Three people were arrested in Vancouver when a protest over development costs for the 2010 Winter Olympics turned violent.
About 50 protesters had gathered on Monday night at Vancouver Public Library where a city budget meeting was being held to discuss, in part, an Olympic fund. Police said the crowd had to be controlled after one protester made a grab for an officer's gun belt.
The Vancouver Anti-Poverty Committee criticized funding for the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Vancouver and nearby Whistler.
"Wedged between budget recommendations from the city is a proposal for a $20 million slush fund that will be extorted from public funds," a protest notice on the committee's Web site said. "The money wasted on the Olympics could have housed every homeless woman in Vancouver."
City councilor Peter Ladner, who had to be escorted out of the building by police, said the city has proposed putting aside C$5 million (US$4.4 million) a year for the next four years for Olympic legacy projects. He said the meeting was to get public input on the budget proposals.
"There was a level of violence last night that we weren't ready for," Vancouver Police Department spokesman Tim Fanning said.
During the melee one protester grabbed for a female officer's belt, which held her handgun, baton and pepper spray.
Charges were filed against three protesters, include assaulting an officer, causing a disturbance and obstructing an officer.
A civic association representing Vancouver's Downtown Eastside -- considered one of the poorest neighborhoods in Canada -- recently said that hundreds would lose their homes in cheap hotels as developers sought to turn them into Olympic accommodations.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier