grants

June 18 (Asia Today) — South Korea is again considering changes to a local education funding system that automatically receives a fixed share of national tax revenue, as a semiconductor-driven rise in government receipts is expected to increase grants despite a shrinking student population.

The debate centers on local education finance grants, the main source of funding for elementary, middle and high schools administered by regional education offices.

The grants have risen to about 76 trillion won ($50 billion) under this year’s supplementary budget, according to the National Assembly Budget Office and education officials.

Some projections suggest the total could exceed 80 trillion won ($52.6 billion) if stronger tax revenue from the semiconductor industry is fully reflected.

The grant system receives 20.79% of internal tax revenue along with part of the national education tax. That means the amount increases when tax receipts rise, regardless of changes in student enrollment.

The number of elementary, middle and high school students fell from 5.96 million in 2016 to 4.92 million this year, a decline of 1.04 million, or 17.4%.

Over the same period, local education grants increased from 43 trillion won ($28.3 billion) to 76 trillion won, an increase of 33 trillion won ($21.7 billion), or 76.7%.

Budget officials and public finance experts say the automatic link to tax revenue makes government spending less flexible.

They argue that funding for primary and secondary education continues to expand despite falling enrollment while early childhood, higher education and lifelong learning programs face comparatively greater financial constraints.

Proposals include adjusting the percentage of internal tax revenue allocated to the grants or incorporating changes in the school-age population and nominal economic growth into the funding formula.

Education officials have strongly opposed reducing the grants based mainly on student numbers.

Superintendents-elect from South Korea’s ninth nationwide local elections issued a joint statement Monday warning that students would ultimately bear the cost of a funding overhaul driven primarily by fiscal considerations.

“Personnel expenses for teachers and other employees, school operating costs and facility safety and maintenance expenses arise at the school and classroom level, not simply on a per-student basis,” they said.

Schools also face growing fixed costs for meal services, after-school care and administrative support.

Personnel costs for permanent contract employees at public schools, including cafeteria workers, care staff and administrative assistants, reached 5.74 trillion won ($3.77 billion) last year.

That was a 61% increase from 2021. The figure is expected to exceed 6 trillion won ($3.94 billion) this year.

Three major teachers’ organizations also rejected claims that regional education offices have excess money.

They said the combined initial budgets of special education accounts fell by about 1 trillion won ($657 million) this year.

Funding for teaching and learning support declined 14.9%, while spending on school facility improvements fell 22.4%, they said.

The groups described education office reserve funds as a financial safeguard rather than unused money.

The Education Ministry is reportedly considering alternatives to immediately lowering the legally mandated allocation rate.

Possible measures include retaining the link to internal tax revenue while placing a ceiling on annual increases or allowing regional education offices to use more of the money for early childhood, higher education and lifelong learning.

The approach is intended to avoid a sudden reduction in primary and secondary school funding while directing more resources toward other parts of the education system.

Park Nam-gi, an emeritus professor at Gwangju National University of Education, said many necessary programs remain underfunded despite claims that schools have surplus resources.

“There are many things schools cannot do because they lack funding,” Park said.

He cited the expansion of special education, separate spaces and personnel needed to protect teachers and investment in education suited to the artificial intelligence era.

“It is wrong to conclude that education funding is excessive without properly supporting these needs,” Park said.

He said cash assistance programs introduced by some superintendents should be corrected where necessary, but that such concerns should not be used to justify reducing the overall education budget.

“Unlike welfare spending for the present, education funding is an investment in the country’s future,” Park said.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260618010006611

A federal immigration judge has granted asylum to a woman orphaned in Iran in the 1970s and adopted by an American war veteran, whom immigration officials threatened this year with deportation to the country with which the U.S. is now at war.

Judge Andrew Fishkin’s ruling probably ends a months-long ordeal for the California woman, one of thousands adopted from abroad who were never granted citizenship because of bureaucratic loopholes between adoption and immigration law.

The woman has lived in the United States since she was adopted by American parents as a toddler and has no criminal record. The Associated Press is not naming her because she worries her legal situation remains tenuous as the administration has time to appeal. A federal judge has allowed her to use a pseudonym, “Ms. S,” in her challenge to the government’s determination of her immigration status.

The woman received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security in February that ordered her to appear for removal proceedings, saying she is subject to deportation because she overstayed her visa in March 1974 at 4 years old.

