Category World News

According to an internal cable that was seen by news outlets on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump’s administration has mandated that its embassies abroad stop holding new visa interview dates for students and foreign visitors.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated in the memo that the pause is in place because the State Department intends to expand the selection of student applicants on social media.

What this pause might mean, as we all know from the beginning.

What transpired?

Rubio demanded that US embassies everywhere the world stop holding new visa interviews for foreign students in a cable that was obtained by several news organizations.

According to the cable, “The Department is reviewing the current operations and procedures for screening and vetting of student and exchange visitor (F, M, J) visa applicants,” and plans to provide guidance on expanded social media vetting for all of these applicants.

Consulate sections should not add any additional appointment capacity for student or exchange visitor visas in preparation for an expansion of the social media screening and vetting requirements.

The F-1 student visa is most common among international students. Students who enroll in exchange or scholarship programs like the Fulbright fellowship, professors who take part in exchange programs, and interns are eligible for the J-1 visa. Students who enroll in training programs in the US are eligible for an M-1 visa.

Under the condition of anonymity, a US official confirmed to The Associated Press that the suspension is temporary and does not apply to students who have already scheduled their visa interviews. How long will the halt last is a mystery.

The US State Department’s spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, said at a regular press briefing that the country will use “every tool” to screen anyone who wants to enter the country. She later declined to comment on the reports about the memo.

On Tuesday, Bruce said, “We will continue to use every tool we can to determine who is coming here, whether they are students or not.

How many students from other countries visit the US annually?

According to the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the US State Department’s annual Open Doors report, the number of international students in US institutions increased by an all-time high of 1.13 million during the academic year 2023-2024. The number of international students enrolled in US colleges and universities increased by 6.6 percent from the previous year.

Which nations are these students from?

In Asia, 71.5% of the international students who enrolled in the US between 2023 and 2024, according to the Open Doors report.

With 331, 602 students from India enrolling in US universities, that country was the top source. China sent 277, 398 students to the US following India. South Korea, which sent 43, 149 students to the US, is in third place.

90,600 students from Europe, or 8% of the world’s student population, were sent to the US from Europe.

Which universities accept the majority of foreign students?

The Trump administration’s approval of enrolling international students was suspended last week amid a wider row between Harvard and the administration. About 27 percent of Harvard’s student body is made up of international students, who are currently accounted for by 6, 800.

Other  major universities have comparable proportions of the campus population, with international students accounting for similar proportions.

22 percent of the students at Yale, Northwestern University, and New York University are from outside the United States. International students make up 30% of the total student body at the University of Rochester, which is higher.

The highest number of international students at NYU, according to the Open Doors report, was 272 between 2023 and 2024. Columbia University placed third with 20, 321 students, while Northeast University placed second with 21, 023 international students.

Are most student visas issued now in the US?

According to the memo, how many students who are aiming to enroll in academic programs at US universities this fall (autumn) will be impacted by the State Department’s proposed pause.

By the middle of March or early April, the majority of US universities make admissions announcements. Between March and June, Fulbright makes its final decisions rolling. After receiving their admissions decision, students typically apply for a student visa. After submitting their applications, applicants typically take between a few weeks and a few months to receive their visas.

F-1 student visas can be issued up to 365 days before the program’s start date, according to the US State Department website, but only 30 days before the program’s start date can students enter.

What happens to US students who need to renew their visas?

Students who need their visas renewed or extended in the US are unsure whether the pause will be affected by it.

The application process is the same as the F-1 student visa application process, which requires applicants to complete an online form and schedule an interview at a US embassy outside the US. The F-1 student visa is typically granted for a five-year period.

PhD programs typically last four years, while undergraduate programs typically last three to eight. Therefore, many PhD students must renew their US visas while completing their program. International students who complete one degree and apply for another in the US, such as those who have earned bachelor’s degrees and are pursuing master’s degrees, may need to renew their US visas as well.

What justifies this most recent move by the Trump administration?

The Trump administration’s most recent move is to impose sanctions on US universities, particularly international students who have backed Palestinians in Gaza for the past year.

The US State Department revoked Ranjani Srinivasan, 37, a PhD candidate in urban planning at Columbia University,’s student visa in early March. Up until 2029, her visa was valid. Srinivasan claimed that her speech and limited social media activity had made her face. She had posted and shared content that was critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza on social media. Additionally, she had signed a number of open letters supporting Palestinian rights.

