Colleges around the country implored pro-Palestinian student protesters to clear out tent encampments with rising levels of urgency Monday, including an ultimatum from Columbia University for students to sign a form and leave the encampment by the afternoon or face suspension.

College classes nationwide are wrapping up for the semester, and campuses are preparing for graduation ceremonies.

The notice sent by Columbia to protesters in the encampment Monday said that if they leave by the designated time and sign a form committing to abide by university policies through June 2025 or an earlier graduation, they can finish the semester in good standing. If not, the letter said, they will be suspended, pending further investigation.

“We urge you to remove the encampment so that we do not deprive your fellow students, their families and friends of this momentous occasion,” the letter said, noting that exams are beginning and graduation is upcoming at the Ivy League university in New York City.

A spokesperson for Columbia confirmed the letter had gone out to students but declined to comment further.

Mahmoud Khalil, the lead negotiator on behalf of protesters, said university representatives began passing out the notices at the encampment shortly after 10 a.m. Monday. He said discussions were ongoing about how to proceed.

Early protests at Columbia, where demonstrators set up tents in the center of the campus, sparked pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country. Students and others have been sparring over the Israel-Hamas war and its mounting death toll. Many students are demanding their universities cut financial ties with Israel.

About 275 people were arrested Saturday at various campuses including Indiana University at Bloomington, Arizona State University and Washington University in St. Louis. The number of arrests nationwide has surpassed 900 since New York police removed a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at Columbia and arrested more than 100 demonstrators on April 18.

The demonstrations at Columbia have led it to hold remote classes and set a series of deadlines for protesters to leave the encampment, which they have missed. The school said in an email to students that bringing back police “at this time” would be counterproductive.

The students and administrators have negotiated to end the disruptions, but the sides have not come to an agreement, university President Minouche Shafik said in a statement Monday.

Protests were still active at a number of campuses. Near George Washington University, protesters at an encampment breached and dismantled the barriers Monday morning used to secure University Yard, the university said in a statement. The yard had been closed since last week.

Protesters at Yale University set up a new encampment with dozens of tents Sunday afternoon, nearly a week after police arrested nearly 50 demonstrators and cleared a similar camp.

At least one school, the University of Southern California, canceled its main graduation ceremony this spring. Others are asking the protests to resolve peacefully so they can hold their ceremonies.

Protesters on both sides shouted and shoved each other during dueling demonstrations Sunday at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university stepped up security after “some physical altercations broke out among demonstrators,” Mary Osako, vice chancellor for UCLA Strategic Communications, said in a statement. There were no reports of arrests or injuries.

The plight of students who have been arrested has become a central part of protests, with the students and a growing number of faculty demanding amnesty for protesters. At issue is whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students through their adult lives.

NATO countries haven’t delivered what they promised to Ukraine in time, the alliance’s chief said Monday, allowing Russia to press its battlefield advantage while Kyiv’s depleted forces wait for Western military supplies to arrive.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that “serious delays in support have meant serious consequences on the battlefield” for Ukraine.

“NATO allies have not delivered what they promised,” Stoltenberg said at a news conference in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, referring to delays by the US and Europe in sending weapons and ammunition.

Ukraine’s troops were compelled to make a tactical retreat from three villages in the eastern region, where the Kremlin's forces have been making incremental gains against their weaker opponent, Ukraine's army chief said Sunday. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Monday its forces had also taken the village of Semenivka.

“The lack of ammunition has allowed the Russians to push forward along the front line. Lack of air defense has made it possible for more Russian missiles to hit their targets, and the lack of deep strike capabilities has made it possible for the Russians to concentrate more forces,” Stoltenberg said.

Ukraine and its Western partners are in a race against the clock to deploy critical new military aid that can help check the recent slow and costly but steady Russian advance across eastern areas, as well as thwart drone and missile attacks.

Zelenskyy said new Western supplies have started arriving, but slowly. "This process must be speeded up,” he said.

Though the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line has shifted little since early in the war, the Kremlin’s forces have in recent weeks edged forward, especially in the Donetsk region, by sheer weight of numbers and massive firepower used to bludgeon defensive positions.

Kyiv’s Western partners have repeatedly vowed to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” But vital US military help was held up for six months by political differences in Washington, and Europe’s military hardware production has not been able to keep up with demand. Ukraine’s own manufacturing of heavy weapons is only now starting to gain traction.

Russia is a far bigger country than Ukraine, with greater resources to draw on. It has also received weapon support from Iran and North Korea, the US government says.

Drawn-out Ukrainian efforts to mobilize more troops, and the belated building of battlefield fortifications are other factors currently undermining Ukraine’s war effort, military analysts say.

