Comparing student loan repayments to phone contracts or cinema tickets “amounted to mis-selling” by government, a group of MPs has said.

In a new report, the Treasury Committee also said students were not told clearly enough loan terms could change retrospectively, and called for a U-turn on the decision to freeze the income threshold at which some graduates start repaying their loans.

Last year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the repayment threshold for students with Plan 2 loans would be frozen at £29,385 between 2027 and 2030, instead of rising with inflation.

Both the government and Student Loans Company said the committee had made “an important contribution” to the student finance debate.

A spokesperson for the Student Loans Company said they “recognise the importance of ensuring that students and borrowers across all repayment plans have access to clear, accurate and timely information about student finance”.

A government spokesperson said ministers were “already taking decisive action” and would “continue to look for ways to make the system fairer for students, graduates and taxpayers in a financially sustainable way”.

Plan 2 loans were taken out by students in England between September 2012 and July 2023, and are still issued in Wales. Graduates automatically pay back what they earn above the repayment threshold at a rate of 9%.

Freezing that threshold means graduates start repaying their loans sooner, or pay more as their salaries increase with inflation while the threshold remains the same.

The committee’s report referenced a BBC investigation which found the government compared student loan repayments to £30-a-month phone contracts in promotional presentations to teenagers a decade ago.

As this was “inaccurate for higher earners”, that “amounted to mis-selling”, the report said.

The committee noted that while the government’s student loan policies were exempt from consumer protection laws, it expected the government “to comply with not only the law, but basic fairness and common decency”.

Some of the UK’s biggest banks have been failing their most vulnerable customers, according to the financial regulator.

Banks have been pushing homeless people or those in financial hardship towards unsuitable online applications and away from basic bank accounts.

These accounts are free, do not include an overdraft facility, and provide essential banking for those unable to open a mainstream account.

Now, the nine UK banks and building societies which operate basic bank accounts have agreed to demands from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to make access more straightforward.

Basic bank accounts have many of the same functions as a regular current account, but are designed for those who might otherwise be excluded from the banking system. More than four million people in the UK have these accounts.

They are offered by Barclays, The Co-operative Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group (including the Halifax and Bank of Scotland brands), Nationwide Building Society, NatWest (including the RBS and Ulster Bank brands), Santander, TSB and Virgin Money.

Features include:

But a mystery shopping exercise by the FCA rated a third of experiences with basic bank accounts as poor or very poor.

The exercise covered 298 interactions across branches and by telephone, and rated 28% of cases as good or very good, 38% as fair, 20% as poor and 14% as very poor.

Problems included failing to offer these accounts to people who needed them, particularly those with no fixed address.

Some pushed customers in vulnerable circumstances towards online applications to open an account unsuitable for their needs.

Shimmering on Deb Marino’s finger are diamonds set in an eye-catching gold ring.

“Of course it’s a middle finger ring, because, why not?” the Florida-based blogger says on her Tiktok feed.

Getting rid of her engagement ring would have suggested a regret the 34-year-old doesn’t feel – after all, her marriage brought her daughter. Even just not wearing it would have felt like a waste.

“I didn’t want it locked away in a box,” she says. “Diamonds are precious.”

Plus she does sometimes feel like sticking one finger up after the break-up of her marriage.

Deb is part of a rising trend promoted by jewellers around the world of women marking a new chapter in their life with a new statement piece: the divorce ring.

Deb had the diamond from her engagement ring set at one end of an open circle and added a new sapphire to represent her daughter to the other end. It cost $3,000 (£2,245).

It’s a sizeable sum to part with when divorces can be expensive.

Ring resale values tend to be only around 30% of the original price so for many the trend of giving their old jewellery a new life feels a better investment.

And Deb’s middle finger statement fits right in with what the fashion pages are calling this year’s “hot divorcee summer” – a celebration of liberated glamour and a “don’t care energy”.

Divorce rings can also be a way of marking a kind of financial liberation, says Kate Daly, co-founder of Amicable, a UK company offering mediated divorce services.

“Your whole life gets thrown up in the air,” she says. “Your finances are under extreme pressure.”

