Dancing for worms may seem an odd pursuit, but an environment charity is calling for people across the UK to charm the creatures from the depths in order to count them.

The Soil Association is trying to get a nationwide picture of worm abundance, to track their decline and see where they need the most help.

Across May, the charity is asking people to dance on the soil, soak the earth with water or use the vibrations of a garden fork to draw worms up.

Using the data collected, specialists will create a worm map of the UK to show where the healthiest and most biodiverse soil is. Soil that is full of worms is an indicator that it is healthy.

Worms are vital for the soil; they produce a sticky mucus that binds it together, and this helps to alleviate flooding. Soil with worms is up to 90% more effective at soaking up water.

However, due to pesticides, excessive draining and the use of inorganic fertilisers, the worm population appears to have shrunk. A recent study found that earthworm populations had declined by a third over the past 25 years.

The Soil Association’s head of worms, Alex Burton, said: “It might sound wacky but dancing on the bare earth can help with science. Worm charming is fun and a little surreal, but scientists and farmers use worm counts to understand soil health. We depend on soils for 95% of our food production, and they hold more carbon than the atmosphere, so it is crucial for us to know what’s going on under the ground and worms help to tell us that.

“The data we get for the worm map will help us build a better understanding of the health of soils in gardens, allotments and green spaces across the UK. This will show where they need help to restore their numbers. Worms are in our news, films and our gardens, where children love uncovering them. We’re calling for people to become citizen scientists for our valuable pals, and if they don’t find as many as they were expecting, we have plenty of advice to help them improve the soil.”

The charity is working with the Falmouth worm charming championships, which will be handing out awards for the most worms charmed and the most creative ways of seducing them from the deep.

It can take as little as half an hour to find the worms and only requires a little piece of land, so the work can take place in gardens, farms or local parks. People interested in taking part can download the Worm Hunt Guide and get charming.

Chart-topping US rapper Macklemore has released a new track, Hind’s Hall, which gives robust support to Palestine as well as those protesting at US universities against Israel’s activity in Gaza.

Hind’s Hall is named after the Columbia University building, renamed from Hamilton Hall by occupying student protesters to reference Hind Rajab, a six-year-old child killed in Gaza.

“If students in tents posted on the lawn / Occupying the quad is really against the law / And a reason to call in the police and their squad / Where does genocide land in your definition, huh?” he raps, referring to the police crackdown against protests.

As well as condemning Israel’s campaign in Gaza, Columbia students are calling for their university to divest from companies linked to Israel – a call that has been repeated in other campuses across the US. Last week New York police arrested more than 100 people protesting at Columbia, including some occupying Hamilton Hall. More than 2,000 people have been arrested over US campus protests.

In Hind’s Hall, Macklemore characterises Israel as “a state that’s gotta rely on an apartheid system to uphold an occupying violent history been repeating for the last 75 [years]”, and says he has experienced support from Jewish people in solidarity with the pro-Palestine protests. “We see the lies in them, claiming it’s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist / I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and riding in solidarity and screaming ‘Free Palestine’ with them”.

He addresses Joe Biden, saying “blood is on your hands”, and says he will not be voting for him later this year.

He had previously been a supporter of the Democrats, appearing alongside Barack Obama to discuss the opioid crisis and opposing Donald Trump with chants at concerts. He released a song, Wednesday Morning, after Trump’s 2016 election win with the lyrics: “No time for apathy, no more tears and no complaining / Gotta fight harder for the next four and what we’re faced with.”

Macklemore also criticises the music industry for not being more outspoken during the war in Gaza. “The music industry’s quiet, complicit in their platform of silence,” he raps, adding “I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake” – a reference to the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar which has consumed the US music industry in recent weeks.

The tension between the rappers’ verbal conflict and the real conflict in Gaza has not gone unnoticed elsewhere: “It’s Hard to Care About a Rap War in the Middle of a Real One,” ran the headline of a Rolling Stone article last week.

Macklemore is perhaps still best known for lighthearted songs such as 2012’s Thrift Shop, which topped the US and UK charts, but he is also known for socially conscious material. His track Same Love voiced support for same-sex marriage and the LGBTQ+ community while criticising hip-hop culture for homophobia, while Wing$ lamented poverty and criticised consumerism.

He appeared incognito at Black Lives Matter protests and in 2016 examined his position as a white person at the protests and in rap culture more broadly – which had caused him to be accused of cultural appropriation – with the track White Privilege II.

One of the most famous stories ever told about “Mama” Cass Elliot was a complete lie. It didn’t help that the singer herself repeated it in scores of interviews. As the spiel goes, Cass became the last singer hired for the Mamas and Papas only after she got smacked on the head by a pipe during a construction project at a local club where they all hung out. “It’s true,” she insisted to Rolling Stone in 1968. “I had a concussion and went to the hospital. I had a bad headache for about two weeks and then, all of a sudden, I was singing higher.”

The “new” sound she supposedly produced was what allegedly convinced group’s leader John Phillips to finally bring her into the fold, creating what became one of the most famous four-way harmony groups in pop history. In fact, the real reason Phillips didn’t initially want to hire the clearly gifted Cass was simply because he thought she was too overweight to be part of a viable pop group. “The fact that she felt she had to perpetuate a false story shows the depth of what she felt she had to hide,” said Owen Elliot-Kugell, the singer’s daughter who has written a new book titled My Mama, Cass. “The truth was just too painful.”

Even with that cover story to shield her, Cass experienced relentless fat-shaming throughout the group’s career, highlighted by the main refrain in their seminal hit Creeque Alley that read “no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass”. The snarky references continued into their legacy years when, in an acceptance speech for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, fellow “Mama” Michelle Phillips said: “I have personal knowledge that Cass is looking down on these proceedings wearing a size six Thierry Mugler dress.” The swipes about her weight even played into a widely believed, but false, story about the cause of her death. (The infamous choking-on-a-ham-sandwich bit). The poignancy of it all forms a central motif in Elliot-Kugell’s book though it doesn’t overwhelm the main reason we care to begin with. The book also celebrates the singularity of Cass’ singing, the range of her creative talent, and the warmth of her character. The primary inspiration for writing the book came from a foundational trauma: Elliot-Kugell was only seven when her mother died. “When you lose somebody that young, they become a mystery to you,” she said. “Writing the book allowed me to put the pieces of the puzzle of my mom together in a way I hadn’t previously been able to do.”

Elliot-Kugell, now 57, began thinking about writing a book about her mother nearly two decades ago but, because her own experience with her was scant, she had to go on an extended journalistic mission to mine the memories of people with a far greater understanding of her life and history. “I was always asking people about her,” she said. “This book is a compilation of everything I’ve been told over the years.”

The result strikes her as especially relevant today. “My mom was a forward-thinking woman-of-size who made it in an industry that was largely controlled by men,” she said. “That makes her story timely.”

Because her story ended too soon it gains special pain as well. “My mom was just 32 when she passed,” Elliot-Kugell said. “She didn’t live long enough to write a memoir that would have her side represented. I did this because she didn’t get the chance to.”

What she uncovered was a life in which others often set the agenda, and framed the narrative, for her mother. When Cass was just a girl, she contracted ring worm, a highly contagious disease. Because her mother was pregnant at the time, the family sent her to live temporarily with her grandmother, a product of the Depression who viewed food as both a cure-all and a source of love. “They fed her like crazy,” Elliot-Kugell said. “When my mom came home a couple of months later she was heavier and her parents became concerned. They did what they knew how to do, which was to send her to a doctor. And he did what he knew how to do, which was to put her on amphetamines.”

“She was just eight!” the author exclaimed. “What does being on amphetamines do to a child’s developing brain? It’s not only altering chemically what’s going on, its sending a horrible message that there’s something wrong with you. And this pill will fix it.”

A bright spot in Cass’ early life was music. Even as a child, she had a voice that stood out, as well as an interest in acting that she avidly pursued in high school theatrical productions. Even there, she experienced judgement for her size. While behind the scenes she taught the other kids how to sing, dance and present themselves, she never appeared on-stage herself. “She knew that other people were going to judge her for her looks,” Elliot-Kugell said. “I feel terrible that she had to go through that.”

After high school, she gained enough confidence to move from her family’s home in Maryland to New York to audition for professional parts in musicals. At that point, she ditched her birth name, Ellen Cohen, to fashion a moniker combining her nickname, Cass, with that of a friend named Elliot who died in a car crash. She earned a part in the touring company of The Music Man, but only as the “the fat girl” and, though she was in the running for the role of Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It To You Wholesale, she lost to another promising star: Barbra Streisand. At the time, she lamented to a friend, “there just don’t seem to be many parts for a 200-pound ingenue.”

Luckily for her, the folk music scene was then exploding in New York’s Greenwich Village, a demimonde that celebrated alternative voices and opinions. She helped form several groups there, including the Big 3 and Mugwumps, the latter including future Papa Denny Doherty and later Lovin’ Spoonful guitarist Zal Yanovski. They recorded just one album before splitting, which paved Cass’ eventual way into the burgeoning Mamas and Papas in 1965. By year’s end the new group already scored a Top Five smash with California Dreamin’, yet internecine intrigue threatened to kill them in their crib. Members Michelle Phillips and Denny Doherty had an affair, despite the fact that she was married to John and Cass had already made clear her deep crush on Doherty.

Cass’ thwarted pursuit of him emphasized a pattern in her life of going after unattainable men. Her first marriage, to Big 3 member James Hendricks, was arranged solely to help him avoid the draft. When she was 26, she became pregnant by a man who was fleetingly in her life, yet she decided to raise the child on her own as a way to insure she would always have someone in her life. (The identity of the father, a musician, wasn’t discovered by Elliot-Kugell until she was an adult). “To me, one of the most profoundly sad things in my mother’s whole story is the fact that she never got to have a relationship with another human being on equal standing,” Elliot-Kugell said.

Several years later, Cass married another man, a German journalist named Donald von Wiedenman, whom she divorced within months. Elliot-Kugell makes no mention of him in her book because, she said, “he talked shit about her. And it wasn’t like their marriage changed her life. He was just another opportunist.”

Though romance eluded her, Cass became hugely popular as both a close friend and a trusted musical adviser. From her first days on the scene, she displayed a A&R director’s skill at understanding which musicians would sound right together. During her Mugwumps days, she suggested John Sebastian work with Zal Yanovsky, in the process midwifing the Lovin’ Spoonful. In the backyard of her Laurel Canyon in 1968, she encouraged Graham Nash to harmonize with David Crosby and Stephen Stills, leading to the formation of CSN. “Denny Doherty used to refer to her as the puppeteer with the marionettes, putting everyone together,” Elliot-Kugell said.

When the Mamas and Papas broke up, the smart money was on Cass to become the solo star given the warm timber of her voice, the intelligence of her phrasing and the sheer force of what Elliot-Kugell calls “that Cohen honk. It cuts through everything.”

On her early solo albums, the label insisted she stick with the name Mama Cass, though she wanted to be billed as Cass Elliot to distinguish herself from the group. A new recording contract with RCA in 1972 finally gave her the creative freedom to record under her own name and to cut more sophisticated material by the likes of Randy Newman and Judee Sill. Even so, none of her solo albums sold well. She earned more attention through live shows and TV appearances though, even here, the fat jokes followed. On a Friars Club Roast of actor Carroll O’Connor, Dean Martin introduced her as “a very big girl”. “Today, nobody would say that,” Elliott-Kugell said. “But, at the time, it was part of the schtick of who she was.”

In those years, Cass was working so relentlessly, health problems began to develop that were, tragically, ignored. Elliot-Kugell’s book recounts at least five instances of her mother fainting or experiencing exhaustion that were not properly checked out by a doctor or seen as signs of something more serious. “It’s hard to sit here today and not say, ‘How can no one have seen this?’ she said.

In 1974, Cass was booked to an extensive, and very successful, residency in London. After completing the last show in July she retired to an apartment in Mayfair where, several hours later, she died in her sleep from a heart attack. In her book, Elliot-Kugell works diligently to uncover the origin of the ham sandwich story. She discovered it was cooked up by her manager, Alan Carr, just so no one speculated that drugs was the culprit. Well-meaning as that may have been, it turned her mother’s death into a punch line. The mere fact that people fell for it bold-faces the prejudice that surrounds weight. “It was easier for the public to accept the idea of someone being gluttonous when they’re heavy,” Elliot-Kugell said. “It made the story salacious.”

After her mother’s death, Elliot-Kugell was raised by Cass’ sister, the singer-songwriter Leah Kunkel and her husband, the famed session drummer Russ Kunkel. In her teen years, she pursued her own musical career by helping to form the group Wilson-Phillips (which combined off-spring members of Brian Wilson’s and John Phillips’ clans). Unfortunately, she got forced out before they recorded a single song because, she said, her voice was too loud. Her experiences in the music business have helped her appreciate how rare her mother’s success was in that field. At the same time, Cass’ early death makes her wonder what she might have achieved had she lived. “I think she would have ended up on Broadway and would have done a lot of residencies in Las Vegas. She probably would have owned her own production company.”

She believes, too, that in the modern era of body-positivity, she would have faced less prejudice. Regardless, her legacy lives on. Recently, Cass has experienced an unexpected resurgence on TikTok, where the audio from her 1969 anthem of individuality, Make Your Own Kind of Music has been used in 46 thousand videos, amassing over 32m views. According to Elliot-Kugell, even that dumb ham sandwich story has a positive side. “It’s just another way of remembering somebody,” she said. “It’s great to know that, even 50 years later, she’s still part of the conversation.”

This article was amended on 7 May 2024 to correct the spelling of Carroll O’Connor’s first name.

Rufus Wainwright has defended his musical Opening Night, which was forced to close early after mixed reviews, saying West End audiences lack “curiosity” after Brexit and the British press had turned on the project because it was “too European”.

Opening Night was Wainwright’s first musical and is an adaptation of John Cassavetes’ 1977 film about an actor struggling to cope, who is played by Sheridan Smith. Directed by Ivo van Hove, it opened in March at the Gielgud theatre but a month later announced it would be closing two months early.

Some audience members reportedly walked out during the performance or left during the interval. The musical included a scene where Smith staggers out into the streets of the West End while being filmed and projected back on to the stage.

Wainwright said the experimental elements of the show were too much for conservative audiences, and seeing Smith – who is a mainstream star – in something more avant garde was anathema to certain critics and audience members.

“I do feel that since Brexit, England has entered into a darker corridor where it is a little more narrow in its outlook and the vitriol because we put ‘English rose Sheridan Smith through this ordeal of European theatre’ felt a little bit suspect to me,” he told the Guardian. “I was a little surprised by that.”

Opening Night did get some positive reviews. The Guardian gave it four stars and said it was “the most unusual thing on the London stage right now”, while Time Out called Smith “superb”. But other critics weren’t convinced.