The woman, 56, described what came next as a terrifying and humiliating few months.

She grew up in a Christian, military family on a farm in Wisconsin and was taught to be patriotic. But the documents she received from the government described her as an “alien;” some said she did not understand English, which is the only language she speaks.

Immigration officials told her she was being arrested, but was released and tracked with an ankle monitor. She bought new pants to try to hide it and taught herself not to cross her legs in work meetings, terrified it would threaten the corporate job in healthcare she’s held for almost two decades.

They fingerprinted her and took her DNA. She said she was obviously weeping in the mug shot they snapped of her.

She prepared herself to be detained: She put her bills on autopay and gave her friends a key to her home.

Her lawyer, Emily Howe, said the government had the power to agree she is an American citizen.

“Instead they treated her like a terrorist, like she was the worst of the worst criminals,” Howe said. “It felt very Big Brother, very Orwellian.”

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the record on an individual case.

The Associated Press profiled the woman in 2024 as part of a story about how many international adoptees were left without citizenship because their American adoptive parents failed to naturalize them.

The woman’s parents were living in Iran, where her father was working for a U.S. government contractor, in the 1970s. He was retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel. He’d been held for years a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II.

The couple found the toddler at an orphanage and returned to the U.S. with her in 1973 and soon completed the adoption. At that time, parents had to separately naturalize adopted children. The woman’s parents have since died.

She didn’t learn she hadn’t been naturalized until she applied for a passport at 38 years old. She still doesn’t know how the oversight happened. She searched her father’s papers and found a letter from a lawyer, dated 1975, that said he was working with immigration officials, “it appears this matter is concluded,” and billed her father for his services.

She filed a federal lawsuit this month trying to prohibit the government from removing her and forcing it to grant her citizenship.

She has long believed she should be considered a U.S. citizen: She has a Social Security card, and a driver’s license and has been legally allowed to work and pay taxes for decades. It’s only the immigration agency that denies she is a citizen. She suspects her paperwork was lost, probably when militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Fishkin seemed to agree: He wrote in his ruling that documents from that embassy are not available to her or to the U.S. government. He declared her a refugee, entitled to work in the U.S. His ruling puts the woman on a pathway to being recognized as a citizen.

She’d felt hopeful, she said, when she learned her court date before Fishkin was scheduled for her late father’s birthday. She always felt like she needed to protect not only herself but also her father’s legacy. He was a conscientious military official, she said, who would not have knowingly allowed such a glaring oversight that left his daughter in legal limbo.

Galofaro writes for the Associated Press.

MIAMI — The Trump administration has extended protections shielding about 11,000 Lebanese from deportation, allowing them to stay and work in the United States for another six months.

The decision, announced Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security, marked a rare reprieve for people protected by temporary measures that have been harshly criticized by Republicans. The extension comes amid ongoing fighting in southern Lebanon between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.

The decision was automatic, meaning that the administration missed the deadline by which it was supposed to decide on whether to extend the measure called Temporary Protected Status for Lebanese people living in the U.S. who are covered by the program. By statute, the status automatically extends for six months if the department misses the deadline.

It was an unusual outcome for an administration that has canceled the protections that had covered people from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Syria from deportation.

TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife, giving people authorization to work in increments of up to 18 months. More than 1 million immigrants from 17 countries were protected by TPS at the beginning of the Trump administration, after the Biden administration greatly expanded its use.

The program has been at the center of a controversy.

Republicans and critics of TPS argue that the program and its protections deviate from their original temporary intent, taking on a quasi-permanent character when extended. Its defenders assert that it is a fundamental humanitarian program that prevents vulnerable individuals from being forced to return to dangerous conditions.

The DHS notice said that former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and current Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has led the department for the last two months, “were unable to make an informed determination on Lebanon’s TPS designation.”

The extension allows existing beneficiaries to keep their protections through Nov. 27, “if they still meet the eligibility requirements for TPS,” according to the notice. The work permits that were already issued for Lebanese TPS holders will be valid until the same day.

This is the second time the Trump administration has automatically extended a TPS designation. The first happened nearly a year ago with South Sudan, but the protections were terminated in November 2025, after the six-month extension period.