If at that point a woman decides to buy a new ring it’s a sign that she is making her own financial decisions and “not needing to ask permission from anyone,” says Daly.

“It’s very easy to trivialise, but maybe that’s the first big spending decision you’ve made in a very long time, and certainly perhaps the biggest one you’ve made solo for a long time.”

WASHINGTON — Obtaining a green card through marriage to a U.S. citizen has become a far more demanding and unpredictable process in 2026, as the Trump administration has rolled out a series of policy changes that immigration attorneys say have transformed what was once described as a relatively straightforward path into an extensive, high-stakes legal undertaking.

Marriage-based immigration has long been one of the most common routes to permanent residency in the United States. More than 250,000 marriage-based immigrant visas were issued in fiscal year 2024 alone, and spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens accounted for roughly 53 percent of the 783,000 people who obtained green cards from within the country between October 2023 and September 2024. But this year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has implemented a series of policy shifts that attorneys and advocacy groups say have significantly raised the bar for approval.

Among the most consequential changes is the reinstatement of mandatory in-person interviews for all marriage-based green card applicants, eliminating waiver provisions that had previously allowed certain lower-risk cases, including couples married for several years with children together, to bypass the interview requirement. Both the U.S. citizen sponsor and the foreign national spouse must now appear before a USCIS officer, who may ask detailed questions about the couple’s daily life, how they met, their finances and their future plans. Attorneys say even minor inconsistencies between spouses’ answers can trigger a finding of marriage fraud, a determination that carries severe and often permanent consequences for future immigration benefits.

USCIS has also expanded its use of cross-referenced government databases and enhanced vetting protocols, meaning discrepancies as small as a mismatched address, a missing tax filing or a social media post that contradicts a stated timeline can now trigger a formal Request for Evidence or a Notice of Intent to Deny. Under an internal policy memorandum issued this year, officers have additionally been directed to place benefit decisions on hold for applicants from countries listed under a renewed travel-ban proclamation, a group that reportedly spans dozens of nations.

Perhaps the most sweeping change came on May 21, when USCIS issued a policy memorandum stating that adjustment of status, the process that allows eligible immigrants already inside the United States to apply for a green card without leaving the country, should be treated as a matter of discretion and “administrative grace” rather than a routine alternative to consular processing abroad. The following day, the agency publicly announced it would grant adjustment of status only in what it described as “extraordinary circumstances,” a shift that immigration attorneys say could affect not only marriage-based applicants but also work visa holders, individuals with Temporary Protected Status and others seeking permanent residency from within the country.

USCIS has defended the changes as a return to the statute’s original intent. In a statement, USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the agency’s approach reflects a broader mandate to verify identities and personal histories through “a rigorous process,” one intended to prioritize thoroughly screening and vetting all noncitizens seeking immigration benefits. Kahler also emphasized that beginning the marriage-based petition process does not, by itself, protect an applicant from removal, noting that a pending or approved Form I-130 petition “does not confer any immigration status.”

Immigration attorneys and advocacy organizations have pushed back forcefully against the changes. Shev Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the new discretionary standard represents an attempt to reshape decades of established practice, telling reporters that USCIS is “trying to upend decades of processing of adjustment of status” and that the shift applies broadly to virtually anyone seeking a green card, including spouses of U.S. citizens.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, has been similarly critical, characterizing the broader trend as part of the administration’s ongoing effort to reduce legal immigration levels. Bier noted that green card approvals from within the United States have fallen sharply over the past year according to USCIS data, and he has argued that the shift toward mandatory consular processing “ignores the reality of life,” pointing out that circumstances such as marriage proposals or new job offers often arise naturally after someone has already entered the country under a different visa category.

The practical impact of the changes has already been significant for couples navigating the system. Processing times for Form I-130 petitions filed by U.S. citizen spouses, classified as immediate relative cases, are now running approximately 59.5 months at some field offices, according to published USCIS data, though cases handled through national service centers may move somewhat faster. For spouses of green card holders filing under a different visa category, the underlying I-130 petition alone is taking two to three years to process at many locations. Applicants filing for adjustment of status concurrently from inside the United States are currently waiting an average of eight to nine months for a decision, though the reinstated interview requirement is expected to add further delays on top of that estimate.

The expanded scrutiny extends beyond interviews and paperwork. USCIS has broadened its application of the “public charge” doctrine, directing officers to more closely examine applicants’ financial stability, credit history, English language proficiency, employment history and overall self-sufficiency, factors that attorneys say were not previously emphasized to the same degree in marriage-based cases. Officers have also been encouraged, under internal guidance issued this year, to consider whether an applicant could have returned to their home country to complete the process rather than remaining in the United States, with those who stay potentially facing longer and more intrusive review.

For applicants from certain countries, the consequences can be especially severe. One case highlighted in recent reporting involved a green-card holder married to a U.S. citizen who was born in one of dozens of countries subject to the current travel ban; despite having lived in the United States for three decades, her citizenship application filed the previous year has remained frozen, with no exception available even for spouses of U.S. military service members.

Attorneys are advising couples to prepare far more extensive documentation than in previous years, including joint financial records, lease agreements, communication histories and third-party affidavits attesting to the authenticity of the relationship, in anticipation of interviews that now carry substantially higher stakes than they did just a few years ago. With litigation over several of the new policies still developing and no clear indication of when processing backlogs might ease, immigration lawyers say the marriage-based path to a green card, while still legally available, now demands a level of preparation and legal caution that was rarely necessary under prior administrations.

Some foreign policy failures don’t make headlines or appear in casualty counts or ceasefire agreements. They surface months later, buried in a consultancy report no one in the White House was eager to read.

Last week, the geopolitical research firm Asia Group confirmed what should have been clear from the beginning: the biggest winner of Donald Trump’s Middle East war isn’t the United States, Israel, or even Iran—it’s China.

The bare facts are stark enough to make the point on their own. After the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on 28 February, killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in the process, Tehran responded by effectively shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. 

That single act of retaliation choked off a waterway carrying roughly 80% of the region’s oil exports and nearly 90% of its liquefied natural gas, almost all of it bound for Asia. Prices spiked. Economies that depend on that energy, India, Japan, South Korea, and the smaller economies of Southeast Asia, took the hit exactly as you’d expect.

China, alone among them, barely flinched.

That is not an accident, and it is not luck. It is the result of years of deliberate planning that Washington chose to treat as a rival’s eccentricity rather than a strategic threat worth answering. Beijing spent the past several years building up enormous strategic oil reserves, buying aggressively whenever prices dipped. 

According to the analysis cited in the report, China’s crude imports rose from 11.1 million barrels a day to 11.6 million in 2025 alone, with more than 80% of that increase going straight into storage rather than consumption. While other nations ran their economies on just-in-time energy logistics, China was quietly building a buffer for exactly this kind of shock. When the shock came, the buffer held.

Layer on top of that China’s renewables build-out, a program so large it has reshaped global manufacturing in solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles, and you get a country that was simply less exposed to a Middle Eastern energy crisis than its neighbors, and structurally positioned to gain from the global scramble toward clean energy that such crises accelerate. 

This is the unglamorous secret of strategic advantage: it is rarely won in the moment of crisis. It is won in the years of preparation beforehand, when nobody is paying attention, and there’s no credit to claim.

This ought to sting, because containing China’s rise has been the one constant, bipartisan thread running through American foreign policy for over a decade. Yet here is a war launched under a president who has made “America First” and great-power competition with Beijing central to his political identity, and its most concrete geopolitical dividend has flowed to Beijing. Not because China plotted this outcome, but because Washington created the conditions for it and then handed China the opportunity on a plate.

It would be a mistake, though, to read this as a simple story of Chinese triumph. The report’s own analysts are careful to note the limits of Beijing’s gain. 

Drew Thompson of Singapore’s Rajaratnam School of International Studies makes the sharper point: any erosion of American credibility in the region is not automatically a win for China, which has shown no appetite to become the Middle East’s security guarantor in Washington’s place. Beijing wants the economic upside of stability without the burden of providing it, a free-rider position that works only as long as someone else, however reluctantly, keeps the sea lanes open.