Srinivasan claimed she never participated in any organized campus organization, and that she did not attend the US campus protests in April 2024, when Columbia campus encampments were robbing.

When Abimbola Ogundairo saw a pretty wooden map she thought would be great decor for her walls, she did something most regular buyers wouldn’t think of: She messaged the manufacturers with a simple, yet charged question.

“Which map projection did you use?” she asked, referring to the method of representing maps on a flat plane.

The sellers never responded, but Ogundairo suspected they used a problematic projection. Discouraged, she refused to place an order.

Ogundairo’s obsession with map projections is not random. The 28-year-old is leading an African-led campaign to get more of global institutions and schools to immediately stop using the Mercator Map projection – the most common version of the world map that is generally recognised – because it shrinks Africa, and much of the Global South, while disproportionately enlarging the rich and powerful regions of the world.

Greenland, for example, is shown to be relatively the same size as Africa, but, in reality, can fit in the continent 14 times over. Europe, portrayed as bigger than South America, is actually half its size.

Advocates like Ogundairo are pushing instead for “equal area” map projections, which they say more accurately represent the prominence of the African continent.

Since early May, Ogundairo, as lead campaigner at Africa No Filter, a nonprofit working to change negative perceptions of Africa, has hassled big institutions like the United Nations with a “Correct the World” campaign. People are encouraged to sign an online petition to pressure their governments into compliance. Most people, Ogundairo said, don’t know about the distortions and react with surprise and outrage.

“We’ve had a lot of, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t even know this was happening,’” Ogundairo told Al Jazeera. “I have an uncle who decided to support this because I told him you can fit the US, China, and India into Africa, and he felt so betrayed. He was like ‘Oh my God, I had no idea.’”

Institutions have been harder to crack, Ogundairo said, but she expected some resistance to this sensitive, controversial topic.

For centuries, experts have debated the question: Can anyone accurately depict a three-dimensional, spherical world on a flat surface? Is it possible to take a rounded object, like a football, for example, cut it up, paste it on a board, and have a precise representation?

Many experts conclude the answer is a resounding no. Maps, they say, are inherently a lie, always compromising on something: Area, distance, or something else. Others, though, argue that near-perfect maps exist and must be highlighted.

Ogundairo believes the commonly used Mercator map affects Africa and Africans negatively, and that its widespread use for centuries is connected to the many decades of colonialism the continent endured. Now, she said, some 70 years after independence from colonial masters, is the time to press for change.

“We live in a world where size is often equated with power,” Ogundairo said, adding that the Mercator map feeds tropes that Africa is a country.

“It has a damaging impact on the way we make decisions in our everyday lives, on how we make business decisions, the way we dream, and even the way non-Africans view the continent as a tourist destination and an investment destination. It’s the most lingering lie about Africa,” she said.

A heated, centuries-long debate resurfaces

Cartographers as far back as the early 20th century knew the Mercator projection was problematic.

Developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1599, the projection was one of the first ever to represent arched, imaginary sailing courses as visible, straight lines. Its simplicity for sea navigation cemented its popularity at the time, but its huge errors soon became hard to ignore.

“It preserves shapes and angles, and that’s good for navigation, but it’s terrible for scale,” geography professor Lindsay Frederick Braun of the University of Oregon said of the Mercator map. The map is most suitable for local area mapping and is used by digital platforms like Google Maps.

When enlarged into a world map, though, Mercator becomes problematic, Braun said. The map’s mistakes were not likely to be a conspiracy against Africa or the Global South, but its continued use, he added, is inherently political.

“Part of the reason Mercator got wide use is because it was widely available for nautical charts, but also because it rings true as a vision of the world to the people who were looking at it, the people whose countries are a little bigger.”

Several map projections over time have tried to fill Mercator’s gaps, but all of them compromise on one or more factors. That has made it hard for social justice crusaders looking to support a projection that better represents the Global South.

One cartographer’s claims, though, shook the cartography world in 1973, causing an outpouring of condemnation on the one hand, and on the other, a loyal cult following.

German activist Arno Peters declared his Peters Projection as the “only” precise map, and the true alternative to the Mercator model.

Peters, whose parents had been imprisoned by Nazis and who focused on social inequalities as a journalist and academic criticised the Mercator projection as “Euro-centred”.

The fervour with which he and his supporters promoted the projection as a scientific feat and a social justice breakthrough bordered on what some called propaganda. It caused concerned groups like the United States National Council of Churches to take notice and immediately adopt the map.

