INTERNATIONAL
 
Thousands of UK students protest tuition fees hike
 
LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of students marched through London on Wednesday against plans to triple university tuition fees, and violence erupted as a minority battled police and trashed a building containing the headquarters of the governing Conservative Party.
 
Organizers said 50,000 students, lecturers and supporters demonstrated against plans to raise the cost of studying at a university to 9,000 pounds ($14,000) a year — three times the current rate — in the largest street protest yet against the government’s sweeping austerity measures.
 
As the march passed a high-rise building that houses Conservative headquarters, some protesters smashed windows as others lit a bonfire of placards outside the building.
 
Office workers were evacuated as several dozen demonstrators managed to get into the lobby, scattering furniture, smashing CCTV cameras, spraying graffiti and chanting “Tories Out,” while outside police faced off against a crowd that occasionally hurled food and placards.
 
 
El Salvador prison catches fire, kills 16 inmates, injures 22
 
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — A fire tore through an El Salvador prison Wednesday, killing at least 16 young inmates and injuring 22.
 
Ten of the injured are listed in serious condition with burns, said Mauricio Ventura, director of the Rosales Hospital in the capital, San Salvador.
 
The small prison in the city of Ilobasco held 96 inmates, 43 of whom were in the area affected by the fire. A final count of the inmates showed five were not injured.
 
Most of the prisoners had served time in facilities for youthful offenders and were transferred to Ilobasco after they turned 18.
 
 
NATIONAL
 
US appeals court judge endorses legalizing marijuana use
 
 
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A U.S. federal appeals court judge says the United States should consider legalizing marijuana.
 
Judge Juan Torruella tells a law school audience in Puerto Rico that experimenting with legalization of marijuana and perhaps other drugs is a better way to reduce drug abuse and crime.
 
The 77-year-old judge says it’s the only “realistic” alternative since the drug war has been “lost” at a high cost to society.
 
His comments Tuesday at the University of Puerto Rico were reported by the newspaper El Nuevo Dia.
 
Torruella sits on the Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
 
He was nominated to be a federal judge by President Gerald Ford and elevated to the appeals court by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
 
 
STATE/LOCAL
 
Settlement reached in suit over school’s handcuffing of 6-year-old
 
 
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A law group that sued over a 6-year-old student who was handcuffed to chair at a state-run New Orleans school says the federal lawsuit has been settled.
 
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which filed the suit in July, announced the settlement Wednesday.
 
The center said the state’s Recovery School District, which took over most New Orleans public schools after Hurricane Katrina, agreed to prohibit the use of fixed restraints and limit the use of handcuffs.
 
Security personnel at the schools will receive training on the settlement terms, according to an SPLC news release.
 
“The Recovery School District has reinforced its commitment to their students,” said Thena Robinson, lead attorney for the SPLC. “Hopefully, schools throughout the state will follow RSD’s lead and take action to protect students from the brutal restraints and abusive punishments that far too many students endure on a daily basis.”
 
 
Federal education money to be used to offset state budget cuts
 
(AP) — State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek told school superintendents Wednesday that their districts won’t receive an expected infusion of $147 million in federal education money.
 
Instead, The Associated Press learned that Pastorek told the superintendents in a conference call that the Jindal administration wants to use the money to help fill in budget gaps next year and to offset cuts to higher education.
 
West Baton Rouge Parish Schools Superintendent  David Corona called the news devastating.
 
Districts had been told how much money they could expect and had ing the school districts could use it either in the current school year or the next one.
 
 
 
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