The New York Times critic Houman Barekat said the adaptation “desecrated” Cassavettes’ original film, while he dismissed Wainwright’s songs as “algorithmically bland”. The New Statesman said it was a “chaotic and masochistic project”, while Attitude called it a “missed opportunity sorely lacking in camp”.

Although Wainwright admits the show “wasn’t perfect by any means” and that there “were mistakes made on many fronts”, he believes the negative reaction to the show was partly because Britain has become more insular since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

“There’s a lack of imagination and curiosity about change,” he said. “All of the reviews from Europe were incredible for this piece; the staging and the rhythm is more European and there was a vitriolic reaction against that. I don’t think it was perfect and that I don’t deserve criticism, but this thing of shutting it down if it’s not exactly what you want is not really the theatrical lane that I want to live in.”

Opening Night’s producers, Wessex Grove, said “what is sure-fire and safe has its place” but it was proud to have taken a “risk”, when it announced the show was ending prematurely.

“In a challenging financial landscape, Opening Night was always a risk and, while the production may not have had the life we had hoped for, we feel immensely proud of the risk we took and of this extraordinary production,” they said.

Van Hove said it was “always sad” when a show was cut short.

Wainwright defended Smith, who told the Guardian she “had something to prove” because – like the character she plays in Opening Night – she had unravelled on stage in 2016. “People were saying be careful, we have to be delicate with her, and it couldn’t have been further from the truth,” he said.

“She was always excited and giving her full – I have nothing but admiration and love for her.”

The songwriter, who is the child of two famous folk singers, Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, and whose sister Martha is also a famous artist, has written two operas and 11 studio albums.

Wainwright said he was “a little beaten up by” the experience but was glad the production was ambitious and stood out from what he thinks is a conservative landscape on the West End. “I think the West End has got pretty staid,” he said.

“The main objective I have is that people think about it for days and days and look: people have thought about Opening Night now for weeks. It has remained in the psyche of the press and the public … it does endure for better or for worse.”

Wainwright said he was working on the cast album of the show, which he hopes can give it another life. The final performance of Opening Night in the West End will take place on 18 May.

Israeli military forces have taken control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, a key strategic objective and the sole gateway between Egypt and Gaza for humanitarian aid, Israeli military officials have confirmed.

“At the moment we have operational control of the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing and we have special forces scanning the crossing … That is what is happening in the upcoming hours. The operation is not over … I can’t give a timeline,” a military official said on Tuesday morning.

The spokesperson of the Gaza border authority on Tuesday confirmed the presence of Israeli tanks at the Rafah crossing. Aid officials in the territory said that the flow of aid through the crossing has been halted.

The Israeli operation comes as ahead of a new round of indirect negotiations on a ceasefire in Cairo following an announcement by Hamas leaders on Monday night that they would accept a recent proposal for a deal. Israeli officials say they will send a delegation for further talks although the deal did not meet its core demands and vowed to push ahead with an often threatened assault on Rafah.

“Israel is receiving Hamas response … an Israeli delegation will soon be in Cairo,” the military official said.

The promise of continued talks left a glimmer of hope alive for an agreement that could bring at least a pause to the seven-month-old war that has devastated Gaza.

The Israeli military said late on Monday it was conducting targeted strikes against Hamas in Rafah. The city’s Kuwaiti hospital said on Tuesday that 11 people had been killed and dozens of others injured in Israeli strikes.

After having vowed for weeks to push into the southern border town, Israel on Monday called for Palestinians in eastern Rafah to leave for an “expanded humanitarian area” ahead of a ground incursion.

The military official said the target was “terrorist infrastructure”, after the launch of rockets at Israeli troops at the Kerem Shalom earlier this week.

“We were able to operate in this manner and quickly because of the vast majority of people evacuating and moving and we were able to operate in a very specific area within a specific areas. We are only talking about the Gaza side of the crossing,” the official said.

The Rafah gate is a vital aid lifeline and particularly sensitive for Egypt, which is anxious to avoid a mass migration of Palestinians into its Sinai desert.

The more than 1 million Palestinians taking refuge in Rafah were thrown into confusion by the day’s events, with Israel’s evacuation order triggering an exodus of thousands of people.

In a private meeting on Monday, Jordan’s King Abdullah told US president Joe Biden that an Israeli offensive in Rafah would lead to a “new massacre” of Palestinian civilians and urged the international community to take urgent action.

In a phone call on Monday, Biden pressed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to go ahead with a large-scale offensive. Biden has been vocal in his demand that Israel not undertake a ground offensive in Rafah without a credible plan to protect Palestinian civilians.

US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US had not seen such a plan, adding that Washington could not support an operation in Rafah as it is currently envisioned.

Miller said American officials were reviewing the Hamas response to the ceasefire proposal “and discussing it with our partners in the region.”

It was not immediately known if the proposal Hamas agreed to was substantially different from one that US secretary of state Antony Blinken pressed the group to accept last week, which Blinken said included significant Israeli concessions.

Talks in Cairo had appeared to stall at the weekend over Hamas’s insistence that Israel should commit to making the ceasefire permanent at the outset of the agreement, rather than to negotiate its duration after the truce had taken hold.