There’s also a more unsettling lesson buried in here for anyone watching the Taiwan Strait. As the Atlantic Council’s Wen-Ti Sung observes, the paralysis a single closed waterway inflicted on the world economy is a preview, in miniature, of what a contested Taiwan Strait would do to China’s own ambitions. 

If Beijing’s planners are as rational as this report suggests, the chaos in Hormuz may be less an argument for aggression than a cautionary tale against it. Blocking a strait is easy. Living with the consequences, even as the ostensible winner, is not.

None of this should be read as an argument that Trump’s Middle East strikes were somehow a secretly good strategy in disguise; this is not the case, Beijing itself would need to make. 

The Asia Group’s own framing is more sobering: China doesn’t view the turbulence as an existential threat, but as a set of pain points to be managed, and opportunities to be exploited where possible.

 That is a country adapting well to a mess it did not create. It is not a country that has been checked, weakened, or contained. If the goal of American Middle East policy was ever to leave China worse off, the ledger, for now, reads the opposite way.

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Mumbai: Rich investors eyeing a debt-oriented portfolio with higher returns and better tax efficiency are considering niche plans offered by mutual funds and the newly created specialised investment funds. These structures bundle together high-yielding debt, equity arbitrage, REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) and InvITs (Infrastructure Investment Trusts) among other securities that boost returns while minimising the tax outgo.

For instance, the UNIFI Dynamic Asset Allocation Fund (UDAAF) allocates roughly one-third of its portfolio each to arbitrage, high-rated debt papers and credit. While the scheme does not hold unhedged equity positions, it may participate in special situations such as buybacks, open offers and IPOs to generate additional returns. The fund has delivered a return of 8.05% over the past year, compared with the Value Research category average of 2.24% and 1.28% for the CRISIL Hybrid 50+50 – Moderate Index.

Meanwhile, the Redhex Hybrid Long Short Fund, (RHLSF) a Specialised Investment Fund (SIF) launched in June, allocates 25-35% to arbitrage strategies, up to 10% to REITs, up to 15% to InvITs, 15-25% to high-yielding non-convertible debentures (NCDs), 10-15% to liquid fixed-income instruments and 5-15% to retail loan securitisation.

Buoyed by the response to these products, some smaller fund houses are evaluating similar offerings in the SIF space.

“Using mutual funds and specialized investment funds as vehicles, there are products that add credit to portfolios to boost returns. Due to high returns and tax efficiency these funds are finding favour with HNIs,” says Arihant Bardia, CIO and Founder, Valtrust

High networth individuals (HNIS) are increasingly drawn to these schemes for their combination of relatively stable returns and tax efficiency. The presence of high-yielding credit partly serves as an alternative to equities, which are going through a rough phase currently.
As hybrid products, they are eligible for long-term capital gains (LTCG) taxation at 12.5% depending on their holding period. For instance, investors in the UNIFI Dynamic Asset Allocation Fund must hold their units for at least two years to qualify for the concessional tax rate, while those investing in the Redhex Hybrid Long Short Fund, a lSIF strategy, need to hold for just one year.Investors exiting UNIFI Dynamic Asset Allocation before completing two years will be taxed according to their applicable income tax slab. In the case of RHLSF, gains realised within one year will attract a short-term capital gains (STCG) tax of 20%.

By comparison, a fixed deposit yielding 6.5% delivers a post-tax return of about 4.5% for investors in the highest tax bracket. An arbitrage-heavy hybrid SIF or mutual fund generating an 8% return, however, can deliver a post-tax return of around 7%, translating into a 200-250 basis point advantage over fixed deposits or debt mutual funds.

Managing risk remains the key to success in such a strategy, said fund officials. “We calibrate high yield allocation dynamically with the economic cycle and tap special situations offering favourable risk-reward,” says Premal Damania, National Head Sales, Unifi Mutual Fund.

However, these products are not meant for every investor. While conventional mutual funds typically credit redemption proceeds within two working days, regulations allow SIFs to take longer, reducing their liquidity.

“In a mutual fund, you can get money back in two working days, but in this SIF, redemption happens only once a week, and subsequently redemption takes 10 days, so investors have to budget 15 days for their money,” says Anup Bhaiya, MD and CEO, Money Honey Financial Services.

