Here's some footage of the riots that followed yesterday's vote in Italy to keep Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government in office. READ MORE

Earlier this month, students across the UK began protesting against planned increases in tuition fees and the cutting of university services. Today, students have been occupying buildings in Birmingham and hurling snowballs in Edinburgh and marching in London. All of this thoughtful demonstrating—which is winding down in arrests and some clubbings and the offering of mince pies to politicians—takes place against the dramatic backdrop of the first demonstrations on November 10th, when tens of thousands of young people stormed London. At the end, in Millbank, in central London, some demonstrators smashed windows; fires were set; and an occupation of Conservative headquarters by a few hundred ensued (from that building, an 18-year-old threw a fire extinguisher off the roof). Further, the second wave of demonstrations, on November 24, went off with some hitches when some small violence against property ensued and the police cornered and arrested a number of marchers. READ MORE

At least half the mysterious but immense number of people who attended Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear didn’t see or hear one iota of the stage show, because there were way too many people crowding round a woefully insufficient number of speakers and Jumbotrons. But nobody seemed to mind too much about missing the show, because they were having so much fun comparing costumes and signs, and giggling together over how weird “this whole thing” was. The atmosphere as I roamed about the massive crowd was uniformly giddy all day long. READ MORE