Category: ESTA News

The New York Times reported on the 7th that “UFC Freedom 250,” a mixed martial arts event scheduled to be held on the White House South Lawn on the 14th—President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday—is facing a lawsuit.

According to the report, two individuals, including political activist Susan Douglas and Vietnam War veteran Paul Romano, filed a lawsuit the previous day in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., requesting that the event be stopped. The case has been assigned to Judge Amit Mehta, who was appointed during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that President Trump is granting UFC CEO Dana White and his company privileges that no one else has ever enjoyed, citing unrestricted access to the White House and the Lincoln Memorial to host private, for-profit sporting events, as well as all associated promotional and brand exposure opportunities, as these privileges.

While the event is being held at the White House, the fighters’ official weight-in takes place at the Lincoln Memorial. The plaintiffs also focused their criticism on the improper financial gains resulting from the event. They pointed to reports that premium tickets are selling for over $1 million, the fees Paramount Skydance—a media company owned by President Trump’s close associates Larry Ellison and David Ellison—to receive for streaming the event, and the fact that President Trump purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in TKO Holdings Group, the UFC’s parent company, last March.

Additionally, the plaintiffs noted that the event is taking place three weeks prior to the 250th U.S. Independence Day. The complaint stated, “This event is not intended to commemorate the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, and crucially, it is not an event planned, organized, or executed by the federal government.”

It has been found that New York City’s store vacancy rate has still not recovered to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. According to a report released on the 4th by the New York City Comptroller (Comptroller Mark Levin), the overall store vacancy rate in New York City stood at 11% as of May this year, higher than the 10.5% recorded in early 2020, six years ago. In terms of the number of vacant stores, this amounts to a staggering 15,700.

By borough, Manhattan and Brooklyn exceeded the New York City average at 12.9% and 12.3%, respectively, while Queens recorded 9.5%, the Bronx 8.0%, and Staten Island 7.5%. In particular, the Financial District-Battery Park City area in southern Manhattan was the most severe in New York City, with more than one in five stores (21.1%) closed and vacant.

The Old Astoria-Hallets Point area in Queens followed with a store vacancy rate of 20.1%, while Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill and Manhattan’s Tribeca-Civic Center areas both recorded 19.5%, and Brooklyn East New York recorded 19.4%, placing them in the top five.

A more significant concern is that 80 to 90 percent of the vacant stores have been empty for at least nine months, leading to calls for urgent government-level measures.

What can you do after an interview to increase your chances of getting a job offer? The most common advice is to send a thank-you note, but one American woman, in addition to sending a thank-you note, also attached a “90-day onboarding plan,” detailing the goals she would achieve in the first 30, 60, and 90 days after getting the job. In the end, she successfully landed a tech job with an annual salary of US$165,000, or about HK$1.3 million.

An American woman secured a tech job after submitting a “90-day onboarding plan” during her job interview. (Image source: Hong Kong 01) Jean Kang, 33, who lives in San Francisco, interviewed for a senior project manager position at the design software company Figma in 2021. After the interview, she proactively attached a PDF file outlining her work plan after joining the company. She stated that no one expected or asked her to prepare this information; she did it to proactively demonstrate “what you can get if you hire me” and prove that she can operate independently without needing hands-on guidance. An American woman landed a million-dollar job after sending out an extra document during her interview.

Jean Kang interviewed for a senior project manager position at the design software company Figma in 2021. (Image for illustrative purposes only. Image source: Getty Images) Based on interview details, identify pain points and create a blueprint to demonstrate immediate combat effectiveness.

Jean Kang revealed that she constructed this roadmap based on information gathered from previous rounds of interviews. When writing the outline, she would ask herself: Why is the company hiring for this position? What are they looking for? What impact will this position have? How can I prove that I am the most suitable candidate? And what abilities can I demonstrate immediately? Next, she worked backwards, setting specific goals such as “establishing key relationships” for the first 30 days, “understanding core business priorities” for the next 60 days, and “aligning project plans” for the next 90 days.

