80 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested during Columbia University library takeover

• May 8, 2025

Eighty pro-Palestinian protesters were taken into custody at Columbia University after more than 100 demonstrators took over Butler Library as final exams were scheduled to begin, cops said Thursday.

Federal authorities are reviewing the visa status of all those taken into custody, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X.

Acting President Claire Shipman authorized the NYPD to enter campus after the swarm of masked protesters showed up at the library and forced their way inside.

Cops were seen escorting out dozens of protesters in zip ties who school officials said were not enrolled in the school and were trespassing.

“We are reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library,” Rubio said on X. “Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.”

Shipman attributed the decision to allow NYPD officers on campus to the large number of protesters. Two Columbia security officers were injured as protesters forced their way inside the building.

“Requesting the presence of the NYPD is not the outcome we wanted, but it was absolutely necessary to secure the safety of our community,” Shipman wrote. “Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies; this is especially unacceptable while our students study and prepare for final exams.”

Videos on social media showed the activists, who wore masks, pushing through security at the entrance of Butler, the main campus library, shortly after 3 p.m., steps away from where students pitched a tent demonstration last year.

The protesters played drums and posted signs and stickers to free Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia grad who has been detained by federal immigration authorities.

The main protest group on campus, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, on Wednesday reveled in their ability to pull off the disruption, despite a crackdown on student activists. Last month, an effort to repitch a tent encampment was averted after NBC News publicized their plans.

“Despite Columbia’s transformation of the university into a dystopian site of surveillance through its carceral expansion of cameras, wifi and ID tracking, externally contracted security, disciplinary processes, and arresting power for Public Safety officers, it still failed to quell the student movement. Students outsmarted the university, exposing the cracks in their broken system,” the group said in a statement.

“Students know that resisting genocide is their moral imperative, and history is on their side.”

Mayor Adams condemned the protesters by making a plea to their parents on live television Wednesday.

“Parents, if your children are going to Columbia campus and participate in this, I think you should reach out to them,” Adams said on NBC 4. “This is not what you do on the college campus, particularly going inside a library and protesting in this manner. We are in engagement with the college.”

Columbia finals begin on Friday.

​ Orange County Register 

A crazy tax on ‘foreign’ films in global economy

• May 8, 2025

There’s an easy and unfortunate recent economic parallel to President Donald Trump’s absurd proposal to slap a 100% tariff on “foreign” films coming into the United States as some supposed protectionism for the American movie industry.

It’s the Trump administration’s various high tariffs on foreign wines and spirits, levied in order to supposedly protect domestic vintners and distillers.

Because you know who is leading the opposition to these trade-war stunts? The people who make movies and the people who make booze, that’s who.

Because they know something about the international economics of the global culture that the crafters of the administration’s mercantilist agenda quite clearly do not: Wine making, and wine drinking, begats more of the same. People who like to drink wine from Tuscany already like to drink wine from Sonoma. Movie-goers and TV streamers may stand in line for the latest Hollywood-made Marvel flick, but they also crave the Lupin heist shows on Netflix by way of Paris.

And the economies of both the drinks business and the film business are already, inextricably, internationally intertwined.

The Napa cabernet maker is currently willing to pay $1,000 a barrel for one made of French oak. But $2,000 a barrel? She’s not quite sure about that.

The movie producer already moves his sets, his actors, his post-production facilities around the world to find the most efficient venue in which to do the work. (There is almost no such thing as a “foreign” film or a “domestic” production these days.) Until he gets wildly taxed to do so, and then … he’s not quite sure he’s putting his money into this business after all.

A tax is a tax, and the formerly tax-wary Republican Party is on the verge of selling its soul, all for an antique way of looking at the way the world does business that will lead to American economic stagnation in its isolationism.

Industry professionals think that the plan is not only wrong, but unworkable. “On first blush, it’s shocking and would represent a virtually complete halt of production,” one industry insider told CNN. “But in reality, he has no jurisdiction to do this and it’s too complex to enforce.”

