WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced last week it had canceled more than $400 million in student loans for people who attended for-profit colleges.

The ruling affects 16,000 students who the government says were defrauded by for-profit colleges, including 1,800 former DeVry University students.

While it comes as a relief to thousands of people and their families, it's left some to wonder: If President Joe Biden can cancel debt for those students, can he cancel debt for everyone?

AMERICA'S DEBT PROBLEM

The U.S. has accrued nearly $1.75 trillion worth of student debt nationwide.

In Florida, the average debt for those with loans is around $24,000. In Montana, it's averaging just over $27,000. In Wisconsin, it's over $30,000.

Similar numbers are reported in most states throughout the country.

A RELUCTANT PRESIDENT

When Biden ran for office, he pledged to cancel student debt. However, since he has taken office, he has not acted on his own to do it.

Instead, he has encouraged Congress to take action to cancel student debt — a move that has frustrated many in his party.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, has recently called on the Biden Administration to take more action to cancel student debt.

CHANGES HAVE HAPPENED

But that doesn't mean no changes are happening. In fact, some changes have already occurred that are impacting families.

For one, every American with federal student loan debt has enjoyed nearly two years of not having to make the payments — without interest accumulating on those loans.

Since March of 2020, under a program that began under former President Donald Trump, federal payments have been suspended. Biden has extended the pandemic-related policy several times since taking office.

May 1 is when federal student loan payments are set to resume. However, that date may get pushed back again.

Additionally, federal law already allows Americans who work in public service to get their debt forgiven after working a certain number of years.

Before Biden took office, the process was complicated, and many borrowers were denied loan forgiveness over technicalities. A new waiver by the Biden administration has changed some of that, and experts now say 9.3 million Americans are now eligible for student loan forgiveness. That includes teachers, police officers, government employees and even some who work for non-profits. Those who think they may qualify are encouraged to apply — or re-apply.

Finally, a big change has happened recently involving bankruptcies.

Student loans aren't treated the same way as credit cards when someone files for bankruptcy. While it's possible to get the debt discharged, typically, the debt stays with someone after they get a bankruptcy ruling. However, in New Jersey, a federal judge decided to interpret the law differently and canceled more than $100,000 in one man's student debt after he filed for bankruptcy. The Justice Department has decided not to object to that case, a rare move, and the Department is now reviewing bankruptcy policies going forward.

PRESSURE ON PRESIDENT

Still, Biden is facing pressure to do more.

The White House has not yet released an internal legal analysis showing whether Biden's attorneys believe he has the authority to cancel debt on his own.

Many members of Congress believe he does and would like to see that analysis released.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed updated COVID-19-related guidance for the holiday season from its website just days after posting it.

Over the weekend, the CDC's website showed it updated its holiday guidance on Friday, but the web pages detailing the guidance were removed as of Monday.

"The page had a technical update on Friday, but doesn’t reflect the CDC’s guidance ahead of this upcoming holiday season. The CDC will share additional guidance soon," reads a statement sent to ABC News from the CDC Media Branch.

The vague guidance recommended virtual and outdoor guidance for holidays.

"My guess is that they put a little bit too much of the cart before the horse," said Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett, of Boston Medical Center. "I know it's a frustration for people, so I think continuing to be in dialogue with trusted health professionals is a terrific way to go, as well."

The CDC's latest move adds to the confusion surrounding the holiday safety after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday that it was too soon to tell whether people should avoid gathering for Christmas.

On Monday, the nation's top infectious disease expert made an effort to clear the air on his previous statement.

"I will be spending Christmas with my family," Fauci said. "I encourage people, particularly the vaccinated people who are protected, to have a good, normal Christmas with your family."

Top health officials are emphasizing the importance of COVID-19 vaccinations in ensuring safe holiday gatherings, especially as doctors anticipate vaccine approvals for younger children.

"The good news is I think we're in a very different place than we were one year ago," Gergen Barnett said.

The CDC has given no timeline for updated holiday guidance.

DENVER, Co. — Taking children away from parents is a heartbreaking situation. Now, a federal law just put into effect Oct. 1 is hoping to prevent those moments.

The Families First Prevention Services Act aims to move away from placing children into residential facilities or group homes, and instead, keeps them in either a foster home or, preferably, their own home. In order to do that, federal dollars will be put towards services that can be accessed at the home, something that couldn't be done before.

National data says the most common reasons children end up in the foster care system are neglect and drug abuse. By providing treatment in the home, the hope is that it will heal the family unit from within.

"That could be for substance use. That could be for mental health issues that could be for really strengthening families and making more resources available to families to utilize while they're together in their home, rather than having to remove a child before you can access that funding for those support services," said Yolanda Arredondo, a child welfare professional.