To achieve her goal, she even outlined detailed steps, including meeting with product support, sales, employee management, and leadership colleagues to understand the current fiscal year’s business objectives and familiarize herself with the corporate support model. In addition, she used Figma’s design tools to add personalized touches such as stickers to her documents, showcasing her sincerity and personal style.

A few days later, she received an offer of admission, and the team gave her extremely high praise. An American woman landed a million-dollar job after sending out an extra document during her interview. Jean Kang included a work plan after the interview, demonstrating his understanding of the job’s challenges and business objectives.

Experts agree that taking an extra step and thinking from another’s perspective can help break through the current situation. Career experts also agree on the benefits of sending thank-you notes. Ian Siegel, CEO of the job search website ZipRecruiter, pointed out in March 2023 that this could be a key advantage over competitors, and suggested that job seekers go beyond a typical thank-you note, such as proactively offering or explaining how they can fill a skills gap in the company.

Former Google executive Jenny Wood also stated in March 2025 that including three to four sentences in a thank-you letter explaining how you have driven the company’s growth or solved pain points can demonstrate a job seeker’s commitment to the business and its goals.

According to a report by Axios on the afternoon of June 1st local time, US President Trump expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with Israel’s escalation of the situation in Lebanon during a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The report stated that in this “strongly worded” call, Trump accused Netanyahu of “overstepping his bounds” on the Lebanese issue.

According to a US official, Trump warned Netanyahu that bombing Beirut, the Lebanese capital, would “further exacerbate Israel’s isolation in the international community.” According to two sources familiar with the matter, Trump called Netanyahu “crazy” during the call and accused him of being “ungrateful.” One U.S. official relayed Trump’s words: “If it weren’t for me, you’d be in jail by now. I’ve been helping you. Now everyone hates you, hates Israel.”

Another source said Trump was “very angry” and even yelled at Netanyahu, “What the hell are you doing?” The report states that Trump does not oppose Israel taking “self-defense action” against Hezbollah’s attacks in Lebanon, but he believes Netanyahu’s recent military escalation in Lebanon is an “overreaction”—in addition to threatening airstrikes on Beirut, the Israeli military has recently expanded its ground operations in southern Lebanon.

The report states that this call was one of the tensest between Trump and Netanyahu since Trump returned to the White House. A major reason for Trump’s anger is that Israel’s escalation of the situation in Lebanon could lead to the breakdown of ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran.

The U.S. international tourism market is facing its worst recession since the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysts warn that this is not just a tourism problem but may symbolize a structural decline in the U.S. international image, soft power, and global influence.

According to a CNN report, data from the World Travel and Tourism Council shows that the number of international tourists visiting the United States in 2025 will decline by 5.5% compared to last year, marking the worst single year drop in 20 years, excluding the period of the pandemic in 2020. At the same time, the global international tourism market continues to grow.

The World Tourism and Tourism Council points out that by 2025, the number of international tourists worldwide will increase by approximately 80 million compared to the previous year, “but these people have chosen other destinations instead of the United States.” Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, a travel data analytics company, said that the United States had long maintained a rare “trade surplus” in the tourism industry, meaning that foreign tourists spent more money in the United States than Americans spent on traveling abroad.

But by 2025, this advantage will have officially reversed. Currently, Americans spend more on overseas travel than international tourists spend in the US, signifying a clear decline in the competitiveness of American tourism.

Analysis indicates that the reasons for international travelers turning away from the United States include not only the geopolitical risks caused by the Iran war and soaring aviation fuel prices, but also the deteriorating political atmosphere within the United States, immigration enforcement controversies, and the Trump administration’s tough rhetoric towards allies and foreign countries.

Juliette Kayyem, director of the Homeland Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School and a senior national security analyst at CNN, said that the United States used to be a model for many countries around the world, but this image as a “beacon of democracy” is gradually crumbling. She pointed out that many foreigners now perceive the United States as a country of “government incompetence, immigrant raids, violence, and social chaos.”

