nation.

Kallas, who has led the Reform Party since 2018 and became Estonia’s first female prime minister in January 2021, started coalition talks this month with two other parties, and they are expected to reach a coalition deal by early July.

If not, Kallas will face the grim prospect of governing a weak one-party minority government until the next general election scheduled for March 2023.

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Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Settlement would forgive $6B for defrauded college students

By COLLIN BINKLEY

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks at an event where Vice President Kamala Harris announced the cancelation of all federal student loans borrowed by students to attend any Corinthian Colleges, June 2, 2022, at the Department of Education in Washington. The Biden administration has agreed to cancel $6 billion in student loans for about 200,000 former students who say they were defrauded by their colleges, according to a proposed settlement in a Trump-era lawsuit. 

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)


The Biden administration has agreed to cancel $6 billion in student loans for about 200,000 former students who say they were defrauded by their colleges, according to a proposed settlement in a Trump-era lawsuit.

The agreement filed Wednesday in San Francisco federal court would automatically cancel federal student debt for students who were enrolled at one of more than 150 colleges and later applied for debt cancellation because of alleged misconduct by the schools.

Almost all the schools involved are for-profit colleges. The list includes DeVry University, the University of Phoenix and other chains still in operation, along with many that have folded in recent years, including ITT Technical Institute.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement that the settlement would resolve the claims “in a manner that is fair and equitable for all parties.”

The deal has yet to be approved by a federal judge. A hearing on the proposal is scheduled for July 28.

If approved, it would mark a major step in the Biden administration’s efforts to clear a backlog of claims filed through the borrower defense program, which allows students to get their federal loans erased if their schools made false advertising claims or otherwise misled them.

The class-action suit was initially filed by seven former students who argued that President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, had intentionally stalled the borrower defense process while she rewrote its rules. When the suit was filed, no final decision had been made on any claims for more than a year.

When the department under DeVos started deciding claims months later, it issued tens of thousands of denials, often without any explanation. At the time, the judge overseeing the case blasted DeVos for the “blistering pace” of rejections, saying her approach “hangs borrowers out to dry.”

Tens of thousands of borrowers were still in limbo when the Biden administration took over and started negotiating a settlement in 2021, according to court documents. The latest federal data shows there are more than 100,000 pending claims for borrower defense.

Under the proposed settlement, anyone who attended an eligible school and applied for cancellation as of Wednesday would get their federal student loans and interest fully forgiven. They would also get refunds for past payments made on those loans.

An additional 68,000 plaintiffs who did not attend eligible schools will get a “streamlined review” of their claims. The oldest claims will get reviewed first, while the most recent ones will get a decision within 2½ years.

All borrowers who were caught up in DeVos’ flurry of denials will have their rejections revoked and their claims will be treated as if they have been pending since the date they were originally filed.

The Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represented students in the suit, said the agreement will help create a “fair, just and efficient for future borrowers.”

“This momentous proposed settlement will deliver answers and certainty to borrowers who have fought long and hard for a fair resolution of their borrower defense claims after being cheated by their schools and ignored or even rejected by their government,” said Eileen Connor, director of the project.

Borrower defense claims are typically reviewed individually, but the Education Department decided to grant automatic cancellation in this case because of “common evidence of institutional misconduct” at the schools in question, according to the settlement.

At some schools, there was already proof of “substantial misconduct,” while others were included because of high rates of claims coming from their former students, according to the deal.

The borrower defense process was started by Congress in 1994 but was rarely used until the collapse of the Corinthian Colleges chain in 2015. The for-profit company closed its campuses amid widespread findings of fraud, prompting thousands of students to apply for debt cancellation.

That led the Obama administration to expand the program and create clearer rules. It became the centerpiece of the administration’s efforts to crack down on for-profit colleges that lied or used high-pressure tactics to recruit students. Students at Corinthian and other chains said they enrolled on promises that they would land high-paying jobs, only to graduate with few job prospects.

Earlier this month the Biden administration agreed to cancel federal student debt for anyone who attended a Corinthian school from the company’s founding in 1995 to its collapse two decades later. The action will erase $5.8 billion in debt for more than 560,000 borrowers, the largest single discharge in the Education Department’s history.

The settlement adds to the administration’s effort to cancel student debt for certain groups of borrowers. It has erased billions of additional dollars in debt from other former for-profit college students, along with borrowers who have severe disabilities and those with jobs in public service.

