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Ramesh Patel's grieving family have revealed the heartbreaking final words they received from him moments before he was killed in the Ahmedabad air disaster.

The serial liar (pictured) triggered an investigation in 2014 into allegations of child sexual abuse and murder involving politicians, generals and senior figures in the intelligence services.

Heading into the Canadian GP- and speaking before he qualified a distant seventh - he is guarded and, deep down, would rather be undisturbed as he watches the US Open golf on his phone.

This Father's Day, if you have given or received a card, what does it depict? A foaming tankard? A sports car, wheel barrow, tie, rugby ball? Pictured: A young Quentin Letts with his father Richard

Last week America's financial aid program announced that "the rate of fraud through stolen identities has reached a level that imperils the federal student aid programs." Or, as the Associated Press suggests: Online classes + AI = financial aid fraud. "In some cases, professors discover almost no one in their class is real..." Fake college enrollments have been surging as crime rings deploy "ghost students" — chatbots that join online classrooms and stay just long enough to collect a financial aid check... Students get locked out of the classes they need to graduate as bots push courses over their enrollment limits. And victims of identity theft who discover loans fraudulently taken out in their names must go through months of calling colleges, the Federal Student Aid office and loan servicers to try to get the debt erased. [Last week], the U.S. Education Department introduced a temporary rule requiring students to show colleges a government-issued ID to prove their identity... "The rate of fraud through stolen identities has reached a level that imperils the federal student aid program," the department said in its guidance to colleges. An Associated Press analysis of fraud reports obtained through a public records request shows California colleges in 2024 reported 1.2 million fraudulent applications, which resulted in 223,000 suspected fake enrollments. Other states are affected by the same problem, but with 116 community colleges, California is a particularly large target. Criminals stole at least $11.1 million in federal, state and local financial aid from California community colleges last year that could not be recovered, according to the reports... Scammers frequently use AI chatbots to carry out the fraud, targeting courses that are online and allow students to watch lectures and complete coursework on their own time... Criminal cases around the country offer a glimpse of the schemes' pervasiveness. In the past year, investigators indicted a man accused of leading a Texas fraud ring that used stolen identities to pursue $1.5 million in student aid. Another person in Texas pleaded guilty to using the names of prison inmates to apply for over $650,000 in student aid at colleges across the South and Southwest. And a person in New York recently pleaded guilty to a $450,000 student aid scam that lasted a decade. Fortune found one community college that "wound up dropping more than 10,000 enrollments representing thousands of students who were not really students," according to the school's president. The scope of the ghost-student plague is staggering. Jordan Burris, vice president at identity-verification firm Socure and former chief of staff in the White House's Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer, told Fortune more than half the students registering for classes at some schools have been found to be illegitimate. Among Socure's client base, between 20% to 60% of student applicants are ghosts... At one college, more than 400 different financial-aid applications could be tracked back to a handful of recycled phone numbers. "It was a digital poltergeist effectively haunting the school's enrollment system," said Burris. The scheme has also proved incredibly lucrative. According to a Department of Education advisory, about $90 million in aid was doled out to ineligible students, the DOE analysis revealed, and some $30 million was traced to dead people whose identities were used to enroll in classes. The issue has become so dire that the DOE announced this month it had found nearly 150,000 suspect identities in federal student-aid forms and is now requiring higher-ed institutions to validate the identities of first-time applicants for Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms... Maurice Simpkins, president and cofounder of AMSimpkins, says he has identified international fraud rings operating out of Japan, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nairobi that have repeatedly targeted U.S. colleges... In the past 18 months, schools blocked thousands of bot applicants because they originated from the same mailing address; had hundreds of similar emails with a single-digit difference, or had phone numbers and email addresses that were created moments before applying for registration. Fortune shares this story from the higher education VP at IT consulting firm Voyatek. "One of the professors was so excited their class was full, never before being 100% occupied, and thought they might need to open a second section. When we worked with them as the first week of class was ongoing, we found out they were not real people."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: Rory McIlroy has admitted his only remaining ambitions for this US Open are a quick final round and even quicker getaway.

Having a picture of your pooch on your desk may be enough to reduce anger - and even violence - in the workplace by one third, scientists have found.

This would leave patrols in the north (pictured) at their weakest just as smugglers were ramping up operations to take advantage of calmer seas.

Flanked by impassive henchmen deep inside a ramshackle migrant camp, the kingpin of a major people smuggling operation (pictured) cracks into a cynical smirk.

This actress embodied the quintessential girl-next-door in a fictional Massachusetts coastal town on a groundbreaking 90s teen drama. Think you know who it is?

A Gladiators star has signed up for this year's Strictly Come Dancing, after 'impressing' BBC producers on the Christmas special.

Officers launched a probe after it was alleged that two children at Lambrook School in Berkshire molested another pupil during a school trip.

The streets here tell a rather depressing story of a region that has been left behind the rest of the UK.

The pre-tournament favourites were shellshocked as Martin Schindler and Ricardo Pietreczko cruised to an emphatic 8-4 victory on Saturday night.

JoJo Siwa has officially set the record straight on her sexuality amid her budding romance with Love Island star Chris Hughes.

Starbucks is selecting two lucky individuals for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel the world, spotlight global coffee culture and earn a very attractive salary.

After years of China's cruel One Child Policy and hundreds of adoptions to the West, Barbara Demick uncovers the truth behind one separated set of little girls.

We all know how invaluable animals can be for our wellbeing, but in a new book, Jay Griffiths reveals just how extraordinary animals really are.

Scientists say residents in these areas (pictured) - not too busy, not too quiet but just right - sandwiched between city centres and the countryside, are less likely to suffer anxiety and depression.

Fans have been harboring mounting concerns for Justin's health in recent months, and rumors are flying of possible marital strife between him and Hailey.