Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was found guilty of bombing Pan Am flight 103 while en route from London to New York on December 21, 1988. A total of 270 people were killed.

Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment in Scotland, but released two years ago on compassionate grounds and returned to Libya because he was suffering from advanced terminal prostate cancer and thought to have just a few months to live.

His release infuriated some politicians in the United States — home to many of the bombing victims — and the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi prompted hopes among some that Libya’s new leaders could allow Megrahi’s extradition.

However, Libya’s National Transitional Council said on Sunday it had no intention of agreeing to any such request, and Scotland has no plans to make one.

“At the present moment the only people with any authority in this matter are the Scottish government … and the new Libyan Transitional Council,” Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond told Sky News.

“We have never had, and do not have, any intention of asking for the extradition of Mr Megrahi,” he added.

SCOTTISH, LIBYANS IN CHARGE

Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said he would like to see Megrahi back in jail. Prime Minister David Cameron, who took office in May 2010, has called the release a mistake.

However, Scotland has responsibility for its own legal system.

“Perhaps if we all followed due process of law as the Scottish government has done and ceased the international politicking around this, then we could all be in a much better place,” Salmond said in Monday’s interview, in a barely veiled criticism of those who have attacked Megrahi’s release.

“The views of American senators, of American lawyers, of the UK Foreign Secretary and of the Deputy Prime Minister have no bearing on this issue.”

Salmond leads the Scottish National Party, which has run the country since 2007. Cameron’s Conservatives, Clegg’s Liberal Democrats and the Labour party which governed Britain at the time of Megrahi’s release all sit in opposition to the SNP in the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.

Though discomfited by the official welcome accorded by Libya to Megrahi, and by the long time that he has lived since being freed, Scottish leaders have defended their decision as showing compassion to a dying man, in line with established Scottish policy. They reject suggestions the release was timed to help Britain win diplomatic and commercial favors from Gaddafi.

A CNN correspondent said on Sunday that he had found Megrahi in what was described as a palatial house in an upmarket part of Tripoli, guarded by at least six security cameras and attended to by concerned relatives.

“He appears to be a shell of the man that he was, far sicker than he appeared before … at death’s door,” he said.

Scottish authorities said several days ago that they had lost contact with Megrahi during the chaotic conditions caused by Libyan rebels’ climactic push to oust long-time ruler Gaddafi.

But authorities said early on Monday morning that contact has been established with Megrahi’s family. As a prisoner free on license, Megrahi is obliged to report in regularly.

“Over the course of the weekend, there has been contact through Mr Al-Megrahi’s family,” the Scottish Government and East Renfrewshire Council said in a joint statement.

“There was no evidence of a breach of his license conditions, and his medical condition is consistent with someone suffering from terminal prostate cancer.”

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

The August Reuters/Ipsos MORI Political Monitor shows satisfaction with the government is unchanged from last month, with twice as many people dissatisfied with the ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition as satisfied (59 percent compared to 30 percent).

The standing of the party leaders among voters was also little changed.

Support for the governing centre-right Conservative Party was broadly unchanged at 34 percent, as was that for Labour on 40 percent.

The Liberal Democrats — whose support slumped after the party entered government with the Conservatives last year — saw an increase of 4 points in its projected share of the vote to 15 percent, their highest share since last September, although Ipsos MORI said it was too early to say whether this indicated a sustained shift in attitude.

A parliamentary election does not have to be held until 2015.

BROKEN BRITAIN?

Looting and violence in neighbourhoods across London and other English cities shocked Britons and prompted widespread soul-searching as politicians and commentators looked to explain the outbreak.

The Conservatives, traditionally seen as the strongest party on law and order, called for a robust response to deal with perpetrators. The Liberal Democrats said those involved in the violence should be made to help rebuild their communities.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who coined the phrase “Broken Britain” while in opposition said he now believed some parts of Britain’s society were not just broken but “sick.”

But the findings of the poll suggest public opinion about the state of British society has not shifted significantly.

Three in five people (58 percent) of people surveyed for this month’s poll agreed British society was “broken” — a slight fall from the 63 percent who agreed with the question when Ipsos MORI last asked it in 2008.