Biden has also faced mounting pressure to pursue mass student debt cancellation. The White House recently signaled that it is considering canceling $10,000, but no decision has been reached.

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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

COVID vaccines saved 20M lives in 1st year, scientists say

Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday.

By CARLA K. JOHNSON

FILE - In this March 2021 photo provided by Pfizer, vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are prepared for packaging at the company's facility in Puurs, Belgium. According to a study published Thursday. June 23, 2022 in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if global targets had been reached. (Pfizer via AP)


On Dec. 8, 2020, a retired shop clerk in England received the first shot in what would become a global vaccination campaign. Over the next 12 months, more than 4.3 billion people around the world lined up for the vaccines.

The effort, though marred by persisting inequities, prevented deaths on an unimaginable scale, said Oliver Watson of Imperial College London, who led the new modeling study.

“Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,” Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn’t been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines.”

The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom.

An additional 600,000 deaths would have been prevented if the World Health Organization target of 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021 had been met, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The main finding — 19.8 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented — is based on estimates of how many more deaths than usual occurred during the time period. Using only reported COVID-19 deaths, the same model yielded 14.4 million deaths averted by vaccines.

The London scientists excluded China because of uncertainty around the pandemic’s effect on deaths there and its huge population.

The study has other limitations. The researchers did not include how the virus might have mutated differently in the absence of vaccines. And they did not factor in how lockdowns or mask wearing might have changed if vaccines weren’t available.

Another modeling group used a different approach to estimate that 16.3 million COVID-19 deaths were averted by vaccines. That work, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, has not been published.

In the real world, people wear masks more often when cases are surging, said the institute’s Ali Mokdad, and 2021′s delta wave without vaccines would have prompted a major policy response.

“We may disagree on the number as scientists, but we all agree that COVID vaccines saved lots of lives,” Mokdad said.

The findings underscore both the achievements and the shortcomings of the vaccination campaign, said Adam Finn of Bristol Medical School in England, who like Mokdad was not involved in the study.

“Although we did pretty well this time — we saved millions and millions of lives — we could have done better and we should do better in the future,” Finn said.

Funding came from several groups including the WHO; the UK Medical Research Council; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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AP health and science reporter Havovi Todd contributed.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

ABOLISH SCOTUS

After Supreme Court gun decision, what’s next?

By JESSICA GRESKO and MARK SHERMAN

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Sales associate Elsworth Andrews arranges guns on display at Burbank Ammo & Guns in Burbank, Calif., Thursday, June 23, 2022. The Supreme Court has ruled that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, a major expansion of gun rights. The court struck down a New York gun law in a ruling expected to directly impact half a dozen other populous states.

 (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has issued its biggest gun rights ruling in more than a decade. Here are some questions and answers about what the Thursday decision does and does not do:

WHAT EXACTLY WAS THE SUPREME COURT RULING ON GUNS?

The Supreme Court said that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. That’s important because about half a dozen states have conditioned getting a license to carry a gun in public on the person demonstrating an actual need — sometimes called “good cause” or “proper cause” — to carry the weapon. That limits who can carry a weapon in those states.

In its decision, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s “proper cause” requirement, but other states’ laws are expected to face quick challenges. About one-quarter of the U.S. population lives in states expected to be affected by the ruling.

The last time the court issued major gun decisions was in 2008 and 2010. In those decisions the justices established a nationwide right to keep a gun for self-defense in a person’s home. The question for the court this time was just about carrying a gun outside the home.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court’s majority opinion that the right extended outside the home as well: “Nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms.”

HOW DID THE JUSTICES RULE?

The gun ruling split the court 6-3, with the court’s conservative justices in the majority and its liberals in dissent. In addition to Thomas, the majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The court’s three liberals who dissented are justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

ARE NEW YORKERS NOW FREE TO CARRY A GUN IN PUBLIC?

Not exactly. The justices didn’t touch other parts of New York’s gun law, so other requirements to get a license remain. The court made it clear that the state can continue to make people apply for a license to carry a handgun, and can put limitations on who qualifies for a permit and where a weapon can be carried. In the future, however, New Yorkers will no longer be required to give a specific reason why they want to be able to carry a gun in public.