But even those who imagine that the tax, if unenforceable, would be one weapon against rampant runaway production, driven by the high cost of production, especially in California, say that it could also be disastrous.

“In its current form, the tariff doesn’t make sense,” Jay Sures, vice chairman of United Talent Agency, told the network — meaning that to him, some other form might. Whatever. But his bottom line is that, since it’s far cheaper to make at least part of your movie overseas, a blanket tariff “has the ability to bring the movie business to a standstill — which is the last thing Hollywood needs after dual strikes and a content recession.”

After announcing his movie tariff plan, as so often, in an ill-considered, incoherent social media post over the weekend, Trump tried to clarify his thoughts later: “I’m not looking to hurt the industry, I want to help the industry,” Trump said Monday.

He said that would now ask Hollywood studios if “they’re happy” with his proposal to impose tariffs of 100% on all content “made outside of the United States.”

They’re not.

Free up producers by making it more cost-effective to film here by limiting regulations, union mandates and local business taxes, absolutely. But don’t pretend we can unring the bell of global connectivity.

​ Orange County Register 

Average rate on a US 30-year mortgage holds steady at 6.76%, not far from highest levels this year

• May 8, 2025

By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage in the U.S. held steady this week, not far from its highest levels this year, but below where it was a year ago.

The rate stood at 6.76% for the second week in a row, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 7.09%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, eased. The average rate dropped to 5.89% from 5.92% last week. It’s down from 6.38% a year ago, Freddie Mac said.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, including global demand for U.S. Treasurys, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions and bond market investors’ expectations about the economy and inflation.

After climbing to a just above 7% in mid-January, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage has remained above 6.62%, where it was just four weeks ago. It then spiked above 6.8% in the following two weeks and eased last week to 6.76%.

The recent swings in mortgage rates reflect volatility in the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

The yield, which had mostly fallen after climbing to around 4.8% in mid-January, surged last month to 4.5% amid a sell-off in government bonds triggered by investor anxiety over the Trump administration’s trade war.

The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.33% in midday trading Thursday, up from 4.26% late Wednesday.

Elevated mortgage rates and rising home prices remain affordability hurdles for many would-be homebuyers. It’s why the spring homebuying season is off to a lackluster start. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in March, posting the largest monthly drop since November 2022.

​ Orange County Register 

Ducks hire Joel Quenneville as next coach

• May 8, 2025

The Ducks have hired four-time Stanley Cup winner Joel Quenneville as head coach, less than a year after he was reinstated by the NHL, sources confirmed.

Quenneville, 66, won a Cup as an assistant with the Colorado Avalanche before capturing three championships in six campaigns with the Chicago Blackhawks. The last of those, in 2015, saw Chicago rally to beat the Ducks in a seven-game Western Conference finals series.

The first of the titles, in 2010, came shortly after the organization became aware of allegations of sexual assault by former Chicago video coach Brad Aldrich toward Blackhawks prospect Kyle Beach.

More than a decade later, the league investigated, finding that Quenneville and executives Stan Bowman and Al MacIsaac provided insufficient response to the allegations. All three were barred from seeking employment from October 2021 until July of last year. Quenneville was coaching the Florida Panthers at the time, and previously he had stewarded St. Louis (1996-2004) and Colorado (2005-2008).

Bowman’s reinstatement led to his being snatched off the market quickly, with the son of Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman – the elder Bowman is the only coach with more career NHL wins than Quenneville – now serving as general manager of the Edmonton Oilers. Quenneville did not have to wait too much longer for his call.

It wasn’t dissimilar to the one he received from the Blackhawks in 2008, after they fired franchise legend Dennis Savard just four games into the season after his ascendant group narrowly missed the playoffs. What followed were seven seasons that saw the Blackhawks make the conference finals five times and go 3-0 in Stanley Cup Final series.

In Anaheim, Quenneville replaces Greg Cronin, who in his second season presided over the biggest year-over-year improvement in the Western Conference standings and saw most of the Ducks’ core young players step forward by the 2024-25 season’s end.

