
College financial aid form will be delayed for some students after last year’s botched rollout
CNN
Only a limited number of students and families will be able to access the government’s college financial aid form – which they must submit to be eligible for federal loans and grants – on the traditional October 1 launch date.
Only a limited number of students and families will be able to access the government’s college financial aid form – which they must submit to be eligible for federal loans and grants – on the traditional October 1 launch date. The 2025-2026 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, will be released on October 1 to a subset of students and then be made available to an increasing number of applicants over the following two months. The FAFSA will be fully available to all students on or before December 1, the Department of Education said Wednesday. The delay comes after a rocky rollout of an updated version of the FAFSA for the 2024-2025 academic year. The changes to the form are meant to make the FAFSA easier to fill out and deliver more financial aid to students and families, but the implementation was plagued with problems. When the new version of the FAFSA was released last December, it was initially only available for hours at a time. The botched rollout resulted in significant delays for students, many of whom were still waiting for financial aid award letters – which show how much they will have to pay for college – when trying to decide where to enroll for the coming fall. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the FAFSA rollout and expressed concerns that the complications with the form would prevent some low-income students from going to college at all.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.

Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.

Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.

As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.