An account in Haaretz suggested that the deal Hamas agreed to does not include an immediate demand for a permanent ceasefire, but also changes other elements of the Egyptian deal proposal, such as the requirement that it free 33 hostages in the first phase. It also reportedly takes away Israel’s right of veto on which Palestinian detainees are released in exchange.

On Monday night, hundreds of Israelis rallied around the country calling for the government to agree to the terms of the deal that Hamas had accepted.

About 1,000 protesters gathered near the defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, while in Jerusalem, about 100 protesters marched toward Netanyahu’s residence with a banner reading, “The blood is on your hands.”

Two women have sprayed the words “MeToo” on a 19th-century painting of a woman’s vagina by French artist Gustave Courbet in a stunt by a performance artist, a museum and the artist said.

“The Origin of the World”, a nude painted from 1866, was protected by a “glass pane” and the police were on site to assess the damage, the Centre Pompidou in the north-eastern city of Metz told AFP on Monday.

The work had been on loan to the Centre Pompidou-Metz from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris as part of an exhibition centred on French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who once owned the painting.

Metz prosecutor Yves Badorc said two women born in 1986 and 1993 had been arrested after five works in total, including Courbet’s nude, had been sprayed with the words “MeToo”.

A third person – who has not been detained – is believed to have stolen another artwork, he said.

The stolen piece – red embroidery on white material by French artist Annette Messager – is called “I Think Therefore I Suck”.

French-Luxembourgish performance artist Deborah de Robertis told AFP she had organised the spray painting in red, carried out by two other people, as part of a performance titled: “You Don’t Separate the Woman from the Artist”.

In a video sent to AFP by de Robertis, one woman tags Courbet’s famous painting with red paint and then another painting.

They then chant “MeToo” before being dragged away by security guards.

De Robertis explained that she wanted to “challenge the history of art”, in particular by tagging “MeToo” on the famous painting “because women are the origin of the world”.

In an open letter, de Robertis denounced the behaviour of six men in the art world, describing them as “predators” and “censors”.

She said the actions were a feminist performance, carried out because “the very closed world of contemporary art has remained largely silent until now”.

The artist said they had also targeted another work by Austrian artist Valie Export.

De Robertis already had work on display at the venue – a photograph of a 2014 performance at the Musee d’Orsay in which she posed showing her vagina underneath Courbet’s painting.

Culture minister Rachida Dati wrote on X: “To ‘activists’ who think that art is not powerful enough to carry a message alone … An artwork is not a poster to colour in with the day’s message.”

Metz mayor Francois Grosdidier condemned what he described as “a new attack on culture, this time by fanatic feminists”.

Courbet’s nude was first owned by a Turkish-Egyptian diplomat called Khalil Bey, a flamboyant figure in 1860s Paris who put together an art collection celebrating the female body before he was ruined by his gambling debts, according to the Musee d’Orsay.

It belonged to Lacan before it entered the museum’s collection in 1995.

A French court in 2020 sentenced de Robertis to pay a 2,000-euro ($2,150) fine for appearing naked in 2018 in front of a cave in the town of Lourdes in southwest France, a Catholic pilgrimage site for those who believe the Virgin Mary appeared there.

A case against her was dropped in 2017 after she showed her vagina in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa at the Louvre museum in the French capital.

Pro-Palestinian protesters who had been blocked by police from accessing an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday broke through fencing, linked arms and encircled tents that remained there, as Columbia University canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests.

Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group had been at the encampment for the past two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing of thousands of people in Gaza.

“Specifically, our encampment is protesting MIT’s direct research ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense,” he said.

Protesters also sat in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue, blocking the street during rush hour in the Boston area.

The demonstrations at Columbia have roiled its campus and officials said on Monday that while it would not hold its main ceremony, students would be able to celebrate at a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies this week and next.

The decision comes as universities around the country wrangle with how to handle commencements for students whose high school graduations were derailed by Covid-19 in 2020. Another campus shaken by protests, Emory University, announced on Monday that it would move its commencement from its Atlanta campus to a suburban arena. Others, including the University of Michigan, Indiana University and Northeastern University, have pulled off ceremonies with few disruptions.

Columbia’s decision to cancel its main ceremony, scheduled for 15 May, saves its president, Minouche Shafik, from having to deliver a commencement address in the same part of campus where police dismantled a protest encampment last week. The Ivy League school in upper Manhattan said it had made the decision after discussions with students.

“Our students emphasized that these smaller-scale, school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families,” officials said.

Most of the ceremonies that had been scheduled for the south lawn of the main campus, where encampments were taken down last week, will take place about five miles north at Columbia’s sports complex, officials said.

Speakers at some of Columbia’s still-scheduled graduation ceremonies include the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames and Dr Monica Bertagnolli, director of the National Institutes of Health.

Columbia had already canceled in-person classes. More than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green or occupied an academic building were arrested in recent weeks.

Similar encampments sprouted up elsewhere as universities struggled with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.

On Monday evening, a group of students at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence used tables and chairs to barricade the entrance to the second floor of a building on campus, preventing police from getting in, according to a report from the Brown Daily Herald, a student publication at nearby Brown University.