The decision also doesn’t take effect immediately and state lawmakers said Thursday that they were planning to overhaul the licensing rules this summer. They have yet to detail their plans. Some options under discussion include requiring firearms training and a clean criminal record. The state might also prohibit handguns from being carried in certain places, like near schools or on public transit.

In addition, the decision does not address the law that recently passed in New York in response to the Buffalo grocery store massacre that among things, banned anyone under age 21 from buying or possessing a semi-automatic rifle.

WHAT OTHER STATES ARE LIKELY TO BE IMPACTED?

A handful of states have laws similar to New York’s. The Biden administration has counted California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island as all having laws similar to New York’s. Connecticut and Delaware are also sometimes mentioned as states with similar laws.

WHAT CAN STATES DO TO REGULATE GUNS AFTER THE DECISION?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, noted the limits of the decision. States can still require people to get a license to carry a gun, Kavanaugh wrote, and condition that license on “fingerprinting, a background check, a mental health records check, and training in firearms handling and in laws regarding the use of force, among other possible requirements.” Gun control groups said states could revisit and perhaps increase those requirements. States can also say those with a license to carry a gun must not do so openly but must conceal their weapon.

Justice Samuel Alito noted that the decision said “nothing about who may lawfully possess a firearm or the requirements that must be met to buy a gun.” States have long prohibited felons and the mentally ill from possessing weapons, for example. The decision also said nothing “about the kinds of weapons that people may possess,” Alito noted, so states might also try to limit the availability of specific weapons.

The justices also suggested that states can prohibit the carrying of guns altogether in certain “sensitive places.” A previous Supreme Court decision mentioned schools and government buildings as being places where guns could be off limits. Thomas said that the historical record shows legislative assemblies, polling places and courthouses could also be sensitive places. Thomas said courts can “use analogies to those historical regulations of ‘sensitive places’ to determine that modern regulations prohibiting the carry of firearms in new and analogous sensitive places are constitutionally permissible.”

HOW DO COURTS ASSESS GUN RESTRICTIONS GOING FORWARD?

The court made it harder to justify gun restrictions, although it’s hard to know what the new test the court announced will mean for any specific regulation.

Thomas wrote that the nation’s appeals courts have been applying an incorrect standard for assessing whether such laws are impermissible. Courts have generally taken a two-step approach, first looking at the constitutional text and history to see whether a regulation comes under the Second Amendment and then, if it does, looking at the government’s justification for the restriction.

“Despite the popularity of this two-step approach, it is one step too many,” Thomas wrote.

From now on, Thomas wrote, courts can uphold regulations only if the government can prove that they fall within traditionally accepted limits.

Among state and local restrictions already being challenged in federal court are bans on the sale of certain semi-automatic weapons, called assault rifles by opponents, and large-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as minimum age requirements to buy semi-automatic firearms.

WHAT OTHER BIG RULINGS ARE IN THE WORKS?

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the guns case back in November and a decision had been expected before the court begins its summer recess. The court has nine more opinions to issue before it goes on break and plans to release more Friday. Still waiting is a major abortion decision.

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Associated Press editor David Caruso contributed to this report from New York.

At Pride, celebrations amid a darker national environment

By DEEPTI HAJELA

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Ellen Ensig-Brodsky, 89, a LGBTQ rights activist, pose in her home, Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in New York. Even with ailing knees, Ensig-Brodsky said she plans to be on the Pride Parade route on Sunday. "The parade is the display, publicly, of my identity." 

(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)


NEW YORK (AP) — LGBTQ Pride commemorations that sometimes felt like victory parties for civil rights advances are grappling this year with a darker atmosphere, a national environment of ramped-up legislative and rhetorical battles over sexual orientation and gender identity.

Big crowds are expected Sunday at Pride events in New York City and a range of other places including San Francisco, Chicago, Denver and Toronto, in a return to large, in-person events after two years of pandemic-induced restrictions.

Like every year, the celebrations are expected to be exuberant and festive. But for many, they will also will carry a renewed sense of urgency.

In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law barring teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, which critics decried as an effort to marginalize LGBTQ people and lambasted as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, like DeSantis a Republican, sent a letter to state health agencies in February saying that it would be child abuse under state law for transgender youth to get gender-affirming medical care. A judge has halted full implementation of any parental prosecutions.

“There are so many anti-LGBTQ attacks going on around the country and a lot of them are really about trying to erase our existence and to make us invisible, and to make our young people invisible and our elders invisible,” said Michael Adams, CEO of SAGE, which advocates for LGBTQ elders.

