World leaders have wrapped up their debates at the G20 in Canada. They’ve been trying to map out ways to bolster global economic recovery and slash budget deficits. There have been no breakthroughs. Nevertheless, leaders agreed to reduce budget deficits in half by the year 2013. They have also withheld from voting on the decision about a new tax on international banking operations for financial institutions. Some critics say that many leaders are more focused on their national agendas than international ones – like the US, which is pushing for the stimulus plan, which is their way out of the global financial crisis.G20 leaders agree on halving budget deficits by 2013
Toronto, Canada (CNN) -- Police fired tear gas Sunday to tame groups protesting the arrest of G-20 demonstrators in Toronto, Canada, said Nena Snyder, a spokeswoman for the Integrated Security Unit. An old film studio was converted into a prisoner processing center specifically for handling G-20 protest arrests. Police released tear gas outside that center where other people were protesting the arrests, Snyder said. "I do not believe that the individuals bent on vandalism and violence in our city have finished with their intent, so we will remain vigilant," Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said Saturday night. Police have made a total of 562 arrests since June 18, said Constable Rodney Petroski of the Ontario Provincial Police. From 6 a.m. ET Sunday through late afternoon, 224 people were arrested, he said. Some of those have been released from the prisoner processing center, while others were being held for bail, according to Petroski. Mobs were scuffling with police in multiple locations, Snyder said. Of the Sunday arrests, 70 took place on Bancroft Avenue, she said. "At no time was there risk to the safety of summit participants," according to the ISU. There were no reports of serious injuries to either protesters or police, said Integrated Security Unit spokeswoman Jillian Van Acker. Four people were arrested leaving underground infrastructure tunnels outside the controlled access zone at 2:25 a.m., Van Acker said. Workers were vwelding shut some of the entrances to the underground infrastructure. Blair told reporters that packs of disruptive demonstrators infiltrated peaceful protests in order to cause chaos and distract police. "These criminals rely on the anonymity of hiding in a larger group of the curious and the naive," he said. At least four police cars went up in flames and smoke during hours of confrontation, authorities said. Protesters left behind broken windows and graffiti. Blair said police used tear gas after warning a group of protesters "engaged in acts of destruction" Saturday. But not all encounters between police and protesters were hostile. At one intersection the crowd danced and chanted, "You're sexy, you're cute, take off your riot suit!" More aggressive groups of demonstrators moved from intersection to intersection, trying to circumvent police and get to the security fence protecting the summit meeting. "The fence is a symbol that they can build a fence and spend a billion dollars on their agenda. The fence is a symbol of what's wrong with this country," protester Rolf Gerstenberger said. Everywhere the protesters went, police were waiting to head them off, in some cases with individual blasts of pepper spray, tear gas and bean bag pellets, according to the summit's security unit. Authorities said the fence was not breached Saturday. Behind it, world leaders began an economic summit focusing on recovery from the global financial crisis. As they prepared for Sunday's scheduled meetings, the U.N. chief urged them to remember that the world's poor need help making ends meet now more than ever. "Let me emphasize this evening that, under any circumstances we must not balance budgets on the backs of the world's poorest people," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. Ban said countries should invest in agriculture, green recovery jobs and health. On Saturday, European Union Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso stressed that European leaders were already taking action to strengthen their economies and deal with a weakening euro caused by public debt woes. "There should be no doubts. Europe will do whatever it takes to assure the financial stability of the euro," he told CNN. This weekend's meetings come on the heels of the two-day G8 summit outside Toronto, where the leaders of the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan and Russia also focused on recovery from the global economic crisis. The group also made note of other thorny issues in their final statement issued Saturday, singling out Iran and North Korea for criticism.
G-20 protests plagued by violence, vandalism
Police arrest 500 in crackdown on anarchist groups masked Protesters smashed windows and torched cars Masked protesters clashed with riot police across Toronto city centre yesterday and early today as leaders of the G20 countries gathered behind the toughest security cordon in the history of the summit. More than 500 people were arrested, including many from peaceful protests across the Canadian city, as police cracked down on anarchist groups. The trouble was sparked when the anarchists broke away from the main peaceful protest by trade unions and other groups around the summit conference centre, and began smashing the windows of banks and chain stores and torching police patrol cars in the shopping and financial districts. They covered their faces, and used litter bins, poles and bricks to smash the facades of an Urban Outfitters, a branch of Scotia Bank and an Adidas store. Footage from the Canadian broadcaster CTV also showed them looting, and threatening photographers. Police armed with batons, tear gas, pepper spray and plastic bullets and mounted divisions were deployed to try to control the violence, according to news reports. Jesse Rosenfeld, a freelance journalist who has written for the Guardian's Comment is Free website, was arrested and hit by police officers, according to a Canadian TV journalist who witnessed the arrest. The rioting intensified into the night, with shop fronts smashed and media vehicles damaged. Police charged the crowds to seize individuals, and fired plastic bullets in an effort to clear a park, Reuters news agency reported. "We have never seen that level of wanton criminality and vandalism and destruction on our streets," Toronto police chief Bill Blair told a news conference. "There are limits to free speech, and these limits really end when it infringes on the rights and the safety of others." "This isn't violence," one masked protester told the Toronto Star newspaper. "This is vandalism against violent corporations. We did not hurt anybody. [The corporations] are the ones hurting people." There was anger at some of the police tactics. In scenes broadcast live in Toronto, an officer in riot gear could be seen striking an apparently unarmed protester several times during a standoff between lines of protesters and police. A Montreal journalist, Stefan Christoff, said he was hit many times by a riot policeman with plastic-coated metal baton after chanting slogans opposed to the G20. Steve Paikin, who presents TV Ontario's current affairs programme Agenda, saw riot police with rubber bullet guns and smoke bombs break up a peaceful protest which was "like an old sit-in", he said. "No one was aggressive, and yet riot squad officers moved in," he wrote on Twitter. "Police on one side screamed at the crowd to leave one way. Then police on the other side said leave the other way. There was no way out. So the police just started arresting people. This was a peaceful, middle-class crowd. No anarchists. Literally more than 100 officers with guns pointing at the crowd. Rubber bullets and smoke bombs ready to be fired." Paikin said he saw the assault on Rosenfeld. "As I was escorted away from the demonstration, I saw two officers hold a journalist ... Two officers held him. A third punched him in the stomach. Totally unnecessary. The man collapsed. Then the third officer drove his elbow into the man's back." Police were accused of being slow to respond when the violence began. Shops had not been boarded up. Security was meant to be tight. Canada had estimated that the cost of security for the G20 summit and the earlier G8 summit, in Huntsville, Ontario, would be a record C$1bn (£640m) for the two centres. Security costs for the 2008 G8 summit in Japan were US$381m (£211m), and $30m for the 2009 London G20 summit. The costs in Canada included 19,000 police officers and 1,100 private security guards, working behind a 3 metre (9ft) metal fence around the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where the summit took place. The tight security has angered some in the city and L Ian MacDonald, a columnist for the Toronto Star, said the city "looked like West Berlin, 1961, not Toronto, 2010". Toronto's baseball team, the Blue Jays, were sent to play away from home and the CN tower was closed because of its proximity to the convention centre. There has been particular anger at the introduction of a regulation that allows police to stop and search anyone coming within five metres of the security fence and make arrests if no identification is provided, which lawyers have said may violate Canada's charter of rights and freedoms that guarantees freedom of assembly.G20 rioters disrupt peaceful Toronto protest
