British police surrounded a G8 protest campsite yesterday after a day of sometimes violent confrontation around the summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations.
Officers said they had thrown a security cordon around the campsite in the town of Stirling, 32km south of Gleneagles, to protect public safety. They were allowing protesters to come and go as long as they submitted to body searches. They said everything was quiet. But protesters, who say there are upwards of 3,000 people inside the camp, insisted they were being kept in.
Police said they made 91 arrests on Wednesday and seized several weapons including an axe, a machete and a high-powered catapult with ball-bearing ammunition. Eight police officers were injured in the clashes, but none seriously.
PHOTO: AP
The leaders of the G8 are meeting amid tight security at the Gleneagles hotel golf resort, 64km northwest of Edinburgh, to tackle African poverty and global warming. They were expected to make an announcement on global warming later yesterday and to wrap up the summit this afternoon.
politicians upstaged
Fighting for the poor has never been so cool as at the golf resort of Gleneagles, where the scruffy duo of Bob Geldof and Bono on Wednesday upstaged the world's most powerful men.
A media scrum of hundreds of journalists and star-struck officials greeted the two singers as they described their attempts to persuade G8 leaders to double aid to Africa.
Geldof wore a pin-striped blue jacket, but not quite in the style that the world leaders, or even the usually genteel clientele at Gleneagles golf club would recognize -- with no tie, shirt open and his long hair reaching down to the collar.
Next to him, Bono sported wrap-around sunglasses and a backwards baseball cap. Clearly the rockers and professional politicians make odd partners.
"It's equally unhip, it turns out, for the politicians to hang out with us, as it is unhip for us to hang out with them," Bono said.
For the men in suits who dominate G8 summits it must be a shock having to argue with unshaven entertainers in leather jackets.
But the celebrity campaigners have become pros in the high-stakes diplomatic debate over African poverty. Geldof is certainly not overawed by the trappings of power. He'd met Bush, he said, and found him "bullish," but open to discussion. Following the failure of Paris to secure the 2012 Olympic games, French President Jacques Chirac was probably "a bit glum," Geldof joked.
And neither the former Boomtown Rats lead singer nor Bono would take second place in a speechwriting competition.
"There is a lot at stake -- not only African lives ... but faith in the political system itself," Bono said, sounding like a politician.
"This isn't a sum of money. ... What they are talking about is 50,000 dead tomorrow and 50,000 dead the next day," Geldof said, no slouch in the battle of the soundbites.
Alongside them on the podium were Hollywood actor George Clooney, the hit Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour and Kenya's Nobel peace prize winner Wangari Maathai -- a line up bound to make the official photographs of the G8 leaders seem dull by comparison.
Unlike veteran activists Geldof and Bono, little had been known to date about Clooney's interest in African poverty. "I came in late to this game. I'm ashamed of how late I was," said the star of Ocean's Eleven and other hits. And what had brought him aboard? Brad Pitt.
"I was lucky enough to talk to Bono and Brad Pitt," Clooney said. "He said, '`wake up.'"
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
RSS