Stoltenberg said more weapons and ammunition for Ukraine are on the way, including Patriot missile systems to defend against the heavy Russian barrages that smash into the power grid and urban areas.

That additional help may be needed as Ukrainian officials say Russia is assembling forces for a major summer offensive, even if it troops are making only incremental gains at the moment.

“Russian forces remain unlikely to achieve a deeper operationally significant penetration in the area in the near term,” the Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment late Sunday.

Even so, the Kremlin’s forces are closing in on the strategically important hilltop town of Chasiv Yar, whose capture would be an important step forward into the Donetsk region.

Donetsk and Luhansk together form much of the industrial Donbas region, which has been gripped by separatist fighting since 2014, and which Putin has set as a primary objective of the Russian invasion. Russia illegally annexed areas of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions in September 2022.

Police moved in to clear dozens of protesters who had set up tents in a courtyard at the Sorbonne University in Paris on Monday to protest against the war in Gaza, students there said.

The demonstration took place three days after protests at the capital's elite Sciences Po university and came in the wake of rallies in campuses across the United States against the conflict.

"We set up tents ... like in several US universities," Sorbonne student Louis Maziere said. "We're doing all we can to raise awareness about what is happening in Palestine, about the ongoing genocide in Gaza."

"Police then came running in, brought down tents, grabbed students by the collar and dragged them on the ground, that's not OK... We're quite shocked," he said.

Fellow student Lou said: "What we're pushing for is peace and they answer with force and violence."

BFM TV showed footage of police dragging a couple of students out.

A police source confirmed they had intervened to clear out the Sorbonne's courtyard.

"This operation, which lasted only a few minutes, was carried out peacefully without incident," the source said, declining to respond to questions on how the students had been removed.

The university, one of the world's oldest, closed its buildings for the day during the peaceful protests. Students chanted "Free Palestine" and urged the institution to condemn Israel.

Israel has imposed a siege on Gaza and mounted an air and ground assault in which at least 34,488 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities.

Israel's actions came in response to an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 by militants of the Palestinian group Hamas in which 253 people were taken hostage and about 1,200 people were killed, according to Israeli tallies.

Several French politicians, including Mathilde Panot who heads the hard-left LFI group of lawmakers in the National Assembly, have urged supporters on social media to join the Sorbonne protests.

Türkiye has told allies that it will back the candidacy of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to be NATO's next secretary-general, a Turkish official said on Monday, an important step towards securing him the top job.

NATO's next chief will face the challenge of sustaining allies' support for Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion, while guarding against any escalation that could draw the military alliance directly into a war with Moscow.

NATO takes decisions by consensus, so any candidate needs the support of all 32 allies.

Türkiye, along with fellow NATO member states Hungary, Slovakia and Romania - whose President Klaud Iohannis is standing against Rutte - has not publicly voiced its support for Rutte to succeed Jens Stoltenberg, who will be stepping down as the head of the military alliance in October.

Ankara's backing may increase pressure on Iohannis to withdraw from the contest, though Hungary has

expressed opposition to Rutte's candidacy.

Budapest has raised critical comments made by Rutte about its government, but some diplomats say it could change its stance if Rutte pays a visit to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as he did to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan last week.

They expect Slovakia would also fall into line.

The United States, France, Germany, Britain and other alliance members have already voiced support for Rutte's candidacy.

Depending on the outcome of November's US presidential election, Stoltenberg's successor may have to work with Donald Trump, who has faced fierce criticism for calling into question his commitment to defending NATO allies if re-elected.

Rutte - The Netherlands' longest-serving leader - announced his departure from Dutch politics last July, but remains in post. He has good relationships with British, European Union and US leaders, including Trump.

Many NATO members are keen to wrap up the selection process soon, so it does not become part of bargaining over top European Union jobs after elections to the European Parliament in June.

Citing NATO diplomats, Dutch news agency ANP said earlier on Monday that Türkiye had decided to back Rutte's candidacy, but it did not provide further details. Türkiye's state-run Anadolu news agency also confirmed Ankara's backing.

The public prosecutor general's office in Munich on Monday took over the investigation into the stabbing deaths of two Ukrainian men in southern Germany because of a possible political motivation for the crime, German news agency dpa reported.

The two Ukrainians, who were 23 and 36 years old and lived in the southern German county of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, were killed at a shopping center in the village of Murnau in Upper Bavaria. Shortly after the slayings on Saturday evening, police arrested a 57-year-old Russian on suspicion of murder, dpa reported.

The public prosecutor general's office usually takes over investigations from regular prosecutors if there is a possibility that a crime was politically motivated. The Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism is also involved in the investigation of the killings, dpa reported, The AP reported.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday that it appeared the two men were military servicemen undergoing medical rehabilitation in Germany.

