Two Jewish students were assaulted by masked attackers on the campus of DePaul University in Chicago on Wednesday afternoon. The incident occurred around 3:20 p.m. in front of the Student Center on the Lincoln Park campus. In a statement, DePaul University President Robert Manuel condemned the assault, noting that the victims were targeted for visibly showing their support for Israel. “I’m appalled to share that the attack targeted two Jewish students at DePaul,” Manuel said. “This is completely unacceptable and a violation of DePaul’s values to uphold and care for the dignity of every individual.” The two students were punched by the offenders but declined medical treatment for their injuries. The university has since offered support and resources to the victims, while working with Chicago police to determine whether the assault constitutes a hate crime. “We are outraged that this occurred on our campus,” Manuel continued. “We will do all we can to hold those responsible accountable for this outrageous incident.” “We recognize that for a significant portion of our Jewish community, Israel is a core part of their Jewish identity,” Manuel said. “Those students—and every student—should feel safe on our university campus.” This incident comes amidst ongoing tensions at DePaul University, which earlier this year saw a series of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. In May, Chicago police cleared an anti-Israel encampment from the university’s quad after more than two weeks of protests. “Please know that the safety and wellbeing of our university community remains our highest priority,” President Manuel concluded. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Police began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday at DePaul University in Chicago, hours after the school’s president told students to leave the area or face arrest. Officers and workers in yellow vests cleared out tents and camping equipment at the student encampment, leaving behind yellow squares of dead or dying grass where the tents had stood. Front-loaders were being used to remove the camping equipment. Just across the street from where the encampment was spread across a grassy expanse of DePaul’s campus known as “The Quad,” a few dozen protesters stood along a sidewalk in front of a service station, clapping their hands in unison as an apparent protest leader paced back and forth before them, speaking into a bullhorn. All of the protesters at the encampment “voluntarily left” the area when police arrived early Thursday, said Jon Hein, chief of patrol for the Chicago Police Department. “There were no confrontations and there was no resistance,” he said at a news briefing. “As we approached, all the subjects voluntarily left the area.” Hein said, however, that two people, a male and female in their 20s, were arrested outside the encampment “for obstruction of traffic.” The move to clear the campus comes less than a week after the school’s president said public safety was at risk. The university on Saturday said it had reached an “impasse” with the school’s protesters, leaving the future of their encampment on the Chicago campus unclear. Most of DePaul’s commencement ceremonies will be held the June 15-16 weekend. In a statement then, DePaul President Robert Manuel and Provost Salma Ghanem said they believe that students intended to protest peacefully, but “the responses to the encampment have inadvertently created public safety issues that put our community at risk.” Efforts to resolve the differences with DePaul Divestment Coalition over the past 17 days were unsuccessful, Manuel said in a statement sent to students, faculty and staff Thursday morning. “Our Office of Public Safety and Chicago Police are now disassembling the encampment,” he said. “Every person currently in the encampment will be given the opportunity to leave peacefully and without being arrested.” He said that since the encampment began, “the situation has steadily escalated with physical altercations, credible threats of violence from people not associated with our community.” Students at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments, calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it, to protest lsrael’s actions in the war with Hamas. The protests began as schools were winding up their spring semesters and are now holding graduation ceremonies. Tensions at DePaul flared the previous weekend when counterprotesters showed up to the campus in the city’s Lincoln Park neighborhood and prompted Chicago police to intervene. The student-led DePaul Divestment Coalition, who are calling on the university to divest from Israel, set up the encampment April 30. The group alleged university officials walked away from talks and tried to force students into signing an agreement, according to a student statement late Saturday. “I don’t want my tuition money to be invested in my family’s suffering,” Henna Ayesh, a Palestinian student at DePaul and Coalition member, said in the statement. DePaul is on the city’s North Side. Last week, police removed a similar encampment at the University of Chicago on