Quenneville also inherits a fledgling group from a franchise that has been drafting high year after year. The Ducks have missed the postseason seven consecutive times, and Chicago had gone fishing in April during nine of 10 years prior to Quenneville’s arrival.

When he took the gig in Chicago, he said he could never have envisioned the success they enjoyed, one rivaled in the same era only by the Pittsburgh Penguins’ triumphs in 2009, 2016 and 2017.

“That’s dreaming in color times 10,” said Quenneville in 2015, immediately following the conference finals win over the Ducks. “The core has been through a lot of challenges and battles. They were still a very young group at the time. I was very fortunate to (arrive) with a team that was sitting on go, and they keep going.”

​ Orange County Register 

Trump says he’ll pull the nomination of Ed Martin, who defended Jan. 6 rioters, for DC US Attorney

• May 8, 2025

By SEUNG MIN KIM and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would pull the nomination of conservative activist Ed Martin Jr. to be the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital, after a key Republican senator said he could not support him for the job due to his defense of Jan. 6 rioters.

“We have somebody else that will be great,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the status of Martin’s confirmation. He said it was disappointing, but “that’s the way it works sometime.”

A spokesperson for Ed Martin didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Martin has served as acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia since Trump’s first week in office. But his hopes of keeping the job faded amid questions about his qualifications and background, including his support for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol over four years ago.

Martin stirred up a chorus of critics during his brief but tumultuous tenure leading the nation’s largest U.S. Attorney’s office. He fired and demoted subordinates who worked on politically sensitive cases. He posted on social media about potential targets of investigations. And he forced the chief of the office’s criminal division to resign after directing her to scrutinize the awarding of a government contract during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.

Martin’s temporary appointment is due to expire on May 20.

​ Orange County Register 

India and Pakistan trade fire and accusations as fears of a wider military confrontation rise

• May 8, 2025

By BABAR DOGAR, MUNIR AHMED, SHEIKH SAALIQ and AIJAZ HUSSAIN

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — India fired attack drones into Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least two civilians, the Pakistani military said. India, meanwhile, accused its neighbor of attempting its own attack, as tensions soared between the nuclear-armed rivals.

India acknowledged that it targeted Pakistan’s air defense system, and Islamabad said it shot down several of the drones. India said it “neutralized” Pakistan’s attempts to hit military targets. It was not possible to verify all of the claims.

The exchanges came a day after Indian missiles struck several locations in Pakistan, killing 31 civilians, according to Pakistani officials. New Delhi said it was retaliating after gunmen killed more than two dozen people, mostly Hindu tourists, in India-controlled Kashmir last month. India accused Pakistan of being behind the assault. Islamabad denies that.

Both sides have also traded heavy fire across their frontier in disputed Kashmir, and Pakistan claimed it killed scores of Indian soldiers. There was no confirmation from India.

Late Thursday in Indian-controlled Kashmir, residents of the city of Jammu reported hearing explosions and sirens. Shesh Paul Vaid, the region’s former director-general of police, said there was a complete blackout in Jammu following loud blasts. “Bombing, shelling, or missile strikes suspected,” he wrote on social media.

Jammu is close to the Line of Control, the de factor border that divides the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to avenge the deaths in India’s missile strikes, raising fears that the two countries could be headed toward another all-out conflict. Leaders from both nations face mounting public pressure to show strength and seek revenge, and the heated rhetoric and competing claims could be a response to that pressure.

The relationship between countries has been shaped by conflict and mutual suspicion, most notably in their dispute over Kashmir. They have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region, which is split between them and claimed by both in its entirety.

With tensions high, India evacuated thousands of people from villages near the highly militarized frontier in the region. Tens of thousands of people slept in shelters overnight, officials and residents said Thursday.

About 2,000 villagers also fled their homes in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

Mohammad Iftikhar boarded a vehicle with his family on Thursday as heavy rain lashed the region. “I am helplessly leaving my home for the safety of my children and wife,” he said.

