San Francisco free speech rally attacked by angry critics
A free speech demonstration staged by conservative activists quickly fell apart in downtown San Francisco on Saturday after several hundred counterprotesters surged the area, outnumbering and attacking those gathered, including knocking one in the mouth.
A photographer working for The Associated Press witnessed an activist with Team Save America taken away in an ambulance and an injured San Francisco police officer on the ground by the city’s United Nations Plaza.
Team Save America organized the rally to protest Twitter, which it said squelches conservative speech.
Members of the group wore red “Make America Great Again” Trump campaign hats and carried propolice “Thin Blue Line” flags and U.S. flags.
Philip Anderson, the organizer of the event, posted photos to social media of his bloody mouth with a front tooth missing and another hanging loosely. He said anti-fascist protesters attacked him “for no reason.”
Armenia, Azerbaijan announce new truce
Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday announced a new attempt to establish a ceasefire in their conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh starting from midnight, a move that comes a week after a Russia-brokered truce frayed immediately after it took force.
The new agreement was announced following Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s calls with his counterparts from the two nations, in which he strongly urged them to abide by the Moscow deal.
Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. The latest fighting that began on Sept. 27 has involved heavy artillery, rockets and drones, killing hundreds in the largest escalation of hostilities in over a quarter-century.
Russia, which has a security pact with Armenia but has cultivated warm ties with Azerbaijan, hosted top diplomats from both countries for more than 10 hours of talks that ended with the initial ceasefire agreement. But the deal frayed immediately after the truce took effect last Saturday, with both sides blaming each other for breaching it.
Transit shutdowns fail to deter Thai protests
Pro-democracy activists in Thailand staged a fourth straight day of high-profile protests in the capital on Saturday, thwarting efforts by the authorities to stop them, including a shutdown of the city’s mass transit systems.
Unlike protests a day earlier, in which police used a water cannon to disperse protesters, Saturday’s demonstrations were peaceful, with no reports of any clashes by the time participants started heading home in the evening.
The protesters are calling for Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to leave office, the constitution to be amended to make it more democratic and the nation’s monarchy to undergo reform.
All stations of Bangkok’s elevated Skytrain transit system were closed Saturday afternoon to try to keep protesters from gathering.