news Protest themes range from world poverty to global warming at London G20 summit

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Protest themes range from world poverty to global warming at London G20 summit



41 minutes ago




By Raphael G. Satter, The Associated Press


LONDON - Police were out in force for the G20 summit Thursday, swarming the east London riverside site as small groups of demonstrators protested world poverty and climate change.

At the ExCeL centre in the Docklands area, where leaders of the Group of 20 financial powers held talks on the global economy, police manned barriers and checkpoints around the security perimeter, turning away anyone without accreditation within an 800-metre radius. Police boats patrolled the Thames River.

Outside the summit venue, dozens demonstrated with signs that read "Stop Ethiopia from Starving."

At the Bank of England in central London, demonstrators returned to the scene of violent clashes Wednesday to express their anger at the death of a man near a protest camp late Wednesday. Organizers say they observed a minute of silence and set up a wall of condolences before yelling "Shame on you!" at police.

The circumstances surrounding the 47-year-old man's death were unclear.

Officers on horseback were called in to control the crowd and sealed off nearby streets.

Earlier in the day, French daredevil Alain Robert scaled Lloyds of London's highrise headquarters as office workers gathered below to snap photos.

Robert, dubbed the French spider-man, has scaled dozens of tall structures around the world without ropes or harnesses as part of a campaign to draw attention to global warming. He unfurled another climate change banner in his climb Thursday before being led away by police.

Other protesters sat and played a giant Monopoly game near the London Stock Exchange.

"The question is of course who has got the monopoly? It is fairly obvious the G20 are the global financial elite," said protester Clare Smith, 27.

"Meanwhile, the poor are getting poorer and that has even started to show in this country, but has obviously been going on across the world for some time," she said.

Police said there had been 111 arrests so far, most of them Wednesday, when some protesters broke into the Royal Bank of Scotland building and vandalized the Bank of England building.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators, meanwhile, were descending Thursday on two southwest German towns and the French city of Strasbourg to protest a cross-border NATO summit marking the alliance's 60th anniversary.

President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy are among 28 world leaders expected to be on hand for the two-day summit beginning Friday after the end of London's G20 gathering.