Riot Gear

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.

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.

Fearing a riot after a verdict in the Rodney G. King beating trial, the City Council last week approved the purchase of 30 helmets and riot gear for police officers and 10 bulletproof vests for firefighters at a cost of about $13,000. "There is a feeling there might be trouble following the verdict. We are going to be prepared," Mayor Harry A. Knapp said after the meeting.

Several thousand protesters took to the streets of Tehran on Thursday and clashed with security forces in the latest round of unrest over Iran's disputed June presidential election, according to witnesses and amateur video posted on the Internet. The latest unrest in the nation's capital comes as Iran steels itself for a potential outbreak of violence around the country this weekend during Ashura, the annual commemoration of the 7th century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad and a revered figure in Iran's Shiite Muslim faith.

Racially motivated fighting broke out Monday among hundreds of black and Latino students at North Hollywood High School, prompting a large police response to quell the disturbances. No injuries were reported. Four students were arrested in the fighting, police said. The school's principal, Catherine Lum, said the fighting began during the school's morning recess period and spread at lunch time. By 1 p.m.

The People's March had just reached the edges of Steel City's downtown, at the halfway point in the three-mile protest, and Robert Shepherd's feet ached with each step. The gray-haired former bookstore clerk was one of several thousand peaceful demonstrators who took to the streets of Pittsburgh on Friday to call attention to a host of ills they attributed to the economic policies of the world leaders convening at the Group of 20 summit. It had been four decades since he had marched across college campuses to protest the war in Vietnam and to fight for civil rights.

For the second time in 24 hours, a violent, bottle-throwing standoff Sunday night pitted Los Angeles police against some Lincoln Heights residents, in the wake of the shooting death of a teen-ager by police who say he pointed a semiautomatic pistol at them. Residents--mostly teen-agers and people in their 20s--hurled bottles and rocks, set trash dumpsters afire and shouted at police during the nearly three-hour melee.

If there was a genesis to the brutal aftermath of the Rodney G. King verdicts, a place where it all began, it was at Florence and Normandie avenues--a thoroughfare that lies gutted and leveled now. What happened there? Sides of the story abound: The side of gang-bangers who ignored the suggestion of one of their own to demonstrate peacefully in a white neighborhood. The side of the police, who, outnumbered, seemingly succumbed to bureaucratic paralysis.

Summer solstice celebrations planned at the prehistoric Stonehenge monument on Salisbury Plain were called off after uninvited crowds defied police orders and pushed through a fence to invade the circle of stones. About 150 people had permission for an early morning Druidic celebration, but other celebrants intruded, climbing atop the 5,000-year-old stones, located about 80 miles southwest of London.

UCLA officials said Friday that they are investigating allegations that campus police used unnecessary force, including tasers and pepper spray, in dealing with large protests by students and union activists last month outside a campus building where the UC regents voted to raise student fees. About a dozen students and police suffered minor injuries during the Nov. 18 and Nov. 19 demonstrations, which attracted more than 2,000 people and a large police contingent in riot gear. In a letter to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, more than 100 UCLA faculty members expressed grave concern over police tactics and contended that protesters' freedom of expression was violated.

The People's March had just reached the edges of Steel City's downtown, at the halfway point in the three-mile protest, and Robert Shepherd's feet ached with each step. The gray-haired former bookstore clerk was one of several thousand peaceful demonstrators who took to the streets of Pittsburgh on Friday to call attention to a host of ills they attributed to the economic policies of the world leaders convening at the Group of 20 summit. It had been four decades since he had marched across college campuses to protest the war in Vietnam and to fight for civil rights.

Several thousand people held anti-government protests in the Hungarian capital during a national holiday Sunday, and police detained 35 people. Dressed in riot gear, the police chased some of the protesters through the streets of Budapest and prevented them from reaching the parliament building, where violent protests had taken place in 2006. At one point, tear gas was used to drive back a small group of demonstrators that tried to attack police lines near St. Stephen's Basilica.

When local protests broke out this month over the Israeli invasion of Gaza, Los Angeles Police Department officials decided that officers at the scene should not immediately wear their riot helmets out of concerns the gear might escalate passions among the demonstrators. But the decision has now generated controversy after a protester hit an officer with the wood post of a protest sign during a march in Westwood.

Police efforts to thwart large protests outside the Republican National Convention on Thursday night led to a clash less than a mile from the arena that resulted in "a couple of hundred" arrests, authorities said. The confrontation capped four days of demonstrations here; in the previous three days, nearly 400 people were arrested. Cmdr. Doug Holtz of the St. Paul Police Department said he thought "a couple of hundred" people had been arrested Thursday night, but the exact numbers wouldn't be known until today.

A fight between rival groups of black and Latino students at Locke High School quickly escalated into a campus-wide melee Friday, with as many as 600 students brawling until police restored calm with billy clubs. The troubled campus in South Los Angeles was locked down after the fight broke out at 12:55 p.m., as students returned from lunch to their fifth-period classes.

Police in riot gear used tear gas to break up a disturbance Sunday when possibly 2,000 youths in town to watch hydroplane races threw bottles and rocks at police officers. About a dozen youths were arrested, police said.

More than 200 inmates rioted at the state prison in Chino on Thursday night, injuring at least one prisoner and triggering an hours-long lockdown at the facility, authorities said. The riot at the California Institution for Men broke out about 7 p.m. when inmates in the prison's reception center began fighting, according to Todd Slosek, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections.

Hundreds of people rioted in Jamaica's capital, Kingston, attacking a police station and setting cars ablaze after a policeman allegedly shot and wounded a high school student. At least one man in his 20s was killed during the riot, witnesses said. A soldier was shot and wounded, but his condition was not immediately known, police said. Police and soldiers clad in riot gear used tear gas to repel rock-throwing residents in the west Kingston neighborhood of Denham Town.