Federal immigration authorities arrested a Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey on Tuesday night, the latest in a string of arrests targeting international students for their Palestinian advocacy.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a PhD student in the graduate school of arts and sciences at the Massachusetts university, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers outside her off-campus apartment on her way to an Iftar dinner with friends, according to her attorney and activists.
In an email to the Tufts community, university president Sunil Kumar said the school was told that federal authorities terminated her visa status, “and we seek to confirm whether that information is true.”
The Independent has requested comment from ICE.
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Ozturk, who is in the United States on a non-immigrant F-1 visa for international students, was meeting with friends to break her Ramadan fast when she was detained near her home in Somerville, attorney Mahsa Khanbabai said in a statement to The Independent.
“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her,” she said.
Surveillance footage of the arrest shows plainclothes agents approaching her from the street. One officer, whose head is covered by sweatshirt hood, appears to approach her without identifying himself and then grabs her arm. Another officer approaches and takes her phone while she is placed in handcuffs. Three officers cover their faces with neck gaiters.
Tufts did not have any prior knowledge of the arrest “and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event,” Kumar wrote.
Kumar issued a reminder that the university has a protocol for how to respond to federal agents making “unannounced visits” on or off campus.
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Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested by ICE officers on March 25, according to the school (REUTERS)
Ozturk’s attorney has filed a petition of habeas corpus challenging her arrest and detention. Massachusetts District Judge Indira Talwani is giving federal officials until Friday to respond to the complaint, and Ozturk cannot be moved outside the state without at least 48 hours of advance notice to the court, according to Talwani’s order.
Ozturk is a student at the university’s doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development, and graduated with a master’s degree from the Teachers College at Columbia University, according to her LinkedIn.
“I am passionate about researching children’s and adolescents’ digital media and technologies for caring, kind, and compassionate media environments,” she writes. “As an interdisciplinary media researcher and developmental scientist in training, I research children’s and adolescents’ positive development in a media-embedded, globalized, and connected world.”
Last year, in response to Israel’s ongoing devastation of Gaza, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily newspaper calling on Kumar to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and for the university to divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.
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Ozturk is among dozens of students and professors identified by Canary Mission, a pro-Israel campaign that maintains a database intended to blacklist and intimidate activists the group accuses of promoting “hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.”
“Efforts to deport students based on their speech or protected activism undermine America’s commitment to free expression,” Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told The Independent. “If ICE detained Ozturk based on her op-ed or activism, it’s a worrying escalation in an already fraught environment for college students here on student visas.”
Her arrest follows similar actions from federal authorities targeting student activists and students who have merely spoken in support of Palestine, none of whom have been accused of committing any crime. Donald Trump’s administration has zeroed in on campus activism at prestigious universities, where Israel’s war in Gaza has provoked a wave of demonstrations and protest encampments demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel’s devastation.
Students have been accused of supporting terrorism and violating the president’s executive orders directing federal agencies investigate and potentially remove non-citizens who “bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” and “advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”
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Demonstrations across the country have (EPA)
On Tuesday, university professors and academic organizations from across the country filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of violating the First Amendment through a “climate of fear and repression” on college campuses.
“Out of fear that they might be arrested and deported for lawful expression and association, some noncitizen students and faculty have stopped attending public protests or resigned from campus groups that engage in political advocacy,” according to the lawsuit.
“Others have declined opportunities to publish commentary and scholarship, stopped contributing to classroom discussions, or deleted past work from online databases and websites,” attorneys wrote. “Many now hesitate to address political issues on social media, or even in private texts. The [policy], in other words, is accomplishing its purpose: it is terrorizing students and faculty for their exercise of First Amendment rights in the past, intimidating them from exercising those rights now, and silencing political viewpoints that the government disfavor.”
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Manhattan blocked the Trump administration from deporting Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student and lawful permanent resident who was the victim of the government’s “shocking overreach,” vilifying her political views and constitutionally protected right to protest, according to her attorneys.
Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and prominent student activist accused of organizing “pro-Hamas” attacks on campus, is currently battling his removal from the United States after his shocking arrest in front of his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant, earlier this month. He is currently detained in Louisiana as his case moves jurisdictions to a federal court in New Jersey.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Amazon has been accused of listing products from independent retailers without their consent, even as the ecommerce giant sues start-up Perplexity over its AI software shopping without permission.
The $2.5tn online retailer has listed some independent shops’ full inventory on its platform without seeking permission, four business owners told the Financial Times, enabling customers to shop through Amazon rather than buy directly.
Two independent retailers told the FT that they had also received orders for products that were either out of stock or were mispriced and mislabelled by Amazon leading to customer complaints.
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“Nobody opted into this,” said Angie Chua, owner of Bobo Design Studio, a stationery store based in Los Angeles.