India fires drones at Pakistan

India fired several Israeli-made Harop drones at Pakistan overnight and into Thursday afternoon, according to Pakistani army spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, who said 29 were shot down. Two civilian were killed and another wounded when debris from a downed drone fell in Sindh province.

One drone damaged a military site near the city of Lahore and wounded four soldiers, and another fell in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital, according to Sharif. “The armed forces are neutralizing them as we speak,” he told state-run Pakistan Television.

In Lahore, local police official Mohammad Rizwan said a drone was downed near Walton Airport, an airfield in a residential area about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the border with India that also contains military installations.

India’s Defense Ministry said its armed forces “targeted air defense radars and systems” in several places in Pakistan, including Lahore.

Blackout in Gurdaspur district

New Delhi, meanwhile, accused Pakistan of attempting “to engage a number of military targets” with missiles and drones along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir and elsewhere along their border. “The debris of these attacks in now being recovered from a number of locations,” it said.

At a news briefing, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Thursday rejected India’s claim that Islamabad carried out any attack in Indian Punjab. “These accusations are an attempt to incite anti-Pakistan sentiment among the Punjabi Sikh population in India,” he said.

Seated alongside Dar, the military spokesperson, Sharif said Pakistan shot down 29 Indian drones after they violated its airspace.

Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar told parliament that so far Pakistan has not responded to India’s missiles attacks, but there will be one. Later Thursday, Indian authorities ordered a night-time blackout in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district, which borders with Pakistan.

The Harop drone, produced by Israel’s IAI, is one of several in India’s inventory, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance report.

According to IAI, the Harop combines the capabilities of a drone and a missile and can operate at long ranges.

The two sides have also exchanged heavy fire over the past day.

Tarar said that the country’s armed forces have killed 40 to 50 Indian soldiers in the exchanges along the Line of Control. India has not commented on that claim. Earlier, the army said one Indian soldier was killed by shelling Wednesday.

Sikh Temple in Kashmir

Tarar denied Indian accusations that Pakistan had fired missiles toward the Indian city of Amritsar, saying in fact an Indian drone fell in the city. Neither claim could be confirmed.

India’s Foreign Ministry has said that 16 civilians were killed Wednesday during exchanges of fire across the de facto border.

Pakistani officials said six people have been killed near highly militarized frontier in exchanges of fire over the past day.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri denied that New Delhi has targeted civilians and a key dam, as Pakistan has alleged. He, in turn, accused Pakistani forces of targeting civilians, including at a Sikh Temple in Kashmir, where he said three Sikhs were killed.

Flights remained suspended at over two dozen airports across northern and western regions in India, according to travel advisories by multiple airlines. Pakistan resumed flights nationwide after a suspension at four airports, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.

Ahmed reported from Islamabad; Saaliq reported from New Delhi and Hussain reported from Srinagar, India. Associated Press writers Rajesh Roy in New Delhi, and Ishfaq Hussain and Roshan Mughal in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Trump administration invokes state secrets privilege in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case

• May 8, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is invoking the “ state secrets privilege ” in an apparent attempt to avoid answering a judge’s questions about its mistaken deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis disclosed the government’s position in a two-page order on Wednesday. She set a Monday deadline for attorneys to file briefs on the issue and how it could affect Abrego Garcia’s case. Xinis also scheduled a May 16 hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, to address the matter.

The Republican administration previously invoked the same legal authority to cut off a judge’s inquiry into whether it defied an order to turn around planes deporting Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia, 29, has been imprisoned in his native El Salvador for nearly two months. His mistaken deportation has become a flash point for President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and his increasing friction with the U.S. courts.

Trump has said he could call El Salvador’s president and have Abrego Garcia, who was living in Maryland, returned to the United States. Instead, Trump has doubled down on his claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang.

Police in Maryland had identified Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 gang member in 2019 based off his tattoos, Chicago Bulls hoodie and the word of a criminal informant. But Abrego Garcia was never charged. His lawyers say the informant claimed Abrego Garcia was in an MS-13 chapter in New York, where Abrego Garcia has never lived.