“Indeed, our recent Issues Index, conducted during the riots and their immediate aftermath, showed that despite showing a marked increase in concern about crime and law and order following the riots, fewer are now concerned about crime and anti-social behaviour than throughout 2008,” said Ipsos MORI’s Helen Cleary.

Economic optimism continues to fall. Only a fifth (19 percent) believe the economic condition of the country will improve in the next 12 months, and half (52 percent) think it will get worse. Pessimism about the short-term future of the economy has been increasing month-on-month since May.

Technical details:

- Ipsos MORI interviewed a representative sample of 1,002 adults aged 18+ across Britain.

- Interviews were conducted by telephone August 20-22.

- Data are weighted to match the profile of the population.

(Created by Jodie Ginsberg)

“I’m being hired by the British government to consult with them on the issue of gangs, gang violence and gang intervention from the American experience and to offer some advice and counsel on their experience,” Bratton told Reuters in New York.

British police flooded the streets again on Friday night to ensure weekend drinking does not reignite the rioting that shocked Britons and sullied the country’s image a year before it hosts the Olympic Games.

Steve Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said 16,000 officers, instead of the usual 2,500, would remain on duty in London in their biggest peacetime deployment — a measure of the perceived public order challenge.

Other forces, including those in Nottingham, Birmingham and Liverpool, said they would maintain a high level of policing over the weekend, though they said they did not expect further trouble after a couple of nights of quiet.

Even in normal times, alcohol-fueled street disorder is common across urban Britain at weekends.

Cameron, describing the four nights of looting, arson and violence, in which five people were killed, as “criminality, pure and simple,” said the initial police response had been inadequate.

His remarks drew a sharp reaction from the police service, which is facing deep cuts in numbers as part of a government austerity drive aimed at cutting the large public debt.

“The fact that politicians chose to come back is an irrelevance in terms of the tactics that were by then developing,” said Hugh Orde, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, referring to Cameron and other senior ministers who cut short their holidays after two days of mayhem at home.

Bratton, credited with curbing street crime as police chief in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, said he would help the British government develop strategies on dealing with widespread rioting and gang culture.

“The government is very interested in trying to quickly come up with strategies and plans to deal with the issues and concerns identified during these riots,” said Bratton, a former police chief and now chairman of private security firm Kroll.

A Downing Street spokesman said Cameron had spoken to Bratton on Friday, and that Bratton would join a series of meetings in the autumn, working unpaid and in a personal capacity. Bratton has worked with the British police at other times over the past 20 years.

Cameron himself has not escaped criticism. A ComRes poll for The Independent newspaper showed that 54 percent of Britons say he failed to provide leadership early enough to control the riots, while an ICM survey for The Guardian showed that only 30 percent thought Cameron responded well to the riots and 44 percent thought the opposite.

More than 1,200 people were arrested during and after the unrest. One London looter, 24-year-old Natasha Reid, turned herself in to police because she could not sleep for guilt after stealing a television, according to her defense lawyer.

In another case, Chelsea Ives, 18, one of thousands of people enrolled as “ambassadors” to help visitors to the 2012 Olympics, was identified by her mother who saw her on television after allegedly throwing bricks at a police car. Ives denied charges of burglary and violent disorder.

Courts have sat through the night to process those accused of crimes ranging from assault to stealing a bottle of water.

Offenders include a millionaire’s daughter, a charity worker and a journalism student, but most are unemployed young men.

Some police forces have taken unusual steps to crack down on the protesters and deter future violence.

Greater Manchester Police launched a ‘Shop A Looter’ campaign using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to encourage people to inform on those suspected of looting, and posted pictures on its website (here)

of people convicted of offences.

Those pictures included a 46-year-old man sentenced to four months in prison for assaulting a police officer and a 28-year-old man sentenced to eight months for stealing clothes.

“The fightback has well and truly begun,” Cameron told an emergency session of parliament on Thursday, outlining a range of measures aimed at preventing any repeat of England’s worst riots in decades. Targeting street gangs became a top priority.

