With controversy swirling around France’s crackdown on Roma migrants, this photo submission depicting a Roma girl from George Calin is particularly timely. The underexposure of the image gives it an almost old-fashioned grainy feel that adds to the dreary mood.
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Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests on Saturday started in Asia and rippled through Europe back to the United States and Canada. Protesters fed up with economic inequality took to the streets in cities from Washington, Boston and Chicago to Los Angeles, Miami and Toronto.After weeks of intense media coverage, the size of the U.S. protests on Saturday have been smaller than G20 meetings or political conventions have yielded in recent years. Such events often draw tens of thousands of demonstrators.In New York, where the movement began when protesters set up camp in a Lower Manhattan park on September 17, organizers said the protest grew to at least 5,000 people as they marched to Times Square from their makeshift outdoor headquarters.”These protests are already making a difference,” said Jordan Smith, 25, a former substance abuse counselor from San Francisco, who joined the New York protest. “The dialogue is now happening all over the world.”The protesters chanted, “We got sold out, banks got bailed out” and “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street.” They arrived in Times Square at a time when the area is already crowded with tourists and Broadway theatergoers.”This is disgusting” said Anatoly Lapushner, who was shopping with his family at Toys R Us in Times Square. “Why aren’t they marching on Washington and the politicians? Instead they go after the economic lifeblood of the city.”PARTY MOOD IN NEW YORKAmerican protesters are angry that U.S. banks are enjoying booming profits after getting bailouts in 2008, while many people are struggling in a difficult economy with more than 9 percent unemployment and little help from Washington.Some were disappointed the New York crowd was not larger.”People don’t want to get involved. They’d rather watch on TV,” said Troy Simmons, 47, who joined demonstrators as he left work. “The protesters could have done better today … people from the whole region should be here and it didn’t happen.”The Times Square mood was akin to New Year’s Eve, when the famed “ball drop” occurs. In a festive mood, protesters were joined by throngs of tourists snapping pictures, together counting back from 10 and shouting, “Happy New Year.”Police said three people were arrested in Times Square after pushing down police barriers and five men were arrested earlier for wearing masks. Police also arrested 24 people at a Citibank branch in Manhattan, mostly for trespassing.Citibank was not immediately available for comment.Five thousand people marched through the streets of Los Angeles and gathered peacefully outside City Hall.The Occupy Wall Street movement has been gathering steam over the past month, culminating with Saturday’s action. The protests worldwide were mostly peaceful apart from Rome, where the demonstration sparked riots.But it was unclear if the movement, which has been driven using social media, would sustain momentum beyond Saturday. Critics have accused the group of not having clear goals.In Toronto, a couple of thousand people gathered peacefully and started to set up a camp in one of the city’s parks. Protesters in Washington marched through the streets.”I am going to start my life as an adult in debt and that’s not fair,” student Nathaniel Brown told Reuters Television. “Millions of teenagers across the country are going to start their futures in debt, while all of these corporations are getting money fed all the time and none of us can get any.”
The proposed merger comes as Malaysian authorities are
encouraging lenders to consolidate to create larger banks that
can expand their regional market share.
The couple, David Joseph Pedersen, 31, and Holly Grigsby, 24, were arrested last Wednesday in Northern California, capping what authorities said was a two-week, three-state crime spree that began in the Puget Sound city of Everett, Washington.Both face charges of aggravated first-degree murder in Washington state over the stabbing death of Pedersen’s 69-year-old stepmother and the shooting death of his father, aged 56. Both were slain last month.Appearing together in Yuba County Court in Marysville, California, on Tuesday, the pair waived their right to challenge extradition to Washington to face the charges.”We anticipate they will probably be out of our jail by the end of the week,” said Patrick McGrath, Yuba County’s district attorney.An affidavit filed with the charges said Grigsby had confessed to killing the stepmother, Leslie Pedersen, by slashing her throat with two knives after she was bound with duct tape.The affidavit said Grigsby also told Oregon State Police in a five-hour videotaped statement that her companion shot his father, David Jones Pedersen, in the back of the head while the elder Pedersen was driving the couple to a bus station, and that Grigsby took control of the Jeep from the passenger seat after he was shot.SUPREMACIST LEANINGSThe affidavit said the pair then drove to their home state of Oregon, where they are suspected of abandoning the body of Pedersen’s father in his Jeep and later shooting dead 19-year-old Cody Myers, whose body was found last week in a forest.Pedersen and Grigsby were driving Myers’ car when they were taken into custody, police said. They have since been named as suspects in a fourth slaying, that of Reginald Clark, 53, who was found shot dead in a car in Eureka, California.Grigsby told police detectives in her statement that Myers was killed in the mistaken belief, based on his last name, that he was Jewish, according to the affidavit. It also quoted her as commenting when arrested that she and Pedersen “were on their way to Sacramento to ‘kill more Jews.’” Clark was black.The accused couple’s white supremacist leanings were evident in a White Power tattoo on Pedersen’s neck and through Facebook postings by Grigsby.In a jailhouse interview published by the Marysville Appeal-Democrat newspaper, David “Joey” Pedersen said he decided to kill his father because he believed the elder Pedersen had molested Joey’s sister and a cousin.”It looks like I’m an irrational psychopath, and I’m not,” the paper quoted him as saying.Police have said the couple killed the stepmother because they believed she had known of the sexual abuse but failed to stop it, though police said they had no proof of molestation.Prosecutor Mark Roe of Snohomish County, Washington, said aggravated first-degree murder was the only crime in the state that can carry the death penalty. He said the pair could also face execution if the slayings in Oregon and California were prosecuted as hate crimes.