The protest was organized by Risd Students for Justice in Palestine, who said they would not leave the building until president Crystal Williams met their demands for fiscal transparency around investments, “holistic” divestment from groups involved with “sustaining Israel apartheid”, establishing a student oversight committee for investments and publicly condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

The University of Southern California earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony. Students abandoned their camp at USC on Sunday after being surrounded by police and threatened with arrest.

Other universities have held graduation ceremonies with beefed-up security. The University of Michigan’s ceremony was interrupted by chanting a few times on Saturday. In Boston on Sunday, some students waved small Palestinian or Israeli flags at Northeastern University’s commencement in Fenway Park.

At the University of California, San Diego, police cleared an encampment and arrested more than 64 people, including 40 students, on Monday.

The University of California, Los Angeles, moved all classes online for the entire week due to continuing disruptions following the dismantling of an encampment last week. The university police force reported 44 arrests on Monday but there were no specific details, the UCLA spokesperson Eddie North-Hager said in an email to the Associated Press.

Schools are trying various tactics from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action to get protesters to take down encampments or move to campus areas where demonstrations would be less intrusive.

A group of faculty and staff members at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill asked the administration for amnesty for any students who were arrested and suspended during recent protests. UNC Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine said in a media advisory that it would deliver a letter on behalf of more than 500 faculty who support the student activists.

Other universities took a different approach.

Harvard University’s interim president, Alan Garber, warned students that those participating in a pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard could face “involuntary leave”. That means they would not be allowed on campus, could lose their student housing and might not be able to take exams, Garber said.

If Erik ten Hag’s future at Manchester United remained up for debate then surely this removed any lingering doubts for Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Even amid a season in which his team have lurched from one disaster to another, a scintillating performance from a Crystal Palace side inspired by the magical feet of Michael Olise delivered one of the most embarrassing evenings of the Dutchman’s tenure.

United’s European aspirations for next season may now have to rely on them beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final after two goals from Olise, Jean-Philippe Mateta’s ninth in 11 since the appointment of Oliver Glasner and another from Tyrick Mitchell gave Palace a league double over their opponents for the first time in Premier League history. The scant consolation for Ten Hag was that Palace could not find a fifth to match their record victory over United back in December 1972 after the substitute Odsonne Édouard hit a post late on. For reference, that result led to the sacking of the manager, Frank O’Farrell, three days later.

Ten Hag should at least make it through to the end of the season but faces a mammoth task to lift his despondent players after this chastening defeat in south London. Palace have now picked up four victories in their last five matches under Glasner and look like a team who don’t want the season to end. But while Gareth Southgate – watching on from the stands at his former club – would have been impressed with Eberechi Eze and pleased to see Marc Guéhi make his return as a substitute as he aims to prove his fitness in time for the Euros after three months out, it was Olise who stole the show.

The former Reading forward has opted to play for France Under-21s, although he remains eligible for England. Having now been directly involved in 13 goals in his last nine starts here, the 22-year-old would certainly be under consideration if he ever changes his mind.

In the absence of the sidelined Bruno Fernandes and Harry Maguire, the extent of United’s injury list meant that two of the substitutes were goalkeepers and four had never made a senior appearance. Jarred Gillett, the referee, made history by wearing a head-mounted ­RefCam, with ­footage to be broadcast at a later date, and his first decision was to wave away Mitchell’s appeals for a penalty after a challenge from Jonny Evans.

It was not long until Palace found a way through United’s porous defence as the familiar failings returned, however. A sublime piece of skill from Olise after he received Daniel Muñoz’s throw-in left Casemiro sprawling in the centre circle as the forward sped away before clipping a precise shot past André Onana from the edge of the penalty area. “Professionals shouldn’t allow this,” was Ten Hag’s verdict. “It’s not the first time this season it has happened.”

The electric Olise could have had a hat-trick inside the first 23 minutes had Mateta not blocked his goalbound shot after he was again set up by Muñoz before shooting straight at Onana. The visitors’ hopes of a quick equaliser were dashed when Gillett ruled Rasmus Højlund had impeded Dean Henderson, the former United goalkeeper, as he jumped for the ball.

United were fortunate Olise could not capitalise on a slip from Kobbie Mainoo that left him clean through on goal. Onana then almost came unstuck when trying to clear under pressure from Mateta and sliced the ball out of play to the delight of the home fans. But United’s luck could not hold forever and Ten Hag looked on forlornly when Chris Richards fed Mateta after winning possession. The in-form striker powered past the helpless Evans before smashing his shot into the net.

United’s players were sent out into the rain early for the second half but Palace continued where they left off as Eze volleyed Nathaniel Clyne’s cross straight at Onana. Casemiro thought he had pulled one back when he stabbed home after his header came back off a post, only to be flagged offside by almost a metre.