She says the new law makes it so children will only be taken out of the home and into a group setting if it is absolutely necessary.

"Because that need is there not just a reaction to this family circumstance, that it really is a need to protect the safety and well-being of a child," said Arredondo, "and hopefully that's temporary and we can provide treatment-focused services to reunify the family as quickly as possible."

In Colorado, where Arredondo works, the state has already been implementing these new federal rules over the last few years. Right now, they serve 70% of children and families in their own home, 30% are with foster families. However, some advocates are concerned that since more foster homes will be needed, there won’t be enough places for children to go.

Arrendondo says she hasn’t necessarily seen that, but anyone interested in becoming a foster parent should seek out resources near them.

Hopefully, this new law means more families getting the help they need to stay together through the tough times in hopes of a brighter future.

It was a fitting place for an industry in need of a miracle.

In October, Air Belgium moved two planes to Lourdes, the Catholic sanctuary in France, to park up for the winter.

The planes — both Airbus A340-300s, of which the airline only has four in total — have been parked at Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrenees airport for long-term storage.

A spokesperson for Air Belgium blamed the "reduced demand and current operational restrictions due to COVID-19" and said the aircraft had been parked temporarily "to defer maintenance."

The airline is one of many struggling in the pandemic. Aviation has been particularly hard hit by COVID-19, with legal restrictions on travel joined by an unwillingness to fly by members of the public.

Looking at the third quarter of the year, the extent to which airlines have been crippled becomes clear. North American passenger jet arrivals dropped by 48% year-on-year, according to December figures released by aviation analytics company Cirium, while Latin America was barely better, at 46% down. Europe's numbers, meanwhile, have been devastated — over 70% down, year on year. Even in Asia Pacific -- which has controlled the pandemic better than other regions — arrivals are still over 30% lower now than they were this time last year.

Back at the end of October, figures were even more grim — international flights were down 75% year-on-year, according to Cirium (though domestic flights were better, down 36% globally). As the second wave of the pandemic has spread across the globe, airlines have taken drastic action to cut costs — from downsizing aircraft to retiring entire fleets and cutting routes.

Air Belgium's hail Mary at Lourdes isn't the only action the airline has taken. In the same month, it also paused the launch of a new route to Mauritius, and delayed the start of seasonal flights to Guadeloupe and Martinique.

It's just one of countless European airlines struggling in the pandemic. Air Baltic has flown this winter with planes only a third full. And figures from Europe's biggest airline conglomerate, IAG — which owns British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling — shows that it was flying half-full planes over the peak summer period of July to September, despite having reduced capacity to just 21.4%. With just 10% of the normal demand, BA lost £13 million ($17 million) per day.

As a result, with revenue 83% down, the group slashed its winter schedule to just 30% of last year's capacity.

EasyJet, too, announced its first loss in 25 years in October, and cut flights to 20% capacity for the rest of 2020.

Even behemoth Singapore Airlines is suffering. Not only has it cut 4,300 jobs, but in September the airline admitted that it "expects to operate under 50% of [pre-COVID-19] capacity at the end of the financial year."

While American Airlines predicted this fall that its end-of-year capacity will be down 50% overall, with long-haul international capacity at just 25% of what it was last year.

IATA, the International Air Transport Association, has predicted that for 2021, European airlines will see an average load factor of 65%. It doesn't sound so bad, considering — until you take into account that airlines need to run on average at 70% to break even.

Related video: Could new electric 'air taxi' be the future of travel?

Those predictions, of course, were all made before the new variant of Covid-19 was discovered in the U.K., leading to destinations around the globe closing their borders to aircraft coming from the U.K. Even the U.S. — currently the global center of the pandemic — introduced a Christmas Eve rule that all passengers coming from the U.K. from now on must present a negative test before boarding.

Christmas was well and truly canceled for the aviation industry.

So what can we expect in the near future?

Flights to wherever are open

For the next few months, airlines are network-planning to "just fly to wherever they can," says Graham Dunn, executive editor of FlightGlobal.

But for traditional and low-cost carriers, that means different things, he says, with traditional airlines concentrating on their big routes from hub airports, while low-cost airlines will be opening up the map wherever it's allowed.

"It's been interesting to see that when [budget] carriers have brought traffic back, they've tried to bring back more network than frequency, and kept the routes going where they could," he says.

"So I think you'll still see that point-to-point traffic continuing on low-cost carriers."

Conversely, he thinks traditional airlines will get more hub-based for now, with companies ditching regional routes as they try to make the money spinners productive.