She added, “The current international narrative of the United States is, at best, a country that is no longer worthy of respect; at worst, a democracy that is spiraling out of control.”

Canada has become one of the most significant sources of tourism losses for the United States. Some Canadian travelers admitted that what truly made them decide to stop traveling to the US was not just tariffs and talk of “the 51st state,” but also the US war on Iran and the overall political atmosphere. Sachs warned that the United States is currently at a critical crossroads. He believes that if the U.S. wants to restore its international appeal, it must reinvest in tourism promotion programs such as Brand USA, reduce its hostile tone towards allies, and stop allowing political factors to further damage its image.

The Pentagon released a new batch of declassified documents, commonly known as the “UFO Files,” on the 22nd, including 50 previously classified videos and other documents documenting “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”

One video, taken by the US Coast Guard in April 2024 while operating infrared sensors, shows an object flying near an aircraft over the southeastern United States. A video labeled “Syrian UAP instant acceleration” was captured by an infrared sensor on a U.S. military platform in 2021 and uploaded to a classified government network in 2024. The Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has conducted multiple investigations into all the captured phenomena but has found no concrete evidence to prove that the events are related to extraterrestrials. However, military officials admit that many of the events remain unexplained and are in a state of “unresolved.”

Among the newly released records is a video taken by the US Central Command in 2020 at an undisclosed location, showing a spherical object flying over a densely populated area, gradually rising before disappearing into the sky. The record also includes a written account provided last year by a senior U.S. intelligence official, who wrote that while on duty, he saw two “huge spheres” suddenly light up next to the helicopter.

The document states that the orange spheres had a white or yellow center, and the entire sphere emitted light. Officials wrote that fighter jets were scrambled to try to identify what the spheres were but were unable to do so. The official wrote: “The spheres we saw earlier turned into a chase after fighter jets, and we were all stunned by what we witnessed.”

A Department of Defense spokesperson said that since the Pentagon released its first batch of declassified UFO files on the WAR.GOV/UFO website on May 8, the files have received more than one billion views from around the world.

US President Donald Trump is expected to visit Beijing on June 14-15. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer stated clearly at a congressional hearing on June 22 that he hopes the two sides will reach an agreement on a wider range of agricultural purchases beyond soybeans during Trump’s visit.

Greer emphasized that Washington’s goal is to obtain a commitment from China to purchase “all agricultural products,” which will be a major topic of discussion at the Trump-Xi meeting, and Washington hopes this will be a significant achievement of Trump’s visit.

According to multiple foreign media reports, during his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on government trade priorities, Greer stated that the U.S. is working with Beijing to establish a specific mechanism aimed at promoting trade in non-sensitive goods such as agricultural products. The US hopes China will make comprehensive purchases of agricultural products, which is seen as part of a new round of “big deal” between the two countries.

Greer revealed that the US hopes Beijing will make a broader commitment to overall agricultural procurement, rather than just focusing on soybeans as a past indicator. Data shows that China’s soybean purchases from the US have seen a temporary rebound over the past year. However, despite this rebound, China’s soybean imports still primarily come from Brazil and Argentina, with the proportion from the US remaining low. Market analysis indicates that this shows China’s purchasing decisions, in addition to market factors, clearly reflect policy and negotiating leverage.

Artificial intelligence has arrived, bringing undeniable convenience, but also genuine anxiety. In the past, we always discussed whether AI would replace human jobs in the future, but the latest data shows that this “future” may have already arrived. An expert from the University of Sydney Business School, through in-depth analysis of the US job market, has found that AI reshaping the employment structure is not alarmist, but an ongoing reality.

Even more alarming is the possibility that Australia may soon follow suit. Clinton Free, Executive Director of Education at the University of Sydney Business School, wrote in The Conversation that the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that jobs heavily reliant on routine information processing are experiencing the most significant contraction. The sectors most affected are customer support, administration, software, and IT services.

