Latest developments G8, G20

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(Canadian Press)

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The G8 leaders meet this morning in Huntsville, Ont., to discuss two of the world's nuclear trouble spots, Iran and North Korea, along with global economic issues.

Canada has pledged $1.1 billion to its global initiative on maternal and child health for developing countries, announcing the money on the first day of the G8 summit near Huntsville, Ont.

Meanwhile, police forces in charge of security for the G20 in Toronto have been granted special powers for the duration of that summit. Under the new regulations, anyone who comes within five metres of the security fence is obliged to give police their name and state the purpose of their visit.

The first sizable protest during the G20 summit began Friday afternoon, with at least 2,000 people gathering at a park east of downtown Toronto before taking to the streets. A few hundred people later set up tents at the same park, where they said they will camp for the weekend.

A judge has dismissed a motion that sought to ban police use of so-called sound cannons to control crowds during the G20 summit in Toronto. While Friday's decision allows police to use the devices, it also places limits on how they can use them.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/05/26/f-g8-huntsville-g20-toronto.html#ixzz0rxteED7p



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Police arrest more than 500 at Toronto summit
AP



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A protester kicks a burnt-out car as a police vehicle burns in the background during an anti-G20 demonstration Saturday, June 26, 2010 in Toronto. (AP AP – A protester kicks a burnt-out car as a police vehicle burns in the background during an anti-G20 demonstration …

* G-20 Summit Protests Slideshow:G-20 Summit Protests

By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press Writer Rob Gillies, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 16 mins ago

TORONTO – Police conducted a large raid and rounded up more protesters Sunday in an effort to quell further violence at the global economic summit after black-clad youths rampaged through the city, smashing windows and torching police cruisers.

Police said they have arrested more than 500 demonstrators, many of whom were hauled away in plastic handcuffs and taken to a temporary holding center constructed for the summit.

Thousands of police in riot gear formed cordons to prevent radical anti-globalization demonstrations from breaching the steel and concrete security fence surrounding the Group of 20 summit site.

Toronto Police Sgt. Tim Burrows said police made at least 50 arrests in a Sunday morning raid on a building on the campus of the University of Toronto, where they seized a cache of "street-type weaponry" such as bricks, sticks and rocks.

"We think we put a dent in their numbers with this and with the arrests that happened overnight," Burrows said.

The disorder and vandalism occurred just blocks from where U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders were meeting and staying.

"What we saw yesterday is a bunch of thugs that pretend to have a difference of opinion with policies and instead choose violence to express those so-called differences of opinion," Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief spokesman Dimitri Soudas said Sunday.

The streets of downtown Toronto were quiet at daylight, but protesters gathered Sunday morning at a park near the detention center — about 2.5 miles (four kilometers) east of where the leaders are meeting.

Police went into the crowd and made some arrests, adopting a more aggressive strategy than the previous day when they stood back as protesters torched four police cars and broke store windows.

Thee protest outside the temporary holding facility was quickly broken up by riot police, who set off a warning device that created a cloud of smoke before they chased the group down the street.

About 100 demonstrators chanted, "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!'"

Burrows said many of those involved in the violent protests were Canadian. He added that authorities had known of their plans for some time.

"We're not sure we have the leaders, but we have a large proportion of those people and the people who decided they wanted to be influenced by these violent protesters and join with their cause," Burrows said. "A lot of them were home grown. There's a lot of Canadian talent in the group."

Two security guards at a downtown department store witnessed two men emerging from a manhole around 1:30 a.m. more than four blocks north of the security perimeter. The windows of the Hudson's Bay Company store had been damaged earlier during the protests.

"I noticed the manhole cover pop up off the ground and I saw two guys pop up," security guard Peter Panagopoulos said. "My partner saw the police, waved them down. ... In about two minutes there were about 30 to 40 police officers here and they just were all over the boys."

Panagopoulous said he was "freaked out."

"You never know what the hell is going down — there could be bombs. Who knows what is down there."

Police later welded the manhole cover.

