Month: April 2024

Per ABC NEWS, Pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University occupied a hall on campus early Tuesday, hours after school officials ordered the dispersal of a protest encampment. Videos appear to show protesters creating a barricade with metal chairs outside Hamilton Hall after midnight. The campus newspaper Columbia Spectator reported that those inside were working to block the building’s exits with tables, chairs and zip-ties.

Despite warnings from Columbia University (and after the school’s president said it would not divest from Israel), students who defied Columbia’s orders to vacate their pro-Palestinian protest by 2 p.m. on Monday have begun to be suspended. Ben Chang, vice president for communications and a spokesperson for Columbia University, said around 5 p.m. on Monday, about three hours after the deadline passed: “We have begun suspending students .. University representatives engaged in good faith dialogue with the organizers and maintain that dialogue. We were hopeful and we were disappointed when the student protesters couldn’t reach consensus on the issues under discussion.”

Columbia had issued notices to students on Monday in protest camps saying that if protesters left by the 2 p.m. deadline and signed a form committing to abide by university policies through June 2025 or an earlier graduation, they could finish the semester in good standing. If not, the letter said, they would be suspended, pending further investigation, and barred from completing the spring semester.  However at the encampment, protesters voted nearly unanimously to stay put, and around 2:45 p.m were seen marching on the quad, chanting “Disclose! Divest! We will not slow, we will not rest!’”

In a statement, University President Minouche Shafik had asked the protesters to voluntarily disperse, saying the demonstration had created “an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty, adding that “external actors have contributed to a hostile environment” around university gates, and that it had become a “noisy distraction” for students. Shafik also cited the May 15 commencement, saying, “We also do not want to deprive thousands of students and their families and friends of a graduation celebration.” A portion of the encampment has been cleared to make space for the upcoming commencement ceremony for graduates, and picketers are largely sticking to the perimeters of the encampment.

Columbia was the first elite institution struck by protests in support of the Palestinian cause, with students demanding that the school divest from investments that support weapons manufacturing and Israel; protests spread quickly last week on campuses across the U.S.

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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Elon Musk over the terms of a settlement agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (‘SEC’) that requires him to get approval in advance of some social media posts that relate to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he leads. Musk was seeking to overturn restrictions imposed on him by the SEC following a 2018 post on Twitter (now X). The high court rejected Musk’s appeal without comment.

An appeals court’s rejected Musk’s bid last year for the so-called “Twitter sitter” provision to be modified, complainingn that the requirement amounts to “prior restraint” on his speech, violated his First Amendment rights and was “unenforceable.” Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, and filed a petition with the Supreme Court in December 2023 seeking to undo the agreement, claiming it was an unconstitutional infringement of his right to free speech.

Tweets that Musk had posted in 2018, in which he claimed he had secured funding to take Tesla private, had caused the company’s share price to jump and led to a temporary halt in trading. The tweet was ruled to be “false and misleading” and shareholders accused Tesla of securities fraud. The settlement with the SEC included a requirement that his tweets be approved first by a Tesla attorney, and also called for Musk and Tesla to pay civil fines over the tweets in which Musk said he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share (the funding wasn’t secured, and Tesla remains public).

The SEC’s initial enforcement action against Musk alleged that his tweets about going private violated antifraud provisions of securities laws. The agency began investigating whether Musk violated the settlement in 2021 when he did not get approval before asking followers on Twitter, now X, if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.

Editorial credit: Muhammad Alimaki / Shutterstock.com

Pope Francis made his first trip outside Rome in seven months on Sunday, visiting a prison for women in Venice ahead of a mass in the city.  The Pope has not travelled since visiting the French city of Marseille in September 2023.

Amid concerns over his health, the 87-year-old pontiff arrived by helicopter at 8:00am local time to the courtyard of the women’s prison on the island of Giudecca, and greeted one by one the approximately 80 inmates, staff and volunteers. The pope met with female prisoners who are stars of the Vatican’s pavilion at the Biennale contemporary art show, urging the women to rebuild their lives in the first ever papal visit to one of the world’s biggest art gatherings.