There are dozens of lawsuits challenging the termination of TPS at federal courts in different states. The Supreme Court is set to make a decision on TPS that protected Haitians and Syrians during the summer, and the result is expected to have an impact on all the other cases.

Advocates welcomed the extension.

“Extending Temporary Protected Status means Lebanese nationals in the United States will not be forced back into dangerous conditions but allowed to stay and continue supporting their families and contributing to their local communities,” said Kelly Razzouk, vice president of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee.

José Palma, national coordinator of the National TPS Alliance — an advocacy group that has fought in federal courts against the cancellation of TPS for several countries—welcomed the extension of protections for the Lebanese.

“But we need to find a permanent solution for all TPS beneficiaries,” he warned.

Salomon writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

The National Science Foundation suspended at least 18 research grants to UC Berkeley last month despite a court injunction restricting such suspensions, according to an attorney representing university scientists in a class-action lawsuit.

The NSF declined to comment on the suspensions.

The grants include at least one that the NSF had previously canceled and was compelled by a federal court order to restore, for a series of mixed-reality exhibits at the Lawrence Hall of Science showcasing Indigenous Ohlone knowledge about the natural world, said one of the project’s leaders, Jedda Foreman.

Foreman, an associate director at the Lawrence Hall of Science, said another researcher on her team received an email from UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor of research, Katherine Yelick, notifying them that the National Science Foundation had suspended the $1.4-million grant. Foreman said she viewed the email, which said the university had received a letter from the NSF raising concerns about “foreign funding.” The email did not provide a copy of the letter or explain further, she said.

Foreman said the Lawrence Hall of Science had not received any foreign funding for the project.

“The grantees were given near-zero information about what was problematic in the execution of their grant,” said Claudia Polsky, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law who is representing Foreman and other researchers in a suit they filed last year contesting a previous round of grant cancellations by the Trump administration.

Polsky said her legal team was seeking more information about the 18 suspensions, but was concerned that the freezing of Foreman’s grant may violate a court order a federal judge issued in that case restoring the defunded projects.

UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in a statement that the university “is engaged with the government on matters pertaining to research grants, and remains committed to compliance with all federal laws, rules and regulations.”

He declined to comment on the types of grants affected, the amount of funds at stake, or the potential effect on the campus.

One of the Lawrence Hall of Science exhibits, which were co-designed with Ohlone youth, is scheduled to open Sunday, with another set for the fall of 2028. Researchers also are studying whether participating in creating exhibits sparks more interest in science among Indigenous young people and makes them more likely to pursue STEM careers.

“We’re doing a lot of hoping and finger-crossing that something works out,” Foreman said. “It was such a powerful project and we really want to be able to share what we’ve learned.”

National Science Foundation turmoil

The University of California received $525 million in National Science Foundation grants in the 2024-25 budget year. But that funding source has become increasingly volatile under the Trump administration as the federal agency has terminated nearly 2,000 grants nationwide that it said did not align with its priorities — including those focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion — and has been slower to approve and disburse new awards.

In late April, President Trump fired all 22 members of the independent board of scientists that oversaw the NSF. He is also proposing to cut the agency’s budget by more than half in 2027, though Congress rejected a similar plan last year.

Other federal agencies also terminated research grants en masse last year. Some of the cancellations have been reversed by the courts.

UC researchers are contesting grant reversals by the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Department of Transportation, Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency and National Endowment for the Humanities in the class-action lawsuit, filed last year. The University of California is not a party to the suit.

Last June, the researchers won a key legal victory when U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued a preliminary injunction restoring grants canceled by the NSF, EPA and NEH — including for the Ohlone-focused exhibits co-led by Foreman, one of six named plaintiffs in the case. The judge barred the agencies from revoking funds using form letters that didn’t include an explanation specific to the grant at stake, or because of Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.

Judge Lin stepped in again after the NSF froze hundreds of grants to UCLA in August, amid attempts by the Trump administration to secure a $1-billion settlement from the university over allegations of campus antisemitism. Indefinitely suspending a grant was the same as terminating it, Lin said in a ruling requiring the agency to reinstate the funds.

Polsky said last month’s suspension of Foreman’s grant raised concerns that the Trump administration was seeking a way around those orders. “It seems to us like something that should not have been canceled on the merits and raises suspicion that this was just a different way to cancel the grant,” she said.