"I think those secondary international routes, especially on long haul, won't be coming back [in the short to medium term]. You're much more likely to fly London Heathrow to New York JFK than Gatwick to a secondary U.S. airport," he says.

And instead of sitting pretty on a Dreamliner or an A380, expect to be on a smaller plane, in order for the airline to break even.

"In the short term, it'll be slightly smaller aircraft, slightly less frequency and traditional major hubs, rather than point to point," says Dunn.

Carbon footprints up in the air

Could those smaller aircraft spell good news for the planet?

There's one major positive that we've been able to take from the pandemic: the break that we've given the environment with our reduced flying patterns.

With the climate crisis spiraling out of control, the dip in aviation has given the planet a break for the past nine months.

And you'd think that the retirement of widebody planes and increased use of smaller aircraft for longer flights, plus routes being cut to hub airports, rather than having feeder flights from regional airports, would mean that those who are flying at the moment are at least flying greener.

But don't get too smug: That's not necessarily the case, says Ascanio Vitale, an engineer and environmentalist. His website, Flyzen, aims to be a more accurate kind of carbon calculator, taking more factors into account than most current software.

"You'd hope that we'd be flying greener at the moment, but it can be counter-intuitive," he says.

"It's not just what plane is being used, or the route, it depends on the traffic.

"The first thing you have to do [to reduce carbon footprints] is increase the load factor."

That means that if a smaller plane is being used to fly a long haul route at the moment, "for sure that's more efficient," he says.

But whether that actually cuts the passengers' carbon footprint depends how full those planes are.

If they've been filled to the gills, then indeed, it's more efficient overall. If, though, they're still half empty, the passengers' carbon footprint goes up — and will be higher than what it might have been a year ago, in a bigger, older — but, crucially, fuller — plane.

"It's not about efficiency, it's about impact," he says. "If there are half the amount of flights there were this time last year, but there's a 70% drop in passengers, the impact of these passengers is more.

"And if the airline switches to a plane with fewer seats to fill them more easily, even if it's full, it'll end up less efficient [than a full, larger plane]."

In short?

"We're polluting less at the moment overall, because the number of flights is reduced, and fewer people are traveling. But the single traveler is polluting more than before."

The good and bad news on fares

Thinking about returning to the skies in 2021? You might assume that the lack of demand will mean lower fares, with airlines slashing prices to encourage passengers back on board.

And if you want to splash out for your first post-pandemic trip and book a better-distanced seat in business class, you'd assume the decline in business travelers, and the swift, successful adoption of video conferencing, would see business class fares dive, too.

The bad news? According to travel booking app, Hopper, that's not the case. Business class fares in the United States are, on average, pricing 70% higher than 2020 fares for March 2021 departures. Economy fares are up 18% year on year for the same period.

The good? That may not stay the same.

There's been a "precipitous drop" in business class demand, says a Hopper spokesperson, with bookings down 20% this fall. That has translated into lower fares, too.

So for now, the airlines have raised their 2021 prices to make up for the lack of demand. But if demand stays low, expect them to fall. Your spring bargain may yet not be a pipe dream.

Graham Dunn thinks that we can expect to see better pricing in the near future on the big routes, since traditional carriers will be fighting for passengers on their normal moneymakers. And if you look a little further into the future, he thinks the bargains will be back across the board.

"You'll have airports looking for traffic, so they might be trying to make attractive offers to get airlines back in," he says, adding that if countries' vaccination programs are making progress by the summer, we'll start seeing more point to point flights, rather than routing via hubs.

New airlines?

The past year has been devastating for the aviation industry, with airline closures left, right and center.

But that doesn't necessarily mean reduced competition long term. In fact, it might be that the pandemic helps launch new airlines.

Airlines planning to launch in 2021 include Flyr, in Norway, and Pacifika Air, in New Zealand. LIFT just launched in South Africa, and there are so many putative airlines in the works in Iceland that artist Oddur Eysteinn Friðriksson launched a fake brand, Mom Air, to make a point about their nebulous plans.

But despite how desperate the industry looks now, Graham Dunn thinks that new airlines may well emerge post-pandemic. After all, he says, this summer's rise in European travel when restrictions were eased shows that the passengers are there — "you see the demand when routes come back."

And, he says, the budget airlines' point to point flying created entirely new markets, purely by offering lower fares. Never thought of going to Bratislava before? Have Ryanair dangle a $10 ticket in front of you, and you're on your way to the airport.

So if airports feeling the pinch start making it cheap for airlines to fly there, he says, it's perfectly possible we'll see those new airlines. What's more, with the airline failures of this year, and, potentially, more to come before the end of the pandemic, there will be plenty of spare aircraft hanging around and qualified crew to work on them. For those with the funds and the chutzpah to launch an airline, it could be a very good time to do so.

