During the 2023-2024 academic year, the number of international students in US institutions grew to an all-time high of 1.13 million, according to the annual Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the US State Department. This number marks a 6.6 percent increase in the number of international students enrolled in US colleges and universities from the year before.
Ghani, chairman of the 1MDB asset recovery taskforce, said on Friday that Leissner should have been given the maximum jail sentence as he was “one of the masterminds” of the scheme, which saw billions of dollars in public money siphoned off Malaysia’s investment fund.The 1MDB fund was created as a vehicle to attract foreign investment for energy and infrastructure projects in Malaysia, but was pilfered by officials and bankers.
Malaysian and US authorities estimate that around $4.5bn was stolen in total, in an elaborate scheme that spanned the globe and implicated high-level officials, including former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was jailed in 2022.In 2018, Leissner pleaded guilty to bribery and money laundering counts in relation to his role in the scandal, including paying roughly $2bn in bribes to foreign officials and splitting another $1bn in kickbacks with others in the scheme.A US Department of Justice spokesperson said he will begin serving a 24-month sentence in September.
US prosecutors had called for leniency due to the “extraordinary” assistance he had provided the probe. Leissner served as the star witness in the 2022 trial of his former colleague and Goldman Sachs Managing Director Roger Ng.Judge Brodie sentenced Malaysian national Ng to 10 years’ imprisonment in March 2023 for, among other crimes, “conspiring to launder billions of dollars embezzled” from 1MDB and paying more than $1.6bn in bribes.
Leissner also provided details regarding the involvement of Low Taek Jho, the Malaysian financier known as “Jho Low”, who stands accused of stealing billions from the fund but remains at large.
Step inside a typical home in the United States, and you will quickly find that much of what fills it, from the fruit and vegetables in the kitchen to the bicycle in the garage, is produced elsewhere.What unfolded in Rafah on Tuesday was not a tragedy – it was the grim success of colonial humanitarianism.
On May 27, thousands of Palestinians surged towards an aid distribution site in Rafah – desperate for food after months of starvation – only to be met with gunfire from panicked private security contractors. What the world witnessed at the Tal as-Sultan aid site was not a tragedy, but a revelation: The final, violent unmasking of the illusion that humanitarian aid exists to serve humanity rather than empire.Marketed by Israel and the United States as a model of dignity and neutrality, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s new distribution hub disintegrated into chaos within hours of opening. But this was no accident. It was the logical endpoint of a system not designed to nourish the hungry, but to control and contain them.
As starving people in Gaza – made to wait for hours under the scorching sun, tightly confined in metal lanes to receive a small box of food – eventually began to press forward in desperation, chaos broke out. Security personnel – employed by a US-backed contractor – opened fire in a failed attempt to prevent a stampede. Soon, Israeli helicopters were deployed to evacuate American staff and began firing warning shots over the crowd. The much-advertised aid site collapsed completely after only a few hours in operation.The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had promised something revolutionary with this initiative: Aid free from the corruption of Hamas, the bureaucracy of the UN, the messiness of Palestinian civil society. What it delivered instead was the purest distillation of colonial humanitarianism – aid as an instrument of control, dehumanisation, and humiliation, dispensed by armed contractors under the watchful eye of the occupying military.