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The Hangover News

Very important things happened this weekend, but you were too busy brutalising your own brain to notice.

OPPORTUNISTS AND CHAOS REIGNED IN LONDON

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Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old man from Tottenham, was shot dead by police in his car on Thursday. An understandably angry, but peaceful, protest lead by his family on Saturday turned violent. Reports are indicating that the mood changed when riot police got heavy-handed with a 16-year-old girl.

Tottenham was turned into a fire-strewn battleground on Saturday night – fuller coverage than this column can offer can be found elsewhere on the site.

Annons

It was daylight on Sunday before the police had caught up with looters in nearby Wood Green. But with sunset came more crime, as teams of looters – described by police as "small and mobile" – targeted vulnerable shops while officers dodged missiles hurled by kids.

At the time of writing, the trouble had spread to Enfield, Walthamstow, Edmonton, Dalston, Hackney, Manor House, Finsbury Park, Holloway, Oxford Circus and Highbury in North London.

In the south of the city, a relatively peaceful Brixton Splash carnival did little to suggest that, by midnight, six fire trucks would be trying to stop Foot Locker burning to the ground.

Witnesses reported that people were lobbing petrol bombs at those fire engines. They also said that the looting gangs were moving from area to area in cabs. The places targeted seemed mainly to be warehouses full of electronic goods and sportswear shops.

Events seemed to have moved so far away from Duggan's shooting that it feels a little strange treating it as the same story.

Nevertheless, there was a significant development in his case on Sunday evening. Initial ballistics tests indicate that a bullet lodged in one of the police cars present at the scene of Duggan's shooting was actually fired by police.

This would seem to suggest there was no exchange of fire and thus weaken the police's case for having pulled out their weapons in the first place.

The media seemed strangely uninterested in Sunday evening's developments, with only LBC Radio and the Guardian offering coverage agile enough to rival that provided by Twitter.

Annons

So unresponsive were the 24-hour news channels that some even thought the police had ordered a media blackout, though the Met denied this on Twitter.

No doubt this summary will also be out-of-date by the time you read it, but to stay in the loop, here's a list of useful hashtags.

#Enfield | #Edmonton | #Tottenham | #WoodGreen | #Brixton | #LondonRiots | #Dalston | #Hackney | #Walthamstow

Find out what else happened this weekend on page two.

SHIT CONTINUES TO BE VERY REAL IN SYRIA

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's drive to become the most hated man in the world shows no sign of letting up, given he'll wake up today with the blood of at least four more people on his hands.

The attacks were carried out in Houleh and Deir Ezzor in the eastern part of the country, as Assad continues to win back popular support by killing all of his own people.

Some important Arabs have condemned him.

ANOTHER GUN WENT OFF IN AMERICA

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A family feud in Ohio resulted in eight members of that family dying from gunshot wounds.

Local police aren't releasing many of the details yet – identities, motives, etc – but we know the shootings took place at two different locations.

Police shot the gunman dead.

One of those killed was an 11-year-old girl. Two others were wounded.

BIG BOI WAS ARRESTED

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Police caught the rapper from Outkast with viagra, ecstasy and MDMA.

A sniffer dog narced him out. He was stepping off a cruise ship at the time.

MAC HACKETT