The trouble began in London after police shot dead a black man and refused to give his relatives information about the incident, but then degenerated into widespread looting and violence in many parts of the capital and other major cities.

HARSH MEASURES

The Conservative Party, which irked right-wing supporters by going into coalition with the left-leaning Liberal Democrats last year, is desperate to show it is tough on crime.

A Conservative minister said on Friday he would see if he could make it easier to evict people from government housing for rioting. “…I don’t think this is a time to pussyfoot around,” said communities minister Eric Pickles, adding that his plan would require legal changes.

“These people have done their best to make people frightened on the streets where they live. They’ve done their best to destroy neighborhoods, and frankly I don’t feel terribly sympathetic toward them.”

British media reported that one London council was already trying to evict a tenant from such housing after the tenant’s son was charged with offences linked to the riots.

A 68-year-old man who was attacked as he tried to put out a fire set by rioters in London on Monday night died of his injuries, officials said on Friday.

Three men were killed in Birmingham, central England, when a car drove into them as they tried to stop rioters, and a man died after being shot during riots in Croydon, south London.

The scale and ferocity of the rioting, not only in inner-city areas but also in some middle-class suburbs, has generated a law and order debate with starkly different views.

“There’s got to be a curfew put in place. I would have put in as many police as possible straightaway — they did that eventually. I probably would have used teargas myself,” said Graham Sawyer, 46, a construction site project manager from Romford, east of London.

(Additional reporting by Peter Griffiths, Mohammed Abbas, Tim Castle, Adrian Croft and Olesya Dmitracova in London and Ray Sanchez and Daniel Trotta in New York; editing by Tim Pearce)

Steve Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said 16,000 officers, instead of the usual 2,500, would remain on duty in London in their biggest peacetime deployment — a measure of the perceived public order challenge.

Even in normal times, alcohol-fuelled street disorder is commonplace across urban Britain at the weekend.

Prime Minister David Cameron, describing the four nights of wild looting, arson and violence, in which five people were killed, as “criminality, pure and simple,” has called the initial police response inadequate.

His remarks drew a sharp response from the police service, which is facing deep cuts in numbers as part of a sweeping government austerity drive aimed at slashing public debt.

“The fact that politicians chose to come back is an irrelevance in terms of the tactics that were by then developing,” said Hugh Orde, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, referring to Cameron and other senior ministers who cut short their holidays after two days of mayhem at home

More than 1,200 people were arrested during the unrest — and one London looter, 24-year-old Natasha Reid, turned herself into police because she could not sleep for guilt after stealing a television, according to her defence lawyer.

In another case, Chelsea Ives, 18, who is among thousands of people enrolled as “ambassadors” to help visitors to the 2012 Olympics, was identified by her mother who saw her on television after allegedly throwing bricks at a police car, media said. Ives denied charges of burglary and violent disorder.

Courts have sat through the night to process those accused of crimes ranging from assault to stealing a bottle of water.

Offenders include a millionaire’s daughter, a charity worker and a journalism student, though most are unemployed young men.

In what it said revealed tough justice being meted out, The Guardian newspaper found that in a sample of more than 150 cases before magistrates’ courts, most defendants were remanded in custody, even when they pleaded guilty to relatively minor offences.

FIGHTBACK

“The fightback has well and truly begun,” Cameron told an emergency session of parliament on Thursday, outlining a range of measures aimed at preventing any repeat of England’s worst riots in decades. Targeting street gangs became a top priority.

The trouble began in London after police shot dead a black man and refused to give his relatives information about the incident, but then degenerated into widespread looting and violence in many parts of the capital and other major cities.

Britain could make it easier to evict people from government housing for rioting, a minister said on Friday, the latest move by a coalition desperate to show it is tough on crime.

“That may sound a little harsh, but I don’t think this is a time to pussyfoot around,” Eric Pickles, communities minister, said, adding that the measure would require legal changes.

“These people have done their best to make people frightened on the streets where they live. They’ve done their best to destroy neighbourhoods, and frankly I don’t feel terribly sympathetic towards them.”

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is keen to regain the initiative after early criticism that it was slow to respond to the rioting which has overturned Britain’s image abroad as a generally peaceable and orderly society.

