Meadows – who had brain surgery after allegedly being hit by truncheon – charged with violent disorder A student who had to have brain surgery after he was allegedly hit by a truncheon during the tuition fees protests in central London on 9 December is among 11 males aged between 15 and 25 charged in connection with violence at the event. Alfie Meadows, 20, faces a charge of violent disorder. It brings the total number of people charged as a result of the disturbances to 13, a figure which may increase, according to the Metropolitan police. Meadows is said to have fallen unconscious on the way to hospital after being struck as he tried to leave an area outside Westminster Abbey during the protests. The incident has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The 11 men include six who are facing charges of violent disorder, one who faces two counts of criminal damage, and another who was charged with affray. Three males aged 15, 16 and 17 were charged with violent disorder and will appear at west London youth court on 24 May, while the eight older individuals will appear at City of Westminster magistrates court on 9 June. In addition, a 16-year-old youth also received a final warning for possession of cannabis, and affray. More than 50 people were injured during the disturbances, including Meadows and a police officer who sustained serious neck injuries, while dozens of arrests were made. According to police, scuffles first broke out after the protest, which had been called by a loose coalition of student groups who deviated from an agreed route. Tuition fees Students Higher education Protest Police London Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Lindsay Lohan might be facing another stint in jail and is definitely in store for some grim community service , but at least she scored a standing ovation on the Tonight Show . Lohan taped an appearance with Jay Leno that will air tonight, and apparently the crowd loved her, the Daily…
Continue reading …Boulder police tracked down and arrested bombing suspect Earl Albert Moore this morning at a suburban grocery store—where he was spotted drinking coffee at the in-store Starbucks—concluding a nationwide manhunt, the Denver Post and the AP report. Authorities believe Moore planted a pipe bomb and two propane tanks…
Continue reading …Keith Olbermann fans finally have their date: June 20. That’s when the former MSNBC anchor will return to the air, this time on Current TV , with a nightly show at 8pm EST. The name is easy to remember: Countdown With Keith Olbermann . “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he…
Continue reading …Paula Bonhomme met volunteer firefighter Jesse Jubilee James on an online message board in 2005. Emails and letters led to near-daily phone calls, and in 2006, Bonhomme left her unhappy marriage and planned to move to Colorado to be with James, even though they’d never met face to face. But…
Continue reading …NATO’s airstrike against one of Moammar Gadhafi’s military compounds in Tripoli appears to be just the start of what amounts to Phase 3 of the anti-Gadhafi campaign. The first phase took out anti-aircraft systems, the second hit tanks on the front lines, and now, as Reuters and the New York…
Continue reading …Hundreds of prisoners are still at large the day after a massive jailbreak in Afghanistan , but officials say Afghan and international forces have caught 65 of them and killed two. The justice minister acknowledged in a letter to President Hamid Karzai that the Taliban, which has claimed to have orchestrated…
Continue reading …
Homes are being torn down and pests and squatters are taking over the rubble of Favela do Metrô, but hundreds of families remain with nowhere else to go From the roof of his home in the Favela do Metrô, Eomar Freitas enjoys one of the best views in town. Look south and you see the Christ the Redeemer statue towering over Rio’s mountains. To the north stands the green and pink headquarters of Mangueira, the city’s best-loved samba school. And in between, one of the world’s top sporting venues, the blue and grey Maracanã stadium, which will host the final of the 2014 football World Cup. “We worked hard to build this place,” said Freitas, 35 and unemployed, whose family moved to Rio from Brazil’s impoverished north-east 20 years ago. They built a four-storey home where their wooden shack once stood. “It was a great place to live,” he said. Not any more. Since February, nearly all of the buildings surrounding Freitas’s home have been levelled as part of work to revamp the city’s infrastructure before the World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Redbrick shacks have been cracked open by earth-diggers. Streets are covered in a thick carpet of rubble, litter and twisted metal. By night, crack addicts squat in abandoned shacks, filling sitting rooms with empty bottles, filthy mattresses and crack pipes improvised from plastic cups. The stench of human excrement hangs in the air. “It looks like you are in Iraq or Libya,” Freitas said, wading across mounds of
Continue reading …Homes are being torn down and pests and squatters are taking over the rubble of Favela do Metrô, but hundreds of families remain with nowhere else to go From the roof of his home in the Favela do Metrô, Eomar Freitas enjoys one of the best views in town. Look south and you see the Christ the Redeemer statue towering over Rio’s mountains. To the north stands the green and pink headquarters of Mangueira, the city’s best-loved samba school. And in between, one of the world’s top sporting venues, the blue and grey Maracanã stadium, which will host the final of the 2014 football World Cup. “We worked hard to build this place,” said Freitas, 35 and unemployed, whose family moved to Rio from Brazil’s impoverished north-east 20 years ago. They built a four-storey home where their wooden shack once stood. “It was a great place to live,” he said. Not any more. Since February, nearly all of the buildings surrounding Freitas’s home have been levelled as part of work to revamp the city’s infrastructure before the World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Redbrick shacks have been cracked open by earth-diggers. Streets are covered in a thick carpet of rubble, litter and twisted metal. By night, crack addicts squat in abandoned shacks, filling sitting rooms with empty bottles, filthy mattresses and crack pipes improvised from plastic cups. The stench of human excrement hangs in the air. “It looks like you are in Iraq or Libya,” Freitas said, wading across mounds of
Continue reading …
Long-time Texas politician and Tea Party favourite has made a key step on the official route to the White House Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican congressman beloved of many Tea Party supporters, has announced he is exploring a 2012 presidential bid. The move is a key step on the official route towards announcing a final candidacy and thrusts the long-time Texas politician into a Republican field that has been more marked by hesitancy than any apparent fervent desire to take on Barack Obama. Paul will now make a final decision in May. He joins a field of other Republicans who have also formed so-called “exploratory committees” that includes relatively well-known names like former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and former House speaker Newt Gingrich. But many pundits see the emerging Republican field as short on the kind of name recognition and charisma that will be needed to challenge an incumbent president, even in the face of a still struggling American economy that has hurt Obama’s poll ratings. Some big Republican names, like Mississippi governor Hayley Barbour, have already announced they will not run and powerful figures like former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee also appear to be reluctant. Paul announced his move to a small audience in an airport hotel in Des Moines, Iowa, which conducts the opening contest in the nomination race. A win in the midwestern state is often seen as a vital springboard to eventual victory. Paul is a controversial figure whose anti-government views chime well with many Tea Party activists. But he also wants to slash the defence budget and is a well-known anti-war campaigner; stances which might not go down well with conservative Republicans. He has also run for president before in 1988 and then again in 2008 when John McCain eventually secured the nomination. That race saw Paul fail to breakthrough electorally but he attracted a fervent core of supporters, who were often young college students, and that made him a virtual cult figure on the right. However, in Des Moines, Paul insisted that events of the last three years made another run more likely to succeed. “I believe there are literally millions of more people now concerned about the very things I talked about four years ago,” he said, pointing to government spending, recent political clashes over budget cuts and a ballooning deficit. Ron Paul Republicans US elections 2012 Tea Party movement United States US politics Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …