Activists occupy Columbia building as US campus protests flare

The occupation of Hamilton Hall at the prestigious university in New York came hours after administrators said they had begun suspending students for failing to comply with an order to disperse. Masked individuals smashed windows and moved metal tables to block the building's entrances, images shared overnight on social media showed. "After 206 days of genocide and over 34,000 Palestinian martyrs, Columbia community members took back Hamilton Hall just after midnight," the group said in a statement citing Israel's war in Gaza.