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Police maintained tight security around the summit site, but largely did not intervene as marchers destroyed property. Several protesters were being treated for injuries by fellow demonstrators.

Canadian Police used tear gas to disperse protesters during a massive and violent anti-G20 protest march that saw at least two police vehicles set ablaze, and store and bank windows damaged.

Demonstrators broke the windows of several business establishments, including a Scotia bank, CIBC and a Starbucks.

Protesters also threw bricks at a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) van, breaking its windows.

Toronto Transit Corporation (TTC) streetcars were abandoned on Queen Street.

Two were spray painted with anti-summit graffiti and anarchy symbols.

Police with shields and clubs pushed back a small group of protesters who tried to head toward the security fence around the site of the G-20 summit.

Some demonstrators hurled bottles at police.

About an hour later the group, dressed all in black, smashed the windows of a bank, a coffee shop and some stores.

Police maintained tight security around the summit site, but largely did not intervene as marchers destroyed property.

“We have an enormous amount of resources at our hands,” Constable Wendy Drummond who characterised the police response as “measured” said.

The dynamic in the crowd changed around 3 pm as police donned gas masks.

Some parts of the riot line are as many as three officers deep as the crowd chanted: “Let us through!” Several protesters were being treated for injuries by fellow demonstrators amid reports that paramedics faced delays in getting to the area.

By Thehindu

A police car burns after activists and protesters set it on fire along the streets of downtown Toronto during the G20 Summit. Photo:AP

Petty squabbles earlier hindered the climate change battle.

Tackling climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing South Asia. Regional leaders are meeting in Bhutan this week, but are they any nearer agreeing to an action plan? The BBC’s Navin Singh Khadka reports.

The issue of climate change is the main item on the agenda of the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit under way in the Bhutanese capital Thimpu.

But given the poor track record of co-operation achieved by the regional grouping over other sensitive issues in the past, will the thorny issue of climate change become bogged down in rhetoric and recriminations?

Experts say the vulnerability of the region to climate change means that there is an urgent need for concrete action.

Words not action

“South Asian countries have started to face the effects of climate change and are particularly at risk,” says the United Nations Environment Programme’s (Unep) 2009 outlook.

“Intense floods, droughts and cyclones have impacted on the economic performances of South Asian countries and the lives of millions of poor, it also puts at risk infrastructure, agriculture, human health, water resources and the environment,” it says.

This is not the first time that Saarc summit has discussed the issue.

The declaration of the 14th summit in Delhi in 2007, for instance, said leaders had agreed “to commission a team of regional experts to identify collective actions in sharing of knowledge on the consequences of climate change”.

A year later, the 15th Saarc summit adopted the Dhaka Declaration on climate change.

But, experts say, hardly any of these words have been matched by actions.

In its climate change national action plan launched two years ago, India - the main regional player - stressed the need for co-operation.

“We will need to exchange information with South Asian countries and countries sharing the Himalayan ecology,” the plan read.

“Co-operation with neighbouring countries will be sought to make a comprehensive network for observation and monitoring of the Himalayan environment, to assess fresh water resources and the health of the ecosystem.”

There have been no serious follow-up since this bold pronouncement was made.

Drought

With regional co-operation confined to academic papers, key issues like regional flood forecasting are just not happening.

“Some countries in the region are not willing to share water-related data because they regard it as confidential,” says Mats Eriksson, a senior hydrologist with the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development which has spent years trying to bring together South Asian countries for flood forecasting at a regional level.

But as millions of people in South Asia suffer from floods every monsoon, there is a worrying and growing uncertainty over the uneven distribution of monsoon rainfall in the region.

In recent years, some places have experienced heavy rainfall while others have seen far smaller amounts - and have even been hit by drought.

“Climate change could influence monsoon dynamics and cause lower summer precipitation, a delay to the start of the monsoon season and longer breaks between the rainy periods,” a study by Purdue University in the US found recently.

While everyone now seems to be well informed as to the extent of the problem, questions remain over Saarc’s response to it. But not everyone is pessimistic.

“This is the first time you have a Saarc summit where the leaders of countries in the region are getting together on a very specific subject and I am optimistic,” said the chairman of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, who also heads the Energy Research Institute in Delhi.

Ainun Nishat, climate chief for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Bangladesh, is also positive.

