WASHINGTON: Students protesting the war in Gaza abandoned their camp at the University of Southern California early Sunday after being surrounded by police and threatened with arrest, while Northeastern University’s commencement began peacefully at Boston’s Fenway Park.
Developments in both places were being watched closely following scores of arrests last month — 94 people at USC in Los Angeles and about 100 at Northeastern in Boston.
Dozens of Los Angeles Police Department officers arrived about 4 a.m. at USC to assist campus safety officers. The university had warned of arrests on social media and in person. Video showed some protesters packing up and leaving, while officers formed lines to push others away from the camp as it emptied out. The university said there were no reports of any arrests.
USC President Carol Folt said it was time to draw a line because “the occupation was spiraling in a dangerous direction” with areas of campus blocked and people being harassed.
“The operation was peaceful,” Folt wrote in an update. “Campus is opening, students are returning to prepare for finals, and commencement set-up is in full swing.”
USC earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony while allowing other commencement activities to continue.
At the Northeastern commencement Sunday, some students waved small Palestinian and Israeli flags, but were outnumbered by those waving the flags of India and the US, among others. Undergraduate student speaker Rebecca Bamidele drew brief cheers when she called for peace in Gaza.
The Associated Press has tallied about 2,500 people arrested at about 50 campuses since April 18, based on its reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement.
Arrests continued apace over the weekend. At the University of Virginia, there were 25 arrests Saturday for trespassing after police clashed with protesters who refused to remove tents. At the Art Institute of Chicago campus, police cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment hours after it was set up Saturday and arrested 68 people, saying they would be charged with criminal trespass.
ARRESTS IN VIRGINIA
In Charlottesville, Virginia, student demonstrators began their protest on a lawn outside the school chapel Tuesday. Video on Saturday showed police in riot gear and holding shields lined up on campus, while protesters chanted “Free Palestine.”
As police moved in, students were pushed to the ground, pulled by their arms and sprayed with a chemical irritant, Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor who has been helping the demonstrators, told The Washington Post. The university said protesters were told that tents were banned under school policy and were asked to remove them.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News on Sunday the police response was justified because students had been warned repeatedly to leave, were violating the school’s conduct code, and that outsiders who were not students provided protesters with supplies like wooden barriers.
“We’ve seen folks that are not students show up in riot gear with bull horns to direct the protesters on how to flank our officers,” Miyares said.
He said some had put bear spray into water bottles and thrown them at officers.
It was the latest clash in weeks of protests and tension at US colleges and universities.
Tent encampments of protesters urging universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread in a student movement unlike any other this century. Some schools reached agreements with protesters to end the demonstrations and reduce the possibility of disrupting final exams and commencements.
DEMONSTRATIONS AMID COMMENCEMENT
The University of Michigan was among the schools bracing for protests during commencement this weekend, as were Indiana University, Ohio State University and Northeastern. More ceremonies are planned in the coming weeks.
In Ann Arbor, there was a protest at the beginning of the event at Michigan Stadium. About 75 people, many wearing traditional Arabic kaffiyehs along with their graduation caps, marched up the main aisle toward the stage.
They chanted “Regents, regents, you can’t hide! You are funding genocide!” while holding signs, including one that read: “No universities left in Gaza.”
Overhead, planes pulled banners with competing messages. “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” and “We stand with Israel. Jewish lives matter.”
Officials said no one was arrested, and the protest didn’t seriously interrupt the nearly two-hour event, attended by tens of thousands of people, some of them waving Israeli flags.
OTHER PROTESTS CONTINUE
At Indiana University, protesters urged supporters to wear their kaffiyehs and walk out during remarks by school President Pamela Whitten on Saturday evening. The Bloomington campus designated a protest zone outside Memorial Stadium, where the ceremony was held.
At Princeton University in New Jersey, 18 students began a hunger strike to try to push the university to divest from companies tied to Israel. Students at other colleges, including Brown and Yale, launched similar hunger strikes this year before the more recent wave of demonstrations.
The protests stem from the conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
Anti-war protesters leave USC after police arrive, while Northeastern ceremony proceeds calmly
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Anti-war protesters leave USC after police arrive, while Northeastern ceremony proceeds calmly
- Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
Nigeria tanker truck blast toll rises to 86: rescuers
LAGOS: The death toll from the explosion of a petrol tanker truck in Nigeria that killed people rushing to gather fuel has risen to 86, emergency services said Sunday.
"The final death toll from the tanker explosion is 86," said Ibrahim Audu Husseini, spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency in Niger state.
The truck carrying 60,000 litres of gasoline exploded after flipping over on a road in the centre of the country on Saturday, authorities said.
Pope Francis calls for Gaza ceasefire to be ‘immediately respected’
- Pope Francis: I also hope that humanitarian aid will even more quickly reach... the people of Gaza, who have so many urgent needs
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis called Sunday for a ceasefire in Gaza to be “immediately respected,” as he thanked mediators and urged a boost in humanitarian aid as well as the return of hostages.
“I express gratitude to all the mediators,” the Argentine pontiff said shortly after the start of a truce between Israel and Hamas began.
“Thanks to all the parties involved in this important outcome. I hope that, as agreed, it will be immediately respected by the parties and that all the hostages will finally be able to go home to hug their loved ones again,” he said.
“I pray so much for them, and their families. I also hope that humanitarian aid will even more quickly reach... the people of Gaza, who have so many urgent needs,” Francis said.
“Both Israelis and Palestinians need clear signs of hope. I hope that the political authorities of both, with the help of the international community, can reach the right two-state solution.
“May everyone say yes to dialogue, yes to reconciliation, yes to peace,” he added.
A total of 33 hostages taken by militants during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel are scheduled to be returned from Gaza during an initial 42-day truce.
Under the deal, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are to be released from Israeli jails.
The truce is intended to pave the way for an end to more than 15 months of war sparked by Hamas’s attack, the deadliest in Israeli history.
It follows a deal struck by mediators Qatar, the United States and Egypt after months of negotiations, and takes effect on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president.
Bangladesh seeks arrest of MP cricketer over bounced cheques
- Bangladesh court issues warrant for Shakib Al Hasan for bounced cheques totaling $300,000
- Hasan is a former lawmaker from the party of autocratic, ousted ex-leader Sheikh Hasina
Dhaka: A Bangladeshi court issued an arrest warrant on Sunday for cricket star Shakib Al Hasan for bounced cheques totalling more than $300,000, in the latest blow for the ousted lawmaker.
“The court has previously summoned Shakib but he did not appear at the court,” said Mohammed Shahibur Rahman from the IFIC Bank, which filed the case.
“Now, the court has issued the warrant,” he said.
Shakib is a former lawmaker from the party of autocratic ex-leader Sheikh Hasina, who was overthrown by revolution and fled by helicopter to India in August 2024.
His links to Hasina made him a target of public anger and he was among dozens facing murder investigations for a deadly police crackdown on protesters during the uprising.
He has not been charged over those allegations.
Shakib was playing in a domestic Twenty20 cricket competition in Canada when Hasina’s government collapsed and has not returned to Bangladesh since.
The left-arm allrounder has played 71 Tests, 247 one-day internationals and 129 Twenty20s for Bangladesh, taking a combined 712 wickets.
However, he was left out of the 15-man squad for the one-day international tournament in the Champions Trophy in Pakistan and Dubai next month.
Najmul Hossain Shanto will captain the side, with Bangladesh placed in Group A alongside India, Pakistan and New Zealand.
UK family visa applicants from war-torn countries caught in bureaucratic limbo
- Home Office granting just a handful of waivers to people in countries where biometric information cannot be collected
- Those seeking refuge from Gaza, Sudan and Afghanistan among those awaiting authorization
LONDON: Refugees trying to escape Gaza, Sudan and Afghanistan and join family members in the UK are in limbo between government bureaucracy and a lack of biometric processing facilities.
As part of the family reunification visa application process, applicants must submit biometric information, usually including a fingerprint, at centers in the countries from which they apply.
But such centers often either do not exist in war-torn areas or the facilities are not available to gather the information. This means applicants must either complete the biometric processing once in the UK or be excused from the biometric process entirely.
Figures published by The Guardian on Saturday, however, show that just a handful of these deferrals or exemptions have been granted by the UK.
As of May 2024, 114 people had requested to have their applications “pre-determined” by delaying the submission of biometric data until reaching the UK. Another 84 people had requested to be excused from providing biometric information altogether. By February 2024, just eight predetermination cases and one excusal had been authorized.
The highest number of the requests came from Palestinians and those in Afghanistan and Sudan, where visa application centers have been forced to close due to conflict.
Members of parliament and charities have accused the Home Office of blocking people such in areas from joining their families in the UK.
They compared it to the situation in Ukraine, where people can apply for family reunification visas in the UK without submitting biometrics beforehand.
“The UK rightly welcomed Ukrainian refugees fleeing war. Why can’t the same compassion be shown to people from Gaza and elsewhere?” a coalition of independent MPs, including former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, told The Guardian.
Nick Beales, head of campaigns at the charity RAMFEL, which helps vulnerable migrants access justice, said: “This disclosure proves that it was actually impossible for people in conflict zones, such as Sudan and Gaza, to apply for visas even when they had clear family ties in the UK.”
A Home Office spokesperson told The Guardian they understood applicants may face challenging circumstances to reach a visa application center to submit biometrics, saying: “That is why individuals have the option to submit a biometric deferral request, which is assessed on its own merits, and exceptional circumstances are considered.”
Taliban deputy tells leader there is no excuse for education bans on Afghan women and girls
- The Taliban government has barred Afghan females from education after sixth grade
- There are reports authorities had also stopped medical training and courses for women
A senior Taliban figure has urged the group’s leader to scrap education bans on Afghan women and girls, saying there is no excuse for them, in a rare public rebuke of government policy.
Sher Abbas Stanikzai, political deputy at the Foreign Ministry, made the remarks in a speech on Saturday in southeastern Khost province.
He told an audience at a religious school ceremony there was no reason to deny education to women and girls, “just as there was no justification for it in the past and there shouldn’t be one at all.”
The government has barred females from education after sixth grade. Last September, there were reports authorities had also stopped medical training and courses for women.
In Afghanistan, women and girls can only be treated by female doctors and health professionals. Authorities have yet to confirm the medical training ban.
“We call on the leadership again to open the doors of education,” said Stanikzai in a video shared by his official account on the social platform X. “We are committing an injustice against 20 million people out of a population of 40 million, depriving them of all their rights. This is not in Islamic law, but our personal choice or nature.”
Stanikzai was once the head of the Taliban team in talks that led to the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.
It is not the first time he has said that women and girls deserve to have an education. He made similar remarks in September 2022, a year after schools closed for girls and months and before the introduction of a university ban.
But the latest comments marked his first call for a change in policy and a direct appeal to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst with Crisis Group’s South Asia program, said Stanikzai had periodically made statements calling girls’ education a right of all Afghan women.
“However, this latest statement seems to go further in the sense that he is publicly calling for a change in policy and questioned the legitimacy of the current approach,” Bahiss said.
In the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, earlier this month, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders to challenge the Taliban on women and girls’ education.
She was speaking at a conference hosted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Muslim World League.
The UN has said that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place and women can’t go out in public without a male guardian.
No country recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, but countries like Russia have been building ties with them.