“This year’s Pride is especially important and it is more powerful than ever because it is about people stepping up and stepping out and saying, ‘We refuse to be invisible. We refuse to be erased.’”

Protest has always been an element of New York City’s Pride Parade, which roughly coincides with the anniversary of the beginning of the June 28, 1969, Stonewall uprising — days of angry demonstrations sparked by a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan.

Marchers in the 1980s protested a lack of government attention to the AIDS epidemic.

In recent years, though, they’ve often been celebrations of major victories for LGBTQ communities to celebrate, like in 2015 when the Supreme Court issued the Obergefell v. Hodges decision recognizing same-sex marriage.

That’s not this year, though.

“This year, we have seen an onslaught of aggressively hostile anti-LGBTQ+ bills in many state legislatures, and more of them have passed than last year,” said Jennifer Pizer, law and policy director for Lambda Legal.

There’s also concern over a potential Supreme Court ruling overturning a nationwide right to abortion — an upending of a long-established legal standard that has people wondering whether same-same sex marriage might be next.

It brings home a reality that in addition to celebration, there’s still a need for activism, said Joe Negrelli, 70, a longtime NYC Pride attendee.

“Could it be overturned? Yes, I do believe that. It is a conceivability,” he said of the court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. It “makes me want to put more energy into engaging in marching.

Anyone who might have been “lulled into a false sense of security” by previous civil rights victories “has been woken up now,” Adams said. “I think a lot of us who understand the history of the struggle for equality and equity and social justice in this country know that the fight is never over.”

It’s not just legislation. Those who track hate speech say anti-LGBTQ language has increased online, which raises the fear that extremists will take it as a call to engage in action, like the rash of protests and physical interruptions that have taken place at Drag Queen Story Hours, where adults in drag read books to children.

Earlier this month, 31 members of a white supremacist group, carrying riot gear, were arrested over accusations that they were plotting a major disruption at a Pride event in Idaho.

That doesn’t mean the celebration’s over, advocates said.

“There can be celebration and joy, and also purpose in protest,” Pizer said.

Ellen Ensig-Brodsky, 89, has embraced both those roles in her decades of attending Pride as a LGBTQ rights activist.

“The parade is the display, publicly, of my identity and my group that I have been part of for at least 40 or more years,” she said, adding that she will be marching again Sunday. “I certainly would not want to miss it.”

After all this time, the animosity and hostility she’s seeing around the country aren’t unfamiliar to her.

“The intent to increase anti-LGBTQ existence is a return to what I started out with” decades ago, she said. Back then, “we didn’t come out. We hid.”

Not now, she said, “I think we need to show that love can persist and continue and spread.”

Hong Kongers reflect on Taiwan, an imperfect exile

By JOHNSON LAI and HUIZHONG WU

Lam Wing-Kee, a Hong Kong bookstore owner who fled to Taiwan in 2019, speaks during an interview inside his bookstore in Taipei, Taiwan on June 8, 2022. Taiwan just 400 miles from Hong Kong, is close not just geographically, but also linguistically and culturally. It offered the freedoms that many Hong Kongers were used to and saw disappearing in their hometown. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)


TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — For Lam Wing-kee, a Hong Kong bookstore owner who was detained by police in China for five months for selling sensitive books about the Communist Party, coming to Taiwan was a logical step.

An island just 640 kilometers (400 miles) from Hong Kong, Taiwan is close not just geographically but also linguistically and culturally. It offered the freedoms that many Hong Kongers were used to and saw disappearing in their hometown.

Lam’s move to Taiwan in 2019, where he reopened his bookstore in Taipei, the capital, presaged a wave of emigration from Hong Kong as the former British colony came under the tighter grip of China’ s central government and its long-ruling Communist Party.

“It’s not that Hong Kong doesn’t have any democracy, it doesn’t even have any freedom,” Lam said in a recent interview. “When the English were ruling Hong Kong, they didn’t give us true democracy or the power to vote, but the British gave Hong Kongers a very large space to be free.”

Hong Kong and Chinese leaders will mark next week the 25th anniversary of its return to China. At the time, some people were willing to give China a chance. China had promised to rule the city within the “one country, two systems” framework for 50 years. That meant Hong Kong would retain its own legal and political system and freedom of speech that does not exist in mainland China.