“I believe frequent contact between the leaders is essentially the first step that will lead to some concrete action because they always want to show progress.”

But recent international climate negotiations, such as last year’s Copenhagen summit, have shown that the countries in the region have different interests.

India’s fast-growing economy, for instance, wants a global climate treaty that requires rich nations - and not rapidly developing countries - to cut carbon emissions.

It also wants global temperature rises to be limited to 2C from pre-industrial levels.

Bitter disputes

Whereas least developed countries in the region that are most vulnerable to climate change are lobbying for an international treaty irrespective of who has to reduce carbon emissions.

They want global warming to be limited to 1.5C from pre-industrial levels.

“I therefore do not expect Saarc countries to take common action in terms of dealing with climate change,” says noted Indian environment activist Sunita Narain.

“I expect governments of the region to use Saarc as a meeting point in which they can put forward their respective actions against climate change.”

But is that possible when major region players like India and Pakistan, for example, are engaged in bitter disputes?

One of the latest disputes between the South Asian nuclear rivals is that of sharing of water resources which, experts fear, will get worse as the climate change problem itself remains unaddressed.

The climate change issue urgently demands a meeting of minds.

The House sent its historic health care reform legislation to President Barack Obama for his signature, The Associated Press reported. The bill, which would extend health care coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans and ban insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, passed the House 219-212 on Sunday. “I want to thank every member of Congress who stood up tonight with courage and conviction to make health care reform a reality,” Obama said. “I know this wasn’t an easy vote for a lot of people. But it was the right vote.” Republican lawmakers attacked the legislation and said the voters would hold House members accountable for passing it. “In this economy, with this unemployment, with our desperate need for jobs and economic growth, is this really the time to raise taxes, to create bureaucracies and burden every job creator in our land? The answer is no,” Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.

In other news: The U.S. warned ships sailing off the coast of Yemen to be wary of a possible al Qaeda attack, Reuters reported. The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence said it received information that ships in the Red Sea, the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait between Yemen and Djibouti and the Gulf of Aden along Yemen’s coast were at the greatest risk of attacks similar to the suicide bombing of the U.S. warship Cole that killed 17 in 2000.

Sandstorms whipped across China today, shrouding cities and towns with sand and grit. According to The AP, the sweeping storms have prompted officials to suspend some services due to poor visibility and issue health warnings. Breathing in the sand can cause chest discomfort and respiratory problems, even in healthy people. Click here to see images of the sandstorms.

Lastly, the British Airways strike entered its 3rd — and busiest — day on Monday, The AP reported. The union representing the cabin crew and the airline both claimed victory over the walkout that has caused BA to cancel hundreds of flights. The acrimonious dispute over pay and working conditions is expected to cost the airline more than $95 million. Last week, BA offered a proposal that would reduce 3,000 workers from full- to part-time status, freeze wages for a year and cut cabin crew sizes on long haul flights.

Most read stories: Three Swiss pilots set a new speed record after completing a round the world trip in less than 58 hours, Reuters reported. The charter plane flew over 33 countries, and stopped to refuel 10 times.

Readers were also interested in this AP obituary for Margaret Moth. The CNN war zone camerawoman died on Sunday from cancer at the age of 59. Moth was seriously wounded by sniper fire in 1992 in Sarajevo. After undergoing several reconstructive surgeries, she returned to the war-torn country to record the documentary “Fearless: The Margaret Moth Story.” Moth also covered the rioting that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 and the Israeli invasion of the West Bank in 2002. Hard money training.

China moved swiftly on Saturday to suspend military exchanges with the United States after Washington’s announcement of arms sales to Taiwan, widening rifts in their far-reaching relationship.

The Defense Ministry, in a strongly-worded statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency, condemned the proposed U.S. sale of weapons to self-ruled and democratic Taiwan, which China considers an illegitimate breakaway province.

“Considering the severe harm and odious effect of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the Chinese side has decided to suspend planned mutual military visits,” Xinhua quoted the ministry as saying.

Qian Lihua, director of China’s Defense Ministry Foreign Affairs Office, also summoned the U.S. defense attache to lodge a “solemn protest” about the sales, Xinhua added.