Tech companies are experimenting with artificial intelligence “agents” that can perform tasks like shopping autonomously based on user instructions.
Amazon has blocked agents from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and a host of other AI start-ups from its website.
It filed a lawsuit in November against Perplexity, whose Comet browser was making purchases on Amazon on behalf of users, alleging that the company’s actions risked undermining user privacy and violated its terms of service.
In its complaint, Amazon said Perplexity had taken steps “without prior notice to Amazon and without authorisation” and that it degraded a customer shopping experience it had invested in over several decades.
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Perplexity in a statement at the time said that the lawsuit was a “bully tactic” aimed at scaring “disruptive companies like Perplexity” from improving customers’ experience.
The recent complaints against Amazon relate to its “Buy for Me” function, launched last April, which lets some customers purchase items that are not listed with Amazon but on other retailers’ sites.
Retailers said Amazon did not seek their permission before sending them orders that were placed on the ecommerce site. They do not receive the user’s email address or other information that might be helpful for generating future sales, several sellers told the FT.
“We consciously avoid Amazon because our business is rooted in community and building a relationship with customers,” Chua said. “I don’t know who these customers are.”
Several of the independent retailers said Amazon’s move had led to poor experiences for customers, or hurt their business.
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Sarah Hitchcock Burzio, the owner of Hitchcock Paper Co. in Virginia, said that Amazon had mislabelled items leading to a surge in orders as customers believed they were receiving more expensive versions of a product at a much lower price.
“There were no guardrails set up so when there were issues there was nobody I could go to,” she said.
Product returns and complaints for the “Buy for Me” function are handled by sellers rather than Amazon, even when errors are produced by the Seattle-based group.
Amazon enables sellers to opt out of the service by contacting the company on a specific email address.
Amazon said: “Shop Direct and Buy for Me are programmes we’re testing that help customers discover brands and products not currently sold in Amazon’s store, while helping businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales.
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“We have received positive feedback on these programmes. Businesses can opt out at any time.”
President Donald Trump said Tuesday night that Venezuela will turn over 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, to be sold at market value and with the proceeds controlled by the US.
Interim authorities in Venezuela will turn over “sanctioned oil” Trump said on Truth Social.
The US will use the proceeds “to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” he wrote.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been directed to “execute this plan, immediately,” and the barrels “will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.”
CNN has reached out to the White House for more information.
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A senior administration official, speaking under condition of anonymity, told CNN that the oil has already been produced and put in barrels. The majority of it is currently on boats and will now go to US facilities in the Gulf to be refined.
Although 30 to 50 million barrels of oil sounds like a lot, the United States consumed just over 20 million barrels of oil per day over the past month.
That amount may lower oil prices a bit, but it probably won’t lower Americans’ gas prices that much: Former President Joe Biden released about four to six times as much — 180 million barrels of oil — from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2022, which lowered gas prices by only between 13 cents and 31 cents a gallon over the course of four months, according to a Treasury Department analysis.
US oil fell about $1 a barrel, or just under 2%, to $56, immediately after Trump made his announcement on Truth Social.
Selling up to 50 million barrels could raise quite a bit of revenue: Venezuelan oil is currently trading at $55 per barrel, so if the United States can find buyers willing to pay market price, it could raise between $1.65 billion and $2.75 billion from the sale.
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Venezuela has built up significant stockpiles of crude over since the United States began its oil embargo late last year. But handing over that much oil to the United States may deplete Venezuela’s own oil reserves.
The oil is almost certainly coming from both its onshore storage and some of the seized tankers that were transporting oil: The country has about 48 million barrels of storage capacity and was nearly full, according to Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group. The tankers were transporting about 15 million to 22 million barrels of oil, according to industry estimates.
It’s unclear over what time period Venezuela will hand over the oil to the United States.
The senior administration official said the transfer would happen quickly because Venezuela’s crude is very heavy, which means it can’t be stored for long.
But crude does not go bad if it is not refined in a certain amount of time, said Andrew Lipow, the president of Lipow Oil Associates, in a note. “It has sat underground for hundreds of millions of years. In fact, much of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been around for decades,” he wrote.
new video loaded: Nvidia Shows Off New A.I. Chip at CES
transcript
transcript
Nvidia Shows Off New A.I. Chip at CES
At the annual tech conference, CES, Nvidia showed off a new A.I. chip, known as Vera Rubin, which is more efficient and powerful than previous generations of chips.
This is the Vera CPU. This is one CPU. This is groundbreaking work. I would not be surprised if the industry would like us to make this format and this structure an industry standard in the future. Today, we’re announcing Alpamayo, the world’s first thinking, reasoning autonomous vehicle A.I.
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At the annual tech conference, CES, Nvidia showed off a new A.I. chip, known as Vera Rubin, which is more efficient and powerful than previous generations of chips.
