Protests persist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), one of the top public universities in the United States, demanding a ceasefire in Gaze and divestment from companies linked to Israel.
Protesters have gathered and built a protest encampment outside the Royce Hall in support of Palestinians since last Thursday.
The UCLA rally came one day after a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war was staged at the Los Angeles campus of University of Southern California (USC), where 93 protesters were arrested Wednesday night by the Los Angeles Police Department after hours of clashing with the police.
Sunday even witnessed a brief skirmish between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA. Both sides had remained peaceful until Sunday as the size of the encampment expanded in recent days and counter-protesters have become increasingly vocal and visible on the campus.
The clash led to a larger police presence on the campus. Barriers have been set up by campus security to create a buffer between the encampment and the rest of the university community.
Some said that the encampment and barriers are now starting to disrupt their daily lives.
Organizers of the "UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment" said in a statement that "we will not be silent while Gaza is being annihilated."
"You know, if it does disrupt UCLA, that's kind of the goal, because we are trying to get UCLA to sit down at the bargaining table and talk about divestment," said Kaia Shah, the encampment spokesperson.
The protests have received growing support not just from students but also employees at the university.
"I support the people who are against the genocide in Palestine. And I think we should stop! A ceasefire should come into effect and stop killing people," said a staff member.
Pro-Palestinian protests continue at UCLA
China's service outsourcing industry saw robust expansion in the first four months of this year, the Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday.
Chinese firms inked services outsourcing contracts worth a total of some 781.43 billion yuan (about 110 billion U.S. dollars) in the four-month period, up 14.4 percent year on year, according to the ministry.
The executed contract value stood at 520.51 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9 percent.
Of the total, the value of offshore service outsourcing contracts rose 8.6 percent year on year to 419.04 billion yuan.
Specifically, the value of offshore information technology outsourcing (ITO) services provided by Chinese companies jumped by 10.9 percent from a year earlier.
China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the United States and the European Union ranked the top three markets in terms of the fulfilled contract value of offshore outsourcing service, accounting for 54 percent of the total.
Chinese firms undertook nearly 80 billion yuan(about 14.93 billion U.S. dollars) worth of offshore service outsourcing contracts that were fulfilled with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, up 24 percent from a year ago, while the offshore outsourcing services for Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) member countries totaled 73.26 billion yuan, up 16.6 percent year on year.
Outsourcing refers to hiring an outside party to carry out services or produce goods typically undertaken by in-house employees. In China, service outsourcing is typically divided into three sectors: information technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing.
In the January-April period, the service outsourcing industry welcomed about 301,000 new hires, with 84.7 percent of these individuals holding a bachelor's degree or above. The sector had over 16.17 million employees at the end of April, among whom some 10.56 million were graduates with a bachelor's degree or higher.
China's service outsourcing industry reports robust expansion
