UFO Info Week-End

Five men and a teenage boy were arrested at the weekend when fighting

Five men and a teenage boy were arrested at the weekend when fighting broke out between Kurds and Turkish football fans celebrating their World Cup victory. Buildings in the area were attacked and a Kurdish grocery shop ransacked during the violence. Scotland Yard said the trouble had died down by early evening.Three men were charged with using threatening words and behaviour and three others were released without charge, including a boy aged 14.The area around Green Lanes has a large Turkish population and has been held up as an example of rival ethnic groups living peacefully with each other. The Turkish flag has featured prominently outside shops and businesses during the country’s successful cup campaign.The goal during extra time in the match against Senegal was otherwise greeted with unalloyed joy by members of the Turkish community, which is not used to seeing its football team do so well.Turkey have not featured in World Cup finals for 48 years, and celebrations in Turkish communities at the weekend matched the scale of their achievement. Streets in north London were blocked as hundreds of people drove around the area draping Turkish flags from their car windows and beeping their horns.Hundreds of others descended on Trafalgar Square to celebrate and cheer and dance around Nelson’s Column.The Londra Gazete, a weekly newspaper for Turkish-speaking communities in London, will not come out until Thursday, after the team’s semi-final match against Brazil.Artun Goksan, the editor-in-chief of the paper, said: “If Turkey goes out and wins that one, there will be an even bigger party. This time in Stoke Newington there was a big, big crowd of more than 500 people and at Trafalgar Square more than 1,000. Mostly, people were on Green Lanes with their cars and flags all the way down to Enfield and back.”In Turkey, victories in European club competitions often bring people on to the streets, but Saturday was the first time it had happened in London, Mr Goksan said.Mustafa Demir, who works at The Best Turkish Kebab shop in Stoke Newington, said: “Everywhere was jammed with people enjoying it All of north London was blocked.

It has been the best thing for promoting Turkey and its culture.”If the side is victorious against Brazil, it will face the victor of the Germany vs South Korea game.Germany has a huge Turkish community of about two million.. A purge of corruption among prison officers has been ordered in England and Wales with the number of investigations into allegations including bribery, fraud and violence now at more than 700. Prison Service sources indicated that around 100 members of staff were currently suspended.Mr Narey told The Independent: “The prison population has changed quite a lot. We now have many, many more extremely sophisticated, extremely rich prisoners who have the capacity to compromise and corrupt staff.”He said some inmates had accumulated “very large resources” from drug enterprises and were able to use their associates to put pressure on officers.

Mr Narey has recruited former police officers with backgrounds in intelligence work to take part in the investigations, often working with Customs and Excise officers.. Confronted by growing concern over illegal immigration and the prospect of Europe’s border soon extending to countries such as Ukraine and Belarus, the European Union is to step up efforts to co-ordinate frontier controls. Officials fear that gangs involved in people trafficking from as far afield as China will take advantage of the EU’s eastward expansion in 2004 to target the bloc’s new eastern limits. The existing frontier with Russia – in Finland – will become longer.The EU leaders agreed to boost co-operation among frontier guards and police forces. By the end of this year European countries aim to have started joint operations at the EU’s external borders, to have set up pilot projects and created a new network of immigration liaison officers to tackle illegal migration. By the end of 2003 the EU will set up a core curriculum for border guard training and study the possibility of burden-sharing for managing the external border.But the idea of a European border police force was quietly buried at the EU summit in Seville, in favour of increased co-operation among national governments.