The administration has balked at telling Xinis what, if anything, it has done to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. The judge ruled that his lawyers can question several Trump administration officials under oath about the government’s response to her orders.

In a court filing Wednesday, his lawyers said they already have conducted depositions of three officials and are “still in the dark” about the government’s efforts to free Abrego Garcia. They are asking for permission to depose a more officials, possibly including one from the White House.

​ Orange County Register 

Watch: President Trump set to announce trade deal with UK

• May 8, 2025

By JOSH BOAK, CHRIS MEGERIAN and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Britain are expected to announce a trade deal on Thursday that will lower the burden of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, delivering a political victory for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer that Trump can also use to validate his turbulent approach to the international economy.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that the agreement will be “full and comprehensive.” No details were immediately available, and it’s more likely that the deal will be limited to providing tariff relief to certain sectors like car manufacturing.

The U.S. president is scheduled to speak from the Oval Office on Thursday morning, and Starmer will make his own announcement around the same time.

It’s the first bilateral trade deal since Trump began his stutterstep efforts to rewire the global economy by dramatically increasing import taxes in an attempt to increase domestic manufacturing. The Republican president first announced sweeping tariffs on April 2, then retreated a week later and announced that his administration would seek individual agreements with various countries over the next few months.

No new deals have been reached with America’s largest trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and China. Trump has left the highest tariffs in place on China, sparking a confrontation between the world’s two biggest economies. Washington and Beijing are sending officials to Switzerland this weekend for an initial round of trade talks.

Trump promised on Thursday that there are “many other deals, which are in serious stages of negotiation, to follow!”

Starmer, speaking at a defense conference in London, said “talks with the U.S. have been ongoing, and you’ll hear more from me about that later today.”

The U.S. and the U.K. have been aiming to strike a bilateral trade agreement since the British people voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, allowing the country to negotiate independently of the rest of the continent. Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson touted a future deal with the U.S. as an incentive for Brexit.

Negotiations started in 2020, during Trump’s first term. But the talks made little progress under President Joe Biden, a Democrat and a critic of Brexit. Negotiations resumed after Trump returned to office in January and intensified in recent weeks.

A major goal of British negotiators has been to reduce or lift the import tax on U.K. cars and steel, which Trump set at 25%. The U.S. is the largest destination for British cars, accounting for more than a quarter of U.K. auto exports in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Britain has also sought tariff exemptions for pharmaceuticals, while the U.S. wants greater access to the British market for agriculture products. Starmer’s government has said it won’t lower U.K. food standards to allow in chlorine-rinsed American chicken or hormone-treated beef.

The British government will see a deal as a vindication of Starmer’s emollient approach to Trump, which has avoided direct confrontation or criticism. Unlike the European Union, Britain did not announce retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods in response to Trump’s import taxes.

A trade deal with the United Kingdom would be symbolically important and a relief for British exporters. But an agreement would do little to address Trump’s core concern about persistent trade deficits that prompted him to impose import taxes on countries around the world.

The U.S. ran a $11.9 billion trade surplus in goods with the U.K. last year, according to the Census Bureau. The $68 billion in goods that the U.S. imported from the U.K. last year accounted for just 2% of all goods imported into the country.

The U.S. is much more important to the U.K. economy. It was Britain’s biggest trading partner last year, according to government statistics, though the bulk of Britain’s exports to the U.S. are services rather than goods.

Trump has previously said that his leverage in talks would be U.S. consumers, but he appeared to suggest that the U.K. would also start buying more American-made goods.

“I think that the United Kingdom, like every other country, they want to … go shopping in the United States of America,” he said.

A trade deal with the U.S. is one of several that Starmer’s government is seeking to strike. On Tuesday, Britain and India announced a trade agreement after three years of negotiations. The U.K. is also trying to lift some of the barriers to trade with the EU imposed when Britain left the bloc in 2020.

Jill Lawless reported from London. Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register