MICHIGAN: Police broke up a pro-Palestinian encampment Tuesday at the University of Michigan, less than a week after demonstrators showed up at the home of a school official and placed fake body bags on her lawn.
Video posted online by Detroit-area TV stations showed police moving people away from the camp on the Diag, a common site for campus protests. The encampment had been set up in late April near the end of the school year.
President Santa Ono said in a statement that the encampment had become a threat to safety, with overloaded power sources and open flames. Organizers had refused to comply with requests to make changes following an inspection by a fire marshal, he said.
“The disregard for safety directives was only the latest in a series of troubling events,” Ono said.
Protesters have demanded that the school’s endowment stop investing in companies with ties to Israel. But the university insists it has no direct investments and less than $15 million placed with funds that might include companies in Israel. That’s less than 0.1 percent of the total endowment.
“There’s nothing to talk about. That issue is settled,” Sarah Hubbard, chair of the Board of Regents, said last week.
A group of 30 protesters showed up at her house before dawn last week and placed stuffed, red-stained sheets on her lawn to resemble body bags. They banged a drum and chanted slogans over a bullhorn.
Masked protesters also posted demands at the doors of other board members.
“This conduct is where our failure to address antisemitism leads literally — literally — to the front door of my home,” board member Mark Bernstein, a Detroit-area lawyer, said at a board meeting last week. “Who’s next? When and where will this end? As a Jew, I know the answer to these questions because our experience is full of tragedies that we are at grave risk of repeating. Enough is enough.”
Students and others have set up tent encampments on campuses around the country to press colleges to cut financial ties with Israel. Tensions over the war have been high on campuses since the fall, but demonstrations spread quickly following an April 18 police crackdown on an encampment at Columbia University.

GENEVA: More than 14,000 people have been displaced in recent days from Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, where Russia launched a ground offensive on May 10, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
The assault has seen Russian forces achieve their largest territorial gains in Ukraine in the last 18 months.
“Over the past two weeks, fighting in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine has severely escalated,” Jarno Habicht, the WHO’s representative in Ukraine, told a press briefing in Geneva, via video-link from Kyiv.
“Over 14,000 people have been displaced in a matter of days, and nearly 189,000 more still reside within 25 kilometers of the border with the Russian Federation, facing significant risks due to the ongoing fighting,” he said.
He said the UN health agency was using these figures after speaking with local authorities.
“With the worsening security situation, humanitarian needs in the region are growing, and growing fast,” Habicht said.
The conflict in Kharkiv “has significantly increased the number of trauma patients,” he added.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then, more than 20,000 amputations have been carried out, said Habicht.
And 200 ambulances per year, on average, have been damaged or destroyed in shelling attacks, “depriving the Ukrainian people of urgent care,” he added.
The UNHCR voiced concerns that conditions in Kharkiv — already home to 200,000 internally displaced people — could become even more difficult if the ground assault and aerial attacks continue.
“UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, is extremely worried about the worsening situation and resulting spike in humanitarian needs and forced displacement owing to the new ground offensive,” spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo told the Geneva briefing.
She said the Ukrainian authorities had evacuated more than 10,300 people from villages in the Kharkiv region’s border areas, while others have left by their own means.
“The majority of the evacuees, who had to escape their homes with only a few belongings, are already highly vulnerable and include mainly older people and those with low mobility or disabilities who were not able to flee earlier,” Mantoo said.
Those registered at a transit center in Kharkiv city have been given basic relief items and advised on accommodation options.
“The vast majority of evacuees have expressed a clear wish to stay with family members or in rental accommodation and collective sites in Kharkiv and not move further from their homes, to be able to return when the situation allows,” Mantoo said.
The United Nations’ 2024 humanitarian plan for Ukraine amounts to $3.1 billion this year. UN spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci said that it was thus far only 23 percent funded.