Deadly protests in April and May over soaring food and fuel prices were crushed by President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power for more than two decades. Besigye was badly beaten and put under house arrest.The protest movement, led by the Activists 4 Change (A4C)group, has struggled to rally large numbers since then, mainly because Besigye has largely stayed away from demonstrations.On Tuesday, Besigye’s party, the Forum for Democratic Change, said he was briefly arrested when he joined a “walk-to-work” protest on the outskirts of the capital, Kampala.Later, police said the former presidential contender had been released and taken to his home in the Kasangati suburb.Opposition youths reacted angrily to his detention, hurling rocks at passing vehicles. Police used teargas and water-cannon trucks spraying pink-colored water to disperse the protesters.Analysts said this opposition agitation was unlikely to grow into a serious threat to the government given the international community’s muted response to the previous crackdown.”Police brutality in April and May was not punished and neither did we see strong condemnation of Museveni from the Western powers, and this discourages would-be protesters,” said political analyst Nicholas Ssengoba.Ugandan troops form the backbone of a peacekeeping mission in Somalia, a task few countries are willing to undertake.”FLIMSY CHARGES”Police said they had detained 45 opposition protesters since Sunday and would charge 15 of them with treason.The police said they had unveiled a plot to overthrow the government. The opposition described the treason charges, which carry the death penalty, as flimsy.Kale Kayihura, the inspector general for police, told reporters that security forces had obtained a recording of a September 23 meeting in which participants said they planned to use protests to topple the government.”We have arrested 45 people across the country so far and 15 of these will be charged with treason today or tomorrow,” Kayihura said.According to Kayihura, a person can be heard in the recording saying: “The task remaining is how to bring down this regime” and “we must walk without stopping until the government falls.”Kayihura accused the group of seeking to plunge Uganda into lawlessness.”Clearly, as you can see, the whole intention of A4C’s post-election campaign is geared at overthrowing the government through means other than what is provided for by the constitution of the republic of Uganda. This is a criminal offence called ‘treason.‘“Deputy foreign envoy for the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Ann Mugisha, dismissed Kayihura’s accusation.”A4C is absolutely clear and unwavering in its commitment to non-violence in its activities. (The)Police just want to use serious charges to keep our activists out of action,” she said.Soaring consumer prices sent Uganda’s inflation rocketing to 28.3 percent in September, its highest level since January 1993, fueled by a weak local currency and high food prices.Uganda, Africa’s third-largest economy, hopes to become a top-50 oil producer in the next four years.
Phill Kline, now a law professor at Liberty University in Virginia, was faulted in a 185-page report for his actions both as state attorney general from 2003 to 2007 and later as district attorney in Johnson County, Kansas.The recommendation of the Kansas Board of Discipline for Attorneys that Kline be suspended now goes to the Kansas Supreme Court for a final decision.”The hearing panel concluded that the respondent has repeatedly violated many of the Kansas Rules of Professional Conduct, including the most serious of the rules, the rules that prohibit engaging in false or dishonest conduct,” the report stated.Kline told the board he committed no violations. In an interview Thursday night, Kline said he was not surprised by the board’s findings but was concerned.While he has already lost his Kansas law license for failing to pay an annual registration fee, he said the board finding could affect his ability to teach and practice law anywhere.”They are taking my livelihood,” he said. “All I’ve wanted to do all my life is practice law.”Kline, an outspoken opponent of abortion, battled for years with abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood over whether they were complying with all abortion laws in the state.The disciplinary panel found that Kline provided false or misleading information to the courts about how he gained the identities of women who had abortions.The board also said he allowed redacted medical records be kept at insecure locations and that he discussed an ongoing abortion-related case on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News in 2006.Kline prosecuted cases involving Planned Parenthood and George Tiller, a Wichita, Kansas-based doctor who provided abortions before being murdered in 2009.In a prepared statement released to the media Thursday night, Kline said: “My ‘mistake’ was my willingness to investigate politically powerful people and to let that investigation go where the evidence led.”
Around 500 people marched through Manhattan’s Upper East Side, passing the high-rise buildings where many of the executives live. Among them are Paulson, global media mogul Rupert Murdoch, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and David Koch, co-founder of energy firm Koch Industries.The protesters chanted “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” and “Hey you billionaires, pay your fair share” and carried signs that read “Stop robbing from the middle class to pay the rich” and “We are the 99 percent,” a reference to the idea that the top 1 percent of Americans have too much.Mustafa Ibrahim, 23, an engineer marched on the “Billionaire’s Tour” during a visit to New York from Cairo, where he said he was arrested during a popular uprising this year which toppled Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak.”It’s pretty much the same thing as Egypt,” Ibrahim said. “The problem is the rich keep getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.”Since September 17 protesters have been camped out in a park in Lower Manhattan near Wall Street, rallying against bailouts for banks during the recession, which allowed them to earn huge profits while average Americans suffer high unemployment and job insecurity with little help.As protesters took their grievances to the homes of the rich, the Paulson & Co hedge fund defended its status.Paulson took home $5 billion in 2010, the hedge fund industry’s biggest ever paycheck, but this year one of his main funds has fallen 47 percent after he mistimed a call that the economy would recover strongly.”The top 1 percent of New Yorkers pay over 40 percent of all income taxes, providing huge benefits to everyone in our city and state,” Paulson & Co said in a statement, adding that New York has the highest income taxes of any U.S. states.”Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them to remain in New York City and continue to grow,” it said.The Occupy Wall Street movement is burgeoning ahead of planned global protests on Saturday. On Wednesday, the Service Employees International Union will march on New York City’s financial district for good jobs, while U.S. college students plan solidarity protests on Thursday on at least 56 campuses.According to Occupy Together, which has become an online hub for protest activity, the Occupy Wall Street movement has sparked rallies in more than 1,400 cities throughout the United States and around the world.ARRESTS IN BOSTON, WASHINGTON D.C.Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein canceled a talk at New York’s Barnard College, and though the company — which received and repaid a big federal bailout during the financial crisis — said a scheduling conflict would keep him away, students from nearby Columbia University were planning to protest his appearance.”Don’t look at the Arab spring, look here because things are going to boil over,” said protester Charles Evans, 62, as he marched on the “Billionaire’s Tour.”Fifth Avenue resident Lorna Goldberg, 57, said she was surprised to see the protesters near her home. “But I guess they’re getting their point across by coming here,” she added.Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, last week likened the growth of the protest movement to the grass-roots Tea Party, but the conservative group on Tuesday sought to distance itself from the protesters.The Tea Party Patriots said in a statement that its supporters were “not lawbreakers, they don’t hate the police, they don’t even litter.”