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday will introduce Larry Snelling, the police department’s counterterrorism head, as his choice for police superintendent of the nation’s third-largest city. The introduction comes after Johnson named Snelling on Sunday after a monthslong search led by the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. The selection of Snelling, 54, to head the department is subject to City Council approval. Snelling will succeed David Brown, who in March announced that he would step down the day after Chicago’s mayoral primary election in which crime was a central issue. Then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost that primary, and Johnson went on to win the mayoral race in April. “Today, a new chapter begins in our journey to create a better, stronger and safer Chicago,” Johnson said in a news release Sunday. “Chief Snelling is a proven leader who has the experience and the respect of his peers to help ensure the safety and well-being of city residents, and address the complex challenges we all face related to community safety.” Snelling was raised on the city’s South Side and attended its public schools. He has a bachelor’s degree in adult education from DePaul University and joined the department in 1992 as a patrol officer. “It is a tremendous honor to answer the call to serve my hometown and the people of Chicago as superintendent of the Chicago Police Department,” Snelling said in a statement. “It is also a tremendous responsibility, and one that I do not take lightly.” “In order to continue to make progress as a department, we must embrace innovation, continue to strengthen morale, and go further in strengthening bonds of trust between police and community,” Snelling said. He has been chief of the department’s bureau of counterterrorism, which coordinates with the Office of Emergency Management and Communication and other city agencies, since 2022. While crime in Chicago often focuses on murders and shootings, the numbers so far in 2023 are down in both categories by 5% and 10%, respectively, according to the most recent department crime statistics. However, overall major crime rates are up 35% so far this year over 2022. Snelling was one of three finalists nominated by the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. The other two finalists were Shon Barnes, the police chief in Madison, Wisconsin; and Angel Novalez, Chicago police chief of constitutional policing and reform. (AP)

Facing rising infections and a new COVID-19 variant, colleges across the U.S. have once again been thwarted in seeking a move to normalcy and are starting to require booster shots, extend mask mandates, limit social gatherings and, in some cases, revert to online classes. The threat of the omicron variant comes as a gut punch to schools that were hoping to relax safety measures this spring. Now, many are telling students to prepare for another term of masking, testing and, if cases get bad, limits around social life. Cornell University shut down all campus activities on Tuesday and moved final exams online after more than 700 students tested positive over three days. In a campus message, President Martha Pollack said there was evidence of the omicron variant in a “significant” number of samples. “It is obviously extremely dispiriting to have to take these steps,” Pollack wrote. “However, since the start of the pandemic, our commitment has been to follow the science and do all we can to protect the health of our faculty, staff and students. Hours later, Princeton University moved its exams online and urged students to leave campus “at their earliest convenience” amid a rise in cases. Cornell and Princeton both report student vaccination rates of more than 98%. After a fall with few coronavirus cases, officials at Syracuse University were “feeling pretty good” about the spring term, said Kent Syverud, the upstate New York school’s chancellor. “But omicron has changed that,” Syverud said. “It has made us go back and say, until we know more about this variant for sure, we’re going to have to reinstate some precautions.” Last week, Syracuse announced that all eligible students and employees must get COVID-19 booster shots before the spring term. Students will also face a round of virus tests when they return, and officials are weighing whether to extend an existing mask mandate. Much is still unknown about the omicron variant and how big of a threat it poses. In the United States and many other nations, the delta variant is currently responsible for most COVID-19 cases. But as colleges brace for the worst, many see boosters as their best hope. More than 20 colleges have issued booster shot requirements in recent weeks, and others say they’re thinking about it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is encouraging boosters for people ages 17 and older, and Pfizer last week announced that a booster of its COVID-19 vaccine might offer important protection against omicron even though the initial two doses appear less effective. Hundreds of colleges already require COVID-19 vaccines, and some say boosters are an obvious next step. Most booster mandates so far have come from small liberal arts colleges in the Northeast, but the list includes some as big as Boston University and as far away as the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and the University of New Mexico. The University of Massachusetts in Amherst was among the first to require the booster for students, saying all students must get shots unless they have medical or religious exemptions. “The boosters are our best protection,” said Jeffrey Hescock, co-director of the university’s Public Health Promotion Center. “This demonstrates that we take public health seriously, and our students do too.” A recent online petition arguing against the booster mandate

Would-be plotters bent on staging an attack aboard a passenger plane know they’ve first got to pass through a gauntlet of security measures at an airport, from body scans and spot interrogations to pat-downs and even close scrutiny of their shoes. But a shooting that killed a person and wounded five this week on a Greyhound bus in California illustrates a stark reality about security on buses and trains: Anyone determined to carry out an attack on ground transportation faces few, if any, security checks. The comparative scant security prompted at least one survivor of Monday’s shooting on the bus heading from Los Angeles to San Francisco to rethink his future mode of travel. “I think I will just fly from now on,” Mark Grabban said. He was on the bus with his girlfriend when a passenger who’d been muttering and cursing opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun. Grabban’s perception was that Greyhound worried more about stopping passengers from smoking and talking too loudly than ensuring no one got aboard with a gun. “It’s astounding and shameful,” the 30-year-old said. Greyhound has declined to comment. In the four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, some U.S. lawmakers complained that way too little federal money was spent on ground transit security compared with what was spent on airports. Then-U.S. Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, estimated that $22 billion had gone into airline security in those years, while less than $550 million went to security for buses, trains, subways and ferries combined. There’s no indication spending gaps have closed. That’s true even though vastly more people get on a bus, train or subway than on planes each day. More than 30 million Americans use ground transit daily, compared with around 2 million who fly. Violent incidents on buses are extremely rare. But concerns have arisen that with airports more secure than ever, would-be terrorists in particular could see buses and other ground transit as easier targets. The Transportation Security Administration was established in 2001 to fix security holes that allowed for the 9/11 attacks, with a mandate to check 100% of baggage through airports. That level of security would be impossible on the country’s sprawling bus and rail lines. More than 70,000 buses operate on 230,000 miles (370,149 kilometers) of roadways, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Even if money could be found to pay for metal detectors at bus stations, it would be impossible to have them at every stop along a route, security experts say. The suspect in the California shooting boarded at the East Seventh Street bus station in Los Angeles, according to California Highway Patrol Sgt. Brian Pennings. At the station Tuesday, several security guards were visible, but there were no signs of baggage or any other kind of security checks. “No metal detector, no wand, nothing,” Grabban recalled about the preboarding process Monday. Greyhound has a no-gun policy, but Grabban said “a policy isn’t enough to stop someone from boarding the bus with a gun and shooting people, as I’ve found out.” There’s no indication federal officials will ever consider making pat-downs, body scans and metal detectors as ubiquitous at bus and train depots as they are at airports. “We don’t intend to roll out anything like what we have in the airports.

The first criminal charges to come from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into foreign meddling in the 2016 election stem from different activities. A primer on those charged: PAUL MANAFORT Before Manafort became GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s top strategist between late March and August 2016, he had a storied career in Republican politics. A lawyer by training, Manafort gained prominence rounding up delegates for Gerald Ford at the 1976 Republican convention and helping manage Ronald Reagan’s convention efforts in 1980. He founded a lobbying shop, known as Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, earning a reputation for both his flashy lifestyle and his willingness to take on less-than-savory clients, such as Democratic Republic of Congo’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. In 1995, Manafort set up a new lobbying firm with Rick Davis, who later helped Manafort establish his political contacts in former Soviet states, including Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Ahkmetov. Manafort’s work in Eastern Europe came at a lucky time, as struggled in his domestic lobbying business and his spending on an ill-fated career as a movie producer left him nearly broke in the early 2000s. As an adviser to Ukraine’s pro-Russian Party of Regions, Manafort helped the party turn around its reputation as corrupt and under Russian influence, getting Ukraine’s president elected in 2006. Manafort remained an adviser to the Party of Regions until 2014, when it was ousted amid popular protests. Among Manafort’s long-term friends was Thomas Barrack, who was also personally close with Trump. That connection and Manafort’s perceived skill in Republican Party politics got Manafort his entree into Trump’s campaign. In August 2016, he was ousted amid revelations of large payments listed in an alleged “black book” of under-the-table payments by the ousted Ukrainian government. RICK GATES Rick Gates was Manafort’s deputy, both in the Trump campaign and in Manafort’s work in Ukraine. Now 45, Gates began as an intern at lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, before furthering his career elsewhere. But after working with another Republican lobbyist, Rick Davis, Gates came back into Manafort’s fold. By the time that Davis took a leave from his partnership with Manafort to run John McCain’s presidential campaign, Gates joined Manafort’s new firm, Davis Manafort Inc and was working with Manafort to drum up business in former Soviet States. They hit gold in work performed for the Party of Regions, a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, though that work fizzled out in 2014 after Ukraine’s president fled to Russia amid popular protests. Gates joined Manafort for the Trump campaign, too, serving as a top decisionmaker for day-to-day matters. But he never drew a Trump campaign paycheck. When Manafort got booted from the campaign amid revelations about his Ukrainian political work and questions about how he’d been paid for it, Gates stayed on in Trump Tower as a Republican National Committee liaison to the campaign. Gates work wasn’t done after Election Day, however. He was tapped by Trump Inauguration Chairman Thomas Barrack, a friend of both Manafort’s and Trump’s, to manage the work of the inaugural committee. And he also took a post with a newly created political nonprofit to support Trump, America First Policies, though he stepped down amid controversy surrounding his and Manafort’s work with a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS Before joining