Free Republic

Joseph Hall said he was simply trying to go back home after his workday in Portland. However, he was soon involved in an armed standoff with militant leftists who had closed off roads as part of their protests against police brutality. Hall, a 53-year-old handyman, ended up in the hospital with several broken bones and other serious injuries after the black-clad militants severely beat him up. While driving home in his red pickup truck, a moped allegedly cut him off. Then a man with a handheld radio instructed Hall to stop his truck. Hall claims that another vehicle blocked his...

ROME — Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy won a budget vote in Parliament on Tuesday but the tally showed that he no longer has the support of the majority, a huge humiliation that raised the pressure on him to resign in the face of an escalating debt crisis that has hobbled Greece, threatens Italy and could infect the rest of Europe. The budget vote came hours after Umberto Bossi, a key ally in Mr. Berlusconi’s center-right coalition, publicly asked him to step aside for the sake of the country, the euro zone’s third-largest economy and a new epicenter of...