A 68-year-old man who was attacked as he tried to put out a fire set by rioters in London on Monday night died of his injuries, officials said on Friday.

Three men were killed in Birmingham, central England, when a car drove into them as they tried to stop rioters, and a man died after being shot during riots in Croydon, south London.

Britain is divided over what caused the disorder, but many people fear any reduction in police numbers would leave the country exposed if similar trouble erupted in future.

The Labour Party has urged the government to abandon its plans for a 20 percent phased cut in police funding.

Community leaders and some commentators point to poverty, unemployment and a sense of exclusion among many young people, with public sector cuts likely to hit the poor hardest.

But the scale and ferocity of the rioting, not only in inner-city areas but also in some middle-class suburbs, has generated a law and order debate with starkly different views.

“There’s got to be a curfew put in place. I would have put in as many police as possible straightaway — they did that eventually. I probably would have used teargas myself,” said Graham Sawyer, 46, a construction site project manager from Romford, east of London.

“I’m old enough to remember (former prime minister) Margaret Thatcher. She certainly wouldn’t have let it happen. I think she would have possibly gone too far, but I think she would have stopped it straight away,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Peter Griffiths, Mohammed Abbas, Tim Castle and Adrian Croft; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Steve Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police, said 16,000 officers, instead of the usual
2,500, would remain on duty in London in their biggest peacetime
deployment — a measure of the perceived public order challenge.

Even in normal times, alcohol-fuelled street disorder is
commonplace across urban Britain at the weekend.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, describing the four
nights of wild looting, arson and violence, in which five people
were killed, as “criminality, pure and simple”, has called the
initial police response inadequate.

His remarks drew a sharp response from the police service,
which is facing deep cuts in numbers as part of a sweeping
government austerity drive aimed at slashing public debt.

“The fact that politicians chose to come back is an
irrelevance in terms of the tactics that were by then
developing,” said Hugh Orde, head of the Association of Chief
Police Officers, referring to Cameron and other senior ministers
who cut short their holidays after two days of mayhem at home.

More than 1,200 people were arrested during the unrest — and
one London looter, 24-year-old Natasha Reid, turned herself into
police because she could not sleep for guilt after stealing a
television, according to her defence lawyer.

In another case, Chelsea Ives, 18, who is among thousands of
people enrolled as “ambassadors” to help visitors to the 2012
Olympics, was identified by her mother who saw her on television
after allegedly throwing bricks at a police car, media said.
Ives denied charges of burglary and violent disorder.

Courts have sat through the night to process those accused
of crimes ranging from assault to stealing a bottle of water.

Offenders include a millionaire’s daughter, a charity worker
and a journalism student, though most are unemployed young men.

In what it said revealed tough justice being meted out, The
Guardian newspaper found that in a sample of more than 150 cases
before magistrates’ courts, most defendants were remanded in
custody, even when they pleaded guilty to relatively minor
offences.

FIGHTBACK

“The fightback has well and truly begun,” Cameron told an
emergency session of parliament on Thursday, outlining a range
of measures aimed at preventing any repeat of England’s worst
riots in decades. Targeting street gangs became a top priority.

The trouble began in London after police shot dead a black
man and refused to give his relatives information about the
incident, but then degenerated into widespread looting and
violence in many parts of the capital and other major cities.

Britain could make it easier to evict people from government
housing for rioting, a minister said on Friday, the latest move
by a coalition desperate to show it is tough on crime.

“That may sound a little harsh, but I don’t think this is a
time to pussyfoot around,” Eric Pickles, communities minister,
said, adding that the measure would require legal changes.

“These people have done their best to make people frightened
on the streets where they live. They’ve done their best to
destroy neighbourhoods, and frankly I don’t feel terribly
sympathetic towards them.”

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is keen to
regain the initiative after early criticism that it was slow to
respond to the rioting which has overturned Britain’s image
abroad as a generally peaceable and orderly society.

A 68-year-old man who was attacked as he tried to put out a
fire set by rioters in London on Monday night died of his
injuries, officials said on Friday.