RITTMAN, Ohio — A Rittman police officer was killed and two other officers were injured after responding officers came under gunfire during a shooting that left four people dead overnight in this small northeast Ohio city, according to the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office.

Wayne County Sheriff Tom Ballinger said dispatchers received a 911 call around 9:30 p.m. Sunday reporting a disturbance and shots fired in the area near North Metzger Avenue and Saurer Street. When officers arrived at the scene, they immediately came under fire, Ballinger said.

“Officers responded to the area and immediately started taking fire,” Ballinger told reporters Sunday night. “At this point in time, we have lost an officer in the line of duty and two others have been injured.”

The officer killed was a member of the Rittman Police Department, according to multiple law enforcement sources, though Ballinger did not initially confirm which agency the fallen officer belonged to during his first public remarks. Two additional officers were injured and taken to area hospitals for treatment. A Wayne County Sheriff’s Office K-9 was also wounded during the confrontation.

According to Ballinger, the suspect was found dead inside a home at the scene, along with two other victims. In total, four people died in the incident: the officer, the suspect and two other victims described only as civilians. Authorities have not released the identities of the officer, the suspect or the other victims, pending notification of family members.

“We’ll have maybe a statement later, but right now, just no questions at this time,” Ballinger said as investigators began working to secure the scene in the overnight hours.

The shooting triggered a large-scale law enforcement response that included officers and deputies from multiple agencies across northeast Ohio, among them the Rittman, Wooster and Smithville police departments and the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation has taken over the investigation and is expected to process the crime scene, collect forensic evidence, interview witnesses and review body camera footage as it works to determine exactly how the shooting unfolded.

Television news crews at the scene Monday morning reported seeing at least six law enforcement vehicles towed away, including patrol cars from the Rittman Police Department, a Wayne County Sheriff’s K-9 vehicle, and vehicles belonging to the Wooster and Smithville police departments. Several of the vehicles were reported to have visible bullet holes.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Wooster post asked residents to stay away from the area near Rittman High School as the emergency response continued overnight, and a broader lockdown affected part of the city as investigators worked the scene.

The scale of the incident prompted county officials to declare a mass casualty event, drawing in additional emergency resources from neighboring Medina County. In a statement, the Medina County Firefighters Association confirmed that first responders from the county had been called in to assist after multiple people were injured in Wayne County, while other crews shifted to cover calls in southern Medina County to maintain normal emergency coverage during the response. The association urged the public to stay out of the affected area and asked residents to keep the responders in their thoughts.

Rittman is a small city of roughly 6,100 residents situated along the border of Wayne and Medina counties in northeast Ohio. The community, like many small towns in the region, maintains a modest local police force that regularly coordinates with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office and surrounding municipal departments on major incidents.

Law enforcement agencies across Ohio have offered condolences following news of the officer’s death, with tributes expected once the fallen officer’s identity is officially released. Authorities have not disclosed the suspect’s identity, a possible motive, or whether any additional individuals were involved in the incident. Investigators have also not said what led to the initial disturbance call that prompted officers to respond to the area.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which routinely leads inquiries into officer-involved shootings and other major law enforcement incidents in the state, will be responsible for determining the sequence of events that led to the officer’s death and the deaths of the suspect and the two other victims. Investigators are expected to examine forensic evidence gathered from the scene, along with witness accounts and any available surveillance or body camera footage, as part of a broader effort to reconstruct what happened in the moments before officers began taking fire.

As of Monday morning, multiple law enforcement agencies remained on scene, continuing to process evidence and secure the area. Officials have not provided a timeline for when the investigation might conclude or when further details about the victims might be released.

The incident marks one of the more significant law enforcement tragedies in the region in recent memory, with a single overnight shooting resulting in the death of an officer alongside three other individuals, and additional officers and a police K-9 among the injured. Community members in Rittman and surrounding areas have been asked to avoid the immediate vicinity of the shooting while the investigation continues, as authorities work to provide additional updates in the coming days.

This is a developing story, and further details, including the identities of those killed and injured, are expected to be released by the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation as the investigation progresses.