The names of the victims and the suspect weren’t released in line with German privacy rules. The motive for the killings isn't yet known, authorities said.

According to an initial investigation, the three men knew each other, but further details need to be verified, local police spokesperson Stefan Sonntag told dpa. There were also indications that all three men had consumed alcohol.

“We have clear evidence that the suspect was under the influence of alcohol,” Sonntag was quoted as saying.

A spokesperson for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday expressed concern about the killings.

“This is a worrying incident, no question about it. The circumstances must now be investigated more closely," Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin.

“We can only speculate about the motives at the moment," he added. "But it is clear that we cannot tolerate such a thing on German soil anyway and that the Ukrainians, Ukrainians who have fled to us from the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, must now be safe.”

More than 1 million Ukrainian refugees have come to Germany since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Germany is also home to a significant Russian immigrant community and 2.5 million Russians of German ancestry who mostly moved to the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Britain expects to have removed Chinese-made surveillance technology from sensitive sites by April 2025, as it seeks to tighten security amid increasing concerns about Beijing's spying activities, the British government said on Monday.

Anxiety has mounted across Europe about China's alleged espionage activity. British police last week charged two men with spying for China, including one reported to have worked as a researcher in Britain's parliament for a prominent lawmaker.

In November 2022, the British government said that visual surveillance systems produced by companies subject to China's National Intelligence Law should not be used at sensitive sites such as government buildings and military bases.

Lawmakers have also called for a ban on the sale and use of security cameras made by Hikvision and Dahua, two partly state-owned Chinese firms, over privacy fears, Reuters reported.

The government said it had found that the vast majority of sensitive sites had never deployed the equipment. Of the small number of sites that did have it, about 50% had since replaced it, and progress was being made for removal of the rest.

"Work is pressing ahead to remove remaining devices, with approximately 70% of sites expected to have their surveillance equipment removed by October this year, and all remaining sites on track for complete replacement no later than April 2025," junior minister Alex Burghart said in the statement.

Britain warned six months ago that Chinese spies were targeting British officials in sensitive positions in politics, defence and business as part of an increasingly sophisticated spying operation to gain access to secrets.

"The government takes the security of the UK's citizens, systems and establishments extremely seriously and we have a range of measures in place to scrutinise the integrity of our arrangements," the statement added.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has given a fresh impetus to the European Union's drive to admit more countries, the bloc's chairman said on Monday, adding he hoped the 27-nation club and prospective new members would be ready by 2030.

European Council President Charles Michel spoke ahead of the 20th anniversary on Wednesday of the EU's "Big Bang" enlargement that added 10 mostly ex-communist nations such as Poland and Hungary but also the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus to a bloc that had then comprised just 15 members.

"It was a call of history to unite European countries," Michel told reporters of the 2004 enlargement.

"Twenty years later we face a similar challenge because there is this geo-political chaos, including because of this war by Russia against Ukraine. And facing this chaos is the geo-political strategy to reunify once again."

Michel, a former Belgian prime minister, said the 2004 accession countries had seen their shared gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rise from about half of the EU's average back then to 80% now.

Current applicants to join today's EU of 450 million people include six Balkan countries, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Ukraine is by far the largest prospective member, with some 40 million and a large farming sector.

"Because of the war launched by Russia against Ukraine, there is a new impetus, a reinvigoration of the (EU) enlargement strategy," said Michel, Reuters reported.

"It is challenging. But what is the alternative? The alternative would be a terrible, irresponsible mistake from the EU," he said, calling for the EU and candidate countries to carry out by 2030 the reforms necessary for a new enlargement.

The EU sees itself as an economic peace project born from the ashes of World War Two. Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia have also joined since 2004, while Britain is the only country ever to leave, following a 2016 referendum.

Some in the West have grown critical of the EU's eastern expansion following years of feuds over the bloc's liberal democratic values with nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary in recent years.

Wealthy members are also wary about admitting a large, relatively poor nation such as Ukraine, which could suck up too many resources from EU coffers. But Michel said the payoff would be boosting the EU's international clout.

"The EU is one of the three major regional forces across the world together with China and the United States. And with this new enlargement the idea is not only to get bigger. It is also be more influential."

He said Kyiv would need special transition arrangements as it will need to rebuild following the war, while the EU would also have to tread carefully in fully opening up to Ukraine's large population and food exports.

Israeli officials on Monday appeared to be increasingly concerned that the International Criminal Court may issue arrest warrants against the country’s leaders.

The ICC launched a probe three years ago into possible war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian militants going back to the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, but it has given no indication such warrants are imminent. There was no comment from the court on Monday.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said late Sunday that it had informed Israeli missions of “rumors” that warrants might be issued against senior political and military officials. It was not clear what sparked the Israeli concerns, The Associated Press reported.