Following closely behind are marketing, banking, travel, and retail, while the declines are relatively mild, the downward trend is clearly visible. For Australia, this is by no means a topic it can remain uninvolved in. Fry specifically points out that the industries mentioned above are precisely the sectors of the Australian economy that absorb a large portion of the workforce. In other words, what is happening in the United States, Australia may very well experience soon as well. For decades, job growth in the United States has been primarily driven by white-collar jobs. But in the past three years, this model has been completely disrupted.

The data Fry presented was straightforward: there were approximately one million more blue-collar jobs than white-collar jobs. Manual labor jobs saw a slight increase, while office jobs declined slightly. This growth was primarily concentrated in sectors relatively less impacted by AI, such as construction and maintenance. Meanwhile, sectors like finance, consulting, management, and corporate support—jobs that had seen steady growth for decades—have largely stagnated. These functional areas are precisely the cornerstones of modern organizations.

Free believes this means the next wave of disruptive change may already be quietly brewing. If layoffs are an obvious warning sign, then the “hidden signal” that Freer sees as even more alarming is the reduction in entry-level positions. Data shows that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the United States has climbed to about 5.6%, while the overall unemployment rate is about 4%, and the unemployment rate for experienced graduates is only about 3%.

Even more worrying is that a staggering 42.5% of recent graduates are “underemployed”—meaning they are doing jobs that don’t require a college degree at all. The meaning of this signal is straightforward: as AI begins to take on entry-level tasks, the pathways for young people to enter the workforce are narrowing. For centuries, technological advancements have consistently replaced human labor, but Fried believes the impact of AI this time will be more profound than ever before. There are three reasons for this: First, the speed is unprecedented. ChatGPT, for example, accumulated over 100 million users in just two months after its launch.

This is an adoption rate that is almost unprecedented in the history of human technology. Second, AI is no longer just doing “odd jobs”. Past technological revolutions primarily replaced manual labor or highly repetitive assembly line work. But this time, AI is beginning to venture into professional fields requiring cognitive abilities—drafting legal documents, writing code, analyzing financial statements, generating marketing content… AI is gradually taking over these tasks that originally belonged to “white-collar professionals.” Third, the impact is on the entire industry.

Traditional technological changes often reshape only a specific industry, such as textiles or manufacturing. But the impact of AI spans almost all industries, and virtually no sector can remain completely unaffected.

At the end of the article, Frye offers a conclusion that everyone should consider: the question now is no longer whether AI will change jobs—it already is. The real question is how quickly it will change, and who will pay the price.

As anxieties about AI taking away jobs grow, Freer is urging the government to launch a national dialogue on the issue as soon as possible and to develop corresponding policies to address the impact of AI on the job market. After all, technology waits for no one. What we can do is anticipate the direction of the tide.

Language barriers between users worldwide are breaking down as the social networking service X (formerly Twitter) introduces an automatic translation service. According to IT media outlets such as TechCrunch, X launched a feature that automatically translates posts globally on the 7th following a pilot program.

Nikita Beer, X’s Head of Product, stated on her X account, “By launching the automatic translation feature globally, we will ensure that posts uploaded to X in any language reach users around the world.” In a separate post prior to this, she added, “Post in your language. Post your culture and daily life, and make your country the next trend,” and further explained, “The greatest cultural exchange in history has just launched.”

While users could previously change posts in other languages on X to their preferred language via a ‘translate’ function, the difference this time is that they can view them in their desired language immediately without any separate operation. The translation function utilizes the Grok model, an AI chatbot developed by xAI, founded by Elon Musk.

Since the service’s introduction, X users have shown mixed reactions. In domestic online communities, the sight of users from various countries sharing empathy regarding similar cultures through X has garnered significant attention. Conversely, on the online community Reddit, lengthy comments were posted on posts seeking ways to disable the automatic translation function, with users complaining that the translation quality was too poor or that it was bothersome.