Three men were killed in Birmingham, central England, when a
car drove into them as they tried to stop rioters, and a man
died after being shot during riots in Croydon, south London.

Britain is divided over what caused the disorder, but many
people fear any reduction in police numbers would leave the
country exposed if similar trouble erupted in future.

The opposition Labour Party has urged the government to
abandon its plans for a 20 percent phased cut in police funding.

Community leaders and some commentators point to poverty,
unemployment and a sense of exclusion among many young people,
with public sector cuts likely to hit the poor hardest.

But the scale and ferocity of the rioting, not only in
inner-city areas but also in some middle-class suburbs, has
generated a law and order debate with starkly different views.

“There’s got to be a curfew put in place. I would have put
in as many police as possible straightaway — they did that
eventually. I probably would have used teargas myself,” said
Graham Sawyer, 46, a construction site project manager from
Romford, east of London.

“I’m old enough to remember (former prime minister) Margaret
Thatcher. She certainly wouldn’t have let it happen. I think she
would have possibly gone too far, but I think she would have
stopped it straight away,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Peter Griffiths, Mohammed Abbas, Tim
Castle and Adrian Croft; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the violence would “intensify the cycle of deprivation and vulnerability” in Britain.

“The government has insisted on the priority of creating stronger, better-resourced local communities. This priority is now a matter of extreme urgency,” he wrote in comments emailed to Reuters.

“We need to see initiatives that will address anxieties and provide some hope of long-term stability in community services, especially for the young.”

Williams generated front-page headlines earlier this year with an outspoken attack on government policies, but had not spoken publicly about the riots that erupted in England on Saturday.

“The tragedy of the events of recent days is that those who will pay the heaviest price are those who most need stability and encouragement in local communities,” Williams wrote.

“In no imaginable sense does the violence we have seen help anyone; those who have been involved have achieved nothing except to intensify the cycle of deprivation and vulnerability.”

PEOPLE ARE AFRAID

Williams provoked a public spat with Prime Minister David Cameron in June when he criticized the government in a newspaper article.

In an editorial for the left-leaning News Statesman magazine headlined “The government needs to know how afraid people are,” Williams wrote at length about public concern over government plans to cut spending and shrink the state.

“With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted,” he wrote at the time.

“The uncomfortable truth is that, while grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation,” he added, in words that have been echoed by several politicians and commentators as they looked for explanations for this week’s riots.

At the time, Cameron said he “profoundly disagreed” with many of the Archbishop’s views.

Some 72 percent of Britain’s population — or 41 million people — described themselves as Christian in the 2001 census, the latest available census data. The Church of England represents the largest of that group, but church attendance is low.

The Church of England estimates that one million people take part in one of its services each Sunday.

(Reporting by Jodie Ginsberg; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the violence would “intensify the cycle of deprivation and vulnerability” in Britain.

“The government has insisted on the priority of creating stronger, better-resourced local communities. This priority is now a matter of extreme urgency,” he wrote in comments emailed to Reuters.

“We need to see initiatives that will address anxieties and provide some hope of long-term stability in community services, especially for the young.”

Williams generated front-page headlines earlier this year with an outspoken attack on government policies, but had not spoken publicly about the riots that erupted in England on Saturday.

“The tragedy of the events of recent days is that those who will pay the heaviest price are those who most need stability and encouragement in local communities,” Williams wrote.

“In no imaginable sense does the violence we have seen help anyone; those who have been involved have achieved nothing except to intensify the cycle of deprivation and vulnerability.”

PEOPLE ARE AFRAID

Williams provoked a public spat with Prime Minister David Cameron in June when he criticised the government in a newspaper article.

In an editorial for the left-leaning News Statesman magazine headlined “The government needs to know how afraid people are,” Williams wrote at length about public concern over government plans to cut spending and shrink the state.

“With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted,” he wrote at the time.

“The uncomfortable truth is that, while grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation,” he added, in words that have been echoed by several politicians and commentators as they looked for explanations for this week’s riots.

At the time, Cameron said he “profoundly disagreed” with many of the Archbishop’s views.