Thousands of police headed to Toronto to reinforce security there after the smaller Group of Eight summit ended Saturday in Huntsville, Ontario, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) away. Security was being provided by an estimated 19,000 law enforcement officers drawn from across Canada, and security costs were estimated at more than US$900 million.

Saturday's protests began with a peaceful march, sponsored by labor unions and dubbed family friendly, that was the largest demonstration planned during the summit weekend. Its organizers had hoped to draw a crowd of 10,000, but only about half that number turned out on a rainy day.

Police in riot gear and riding bikes formed a blockade, keeping protesters from approaching the security fence a few blocks south of the march route. Police closed a stretch of Toronto's subway system along the protest route and the largest shopping mall downtown closed after the protest took a turn for the worse.

The black-clad demonstrators broke off from the larger crowd of peaceful protesters and began torching police cars and smashing shop windows.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said the goal of the militant protesters was to draw police away from the security perimeter of the summit so that fellow protesters could attempt to disrupt the meeting.

Some police officers were struck by rocks and bottles and assaulted, but none was injured badly enough to stop working, Blair said.

"We have never seen that level of wanton criminality and vandalism and destruction on our streets," Blair said.

Previous global summit protests have turned violent. In 1999, 50,000 protesters shut down World Trade Organization sessions in Seattle as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. There were some 600 arrests and $3 million in property damage. One man died after clashes with police at a G-20 meeting held in London in April 2009.

At the September G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke and rubber bullets at marchers.

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Associated Press Writers Ian Harrison and Charmaine Noronha contributed to this report.


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Toronto police fire tear gas on G20 protesters
Reuters

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Activists march during a protest ahead of the G20 Summit in downtown Toronto Reuters – Activists march during a protest ahead of the G20 Summit in downtown Toronto, June 25, 2010. About 2,000 …
By Cameron French and Pav Jordan Cameron French And Pav Jordan – 1 hr 45 mins ago

TORONTO (Reuters) – Police in Toronto fired tear gas on protesters for a second straight day on Sunday as new violence surrounding the G20 summit erupted and the arrest tally climbed above 500.

The latest clashes occurred as several hundred protesters marched on a temporary detention center for demonstrators arrested in riots on Saturday during which police used tear gas against the public for the first time ever in Canada's most populous city.

A police spokeswoman confirmed that officers on Sunday fired what are known as muzzle blasts, or "individual applications of tear gas" that are used typically against individuals at close range.

A Reuters witness in front of a former film studio in Toronto's port area where police are detaining protesters said he heard a loud "thunk" and saw clouds of smoke billow before police charged, scattering the crowd.

The weekend violence started on Saturday afternoon after groups of masked anarchists broke away from a larger, peaceful demonstration against the Group of 20 summit of rich and emerging economies, which ends on Sunday.

Protesters, many dressed in black gear, smashed windows of downtown stores and banks and torched police cars in a protest that police finally brought under control with tear gas and mass arrests.

"What we're prepared for today is more of what we saw yesterday," a police spokesman said. "We'd like to see demonstrations remain peaceful."

'BUNCH OF THUGS'

After a day when police admitted losing control of a violent and fast-moving crowd, the arrests came fast on Sunday.

Among those detained, for charges ranging from mischief to assaulting police, were four people who climbed through the sewer system and emerged near the lock-down area where world leaders were attending the summit. Police said they were urgently sealing sewer access near the zone.

A "large number" of people were detained in a raid at the University of Toronto's downtown campus, and police said they seized weapons, including bricks, rocks and sticks.

"What we saw yesterday ... is a bunch of thugs that pretend to have a difference of opinion with policies and instead choose violence in order to express those so-called differences of opinion," Dimitri Soudas, spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told a news conference.

Anti-G20 groups started demonstrating in Toronto before the summit, which followed a smaller meeting of Group of Eight industrial nations in a resort town north of Toronto. The security bill is set to come in at about $1 billion.

Such international meetings have been the target of protest groups for years, including demonstrations that disrupted trade talks in Seattle in 1999.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren and Claire Sibonney; Editing by Peter Cooney)