The pope encouraged the women to reconstruct their lives “brick upon brick, together, with determination” during their time in prison, saying: “Prison is a harsh reality, and problems such as overcrowding, the lack of facilities and resources, and episodes of violence, give rise to a great deal of suffering there. But it can also become a place of moral and material rebirth.”  The Pontiff called on the prison system to “offer detainees the tools and room for human, spiritual, cultural and professional growth, creating the conditions for their healthy reintegration”.

Pope Francis also toured an art exhibition housed at the prison which examines the daily lives of the inmates through the work of 10 different artists. The exhibit is the Vatican’s entry for this year’s Biennale festival of art, which began last weekend.

Editorial credit: Pavel Mikheyev / Shutterstock.com

Authorities confirmed on Sunday that a four-month-old baby was among two people killed in Oklahoma, in the wake of severe storms and multiple tornadoes that spread across four states. The Oklahoma tornadoes Saturday night were the latest in a series of tornadoes that have battered the Midwest beginning last week and into the weekend.

According to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, at least 30 people were injured and one remains unaccounted for as authorities continued a search and rescue mission Sunday. Emergency officials in Hughes County, Oklahoma, said the baby was one of two people killed in storms that struck Holdenville.

Sunday marked the third day of the severe weather outbreak across the heartland states, with more than 22 million people under threat of violent storms in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Illinois. A powerful pair of twisters that touched down in Nebraska, officials said. Twenty-seven million people remain at risk of severe weather into Sunday, including wind gusts, hail, flood risk and potentially more tornadoes.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement Sunday: “My prayers are with those who lost loved ones as tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma last night. Thank you to Oklahoma Emergency Management and those who have worked through the night to keep Oklahomans safe and have worked to clear debris and assess damage.”  Stitt declared a state of emergency in a dozen counties.

A destructive tornado also hit Sulfur, Oklahoma, in Murray County, destroying buildings and scattering debris for miles with at least four other people injured in the area.  Tornadoes were also reported Saturday across Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and Nebraska, officials said, and according to the National Weather Service there were nearly 120 tornado reports in the last two days.

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Police have arrested a 17-year-old in the shooting death of a high school student on the campus of an Arlington, Texas, high school.

Arlington Police Chief Al Jones said 18-year-old Etavion Barnes was found unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds on Wednesday afternoon outside portable buildings on the campus of Bowie High School. According to police, detectives still are working to determine a motive but said it appeared the two knew each other. Authorities have not yet recovered a weapon in the killing, and no other injuries were reported.

The suspect, identified as Julian Howard according to Arlington Jail records, was charged with murder, with police saying it appears that Barnes was targeted. Police Chief Jones said the shooting was reported about 2:50 p.m., shortly before classes were scheduled to be dismissed, and the school was placed on lockdown for about two hours before students were allowed to leave, adding: “we’re still early on in our investigation, our detectives are working to determine a motive.”

A press release from the Arlington PD read: “We, as a community, cannot tolerate this kind of violence. Not in our neighborhoods and not in our schools. Violence is never the right answer. We will continue to work in lock step with our partners at Arlington ISD to ensure our schools are safe spaces where students can learn.”

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The New York State Court of Appeals has overturned Harvey Weinstein‘s rape conviction from 2020, making the 4-3 decision on Thursday, April 25 on the basis that the judge on the trial prejudiced Weinstein with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case.

According to the Associated Press, the decision also stated: “We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes. The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial,” and also noted that testimony “served no material non-propensity purpose” and “portrayed defendant in a highly prejudicial light.”  The court claimed that there was “an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them.”

Weinstein was charged after being accused of forcibly performing oral sex on a woman in 2006 and raping another women in 2013; he was found guilty in February 2020 of criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree in a New York City courtroom, and was subsequently sentenced to 23 years in prison.

PEOPLE reports that it is unclear at this time if Weinstein, 72, will face another trial in connection with these charges. The former Hollywood mogul will be transferred to the custody of prison authorities in California and will remain imprisoned, stemming from his Los Angeles conviction in 2022 on other rape charges, where he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. (Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles on charges involving one of the women who testified in New York.).

Editorial credit: lev radin / Shutterstock.com