Demonstrators

May Day rallies brought immigrant rights, labor and Occupy protesters onto Los Angeles streets Tuesday, snarling traffic and drawing a police force that at times outnumbered the demonstrators. Only several hundred people heeded the call from organizers to gather for the annual May Day immigrant and labor-rights march, echoing a similarly poor turnout last year. The numbers were a far cry from previous years when tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of marchers filled the streets to make Los Angeles the nation's focal point in the debate over immigration.

Deep inside my writerly brain, down where my earliest memories reside, there is a voice. It speaks to me in Spanish. I write in the language of Shakespeare and Steinbeck. That's the language I was educated in, here in L.A. The language of the British Empire, of American Manifest Destiny, of California and the West. But Spanish gave me my first words: mamá, agua . And it was the language on the covers of the first works of grown-up literature I held in my hands, the Guatemalan novels my immigrant father brought into our Hollywood home.

Hundreds of Occupy marchers peacefully convened Tuesday evening in Pershing Square, an hour after the May Day protest in downtown Los Angeles took a tense turn. The mood was jovial as about 200 protesters listened to live music and watched performers. Earlier, police clashed with protesters at 4th and Hill streets, causing officers clad in riot gear to swarm the area. A police official said a female officer was struck in the head with a skateboard and taken to a hospital.

When Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced in 2009 that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other accused Sept. 11 conspirators would be tried in a civilian federal court, we said that his decision "makes an eloquent statement about the Obama administration's determination to avenge the victims of terrorism within the rule of law. " But the five never made it to civilian court; instead, thanks to domestic politics, they are being tried for murder and...

The months-long confrontation between Iran's budding opposition movement and a hard-line government determined to stamp it out escalated sharply over the weekend, as parts of the capital became engulfed in fiery political protest and demonstrations broke out across the country on the occasion of an important Shiite religious holiday. Opposition websites reported as many as nine people killed in Tehran and the western city of Tabriz on Sunday during Ashura, a commemoration of the 7th century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

Clashes flared for a second day Thursday between opponents and supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, spilling out of the central Cairo square occupied by antigovernment demonstrators and deepening the chaos gripping Egypt. The army acted decisively for the first time to try to separate the two sides, planting tanks and soldiers in the no-man's land between what have become enemy lines. In the early afternoon, as helicopters circled overhead, the fighting was scattered and less intense than the previous day. Confrontations were confined mainly to the periphery of Tahrir Square and the backstreets of the adjoining district, with relative calm in much the sprawling plaza itself.

SEATTLE — Downtown Seattle erupted in chaos Tuesday as black-clad May Day demonstrators marauded through the shopping district, smashing plate glass windows at banks and retail outlets, spray-painting cars and slashing tires. At least eight people had been arrested by early evening. May Day arrests also were reported in Portland, Ore., and New York. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn signed an emergency order authorizing police to confiscate sticks, tire irons, hammers and other implements that might be used for continued destruction.

Government-sponsored demonstrators, some armed with clubs, attacked pro-democracy protesters Friday in Tahrir Square and paraded pictures of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's chief rival, Iyad Allawi, with a red X slashed across his face. Groups of rowdy young men, some said by Western sources to have been bused in by Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party, roamed the streets armed with sticks and other weapons. At least four men were badly beaten and several women were assaulted, said pro-democracy activists who have held weekly rallies at the downtown square since February, inspired by the populist movements that first swept Tunisia and Egypt.

Father Jaime Molina reminded the crowd that the Bible was full of people who had wandered far from their homelands: Abraham, Sara, Moses. He told them not to step on anyone's grass, and to pick up their litter. Activist Anton Flores-Maisonet told the demonstrators — about 450 Latino immigrants, their children and their supporters — that most Georgians really didn't support the Arizona-style immigration bill the Legislature approved last week. He was most likely wrong: In a poll taken in July, 68% supported such a bill.

Chinese students clashed with demonstrators criticizing China's treatment of North Korean refugees at the Olympic torch relay in Seoul, throwing rocks and punches. The small groups of anti-torch demonstrators were far outnumbered by Chinese supporters. Police took away a protester who had doused himself with gasoline before he could set himself on fire. Thousands watched the torch relay peacefully today in North Korea.

