DENVER

Obama unveils student loan plan, his own loan struggles

President Barack Obama recalled his struggles with student loan debt as he unveiled a plan Wednesday that could give millions of young people some relief on their payments. Speaking at the University of Colorado Denver, Obama said that he and his wife, Michelle, together owed more than $120,000 in law school debt that took nearly a decade to pay off. He said that sometimes he’d have to make monthly payments to multiple lenders, and the debt meant they were not only paying for their own degrees but saving for their daughters’ college funds simultaneously.

Obama’s plan will accelerate a measure passed by Congress that reduces the maximum required payment on student loans from 15 percent of discretionary income annually to 10 percent. He will put it into effect in 2012, instead of 2014.

NEW YORK

Ex-board member at P&G, Sachs pleads not guilty

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A former board member of Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal charges accusing him of acting as “the illegal eyes and ears in the boardroom” for a friend, a billionaire hedge fund founder sentenced this month to 11 years in prison in the biggest insider trading case in history.

The case, built partially on wiretaps used for the first time in insider trading, has offered unprecedented insight into greed at the highest levels of Wall Street.

The indictment unsealed Wednesday accuses Gupta of cheating the markets with Raj Rajaratnam, the 54-year-old convicted hedge fund founder who was the probe’s prime target.

SANAA, Yemen

Yemeni women burn veils in protest of crackdown

Hundreds of Yemeni women on Wednesday set fire to traditional female veils to protest the government’s brutal crackdown against the country’s popular uprising, as overnight clashes in the capital and another city killed 25 people, officials said.

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In the capital Sanaa, the women spread a black cloth across a main street and threw their full-body veils, known as makrama, onto a pile and set it ablaze.

The women in Yemen have taken a key role in the uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s authoritarian rule that erupted in March.

— From news service reports

 


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