That won't be immediate. Dunn's betting on summer 2022. But he says that "there will be aircraft available, and financing, and [remaining] airlines will be retrenching their networks, and what tends to happen is that a new player comes in and seizes the opportunity." Although fares won't be lower in the short term, he says, he thinks they will dip within a year.

Ascanio Vitale agrees, reluctantly, but he urges us all to think more carefully about our flying habits once we take to the skies again.

"We've been polluting less this year because fewer people have been traveling and the airlines are getting rid of their old planes, but that isn't enough," he says.

"Aviation has a huge carbon footprint, and the trend to cap emissions is so slow, bland and unambitious that it won't make the industry sustainable.

"The pandemic has taught us that we should consume less, but I don't think people understood, because they're just waiting to go back to normal."

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the lives of Americans forever.

In a recent poll by USA TODAY/Suffolk University, 60% of 1,000 people surveyed agreed.

Eighty-five percent polled said the terror attacks had a big impact on their generation, while nearly two-thirds said it had a big impact on their own lives.

From technological advances to changes in national security, exactly what has changed in the 20 years since America came under attack?

National Security

Just 11 days after terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the Department of Homeland Security was created.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was appointed as the first director of the department, which was tasked with overseeing and coordinating a national approach to protect the U.S. against terrorism and future attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security now consists of more than 240,000 employees who are responsible for aviation and border security, cybersecurity and other preparedness measures.

Technology

Technology has seen its fair share of changes in the last 20 years.

"Government agencies and private companies have beefed up their disaster preparedness and telecommunications providers have strengthened their digital infrastructure," wrote Darrell West, senior fellow at Brookings' Center for Technology Innovation and its director, Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, in an online article entitled "How technology and the world have changed since 9/11."

Since 9/11, "the United States realized the importance of mobile communications during terrorist attacks and natural disasters," the article says.

"Steps have been taken to safeguard vital networks, which is a huge advancement since 9/11 when thousands of people in New York, and in the area of the Pentagon bombing had to run and walk for miles to what appeared to be a safe space for shelter," the experts continued. "Back then, we didn’t even have voice-activated internet-enabled navigational tools that could advise pedestrians and drivers of road closures, or other potential road or walking hazards."

In October 2001, the U.S. Patriot Act was enacted, which gave the government more authority to investigate potential threats through surveillance of phone calls, emails and text messages.

"With the advent of smartphones and the prevalence of electronic communications, public authorities also developed new tools for monitoring particular individuals and tracking their physical whereabouts via geolocation data," West and Lee's article says. "Twenty years after the attack, the country continues to debate where to draw the line between promoting personal privacy and protecting national security."

It's easy to wonder if the world's technological advancements had happened sooner, whether 9/11 could have been prevented.

Travel

Remember the days when you could arrive at the airport 30 minutes before your flight and head straight to your gate?

In 2001, that's what travel looked like. Families could come through security to send off loved ones and, even if you didn't have photo ID in your carry-on bag, blades and liquids were allowed.

But on Sept. 11, 2001, 19 hijackers were able to board four different domestic flights and carry out the attacks that killed thousands. That's when air travel changed forever.

The attacks changed the nation "automatically, immediately, into one obsessed, in big ways and small, with protecting its security," historian James Mann wrote in 2018. "The way that 325 million Americans go through airports today started on Sept. 12 and has never gone back to what it was on Sept. 10."

Tougher security measures were introduced when air travel resumed on Sept. 14, 2001, but the comprehensive Aviation and Transportation Security Act was passed into law by Nov. 19, 2001.

Here are some of the changes to air travel in the U.S. since 2001:

• All passengers over 18 need valid government-issued identification to fly, even on domestic flights. Those identifications are checked against passengers' boarding passes.

• The No Fly List was born — a branch of the Terrorist Screening Database noting people banned from boarding commercial aircraft into, out of and inside the U.S.

• The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was introduced in November 2001 and took over all airport security functions.

• Potential weapons like blades, scissors and knitting needles are no longer allowed on board, and airport employees are now better trained to detect weapons or explosives. In 2006, a foiled plot to detonate liquid explosives on multiple transatlantic flights led to the restrictions of liquids, gels and aerosols in carry-on luggage that still exist today.

• Also in 2006, the TSA started requiring passengers to remove their shoes to screen for explosives.

• In March 2010, full-body scanners began to be installed in U.S. airports in addition to metal detectors.

• In July 2017, TSA began requiring all personal electronics larger than a cellphone to be placed in bins for X-ray screening.

