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Ceasefire and divestment calls have spread beyond US campuses, with more expected as Rafah offensive begins

University campuses around the world have been the stage of a growing number of protests by students demanding academic institutions divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.

The protests, which first spread across college campuses in the US, have reached universities in the UK, the rest of Europe, as well as Lebanon and India.
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Some students have begun hunger strikes in protest against their university’s “silence and inaction”.
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Organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest say they reserve the right to remove any Palestinian flags and pro-Palestinian symbols at the show next week in Sweden.

The announcement came amid heightened tensions surrounding Israel’s participation in the annual music competition over its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, now in its seventh month. Pro-Palestinian groups are expected to stage large protests in Malmo to raise awareness of their cause.
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BUENOS AIRES, April 30 (Reuters) - Argentina's lower house of Congress gave President Javier Milei a boost on Tuesday by approving his sweeping reform bill ahead of a final Senate vote and backing articles related to privatizing state bodies and labour reform.
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The ongoing farmer protests are the longest and most impactful of all the farmer protests in the history of the European Union and have led to dangerous changes in EU environmental policy and triggered a new rise of far-right political groups across the EU. In this interview, Natalia Mamonova talks about the limits of neoliberalism, the current state of farmer protests, changes in EU policy and the alarming forecast for the upcoming EU parliamentary elections in June.

When Tesla announced plans to expand its Gigafactory near Berlin and water became rationed, enraged residents organized themselves.

MOSCOW, April 25 (Reuters) - Russia said on Thursday that Poland was playing a "very dangerous game" by considering the possibility of hosting U.S. nuclear weapons.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Thursday he had invited Prime Minister Donald Tusk for talks on May 1 about the possibility of nuclear weapons from NATO states being deployed in Poland.

Duda has reiterated his position that Poland would be ready for such a possibility, prompting Tusk to say he would like a clarification from the president.
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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said any U.S. nuclear missiles in Poland could become targets in the event of a Russia-NATO war.

"It is not difficult to assume that if American nuclear weapons appear on Polish territory, the corresponding objects will immediately join the list of legitimate targets for destruction in the case of direct military conflict with NATO," she told reporters at her weekly briefing.

The Freedom Flotilla could depart Friday with 5,500 tons of aid for Gaza, amid Israel’s ongoing siege and blockade.

Activists are planning to lead a flotilla of ships to Gaza, amid Israel’s ongoing siege. They’ll transport 5,500 tons of desperately needed food and supplies from Istanbul to the Palestinian territory, where famine looms.

The activists don’t necessarily expect to make it there. They hope they do. But in the event that Israel blocks them, boards them, and detains them — or worse — they hope their efforts will inspire international outcry and put more pressure on Israel to end its war in Gaza and blockade around the territory.
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A Biden spokesperson declined to comment on the flotilla and did not respond to questions about whether the administration has been lobbying Turkey to block the voyage.
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Wynd Kaufmyn, an activist from Berkeley traveling with the flotilla, says the participants hope that “there will be enough international eyes on us that Israel will leave us alone, and we get the aid in, and we hope that it’s just the beginning of getting aid in.”

She acknowledges, though, if the flotilla is allowed to depart from Istanbul, participants need to be ready for Israel to “board us, take control of the boat, confiscate everything, deport us, and not treat us very well in the process.”

“We are totally idealistic,” she says. “We’re not being unrealistic.”

An Italian judge on Friday cleared three migrant sea rescue charities that had been accused of abetting irregular immigration in complicity with human traffickers, throwing out a case opened more than seven years ago.

He [Adam Bodnar] also handed the speakers of both chambers of parliament a document outlining the extent of the use of Pegasus after it was purchased by the then PiS government in 2017.

Bodnar informed them that, between 2017 and 2022, the security services applied “end device operational surveillance” to 578 individuals, reports news website Wirtualna Polska.

A far-right political conference being staged in Brussels with the support of Hungarian groups backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban descended into chaos Tuesday as city authorities tried to shut it down.

Speakers including Nigel Farage, a UK politician who led the Brexit charge, continued to speak at the National Conservatism Conference gathering despite orders from a local mayor to ban the event, citing public safety concerns. About a dozen police officers formed a cordon outside the conference and were blocking people from entering.
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A little-known amendment to the reauthorized version of Fisa would enlarge the government’s surveillance powers to a drastic, draconian degree

The United Arab Emirates likes to think of itself as a sort of Switzerland of the Gulf. Microsoft’s (MSFT.O), opens new tab $1.5 billion stake in Abu Dhabi artificial intelligence company G42, announced opens new tab on Tuesday, shows the limits of remaining a neutral counterparty of the United States and China, especially when it comes to AI. While nominally a private sector deal, the main upshot is to shove the UAE firmly into the U.S. camp.

As part of Tuesday’s deal, Microsoft President Brad Smith will join the board of G42, and the $3 trillion group will get to sell a set proportion of cloud capacity to G42, a person familiar with the matter told Breakingviews. G42 in return can use its AI models on Microsoft’s platforms. But there’s an additional, political condition: G42 has to stop using Huawei telecom equipment, which the United States reckons the Chinese government employs for intelligence.

In some ways, China and the UAE have a close relationship – not least because the Middle Kingdom buys lots of Abu Dhabi oil. (...)