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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Student-debt relief: “The Biden administration on Wednesday is canceling $1.2 billion in student debt for about 153,000 borrowers who took out relatively modest student loans and have been repaying it for the last decade or more. ... Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters Tuesday that the forgiveness will happen automatically and brings the total amount of student debt canceled by the Biden administration to nearly $138 billion for nearly 3.9 million borrowers.”
* On the offensive: “President Joe Biden on Tuesday called Donald Trump’s recent remarks on NATO ‘dangerous’ and questioned the former president’s failure not to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin responsible for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.”
* Difficult diplomacy: “There are indications of movement for a new hostage deal outline after weeks of negotiations appeared to stall, said Minister Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet.”
* Questions in need of answers in Oklahoma: “Officials acknowledged unresolved questions Tuesday about a 16-year-old Oklahoma student who died one day after a fight in a high school bathroom. The Feb. 7 fight happened at the Owasso High School West Campus, northeast of Tulsa, police and school officials said. Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, identified the teen Tuesday as Nex Benedict.”
* In Texas: “A Catholic nonprofit that operates several shelters in El Paso sued the Office of the Attorney General earlier this month to delay the release of records after the state agency demanded the immediate release of extensive documentation about the immigrant clients that it serves along the border.”
* The anti-environment court: “Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed inclined on Wednesday to again limit the Biden administration’s ability to protect the environment by temporarily stopping an effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to curtail air pollution that drifts across state lines.”
* Seriously? “On Feb. 8, a woman was found dead in a Manhattan hotel room, bludgeoned to death with an iron. This week, the police announced that a 26-year-old man suspected of committing the crime had been arrested in Arizona, where he was accused of stabbing another woman a few days after the homicide in New York. In the normal course of events, the suspect would be sent back to New York to face charges — a routine extradition. But on Wednesday, an Arizona prosecutor refused, saying she did not believe Alvin L. Bragg, Manhattan’s district attorney, could be trusted to keep him behind bars.”
* An odd story out of Virginia: “Rep. Bob Good (R-Virginia), who is chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, was recently chased out of a store that sells merchandise promoting former President Donald Trump, and one witness of the exchange posted video of the confrontation online.”
See you tomorrow.