Apocalyptic Church

news.sky.com

Many parts of Bangkok are ablaze after the Thai army smashed the Red Shirts’ protest and ordered a curfew across the capital.

Protesters set fire to the offices of a Channel 3 TV station in Bangkok, trapping 100 people inside.

Other parts of the city have been burning with fires at the Stock Exchange, several banks, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Electricity Authority, and the upmarket Central World shopping mall, one of the biggest shopping centres in southeast Asia.

The Foreign Office is now advising against all travel to Bangkok in view of the “highly uncertain” security situation.

In a statement it said: “We judge that the risk to the safety of British nationals has increased and have amended our travel advice accordingly.”
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telegraph.co.uk

Protesters angry at Ireland’s multi-billion efforts to bail out its banks have tried to storm the entrance of the Irish parliament and several have been injured in scuffles with police.

Police say officers staffing the wrought-iron gates drew batons and forced back several dozen protesters. They said the protesters’ injuries were minor and none were arrested.

Tens of billions’ worth of dud property loans are being transferred from five Irish banks to a new government-run “bad bank.” The government also has bought multi-billion stakes in Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland.

Gardai said one officer received a minor facial injury during the scuffle.
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news.yahoo.com

ATHENS, Greece – Riots over harsh new austerity measures left three bank workers dead and engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday, as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings. Police responded with barrages of tear gas.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in a nationwide strike to protest new taxes and government spending cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations before heavily indebted Greece gets a euro110 billion ($141 billion) loan package to keep it from defaulting.

The three bank workers — a man and two women — died after demonstrators set their bank on fire along the main demonstration route in central Athens. As their colleagues sobbed in the street, five other bank workers were rescued from the balcony of the burning building.
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news.yahoo.com

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thai troops fired live rounds and rubber bullets at charging anti-government protesters in a chaotic clash that killed a soldier and wounded 18 people on a congested highway in Bangkok’s suburbs on Wednesday.

The troops had formed a roadblock to stop about 2,000 “red shirt” protesters who left their main protest site in central Bangkok’s shopping district on pickup trucks and motorbikes in defiance of a state of emergency and despite repeated warnings.

About 100 protesters had moved ahead of the main convoy, charging at security forces, who at first used batons and shields to push them back, witnesses said. Some red shirts hurled stones, shot metal balls from sling-shots and launched fireworks at the soldiers.

Troops fired back with rubber bullets followed by live rounds, at first in the air and then narrowly over protesters’ heads, as onlookers dashed for cover in cars and buses in the traffic-choked area 40 km (25 miles) north of central Bangkok, Reuters photographers and witnesses said.
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news.yahoo.com

The Red Shirt protesters contend that Thai Prime Minister Abhisit came to power illegitimately.

BANGKOK – Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in Bangkok on Wednesday, handing the army broad powers to restore order after anti-government protesters broke into Parliament, forcing some lawmakers to flee by helicopter.

Other lawmakers scaled the compound’s walls to escape the most chaotic protest in several weeks of demonstrations by a group demanding Abhisit dissolve the government and call elections within 15 days. He has offered to do so by the end of the year.

“The government has tried its best to enforce the law, but violations of the law have increased,” Abhisit said in a televised statement that interrupted regular programming. “Our main goal is to bring the country back to normal and make our law sacred once again.” He did not spell out how the emergency decree will be applied.

The government already had placed Bangkok under the strict Internal Security Act.
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news.yahoo.com

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan – Anti-government unrest rocked the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday as thousands of protesters stormed the main government building, set fire to the prosecutor’s office and looted state TV headquarters. At least 17 people were killed and at least 180 wounded in clashes, the government said.

The opposition took over state television and announced that it was negotiating with the president and demanding he step down. Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the claim.

The eruption of violence shattered the relative stability of this mountainous former Soviet nation, which houses a U.S. military base that is a key supply center in the fight against the Taliban in nearby Afghanistan.

Furious over government corruption and a recent hike in power prices, demonstrators looted the state television and radio building. Elite police opened fire to drive crowds back from government headquarters. Protesters marched toward the Interior Ministry in the capital, Bishkek, according to Associated Press reporters on the scene, before changing direction and attacking a national security building nearby. They were repelled by security forces.
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news.yahoo.com

ATHENS, Greece – Street clashes erupted between rioting youths and police in central Athens Thursday as tens of thousands demonstrated during a nationwide strike against the cash-strapped government’s austerity measures.

Hundreds of masked and hooded youths punched and kicked motorcycle police, knocking several off their bikes, as riot police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades.

