Month: May 2024

UN nuclear agency chief Rafael Grossi will visit Iran next week, the IAEA said on Tuesday, amid heightened tensions between the Islamic republic and Israel that have led to fears of an attack on a nuclear facility.

“We can confirm that director general Grossi will be in Iran on May 6-7 for meetings with senior Iranian officials,” a spokesman of the International Atomic Energy Agency told AFP.

His visit next week comes less than three weeks after a reported Israeli strike in the central province of Isfahan in retaliation for Iran’s first-ever attack on Israel.

The IAEA and Iranian officials reported “no damage” to nuclear sites in the province.

Concerns have also risen that Iran may further step up its nuclear programme.

The Vienna-based agency has been struggling since 2021 to carry out controls on the programme, which Tehran has expanded even as it denies it wants to make nuclear weapons.

Grossi will take part in “the first International Nuclear Energy Conference” which will be held in Isfahan from May 6-8, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported.

Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami said in February that Tehran had invited Grossi to visit in May to attend the conference.

The IAEA chief is scheduled to meet with Iranian officials to discuss “nuclear issues,” Tasnim reported.

Grossi was last in Iran in March 2023.

In January, Grossi expressed frustration over Iran’s nuclear activity in an interview with AFP, saying Tehran was “restricting cooperation in an unprecedented way”.

In 2015, Iran signed an agreement with major powers to restrict its nuclear programme in exchange for sanction relief.

But in 2018, then US president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the agreement  and reimposed sweeping sanctions, leading to Iran starting to suspend its compliance with limits on its nuclear activities a year later.

In February, Iran said it had started building a new nuclear research reactor in Isfahan, days after it announced it was constructing a nuclear power plant complex in the south.

Shortly after police moved in, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik released a letter in which she requested police stay on campus until at least May 17 — two days after graduation — “to maintain order and ensure that encampments are not re-established”.

Within three hours the campus had been cleared of protesters, said a police spokesperson, adding “dozens” of arrests were made.

At the start of the raid around 9pm ET throngs of helmeted police marched onto the elite campus in upper Manhattan, a focal point of student rallies that have spread to dozens of schools across the US in recent days expressing opposition to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

“Were clearing it out,” the police officers yelled.

Soon after, a long line of officers climbed into Hamilton Hall, an academic building that protesters had broken into and occupied in the early morning hours of Tuesday. Police entered through a second-story window, using a police vehicle equipped with a ladder.

Students standing outside the hall jeered police with shouts of “Shame, shame!” Police were seen loading dozens of detainees onto a bus, each with their hands bound behind their backs by zip-ties, the entire scene illuminated with flashing red and blue lights of police vehicles.

 

 

“Free, free, free Palestine,” chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled “Let the students go.” Columbia will be proud of these students in five years, said Sweda Polat, one of the student negotiators for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition of student groups that has organised the protests.

She said students did not pose a danger and called on police to back down, speaking as officers shouted at her and others to retreat or leave campus.

Protesters were seeking three demands from Columbia: divestment from companies supporting Israel’s government, greater transparency in university finances, and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined over the protests.

President Shafik this week said Columbia would not divest from finances in Israel. Instead, she offered to invest in health and education in Gaza and make Columbia’s direct investment holdings more transparent.

In her letter released on Tuesday, Shafik said the Hamilton Hall occupiers had vandalised University property and were trespassing, and that encampment protesters were suspended for trespassing. The university earlier warned that students taking part in the Hamilton Hall occupation faced academic expulsion.

The occupation began overnight when protesters broke windows, stormed inside and unfurled a banner reading “Hind’s Hall”, saying they were renaming the building for a 6-year-old Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.

The eight-story, neo-classical building has been the site of various student occupations dating back to the 1960s.

At an evening news briefing held a few hours before police entered Columbia, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by “outside agitators” who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.

 

 

Police said they based their conclusions in part on escalating tactics in the occupation, including vandalism, use of barricades to block entrances and destruction of security cameras.

One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, disputed assertions that outsiders led the occupation.

“Disruptions on campus have created a threatening environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty and a noisy distraction that interferes with the teaching, learning and preparing for final exams,” the university said in a statement on Tuesday before police moved in.

The Oct 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas fighters from Gaza, and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave, have unleashed the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism protests of 2020.