Critics, though, were quick to call out Peters on two things. The map, observers pointed out, was only distorted differently: Where the Mercator projection makes areas near the poles appear much larger, the Peters projection relatively represents accurate sizes throughout, but slightly stretches areas near the equator vertically, and areas near the poles horizontally.

“There was also the fact that this map had already been presented by another cartographer decades ago,” Braun said, explaining the second problem.

Scottish scientist James Gall indeed first published an identical projection in a science journal in 1855, but it went unnoticed. There is no proof, some researchers say, that Peters outrightly plagiarised Gall, but critics say his failure to credit the earlier researcher is still problematic.

In 2016, the debate resurfaced with renewed vigour after public schools in the US city of Boston switched to what many now refer to as the “Gall-Peters” projection. Officials said the move was part of a three-year effort to “decolonise the curriculum”. Teachers said they were amazed to see students questioning their view of the world after the switch.

However, many experts and map enthusiasts were annoyed by the fact that Boston chose Peters, and as such, gave the projection renewed relevance.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Boston Public Schools (BPS) for comment.

A perfect map?

Amid the Boston schools’ drama, one group of researchers decided they’d had enough of Peters and set out to do something.

Cartographer Bernard Jenny, who teaches immersive visualisation at Australia’s Monash University, said he was approached by Tom Patterson, a retired cartographer with the UN National Parks, for the task. Together with software engineer Bojan Savric, the team in 2018 created an equal area map they called the “Equal Earth” projection.

That version, which sees Africa expand impressively, is increasingly seen as the closest thing to a perfect area map. It’s the same one Ogundairo’s team is pushing for.

“But that’s maybe a slightly pretentious name,” Jenny laughed over a Zoom call, explaining that Equal Earth is still not a perfect representation of the Earth. “We were just tired of the Peters resurgence and wondered why people would go with that when it’s not even the best in terms of anything,” he said.

The new projection tries to correct the Robinson projection, created in 1963 by American Arthur H Robinson. Many scientists use Robinson’s map because it is more visually balanced, although it compromises on area, size and scale, and particularly enlarges areas close to the north and south poles.

“We tried to come up with a version of Robinson that does not distort area,” Jenny explained. “So we stretched it in a way such that the different areas are not enlarged or shrunken. So Greenland is 14 times smaller than Africa on the globe, and it’s also 14 times smaller on the Equal Earth map.”

Jenny said the team never set out specifically to correct some of the most highlighted errors of the Mercator projection. Subconsciously, though, he said, they knew they wanted their map to better represent historically distorted regions like Africa.

“I would guess any reasonable geographer would support that idea,” the scientist said.

Equal Earth rose in popularity after a NASA scientist saw it online right after it was published, and the organisation immediately switched to it.

The World Bank, too, has picked it up. The institution, since 2013, has experimented with different projections, including the Robinson map, but in 2024 settled on the Equal Earth map.

“The World Bank Group is committed to ensuring accurate representation of all people, on all platforms,” a spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

Progress is slow but steady, Ogundairo of Africa No Filter said. Prominent organisations changing their stances means a universal pivot is possible, she said. Yet, there’s much more work to be done by Africans, she added.

Just as Mercator painted an image that prominently represented his part of the world, Africans, too, need to lead the way in pushing for what they want, Ogundairo said. One missing factor is that Africans have not insisted enough on change, in her view. It’s why her campaign is also urging African countries and the African Union to be particular about how they are represented on the map.

Girls’ first periods are a universal rite of passage. Menarche indicates the body’s capacity to ovulate and eventually reproduce biologically. However, this milestone’s social and cultural significance may vary significantly.

A menstruating girl represents the heritage and bloodline’s survival in some cultures, like the Maoris’. The first bleed, for some indigenous people of the Americas, occurs at the time of their spiritual initiation. Menstruation is thought to have a significant role in restoring one’s vitality in China.

According to their cultural heritage or the lack of cultural lineages brought on by colonization, migration, and conflict, attitudes toward menstruation vary significantly among Muslims.

For instance, I can name towns in the United States that regularly host elaborate period parties or galas for young women, much like the early Muslims in Medina. And in the same country, I’ve heard of communities where women continue to pretend to be menstrual during Ramadan while still hiding their menstrual status.