The Obama administration told the U.S. Congress on Friday of the proposed sales to Taiwan, a potential $6.4 billion package including Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot “Advanced Capability-3″ anti-missile missiles, and two refurbished Osprey-class mine-hunting ships.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told the U.S. ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, that the arms deal could jeopardize bonds with Washington, which has looked to China for help in surmounting the financial crisis, dealing with Iran and North Korea, and fighting climate change.

The U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have joined trade imbalances, currency disputes, human rights, the Internet, and Tibet among rifts dividing the world’s biggest and third-biggest economies.

Washington and Beijing have also recently traded angry words about Internet policy after the search engine giant Google Inc earlier this month threatened to shut its Chinese google.cn portal and pull out of China, citing censorship problems and hacking attacks.

In coming months Obama may meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader China calls a dangerous separatist, adding to Beijing’s ire with Washington.

Vice Minister He hinted the anger would be felt in a number of areas.

“The United States’ announcement of the planned weapons sales to Taiwan will have a seriously negative impact on many important areas of exchanges and cooperation between the two countries,” said He in the remarks, published on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Web site.

He said the arms sales were “crude interference in China’s domestic affairs and seriously harm China’s national security”, words notably tougher than Beijing’s recent statements on the issue.

“This will lead to repercussions that neither side wishes to see,” said He. He urged the U.S. to halt the planned sales. Hard money training.

Health experts warned Wednesday of a stroke crisis in Europe which is already costing the region’s economy an estimated 38 billion euros ($56 billion) a year, with numbers expected to rise as populations age.

In a report for the European Parliament, medical experts working with the campaign group Action for Stroke Prevention, said atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common form of abnormal heart rhythm, affects more than six million people in Europe and increases the risk of stroke by five times.

The economic and health impact of stroke is predicted to grow as the number of people with AF is expected to rise two and a half times by 2050 due to aging populations, the report said.

It the said economic burden created by patients suffering strokes accounts for 2 to 3 percent of total healthcare spending in the European Union and AF is responsible for 15 to 20 percent of all strokes caused by blood clots.

“This burden will increase in years to come, due to both the improved survival of patients with conditions such as heart attacks and Europe’s aging population,” the report said.

Gregory Lip, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Birmingham, said the majority of such strokes were preventable, but under-diagnosis and poor care of AF patients, as well as under-use of medicines and the side-effects of drugs means stroke creates “an unnecessary and heavy burden” on patients, carers and health systems.

AF causes the two upper chambers of the heart to quiver instead of beating properly, resulting in blood pooling and potentially forming clots that can cause stroke. Patients can be given anticoagulants, or blood thinners, to help prevent clots.

Stroke is the most common cardiovascular problem after heart disease and kills an estimated 5.7 million people worldwide each year. Current trends suggest the number of strokes in the European Union will rise from 1.1 million a year in 2000 to 1.5 million a year by 2025, the report said.

Action for Stroke Prevention, an alliance of cardiologists, neurologists, family doctors and patient groups, urged EU policymakers to improve stroke risk assessment and diagnosis of atrial fibrillation before the increasing frequency of strokes becomes “a major public health crisis.” Hard money training.

Americans are turning away from the world, showing a tendency toward isolationism in foreign affairs that has risen to the highest level in four decades, a poll out Thursday found.

Almost half, 49 percent, told the polling organization that the United States should “mind its own business” internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own, the Pew Research Center survey found. That’s up from 30 percent who said that in December 2002.

Results of the survey appear to conflict with President Barack Obama’s activist foreign policy, including a newly announced buildup of 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to fight Taliban and al-Qaida extremists.

“Isolationist Sentiment Surges to Four-Decade High,” the nonpartisan research center headlined its report on the poll about America’s role in the world.

Only 32 percent of the poll respondents favored increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, while 40 percent favored decreasing them. And fewer than half, or 46 percent, of those polled said it was somewhat or very likely that Afghanistan would be able to withstand the radicals’ threat.

Forty-one percent of those surveyed said the United States plays a less important and powerful role as a world leader than it did a decade ago, up from 25 percent who said that just before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the report said.

Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut said in an interview that the “very bad economy” appeared most responsible for the growth of isolationist sentiment. He said the public was also “displeased with the two wars we are waging, in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

While isolationism and unilateralism reached four-decade highs among the public, the stature of China increased.