UC looks to state for alternative funding

The University of California is ramping up efforts to find alternative funding for its multibillion-dollar research enterprise as federal support becomes less reliable. On Monday, UC President James Milliken spoke alongside state Sen. Scott Wiener and United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain at a Sacramento rally in support of state legislation to create a $23-billion fund for scientific research.

If successful, the bill will place a bond measure on the November ballot. Money from the bond would go toward research in wildfire and pandemic preparedness, new medical treatments and other areas, with revenue from inventions shared with the state. The state Assembly’s appropriations committee is set to consider the bill Thursday.

“If the federal government is going to continue to attempt to reduce funding for the research that has been so important to UC — that saves lives, that drives the economy — then the state of California, I hope, will be able to step up,” Milliken said at a meeting of the university’s Board of Regents on Wednesday.

UC Provost Katherine Newman told the regents she has been meeting with leaders of the Russell Group, a consortium of the United Kingdom’s top universities, to discuss collaborating on research in climate change, clean energy and public health — all areas that have seen federal funding threatened under the current administration.

Mello writes for Berkeleyside, which originally published this story. It was distributed through a partnership with the Associated Press.

In a hearing about competing protective order filings from reality TV star Taylor Frankie Paul and her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, a Utah judge granted Thursday that both orders go into effect, though he delayed making a decision on a custody arrangement.

The orders, which were issued by third district court commissioner Russell Minas, are in place for three years and require Paul and Mortensen to stay at least 100 feet away from each other. He also warned that they both could be subjected to criminal charges if there’s a violation of the orders.

“I do think it’s important that there be mutual orders,” Minas said. “I am just concerned that if I don’t order both of them to stay away from each other, there’s going to be some additional problems.”

Addressing Paul and Mortensen, Minas said: “I’m hoping that you’re not people who just thrive on the drama and the conflict … I do want to work with both of you to try to restore some sense of normalcy. I just think right now, you two need to stay away from each other and there needs to be orders that will result in consequences if you attempt to try to engage each other because I still think you have this attraction to each other, physical or otherwise.”

“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star, 31, and Mortensen, 33, both appeared in Utah court for the hearing, which was livestreamed, the first time they’ve been seen in the same room together since news broke last month that they were involved in domestic violence investigations involving multiple allegations.

In the weeks leading up to the ruling, the judge had granted Mortensen custody of their son, with up to eight hours per week of supervised visitation for Paul, known as one of the stars of Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” That arrangement will stay in place until the judge offers his recommendation on parent time on or before May 11.

Dakota Mortensen in the courtroom on Thursday.

(Bethany Baker / Associated Press)

A review hearing is set for June, once mental health and domestic violence assessments of Paul and Mortensen ordered as part of the safety plan by child protective services have been completed and processed.

Paul’s attorney, Eric M. Swinyard, described the hearing as a “significant step forward.”

“Taylor was incredibly candid with the Court that she is not perfect and owned her faults,” read part of his statement. “She looks forward to continuing to cooperate with the Court to make progress in the custody case.”

The Times also reached out to Mortensen for comment.

Paul and Mortensen had been under investigation by both the Draper City Police Department and West Jordan Police Department regarding a series of allegations each made that the other had acted violently during altercations in February, as well as an incident that took place in 2024. After the February allegations made headlines, a video of Paul in 2023 that led to her arrest was leaked; it showed the reality star throwing bar stools at Mortensen while her daughter was present. (Paul pleaded guilty in abeyance to aggravated assault following that incident and her probation in that case will be up in August.) Amid the investigation, Mortensen and Paul filed competing protective orders against each other.

The Salt Lake County district attorney’s office and the Draper City prosecutor both declined to file charges against Paul in April, citing insufficient evidence to prove allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.

The situation between the embattled exes also resulted in the pausing of filming of “Mormon Wives” Season 5. The show has documented the pair’s tumultuous relationship since it’s launch in 2024. It also led to the shelving of Season 22 of ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” which featured Paul as its heroine.

But Thursday’s ruling on the orders comes a week after reports surfaced that “Mormon Wives” has resumed production on its fifth season, without Paul and Mortensen’s involvement — though, Paul reportedly has the option to return. The fate of the unaired season of “The Bachelorette” remains unclear.

Alexandra Del Rosario contributed reporting.