Lam Wing-Kee, a Hong Kong bookstore owner who fled to Taiwan in 2019, stands near a bunk bed during an interview inside his bookstore in Taipei, Taiwan on June 8, 2022. Coming to Taiwan was a logical step for Lam, a Hong Kong bookstore owner who was held by police in China for five months for selling sensitive books about the Communist Party. An island just 400 miles from Hong Kong, Taiwan is close not just geographically but also linguistically and culturally. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)

But in the ensuing decades, a growing tension between the city’s Western-style liberal values and mainland China’s authoritarian political system culminated in explosive pro-democracy protests in 2019. In the aftermath, China imposed a national security law that has left activists and others living in fear of arrest for speaking out.

Hong Kong still looked the same. The malls were open, the skyscrapers were gleaming. But well-known artist Kacey Wong, who moved to Taiwan last year, said he constantly worried about his own arrest or those of his friends, some of whom are now in jail.

“On the outside it’s still beautiful, the sunset at the harbor view. But it’s an illusion that makes you think you’re still free,” he said. “In reality you’re not, the government is watching you and secretly following you.”

Though Wong feels safe in Taiwan, life as an exile is not easy. Despite its similarities to Hong Kong, Wong found his new home an alien place. He does not speak Taiwanese, a widely spoken Fujianese dialect. And the laid-back island contrasts strongly with the fast-paced financial capital that was Hong Kong.

The first six months were hard, Wong said, noting that traveling as a tourist to Taiwan is completely different than living on the island in self-imposed exile.

“I haven’t established the relationship with the place, with the streets, with the people, with the language, with the shop downstairs,” he said.

Other, less prominent exiles than Wong or Lam have also had to navigate a system that does not have established laws or mechanisms for refugees and asylum seekers, and has not always been welcoming. That issue is further complicated by Taiwan’s increasing wariness of security risks posed by China, which claims the island as its renegade province, and of Beijing’s growing influence in Hong Kong.

For example, some individuals such as public school teachers and doctors have been denied permanent residency in Taiwan because they had worked for the Hong Kong government, said Sky Fung, the secretary general of Hong Kong Outlanders, a group that advocates for Hong Kongers in Taiwan. Others struggle with the tighter requirements and slow processing of investment visas.

In the past year or so, some have chosen to leave Taiwan, citing a clearer immigration path in the U.K. and Canada, despite the bigger gulf in language and culture.

Wong said that Taiwan has missed a golden opportunity to keep talented people from Hong Kong. “The policies and actions, and what the ... government is doing is not proactive enough and caused uncertainty in these people, that’s why they’re leaving,” he said.



Kacey Wong, a Hong Kong artist who moved to Taiwan in 2021, stand next to his installation art piece depicting a giant red robot at the exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan on June 11, 2022. Taiwan just 400 miles from Hong Kong, is close not just geographically, but also linguistically and culturally. It offered the freedoms that many Hong Kongers were used to and saw disappearing in their hometown. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)

The island’s Mainland Affairs Council has defended its record, saying it found that some migrants from Hong Kong hired immigration companies who took illegal methods, such as not carrying through on investments and hiring locals they had promised on paper.

“We in Taiwan, also have national security needs,” Chiu Chui-cheng, deputy minister at the Mainland Affairs Council, said on a TV program last week. “Of course we also want to help Hong Kong, we have always supported Hong Kongers in their support for freedom, democracy and rule of law.”

Some 11,000 Hong Kongers got residence permits in Taiwan last year, according to Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency, and 1,600 were able to get permanent residency. The U.K. granted 97,000 applications to Hong Kong holders of British National Overseas passports last year in response to China’s crackdown.

However imperfect, Taiwan gives the activists a chance to continue to carry out their work, even if the direct actions of the past were no longer possible.

Lam was one of five Hong Kong booksellers whose seizure by Chinese security agents in 2016 drew global concern.

He often lends his presence to protests against China, most recently attending a June 4 memorial in Taipei to mark the anniversary of a bloody crackdown on democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. Similar protests in Hong Kong and Macao, until recently the only places in China allowed to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre, are no longer allowed.

“As a Hong Konger, I actually haven’t stopped my resistance. I have always continued to do what I needed to do in Taiwan, and participated in my events. I have not given up fighting,” Lam said.