That only seemed to provoke Palace as a wonderful backheel by Olise through the legs of Casemiro teed up Eze to curl just wide before Mitchell and then Will Hughes were denied by Onana. United were clearly there for the taking and Adam Wharton’s brilliant cross allowed Joachim Andersen to set up Mitchell to tap home from close range. Ten Hag’s response was to replace Antony with Sofyan Amrabat in an attempt to keep the score respectable. But only Casemiro will know why he allowed Muñoz the opportunity to steal the ball near the byline and free Olise to hammer home a fourth.

The double substitution of Olise and Eze to a standing ovation ended the torment of United’s defenders for the evening. To their credit, the away supporters kept singing until the bitter end but it remains to be seen if their manager can survive beyond this campaign.

Things had been tense at the University of California, Los Angeles, with some ugly jibes and the occasional shove exchanged between students who support Israel’s war on Gaza and those who have set up encampments to call for a permanent ceasefire and the university’s divestment from companies that arm and otherwise profit from Israel’s occupation and military incursions in the Palestinian territories.

But what happened in the middle of the night last Tuesday was no scuffle. It was not even one more of the outsized, excessively brutal raids that college administrations have invited the police to inflict on their students.

Since the previous Thursday, groups of ever-more aggressive counter-protesters had beset the Palestine solidarity tent village on UCLA’s Dickson Plaza. Then, just before 11pm on 30 April, at least a 100 masked young men stormed the camp. They announced their presence by blasting the sounds of screaming babies from loudspeakers. They shined strobe lights, sprayed irritant gases and launched firecrackers at the encampment. One landed in the middle of the tents, eliciting screams from the occupants. The besieged protesters called for help – at least five people were already injured – but none came.

The mob breached the metal barricades around the camp, kicked in its plywood walls, and began stomping and beating the campers with fists and poles. At this point, a two-sided melee began. The Daily Bruin, the student paper, reported that some blasts of gas appeared to come from inside the camp. A text from the UC Divest Coalition sent around 1140pm, however, said that the encampment members do not possess teargas and were using “community defense” and wearing goggles to protect themselves.

Unlike at other colleges – such as New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, where cops alerted by the administration mustered in riot gear practically before students pitched their tents – UCLA, in the persons of its security guards and campus police, watched the chaos and did nothing. Unarmed guards hired by the university retreated to a campus building and locked the doors behind them. A handful of UC police officers showed up at 11.13pm and left less than 10 minutes later. John Thomas, the UCPD chief, said that officers came under attack while trying to help an injured person and left. The Los Angeles police department did not arrive until around 1.30am or quell the violence until after 3.00am. A video posted at around 3.30am caught UC security standing a distance away, filming the action on their phones.

Twenty-five members of the encampment were hospitalized overnight. No attackers were arrested. In an editorial addressed to the UCLA chancellor the next day, the Bruin asked: “Will someone have to die tonight for you to intervene?”

On Thursday, UCLA intervened. It called in the LAPD and highway patrol, who arrived early in the morning in body armor, face shields and helmets. They tore down the plywood, shooting flash bangs and at least one rubber bullet. The protesters sprayed fire extinguishers back at them. In contrast to the nights before, this time the cops braved the blows and accomplished their tasks efficiently. By mid-morning, more than 200 students had been arrested, booked and released from custody, the encampment was dismantled and trash was cleared from the site.

The foreign press called the attacks what they were. Al Jazeera described the event as an “assault” that “followed days of harassment”. The BBC, indicating that the evidence spoke for itself, simply posted a video under the headline, “Watch: Counter-protesters attack UCLA pro-Palestinian camp.”

Most of the US press refrained from assigning blame. They called the events “clashes” and described the assaults in the passive voice. “Barriers were breached,” said CBS News. The New York Times reported that “fistfights broke out, chemicals were sprayed into the air and people were kicked or beaten with poles.”

Since the start, Fox News had openly blamed the members of the encampments, many of them Jewish, for victimizing Jews around campus and applauded the police crackdowns. But with the police uncharacteristically absent and the campers unmistakably the victims, it was hard to control the narrative. Even Fox’s Jew-on-the-scene, student Eli Tsives, slipped, calling the attackers a “mob”.

Joe Biden weighed in from the White House. In a statement, he strung together diverse acts –“vandalism, trespassing”, “forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations”, “threatening people”– ending each list with “This is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law.” He added: “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent … but neither are we a lawless country.”

Like the press and the police, the president performed several sleights of rhetoric. He mixed violent acts with non-violent acts. He conflated school policy with law and illegality with lawlessness, a word connoting anarchy. Apparently, he has not heard of non-violent civil disobedience – lawbreaking in resistance to unjust laws or policies – which Henry David Thoreau called a “duty” to democracy. In fact, the campus occupations are versions of the sit-ins of the Black civil rights movement, illegal trespass that has since been sacralized in the annals of American freedom.

Biden also declined to specify who committed any of the acts he condemned, letting the impression float that the culprits are the anti-war protesters.