In addition, bulletproof and locked cockpits became standard on commercial passenger aircraft within two years of the 9/11 attacks. The Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act became law in 2002 and, in 2003, weapon-carrying pilots started boarding U.S. commercial flights.

Journalism

Michelle Wright, a reporter for sister station WTAE in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, remembers dropping off her son for his first day of preschool on Sept. 11, 2001, and holding her 1-year-old baby at home as she watched the first plane hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

"I was stunned," she said.

By the time she got to work, two other planes had crashed — another at the second tower of the World Trade Center and a third at the Pentagon — and there were reports of a plane down in Shanksville, less than two hours away. She and reporter Mike Clark rushed there, but had limited information about whether all of the crashes were related.

Wright and Clark were some of the first media on the scene.

"We just started going live," she said. "That shift turned into a nonstop week of being there. We immediately knew the significance."

Wright said the WTAE crew stayed in hotels and had to go to local stores for clothes and toiletries. They worked from about 3 a.m. until 8 p.m. each day in a world that didn't have social media and in an area of very poor cell reception.

"The public was glued to the television," she said. "People were just really eager to figure out what was going on."

Wright said in her career as a journalist, she can't remember a time when the information she was reporting was more important. Many broadcast stations dropped commercials during that time to make sure that reporters could relay the latest details.

"People were just waiting to find out what was happening to our country," she said.

Wright acknowledged that many relied on cable networks, morning newspapers and radio for breaking news in 2001. Today, however, many people would turn to their phones for instant information.

And, while social media often houses opinion, speculation and misinformation, it allows the public more access to reporters in today's world.

If an attack of that size took place today, the public may not have found out when a plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, but from a tweet from a passenger saying their plane had been hijacked.

Instead of circulating stories about passengers rushing the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 to confront hijackers before the plane, video or photos of the actual encounter may have been posted online in today's world.

Camera footage would also show a clearer picture of the horror of the attacks, the victims and the aftermath.

In 2001, television news crews made editorial decisions not to show footage of people leaping or falling to their deaths, while networks eventually stopped showing reruns of planes striking the towers to prevent children from thinking the attacks were happening again.

Social media doesn't have that type of editorial censorship.

"As panic-inducing as it was and as tragic an experience it was historically in this country, had the current technology been around in 2001, I think you would have had something far more heart-wrenching," said David Friend, author of "Watching the World Changes: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11."

Wright said her experience covering the story of United Flight 93 taught her that passing along information to viewers allows them to make decisions, but also make a difference.

"Knowledge is power," she said. "And it's empowering."

She'll also never forget the moment the loved ones of the passengers and crew of Flight 93 were bussed to the crash site for the first time. Without cell phones capturing footage or even cameras rolling, members of the community lined roughly 30 miles of roadway from where the families were housed to the strip mine where the crash occurred to offer their condolences and support.

"Everyone at the site just froze," she said. "It was a powerful moment. All of our lives were changed."

The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.

MASON, Ohio —

Several people have now been charged in connection to a series of fights at Kings Island over the weekend.

The popular amusement park was forced to close about 30 minutes early Saturday night after several fights broke out between teenagers.

Video taken by a guest shows people pushing and punching each other and knocking people to the ground. Both young men and a young woman can be seen hitting others, repeatedly.

According to dispatch reports and video, there were at least two large-scale fights within the amusement park on Saturday, with one of them spilling over into the parking lot.

Officer Peter Morris with the Mason Police Department was among the first on scene. In a report, Morris says he assisted park security in trying to break up the crowd, adding he saw a male hit a female multiple times, even grabbing her by the throat.

Morris says he was shoved to the ground, claiming multiple people started to pull on his equipment while hitting him -- at one point even being sprayed with pepper spray.

The report states Morris only had minor cuts and bruises.

A statement from the Mason Police Department released Tuesday says multiple individuals have been identified and that "suspect information will be presented to Warren County Juvenile Court for charges."

Authorities did not release any names, saying only that they are still working to identify "other responsible parties."

Officials with Kings Island also released a statement Tuesday, saying that they will up security measures within the park. Video footage throughout the park has been shared with investigators, park officials said.

Increased security will be in place at the park, beginning this weekend.

What that increased security entails is unknown.

"We will continue to utilize our Protect Our Park program, which enables guests to report any safety or security concern through their mobile device," a statement from Kings Island reads. "We are implementing additional security protocols and operational policies as appropriate. We believe these actions will help ensure that Kings Island remains what it has been for nearly 50 years – a place where generations of families and friends can gather for a day of safe fun and good food. More than 3 million guests a year have counted on us for exactly that since we opened in 1972, and we will continue to deliver on that promise for generations to come."