College protests live: Over 2,000 arrested at campuses across the US

“Export and import transactions related to Israel have been stopped, covering all products,” the ministry said.

Trade between Turkey and Israel was worth almost £5.6bn in 2023.

Israel Katz wrote on X that Recep Tayyip Erdogan was “disregarding the interests of the Turkish people and businessmen and ignoring international trade agreements”.

The NYPD announced on Friday that it had arrested 44 people at the New School, a New York private university, after it asked for help dispersing Gaza protesters.

“We gave them options to leave multiple times,” an NYPD spokesperson said, per WABC. “We gave them what the options were in terms of summons desk appearance ticket, and you saw they opted to take the investigators ticket, and what’s disturbing as usual, you can hear the complete anti-Israel hatred live right here.”

Another 13 people were arrested while protesting at New York University.

The former US President met the firefighters on Thursday (2 May) after spending the day in a Manhattan courtroom to witness testimony and cross-examination on criminal charges against him.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.

The 2024 Republican presidential nominee arrived with pizza as he met the same New York City fire department he visited in 2021 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Police have arrested nearly 2,200 people during pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the United States in recent weeks, sometimes using riot gear, tactical vehicles and flash-bang devices to clear tent encampments and occupied buildings. One officer accidentally discharged his gun inside a Columbia University administration building while clearing out protesters camped inside, authorities said.

No one was injured by the officer’s mistake late Tuesday inside Hamilton Hall on the Columbia campus, the NYPD said Thursday. He was trying to use the flashlight attached to his gun at the time and instead fired a single round that struck a frame on the wall.

There were other officers but no students in the immediate vicinity, officials said. Body camera footage shows when the officer’s gun went off, but the district attorney’s office is conducting a review, a standard practice.

The US House of Representatives passed an antisemitism bill on Wednesday evening as pro-Palestinian campus protests surge across the country.

The bill would create “a clear definition of antisemitism” if passed by the US Senate and signed by the president. In turn, this bill would then allow the US Department of Education to cut funding to schools found tolerating behaviour that falls under the definition.

The bill passed with bipartisan support, 320-91.

Free speech advocates, however, oppose the bill. The American Civil Liberties Union argues the bill “would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”

PEN America, a non-profit that advocates for free expression, also condemned the bill, noting that it would adopt the definition of antisemitism as laid out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

“This definition, and its illustrative examples, is overbroad; its enshrinement into law could lead to significant impairment of academic freedom, free speech and legitimate political expression,” the organisation wrote this week.

“Codifying the IHRA definition, which was never intended to be legally binding or otherwise codified into law, is not the right way to attack antisemitic speech and bigotry,” the organisation continued. “Its vague nature is ill-suited to serve as a legal standard, much less form a basis for punitive action.”

Representative Michael Lawler, a Republican from New York who sponsored the bill, said enshrining the IHRA definition in law will instead protect Jewish students on college campuses.

“By requiring the Department of Education to adopt the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism and its contemporary examples, the Antisemitism Awareness Act gives teeth to federal anti-discrimination laws to go after those who attack their Jewish peers,” Mr Lawler said. “Politics should never get in the way of the safety of students. The strong bipartisan support for and passage of this legislation will ensure that it won’t.”

Before police officers poured into Columbia University on Tuesday night, arresting more than 100 people as they cleared an occupied school building and tent encampment, New York City Mayor Eric Adams received a piece of intelligence he said shifted his thinking about the campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza.

“Outside agitators” working to “radicalize our children” were leading students into more extreme tactics, the mayor claimed. And one of them, Adams said repeatedly in media appearances Wednesday morning, was a woman whose husband was “convicted for terrorism.”

But the woman referenced by the mayor wasn’t on Columbia’s campus this week, isn’t among the protesters who were arrested and has not been accused of any crime.