"We expect the court to prevent the issuance of arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, adding that such warrants would “provide a morale boost” to Hamas and other militant groups.

A series of Israeli announcements in recent days about allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza meanwhile appears to be aimed in part at heading off possible ICC action.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Israel “will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.”

“The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it,” he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was not clear what prompted the post.

The ICC investigation covers allegations going back to the 2014 war in Gaza as well as Israel’s construction of Jewish settlements in occupied territory that the Palestinians want for a future state.

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said during a visit to the region in December that the investigation is “moving forward at pace, with rigor, with determination and with an insistence that we act not on emotion but on solid evidence.”

Neither Israel nor its close ally the United States accept the ICC’s jurisdiction, but any warrants could put Israeli officials at risk of arrest in other countries. They would also serve as a major rebuke of Israel’s actions at a time when pro-Palestinian protests have spread across US college campuses.

The International Court of Justice, a separate body, is investigating whether Israel has committed acts of genocide in the ongoing war in Gaza, with any ruling expected to take years. Israel has rejected allegations of wrongdoing and accused both international courts of bias.

Authorities on the Greek island of Samos said Monday that a migrant died and 25 others were rescued from a sinking dinghy that had left the nearby coast of Türkiye.
A search and rescue operation was launched, assisted by the European border protection agency, Frontex, for others possibly missing, officials said.
According to The Associated Press, the coast guard said it responded to a distress call on Sunday. Twenty-three people were rescued from the sinking vessel while two others were pulled from the water. A third man found unresponsive was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Police on a nearby shore found 10 migrants early Monday. They were detained for questioning to determine whether they had also been in the dinghy and made it ashore.
Despite intense patrolling in the eastern Aegean Sea by the Greek coast guard and Frontex, Türkiye-based smugglers frequently target nearby Greek islands as an entry point into the European Union.

Small towns in Oklahoma began a long cleanup Monday after tornadoes flattened homes and buildings and killed four people, including an infant, widening a destructive outbreak of severe weather across the middle of the US.

Punishing storms that began late Saturday in Oklahoma injured at least 100 people, damaged a rural hospital, washed out roads and knocked out power to more than 40,000 customers at one point, state officials said. Tornadoes on Friday in Iowa and Nebraska also caused wide destruction and were blamed for one death, The Associated Press reported.

The destruction was extensive in Sulphur, a town of about 5,000 people south of Oklahoma City, where a tornado crumpled many downtown buildings, tossed cars and buses and sheared the roofs off houses across a 15-block radius.

“You just can't believe the destruction,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said during a visit to the hard-hit town. “It seems like every business downtown has been destroyed.”

Stitt said about 30 people were injured in Sulphur, including some who were in a bar as the tornado struck. Hospitals across the state reported about 100 injuries, including people apparently cut or struck by debris, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. An infant was among those killed, Hughes County Emergency Management Director Mike Dockrey told Oklahoma television station KOCO.

White House officials said President Joe Biden spoke to Stitt on Sunday and offered the full support of the federal government.

The deadly weather in Oklahoma added to the dozens of reported tornadoes that have wreaked havoc in the nation's midsection since Friday. Another death was reported Sunday in Iowa, where officials in Pottawattamie County said a man critically injured during a tornado Friday had died.

In Oklahoma, authorities said the tornado in Sulphur began in a city park before barreling through the downtown, flipping cars and ripping the roofs and walls off of brick buildings. Windows and doors were blown out of structures that remained standing.

Farther north, a tornado near the town of Holdenville killed two people and damaged or destroyed more than a dozen homes, according to the Hughes County Emergency Medical Service. Another person was killed along Interstate 35 near the southern Oklahoma city of Marietta, state officials said.

Heavy rains that swept into Oklahoma with the tornadoes also caused dangerous flooding and water rescues. Outside Sulphur, rising lake levels shut down the Chickasaw National Recreation Area, where the storms wiped out a pedestrian bridge.

Stitt issued an executive order Sunday declaring a state of emergency in 12 counties due to the fallout from the severe weather.
Residents in other states were also digging out from storm damage. A tornado in suburban Omaha, Nebraska, demolished homes and businesses Saturday as it moved for miles through farmland and into subdivisions, then slammed an Iowa town.

The tornado damage began Friday afternoon near Lincoln, Nebraska. An industrial building in Lancaster County was hit, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside. Several were trapped, but everyone was evacuated, and the three injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.

One or possibly two tornadoes then spent around an hour creeping toward Omaha, leaving behind damage consistent with an EF3 twister, with winds of 135 to 165 mph (217 to 265 kph), said Chris Franks, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Omaha office.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds spent Saturday touring the damage and arranging for assistance for the damaged communities. Formal damage assessments are still underway, but the states plan to seek federal help.