Who were these UCLA counter-protesters? Tsives said they looked to be in their late 20s and claimed that they were locals who had “had enough” of antisemitism. Another witness, Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, a videographer who has covered political actions around Los Angeles, knew them better. “I saw people that I’ve seen at Trump rallies,” he told Al Jazeera. “I’ve seen them at anti-LGBTQ protests.” Unlike the pro-Israel students who gather during the day, these guys were not wearing yarmulkes or carrying blue-and-white flags. They were chanting “USA! USA!” At Columbia, the Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was spotted trying to enter the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

The media’s focus on the encampments, simultaneously obsessive and blurry, has diverted attention from the war itself and the protesters’ message, which they repeat whenever they speak: the Palestinian death toll is approaching 35,000. After six months of merciless onslaught, Israel will receive $15bn in unconditioned US military aid. Netanyahu has announced plans to invade Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million people are sheltering, even if a hostage deal is reached. UN workers in Gaza have coined a new term for the psychological state of the people: rather than post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, they are suffering CTSD –constant traumatic stress disorder.

But something else is sliding past popular attention: the meaning of the events at UCLA. Vigilantes staged an assault on unarmed civilians and the state let it happen. This has occurred many times before in US history, particularly when the victims were African American. Still, it is historic.

Is this the mayhem Trump promises at every rally? Is this what we can expect if he loses the election – or if he wins? Have the brownshirts been unleashed? Whatever it augurs, the eve of May Day 2024 must be marked. While across the nation law enforcers are being ordered to commit violence against peaceful, unarmed citizens, in LA they tacitly deputized a mob to police the political speech – and people – that both the police and the mob despise. And by action or inaction, speech or silence, educational leaders, civil authorities and the president condoned this police-enabled civilian violence, this real anarchy.

At UCLA we witnessed legally sanctioned lawlessness. It is more terrible and more politically momentous than anything a civilian can ever do.

• Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept, and the author of five books

Two college freshmen who, during their final year of high school, found a new way to prove Pythagoras’s theorem by using trigonometry – which mathematicians for generations thought was impossible – have since uncovered multiple more such proofs, they revealed in a national interview on Sunday.

“We found five, and then we found a general format that could potentially produce at least five additional proofs,” Calcea Johnson said on CBS’s 60 Minutes, a little more than a year after she and Ne’Kiya Jackson collaborated on an accomplishment that earned them international recognition.

Nonetheless, in comments that stunned their interviewer, Bill Whitaker, the two graduates of St Mary’s Academy in New Orleans denied seeing themselves as math geniuses and dismissed any interest in pursuing careers in mathematics.

“People might expect too much out of me if I become a mathematician,” Jackson said, shaking her head. Johnson, for her part, added: “I may take up a minor in math, but I don’t want that to be my job job.”

Sunday’s conversation on CBS’s popular Sunday evening news magazine were perhaps their most extensive, widely broadcast remarks to date on the new ground that they broke with respect to the Pythagorean theorem.

The 2,000-year-old theorem established that the sum of the squares of a right triangle’s two shorter sides equals the square of the hypotenuse – the third, longest side opposite the shape’s right angle. Countless schoolchildren taking geometry have memorized the notation summarizing the theorem: a² + b² = c².

For 2,000 years, mathematicians maintained that any alleged proof of the Pythagorean theorem that was based in trigonometry would constitute a logical fallacy known as circular reason – in essence, trying to validate an idea with the idea itself.

But the bonus question on a math contest that Johnson and Jackson took home to complete during the Christmas break of their final year at St Mary’s served as the impetus for them to plot out a new way to demonstrate that one could indeed use trigonometry to prove Pythagoras’s theorem.

Their work was so compelling that the pair went to a regional meeting of the American Mathematical Society in Atlanta in March 2023 to outline their findings. At the organization’s recommendation, Jackson and Johnson have submitted their discoveries for final peer review and publication – as well as working on additional proofs while that process is pending, as 60 Minutes noted.

The 60 Minutes interview gave Johnson and Jackson occasion to reflect on the intense reaction caused by initial media reports on their innovative work at St Mary’s, a Catholic high school that has been dedicated to educating Black girls since its founding shortly after the US civil war.

Some of it was negative. Some in the math community smarted at claims in a press release issued by St Mary’s that asserted Jackson and Johnson’s research was “unprecedented”. And they flocked to social media demanding that a 2009 trigonometry-based proof for Pythagoras’s theorem get its due.

Yet a lot of the reaction to Johnson and Jackson was positive, especially as mathematicians who picked apart their work confirmed that – by all indications – they had arrived at a valid new proof, a celebration-worthy accomplishment.

Michelle Obama wrote a post on social media that linked to a story about Johnson and Jackson, adding the text: “I just love this story. … Way to go, Ne’Kiya and Calcea! I’m rooting for you and can’t wait to see what you all do next.”

They also received a commendation from Louisiana’s then governor as well as symbolic keys to the city of New Orleans.

Asked on 60 Minutes why they thought people were so impressed with what they had done, Jackson said she thought the public was surprised young Black women could author such a feat.

“I’d like to be celebrated for what it is,” Jackson said. “Like – it’s a great mathematical achievement.”

Jackson is now attending New Orleans’ Xavier University and enrolled in its pharmacy department. Meanwhile, Johnson – who graduated from St Mary’s as its valedictorian – is now an environmental engineering student at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.