Many of the demonstrations across the country have been met with counter-protesters accusing them of fomenting anti-Jewish hatred. The pro-Palestinian side, including Jews opposed to Israeli actions in Gaza, say they are being unfairly branded as anti-Semitic for criticising Israel’s government and expressing support for human rights.

The issue has taken on political overtones in the run-up to the US presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic rhetoric and harassment.

White House spokesperson John Kirby on Tuesday called the occupation of campus buildings “the wrong approach.”

New York Police Department officials had stressed before Tuesday night’s sweep that officers would refrain from entering the campus unless Columbia administrators invited their presence, as they did on April 18, when NYPD officers removed an earlier encampment.

More than 100 arrests were made at that time, stirring an outcry by many students and staff.

Dozens of tents, pitched on a hedge-lined grassy area — beside a smaller lawn since planted with hundreds of small Israeli flags — were put back up days later.

The King was asked by a patient how he was feeling while he had his own cancer treatment: “I’m all right, thanks. Not too bad,” the King replied.

Looking relaxed and smiling, the King visited a specialist cancer centre in central London with Queen Camilla.

It was his first big public appearance since his cancer diagnosis.

The King, who has become Cancer Research UK’s new patron, was shown some of the innovative medical technology at the Macmillan Cancer Centre at University College London Hospital.

But there was a sense of shared human experience as he sat down to chat to patients about the treatment they were receiving – sympathising that he had his own “treatment this afternoon as well”.

 

“It’s always a bit of a shock isn’t it, when they tell you,” agreed the King, as he spoke to Lesley Woodbridge, 63, from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire.

Her husband Roger spoke with Queen Camilla about the impact on them. “I said to her ‘How do you feel?” … She just said ‘It’s just so difficult’ and we both agreed,” Mr Woodbridge said.

“We’ve all got to stick together,” another patient told the King, while others discussed painful side effects such as mouth ulcers and exhaustion.

There was also a message of modern treatments allowing people to keep going with their lives, with one patient telling the King he was continuing to work in his job at the Royal Opera House.

“One of my favourite places. It restores my spirit,” said the King.

The visit was intended to raise awareness of the importance of early cancer diagnosis and follows the King’s decision to make his own health issues public, in the hope it will encourage others to seek checks.

On the hospital visit, he said the challenge is “to get enough people early”.

In terms of the King’s own health, the hospital’s chief executive David Probert said the King was showing plenty of “energy” going round the hospital. He was using the stairs rather than the lift.

Asha Millen, 60, who is receiving chemotherapy, said the King had told her: “I’m well”.

When the King arrived at the hospital in the royal Bentley, someone shouted: “Are you glad to be back?”

He replied with that kind of cheerful but indistinct noise that sounds like agreeing with someone without being pinned down to anything specific. Alphabetti spaghetti without any of the vowels.

The King then went inside the hospital to loud cheers from the staff and patients waiting inside.

He seemed well and was quick to listen to the stories of many people who had arrived for their own cancer treatment.

They included 11-year-old Ellis Edwards, who is receiving radiotherapy and was given a special present of three books by Queen Camilla – plus a big chocolate coin.

The royal visit was a “really nice distraction”, said the boy’s mother Carly, from Southampton, as they face regular trips to hospital. “He’s really brave and a superstar so it’s great he can do something nice. He deserves it,” she said.

The first visit of the year comes after a Buckingham Palace statement last week revealed a more positive message about his health.

Aside from an Easter church service, the King has stayed away from public events since his treatment for an unspecified form of cancer began.

But the King’s doctors were said to be “very encouraged by the progress made so far”.

Although the mood music about the King’s health is more positive, it remains a cautious optimism, with the King’s cancer treatment still continuing and no date announced for its completion so far.

However, he is expected to be sufficiently well to host a state visit from the Emperor and Empress of Japan in late June, which forms part of his role as head of state.

Despite his recent convalescence, the King has carried on with his constitutional role, including regular private meetings with the prime minister.

Nonetheless, it remains uncertain whether the King will be able to attend some of the key royal events taking place in the weeks ahead, including Trooping the Colour, garden parties and D-Day commemorations.

Decisions on whether he will be able to take part will be made following medical advice nearer the time, but the King’s summer schedule is likely to be reduced, or adapted, while he continues his recovery.