Among Americans polled, 44 percent said China was the world’s leading economic power compared with 27 percent who named the United States. In February 2008, 41 percent said the U.S. was the leading economic power, while 30 percent said China.

A majority of Americans surveyed, or 53 percent, see China’s emerging power as a threat to the United States. Hard money training.

There is no such thing as a dull decade. The arc of history is long—to maul a line by Dr. Martin Luther King—and it bends toward stuff happening. Even the 1970s, generally regarded as the ugly stepdecade of the 20th century, played host to a White House scandal that sprawled on for months, metastasizing into the only presidential resignation in American history. Beat that, 1980s. (OK, no sweat: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the implosion of the Soviet Union …) Still, there are decades when a few earthquakes shuffle the terrain and jostle the nerves—and then there are decades when the world splits open to the boiling core and remakes itself.

Maybe after a generation or two have passed, the events of the 21st century’s first 10 years will recede in significance. With time, perhaps 9/11 will go back to being just another day in September. It sure seems unlikely from here. Indeed, the 10-year period beginning in 2000 has been marked by a string of colossal events that, in any other decade, would have been the undisputed story of their time. It has been a dazing and bedazzling era, almost biblical in its bookending events: the televised tragedy of 9/11 and the election of America’s first black president—a man whose name meant nothing to anyone outside of politics until just a few years before his ascension to the most powerful office in the world. Just think: Hurricane Katrina—a catastrophe so vast it nearly wiped off the map an entire American city—rates a distant, even debatable, third among this decade’s biggest headlines. The Boston Red Sox, trailed around by the Curse of Babe Ruth since 1919, finally won the World Series—twice!—but they, too, must get in line behind two ongoing wars, a global financial collapse, a cataclysmic tsunami, torture, Bernie Madoff, and on and on.

The one thing this decade hasn’t had, oddly, is a name. We could never seem to agree on one. Is it the Aughties? The Double-Zeroes? The Oh-Ohs? The 2K’s? The Zeds? It shouldn’t matter, except that it’s hard to wrap your arms around something when you don’t even know what to call it. “The ‘50s,” “the ‘60s”—for Americans, the terms conjure a specific, albeit oversimplified, portrait of those eras in America. But perhaps it’s fitting that this decade should remain stubbornly absent a name. It’s been too big, too vast, too cataclysmic, too transformative for just one.

And in any case, a decade is just an empty unit of time, arbitrarily walling off of events that exist both within and beyond them. They are mostly useful as a means to an end: when we get to the close of one decade, we use it as an excuse to indulge in two beloved pastimes, looking backward and making lists. As 2010 draws closer, Newsweek.com will be doing plenty of both. “NEWSWEEK 20/10” will commemorate the end of the decade by unveiling 20 top-10 lists over the next four weeks, each one surveying the past decade from a fresh perspective and featuring guest essays by some of the biggest names of the world, many of whom made the news they’ll be writing about. Additionally, thanks to a first-of-its-kind partnership with Facebook, NEWSWEEK is proud to offer readers the ability to reorder every one of the lists in “Newsweek 20/10.” It’s your chance to play along and tell us what we got wrong.

Along with our package of 20 lists, NEWSWEEK’s leading writers—a group that includes Fareed Zakaria on global affairs, Howard Fineman on U.S. politics, Daniel Gross on the economy, Sharon Begley on science, and Daniel Lyons on technology—will take turns over the coming days sharing “One Big Thought About the Decade.” We’ll also unveil a giant, decade-spanning slideshow, “120 Pictures, 120 Months,” in which our photography editors have chosen one picture to represent every month of the decade. (OK, technically, there are only 118 pictures because we haven’t gotten through the last two months of the decade yet. Once we get far enough into December, we promise to add in the 119th and 120th photographs in our series and complete the journey.) Finally, in the last week of November, we’ll wrap things up with a game of alternative history called “The Gore Decade,” in which a series of writers imagine what the last 10 years would’ve looked like if Al Gore had won the coin-flip election of 2000—essentially, a retrospective of the decade that didn’t happen. Hard money training

Ethiopia said Thursday it needs emergency food aid for 6.2 million people, an appeal that comes 25 years after a devastating famine compounded by communist policies killed 1 million and prompted one of the largest charity campaigns in history.

The crisis stems from a prolonged drought that has hit much of the Horn of Africa, including Kenya and Somalia.