The violence spread after the end of the march to a nearby square, where police faced off with stone-throwing anarchists and suffocating clouds of tear gas sent patrons scurrying from open-air cafes.
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news.yahoo.com

LOS ANGELES – Officers armed with beanbag guns stood by as hundreds of protesters chanted, marched and even took over a building Thursday on the UCLA campus, where University of California regents were scheduled to vote on a 32 percent student fee increase.

The UC Board of Regents is considering boosting undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — by $2,500 next year. The average annual fee for a full-time undergraduate would jump to about $10,300 — three times the cost only a decade ago.

For a second day, the proposal drew demonstrators to the University of California, Los Angeles. Some came from other UC campuses and stayed overnight in a tent city.
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guardian.co.uk

Hundreds of demonstrators overturned dustbins to form makeshift barricades

Riot police used teargas to disperse crowds tonight in a series of tense standoffs with anti-globalisation protesters a few miles from the convention centre staging this week’s G20 summit.

As the heads of the world’s most powerful countries gathered to discuss the global economy, hundreds of mainly youthful demonstrators overturned dustbins to form makeshift barricades in the working class Pittsburgh neighbourhood of Lawrenceville.

Some in the crowd covered their faces with scarves or balaclavas, many were dressed in black and waved black flags. A police presence, including Swat teams and riot squads, from as far afield as Kentucky and Virginia blocked them from marching towards the city centre.
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reuters.com

BERLIN (Reuters) – Riot police battled 700 stone-throwing left-wing militants in Berlin for more than five hours in May Day clashes that stretched into the early pre-dawn hours on Saturday.

The attackers also hurled petrol bombs and poured flammable liquids on police in the city’s worst Labour Day violence in four years. Authorities said 237 police were injured — mostly bruises and contusions — while 14 suffered serious wounds.

A total of 289 demonstrators were taken into detention, where they face arrest on charges of bodily harm and rioting.
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timesonline.co.uk

Egyptian leaders ordered the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs today to help protect against swine flu, prompting angry protests from the poor Christian farmers who feed their animals with a country’s food scraps. The decision was also criticised as a “real mistake” by a senior UN food expert.

The Arab world’s most populous nation has been been badly hit by the H5N1 bird flu virus in recent years and the move to cull up to 400,000 pigs – seen by Muslims as unclean animals – was designed to calm fears of an impending pandemic.

But it left Egypt’s large Coptic Christian minority up in arms, especially the slum-dwelling “Zebaleen” rubbish collectors who rely on the hogs for their livelihood. Scores of them blocked the streets and stoned the vehicles of Health Ministry workers as they arrived to carry out the government’s order at pig farms on the outskirts of Cario this afternoon.
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news.yahoo.com

BANGKOK – Swarms of anti-government protesters attacked the prime minister’s car, seized control of major intersections in the capital and commandeered buses, bringing new chaos to the Thai capital as the country’s ousted leader threatened to return from exile to lead a revolution.

The government declared a state of emergency Sunday but, without the intervention of security forces, it was unclear how any bans could be enforced.

In front of the city’s biggest luxury mall, demonstrators danced atop two armored personnel carriers they had forced to a stop, waving flags and shouting “Democracy.” The red-shirted crowd swarmed around the vehicles and demanded the keys from the unhappy soldiers inside.
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news.yahoo.com

PARIS – French workers burned tires, marched on the presidential palace and held a manager of U.S. manufacturer 3M hostage Wednesday as anger mounted over job cuts and executive bonuses.

Rising public outrage at employers on both sides of the Atlantic has been triggered by executives cashing in bonus checks even as their companies were kept afloat with billions of euros (dollars) in taxpayers’ money and unemployment soars.

As the U.S. administration seeks ways of recouping some of the $165 million in bonuses paid to executives at insurance giant American International Group Inc., kept afloat by $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is threatening new laws on bonuses and golden parachutes.
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Almost 100 Tibetan monks have been detained during a riot at a police station after a man detained for advocating independence ‘disappeared’ from jail.

The attack is the latest sign of anger in Tibet over a heavy-handed Chinese clampdown on the region during the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile.

The riot came after Chinese police detained Tibetan monk Tashi Sangpo, 25, on Friday in La’gyab township in the western province of Qinghai.

He was arrested for replacing the Chinese flag with a Tibetan one in the main prayer hall of his monastery on March 10, the anniversary of the uprising that led to the Dalai Lama’s flight.
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Police are petrol-bombed as former IRA prisoner who defected to the dissidents is arrested

Tensions flared in Northern Ireland yesterday when masked gangs attacked police with petrol bombs, bricks and stones after a dissident republican was arrested in connection with the murder of two soldiers last week.

Colin Duffy, 42, is a former IRA prisoner who stood trial in the 1990s for the murder of a soldier but was acquitted when it emerged that a key witness against him was a loyalist paramilitary.
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