Rodney King, the black motorist whose 1991 videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers led to some of the nation’s most destructive race riots, has died at the age of 47.
His death was confirmed by Suzanne Wickham of Harper Collins, who published Mr King’s 2012 book The Riot Within – My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption.
Mr King was stopped for speeding in March 1991 by four officers who hit him more than 50 times, kicked him and shot him with stun guns. A bystander videotaped the beating.
The officers were acquitted a year later, sparking a riot that would leave 55 people dead and more than 2,000 injured.
Skull stunt to scare drunks
Police have arrested three teenagers in the Indian state of Goa for allegedly digging up a graveyard in an island village and lining up skulls along a main road to scare away “drunkards”.
The incident was discovered when stunned residents came across the bizarre scene on Friday morning, and police then found the graveyard of a local church had been vandalised.
They have since arrested three local males aged 14, 18 and 19.
Dr’s 1.3 millon interviewees
Bangladesh’s top university yesterday ordered a probe into a doctoral thesis by a political science teacher who claimed to have interviewed 1.3 million people in three years – more than 1,000 a day.
Dhaka University’s Mohammad Noor Uddin was awarded a PhD last year for his research, The Practices of Marxism and Their Impact on Modern World: The case of Objectivisation. He said he interviewed 1.275 million people for the research carried out between June 2008 and May 2011, meaning he interviewed about 1,200 people every day, Dhaka University vice-chancellor Arefin Siddique said.
Uddin could not be contacted, but one of his thesis supervisors , Professor Shawkat Ara Hossain, defended the work, saying she believed him.