Drought is especially disastrous in Ethiopia because more than 80 percent of people live off the land. Agriculture drives the economy, accounting for half of all domestic production and most exports.

Mitiku Kassa, Ethiopia’s state minister for agriculture and rural development, appealed to donors Thursday for more than $121 million. In January, he had said that 4.9 million of Ethiopia’s 85 million people needed emergency food aid.

Ethiopia has long struggled with cyclical droughts, which are compounded by the country’s dependence on rain-fed agriculture and archaic farming practices.

In 1984, Ethiopia’s famine drew international attention as news reports showed emaciated children and adults with limbs as thin as sticks. The crisis launched one of the biggest global charity campaigns in history, including the concert Live Aid.

This year’s drought appears to be slightly less severe than the one last year, which was exacerbated by high food prices. A year ago, Mitiku appealed for aid to feed 6.4 million people affected by drought.

But many humanitarian groups have said in recent years that they believe the number of people affected by hunger is higher than government estimates.

Because of Ethiopia’s large size and poor infrastructure, independent observers have difficulty collecting data. The worst-affected areas in the country’s east are the site of a fierce insurgency and are off-limits to journalists. Aid groups say their movements in these areas are limited by military restrictions.

In a report marking 25 years since Ethiopia’s famine, the aid group Oxfam said countries must focus on preparing communities to prevent and deal with drought and other disasters before they strike, rather than relying on importing aid.

According to the U.N., nearly two-thirds of Africa’s agricultural land has been degraded by erosion and misused pesticides. In Ethiopia, where bad farming practices have led to massive erosion, 85 percent of land is damaged. Hard money training

The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September, the highest since June 1983, as employers cut far more jobs than expected. The report is evidence that the worst recession since the 1930s is still inflicting widespread pain.

Persistently high unemployment could weaken the recovery as consumers, concerned about their jobs and incomes, restrain spending. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the nation’s economy.

The Labor Department said Friday that the economy lost a net total of 263,000 jobs last month, from a downwardly revised 201,000 in August. That’s worse than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 180,000 job losses, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The unemployment rate rose from 9.7 percent in August, matching expectations.

If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

More than a half-million unemployed people gave up looking for work last month. Had they continued searching, the official jobless rate would have been higher.

All told, 15.1 million Americans are now out of work, the department said. And more than 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007.

Many analysts expect the economy grew at a healthy clip in the July-September quarter, technically ending the recession, but few think the recovery will be strong enough to lower the jobless rate. Most economists expect the rate to top 10 percent and keep climbing.

The economy has received a boost from the Cash for Clunkers auto rebate program and other government stimulus efforts, but many economists believe that growth will slow in the current quarter and early next year as the impact of those programs fade.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday that even if the economy were to grow at a 3 percent pace in the coming quarters, it would not be enough to quickly drive down the unemployment rate. Bernanke said the rate is likely to remain above 9 percent through the end of 2010. Hard money training

Iran said on Tuesday it would refuse to discuss a newly declared nuclear plant at forthcoming international talks and cautioned Western powers it could curb cooperation further if they repeated “past mistakes.”

An Iranian MP suggested parliament might seek withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if Thursday’s Geneva talks with major powers fail and “if the Zionists and America continue their pressure on Iran” — a reference to policies including economic sanctions.

Washington has suggested possible new sanctions on banking and the oil and gas industry if Tehran fails to assuage Western fears it seeks nuclear weapons. U.S. officials believe sanctions could now have more effect, playing on leadership divisions evident since a disputed presidential poll.

Comments by Western and Iranian officials suggested little optimism ahead of the Thursday’s rare meeting of the P5+1 — permanent U.N. Security Council members China, Britain, France, the United Sates and Russia, as well as Germany — with Iran.

“My expectation, or my hope, is that we will be able to get…the guarantees from Tehran, that the program in which they are engaged in is a peaceful program,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters in Gothenburg, Sweden.

“I don’t think it will be easy to ask for, but we will continue to engage.”

Last week’s news of a second uranium enrichment plant, under construction south of Tehran, added urgency to the Geneva talks. Uranium in less refined form can be used for power generation but in a more highly refined state is used in nuclear bombs.

Statements from Tehran on Tuesday allowed some ambiguity on Iran’s readiness to talk. Hard money training