We can draw inspiration and guidance from the Holy Quran and the biography of the Prophet Muhammad to dissuade these contradictory conceptions of Muslim women’s menstruation. They provide a blueprint for period education that can be used to put an end to period shame and end period poverty.

In Islam, menstruation occurs.

Menstruation is used as a determinant of rite and ritual in Islamic tradition. Women who menstruate are exempt from the Ramadan fast and the five daily prayers that are prescribed by the Quran. At this time, circumambulating the Kaaba while carrying out the Hajj in Mecca is prohibited.

However, the Prophetic tradition provides an explanation of how the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) interacted with menstruating women in his life to understand what menstruation meant for the early Muslim community.

Umayyah bint Qays, a girl who rode to battle with the women of her tribe seated on the Prophet Muhammad’s animal, is an example. Her first period, which she was seated next to the Prophet Muhammad, soiled her clothes and her luggage.

The Prophet Muhammad inquired if Umayyah had menstrual bleeding after she noticed her shifting in her seat and feeling awkward in her seat, and she responded positively. Then, according to her Prophet, she was gently instructed to use salt and water to wash both the soiled items and herself.

A necklace was taken from the spoils of war and put on Umayyah’s neck by the Prophet himself when the conflict came to an end triumphantly for the Muslims. She kept this gift dear, neither letting it go out of her body until she passed away.

The Prophet Muhammad and his wife Aisha interact with ease when it comes to discussing and acknowledging menstruation. While she was having her period, the two experienced intense tenderness.

Her husband would put his mouth on the place where she ate and drank when they shared a meal and a drinking cup. He would also prop up his wife while she was menstruating, cuddling, and being close while reciting the Quran.

Aisha was overcome with dissatisfaction during the Prophet Muhammad’s singular Hajj pilgrimage after a year of anticipation and longing for the completion of this rite. He sincerely inquired as to whether she was menstruating, and he comforted her by saying, “This is a matter decreed for the daughters of Adam.”

These examples demonstrate that menstruation is not a sign of shame, sorrow, or embarrassment in the eyes of Islamic tradition.

Embracing a positive legacy from the past

Although the Prophet’s example can be used as a model for improvement, it is often the perceptions of our own menstrual cycles that are influenced by those around us.

By providing girls with access to period products, hygienic facilities, and access to menstrual health education, organizations, institutions, and schools help raise awareness of menstrual health.

However, the majority of our menstrual concepts come before a class. The bleeding of our mother is the first cycle we are aware of. Setting expectations to share or conceal, to push through, to rejoice or lament depends on how she feels, how she interacts with her own monthly period.

The saying that mothers are the first madrassa, or school, is well-known among Muslims. This includes body literacy, roles, responsibilities, self-care, and self-esteem as well as information and ethics.

Mothers play a crucial role in preparing girls for puberty and menstruation, so they are crucial. Every parent and guardian should treat preparing girls for their first periods as a form of human rights. Girls can’t access social media or their peers, both of whom are reliable sources of menstrual health information, without this instruction. Starting with their own home, every family has the chance to break the cycle of historical shame.

They frequently get to decide how their daughter experiences her first period. Unprepared for this situation, she might be a girl who discovers a red stain on her underwear, which could cause her to experience emotions similar to those experienced in other blood-related incidents, such as wounds, injuries, and pain. She might keep this secret a secret by stuffing her underwear with layers of tissue paper or socks without telling anyone.

Or she might just be a girl who anticipates the unexpected and feels giddy with excitement and intrigue. She can be relieved that she is now a part of the family of older sisters, cousins, aunts, and mothers who already promised her a happy day.

In both cases, those who live in the situation influence what she believes and anticipates going forward. She could simply be told to keep her period a shameful secret and given the location of the pads. Or her family could support, acknowledge her, and celebrate her.

Let’s all come to the same conclusion on this Menstrual Hygiene Day: neither the boys and men who care about them nor the girls and women who bleed do so.

We must remember that people make decisions, which will improve access to menstrual health resources and end period poverty. They were created by former female peers, who were once girls, who were shamed or celebrated, and former male counterparts, who were once boys, who were either unconsciously unaware or consciously educated about the daily realities of their female peers.

We have a chance to heal society and the people who form families by reviving Prophetic examples of showing tenderness to menstruating girls and women, sharing gifts at menarche, and acknowledging that menstruation is a divinely designed and life-giving process. We can and must take steps to end menstrual disparity and promote menstrual equality for everyone.