Asahi Shimbun reported, “Watching posts continuously appear on X, one feels both danger and hope at the same time,” adding that “some are reconsidering their views by exchanging messages with people from countries they thought they disliked.”

Since the start of the second Trump administration, visa barriers for international students dreaming of studying in the United States have been steadily rising. Last year, the rejection rate for international student visas (F-1) soared to 35%, marking the highest level in the past decade. This effectively means that one out of every three applicants failed to receive a visa.

According to an annual report released by Shore light, an organization specializing in international education, the global F-1 visa rejection rate for 2025 is projected to reach 35%. This figure is even higher than the previous peak recorded in 2020, when visa screening was tightened due to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report analyzed that this increase in visa rejections acted as one of the main causes of the sharp decline in international student enrollment for the fall semester of 2025. In particular, the rise in rejection rates was concentrated in specific regions.

Students from Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia were found to have been the most significantly affected. In the case of Africa, approximately 64% of F-1 visa applicants were rejected, resulting in a severe situation where effectively “more than half were eliminated.”

This figure represents a significant increase from 43% in 2015 and a 5-percent point rise from the previous year. In some countries, the situation is even more serious, with cases reported in Sierra Leone and Somalia where the rejection rate exceeded 90%. Changes in India, once one of the largest sources of international students for the U.S., are also notable. India’s student visa rejection rate surged from 36% in 2023 to 61% in 2025. This nearly twofold increase in just two years demonstrates that obtaining a visa is becoming increasingly difficult even for traditional student supply nations. In contrast, South America showed a different trend.

The visa rejection rate for South American students decreased from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, recording a gradual decline over the past four years. However, as it remains high compared to 10 years ago, it is difficult to view this as a complete improvement. Europe maintained a relatively stable trend. The visa rejection rate for applicants from Europe has remained largely unchanged over the past decade and is projected to be low at around 9% by 2026. This suggests that there may be differences in the application of visa screening standards by region.

Reflecting these trends, the number of Korean international students in the U.S. continues to decline. According to the ‘Open Doors’ report, an annual international student statistic by the Institute of International Education (IIE), the total number of Korean international students enrolled in U.S. universities, graduate schools, and language institutes for the 2024–25 academic year was 42,293, a decrease of approximately 2% from the previous year.

Excluding the 2020–21 (39,491) and 2021–22 (40,755) academic years, when the COVID-19 pandemic was severe, this marks the lowest level since 2010. The number of Korean international students has been generally declining since peaking at 73,351 in the 2010–2011 academic year. The report points out that current visa policies are undermining the “principle of merit-based selection.”

Controversy regarding equity is also being raised, as outcomes can vary significantly based on country of origin or region rather than academic ability or potential. In fact, it is reported that as a system where most applicants from certain countries are rejected becomes entrenched, the number of cases where students give up on studying in the U.S. altogether is increasing. Experts warn that tightening visa barriers could have a negative impact on the competitiveness of U.S. higher education in the long run. This is because international students play a crucial role not only in tuition revenue but also in research, innovation, and the labor market.

Concerns are being raised that a decline in the influx of international talent, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields, could lead to a weakening of the United States’ global competitiveness. Meanwhile, the rise in visa rejection rates is analyzed to be the result of a complex interplay of factors, including concerns over illegal immigration, political and diplomatic variables, and stricter screening criteria. However, there are also significant criticisms that the lack of clear disclosure of criteria is increasing uncertainty for applicants.

Shoreright pointed out, “If an international student’s chances of admission are determined by their country of origin rather than academic performance or financial ability, the fairness of the U.S. visa system could be undermined.” Ultimately, visa strategy is emerging as a crucial variable for studying in the United States. While the U.S. remains the world’s largest destination for international students, the prevailing view is that the threshold has become much higher than before.

Inside Higher Ed, a media outlet specializing in higher education, analyzed that the increase in F-1 visa rejection rates also contributed to the decline in the number of international students at U.S. universities during last fall semester.