MOSCOW — Russian riot police cleared a Moscow park early Wednesday of a weeklong encampment considered a local version of the Occupy movement, and hours later clashed with antigovernment protesters outside a Stalinist skyscraper in a different part of downtown. The dispersal of several dozen protesters at the park encampment, called Occupy Abai, preceded a nighttime confrontation at Kudrinskaya Square, where several hundred protesters had gathered to oppose President Vladimir Putin.

The political climate in Congress is so noxious these days that even a law that originally passed with overwhelming bipartisan support because it provided much-needed help to abused women is now a partisan issue. That's shameful. Republicans in the House should drop their attempts to undermine the Violence Against Women Act and instead move swiftly to reauthorize and strengthen the existing program, as the Senate has already done. First enacted in 1994, the law has been renewed twice without a fight.

It's after-hours at the Huntington Meats in the Farmers Market and the canvas curtains are drawn. A dozen students sit on folding chairs circled around the worktable. On it lies splayed a whole hog, fresh from the farm, shaved naked, an apple stuffed in its mouth. Its nose is still a little bloody. Want to know where your meat really comes from? Take a butchery class. Over the next two hours, butchers Jim Cascone, Bob Ore and John Escobedo will take this whole animal and, using just a couple of knives and a band saw, reduce it to the cuts of meat you might recognize from the supermarket meat counter.

Don't forget to bring water to your workout, and not just to quench your thirst. Two water bottles are handy for this simple drill, demonstrated below by celebrity personal trainer Mike Donavanik (www.mikedfitness.com). What you're going to do is leap in a skating motion from one bottle to the other, picking up each bottle in its turn. Just remember to keep your core tight through the entire drill and to not overreach when you pick up the bottle. Why you should try it: It's a great plyometric exercise that will work your legs, butt and core and improve hand-eye coordination.

University of California police and administrators should use mediation instead of confrontation when dealing with most student protests, but pepper spray might remain a necessary tool of last resort, according to a UC draft report on campus civil disobedience. The new study, released Friday, urged that campus police be trained to defuse potentially volatile situations and that UC officials not even mobilize police at peaceful demonstrations. In the rare instances when force is required, the report recommended the campus police try "hands-on pain compliance" such as arm twisting or pressure points "before pepper spray or batons whenever feasible.

Research in Motion, hoping for a boost for its struggling smartphones, gave developers a sneak peek at its upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system, expected to be released sometime this year. At the company's BlackBerry World 2012 event in Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday, new Chief Executive Thorsten Heins unveiled a prototype of the system in front of 5,000 customers, developers and other attendees. In a 47-second video that the company also shared online, a customer uses a BlackBerry 10 smartphone to scroll through emails and crisp photos; quickly type, with the help of predictive text, on a touch screen; watch videos; and sync the phone to a television screen.

Violent clashes between police and protesters commemorating the killing of two leftists during Chile's 1973-90 dictatorship left one person dead, nine officers injured and more than 230 demonstrators in custody, authorities said. The fatality was a 23-year-old man shot by masked demonstrators who claimed he was an infiltrator, Santiago Gov. Alvaro Erazo said. The protests broke out Saturday night and lasted into the next morning in several working-class neighborhoods in the capital Santiago.

A protest will be held Saturday near where police shot and killed a mentally ill woman who was wielding a knife Jan. 19. Protesters disturbed by the death of Marcella Byrd, 57, will gather at 3 p.m. at Lincoln Park, and march to the Top Valu Market, where workers called police after Byrd failed to pay for groceries. From Times Staff Reports

CAIRO - At least 11 people were killed Wednesday when unknown attackers armed with guns and firebombs clashed with protesters near Egypt's Defense Ministry in an escalation of violence highlighting political divisions that threaten the country ahead of this month's presidential election. Assailants stormed about 500 demonstrators at dawn, many of them supporters of Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist preacher recently disqualified from the presidential race. Police did not intervene for hours, and authorities said as many as 200 people were wounded in the nation's worst violence in months.

Numerous streets in downtown Los Angeles and beyond will be closed Tuesday for May Day marches. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the following streets downtown will be affected, beginning as early as 7 a.m. and continuing until 7:30 p.m: •Broadway between 11th and Temple streets •Olympic Boulevard between Hill and Main streets •9th between Hill and Broadway •8th between Spring and Broadway ...