Some 72 percent of Britain’s population — or 41 million people — described themselves as Christian in the 2001 census, the latest available census data. The Church of England represents the largest of that group, but church attendance is low.

The Church of England estimates that one million people take part in one of its services each Sunday.

(Reporting by Jodie Ginsberg; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

Manchester and Liverpool in the northwest and Birmingham in central England suffered the worst of the overnight violence, which broke out in north London on Saturday after a protest over a police shooting of a suspect two days earlier.

In Birmingham, police launched a murder inquiry after three Muslim men died after being run over by a car in the mayhem there. A friend of the men told BBC radio they had been part of a group of British Asians protecting their area from looters after attending Ramadan prayers at a mosque.

“The car swerved towards them. It was cold-blooded murder,” the friend said.

London itself was largely quiet, with some 16,000 police — 10,000 more than on Monday — sent onto the streets in a show of force in districts where gangs of hooded youths had looted shops and burned cars and buildings on the previous three nights.

Stephen Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, said officers would be out in force again on Wednesday night.

“Tonight we are going to plan for the worst again, that is what London deserves,” he told BBC radio.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who cut short a family holiday in Italy to deal with the crisis, was due to chair a second meeting of COBRA, the government’s crisis committee, and recalled parliament, a rare occurrence, to debate the violence.

The looting showed the world an ugly side of London less than a year before it hosts the 2012 Olympic Games, an event officials hope will serve as a showcase for the city.

A visit by an International Olympic Committee went ahead on Tuesday “as planned” and the London organisers of the Games said the violence would not hurt preparations for the Olympics.

The chaos in London, and fears of further disruption, led to the cancellation of an England-Netherlands soccer friendly on Wednesday and the postponement of three club matches.

WINDOWS SMASHED

While heavy policing in London prevented all but a few incidents in the capital, copycat looting and violence erupted in cities and towns to the north and west.

Groups of youths in hooded tops fought running battles with police in Manchester, smashing windows and looting shops, and setting fire to a clothes shop.

In nearby Salford, rioters threw bricks at police and set fire to buildings. A BBC cameraman was attacked. Television pictures showed flames leaping from shops and cars, and plumes of thick black smoke billowing across roads.

“Greater Manchester Police has been faced with extraordinary levels of violence from groups of criminals intent on committing widespread disorder,” Assistant Chief Constable Gary Shewan said.

“These people have nothing to protest against – there is no sense of injustice or any spark that has led to this. It is, pure and simple, acts of criminal behaviour which are the worst I have seen on this scale.”

In Liverpool’s Toxteth district, rioters attacked two fire engines and a fire officer’s car, police said. Earlier, some 200 youths throwing missiles wrecked and looted shops, causing “disorder and damage”, police said.

Police said they had arrested 113 people in Manchester and Salford, and 50 in Liverpool.

In Gloucester, in western England, eight fire crews fought a blaze in a large derelict building, cars were set on fire and groups of youths attacked police with rocks and bottles.

Cars were burned and stores looted in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton in central England; and in Nottingham a gang of young men set fire to a police station. There were also disturbances in Birmingham and Leicester in the Midlands, and Milton Keynes north of London.

In London, commuters hurried home early on Tuesday, shops shut and many shopkeepers boarded their windows.

Gangs have ransacked stores, carting off clothes, shoes and electronic goods, torched cars, shops and homes — causing tens of millions of pounds of damage — and taunted the police.

SPENDING CUTS

Community leaders said the violence in London, the worst for decades in the multi-ethnic capital of 7.8 million, was rooted in growing disparities in wealth and opportunity, but many insisted that greed was the looters’ only motive.

Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters: “This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated.”

“People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets,” he said after the first meeting of COBRA, on Tuesday.

The unrest poses a new challenge to Cameron as Britain’s economy struggles to grow while his government slashes public spending and raises taxes to cut a yawning budget deficit — moves some commentators say have aggravated the plight of young people in inner cities.

Police said they had arrested a total of 770 people — one as young as 11 — in London since the looting began on Saturday, and had charged 167 suspects, mainly with burglary and public order offences.

The first riots broke out on Saturday in north London’s Tottenham district, when a protest over the police shooting of a suspect led to violence.

Police are likely to come under pressure over that incident after a watchdog said on Tuesday there was no evidence that a handgun retrieved by police at the scene had been fired. Reports initially suggested Mark Duggan had shot at police before they shot and killed him.

(Additional reporting by Tim Castle, Paul Hoskins, Adrian Croft, Avril Ormsby, Jon Hemming, Sonya Hepinstall, Jon Boyle, Stefano Ambrogi, Peter Griffiths and Georgina Prodhan; Writing by Tim Pearce)

London itself was largely quiet on Tuesday night, with some 16,000 police — 10,000 more than on Monday — sent onto the streets in a show of force in districts where gangs had looted shops and burned cars and buildings virtually unchecked on the previous three nights.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who cut short a family holiday in Italy to deal with the crisis, was due to chair a second meeting of COBRA, the government’s crisis committee, and recalled parliament, a rare occurrence, to debate the violence.

The chaos in London, and fears of further disruption, led to the cancellation of an England-Netherlands soccer friendly on Wednesday and the postponement of three club matches.

The looting also showed the world an ugly side of London less than a year before it hosts the 2012 Olympic Games, an event officials hope will serve as a showcase for the city.

A visit by an International Olympic Committee went ahead on Tuesday “as planned” and the London organisers of the Games said the violence would not hurt preparations for the Olympics.

While heavy policing in London prevented all but a few incidents in the capital, copycat looting and violence erupted in cities and towns to the north and west.

Groups of youths in hooded tops fought running battles with police in Manchester in northwest England, smashing windows and looting shops, and setting fire to a clothes shop.

In Salford, greater Manchester, rioters threw bricks at police and set fire to buildings. A BBC cameraman was attacked. Television pictures showed flames leaping from shops and cars, and plumes of thick black smoke billowing across roads.

“Greater Manchester Police has been faced with extraordinary levels of violence from groups of criminals intent on committing widespread disorder,” Assistant Chief Constable Gary Shewan said.

“These people have nothing to protest against – there is no sense of injustice or any spark that has led to this. It is, pure and simple, acts of criminal behaviour which are the worst I have seen on this scale.”

In Liverpool’s Toxteth district, rioters attacked two fire engines and a fire officer’s car, police said. Earlier, some 200 youths throwing missiles wrecked and looted shops, causing ‘disorder and damage’, police said.

Police said they had arrested 47 people in Manchester and Salford, and 37 in Toxteth.

In Gloucester, in western England, eight fire crews fought a blaze in a large derelict building, cars were set on fire and groups of youths attacked police with rocks and bottles.

Cars were burned and stores looted in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, and in the Midlands town of Nottingham a gang of young men set fire to a police station. There were also disturbances in Birmingham and Leicester in the Midlands, and Milton Keynes north of London.

In London, commuters hurried home early on Tuesday, shops shut and many shopkeepers boarded their windows.

Gangs have ransacked stores, carting off clothes, shoes and electronic goods, torched cars, shops and homes — causing tens of millions of pounds of damage — and taunted the police.

Community leaders said the violence in London, the worst for decades in the multi-ethnic capital of 7.8 million, was rooted in growing disparities in wealth and opportunity, but many insisted that greed was the looters’ only motive.

Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters: “This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated.”

“People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets,” he said after the first meeting of COBRA.

STRUGGLING ECONOMY

The unrest poses a new challenge to Cameron as Britain’s economy struggles to grow while his government slashes public spending and raises taxes to cut a yawning budget deficit — moves some commentators say have aggravated the plight of young people in inner cities.

Police said they had arrested a total of 768 people — one as young as 11 — in London since the looting began on Saturday, and had charged more than 100 suspects, mainly with burglary and public order offences.

The first riots broke out on Saturday in north London’s Tottenham district, when a protest over the police shooting of a suspect two days earlier led to violence.

Police are likely to come under fresh pressure over that incident after a watchdog said on Tuesday there was no evidence that a handgun retrieved by police at the scene had been fired. Reports initially suggested Mark Duggan had shot at police before they shot and killed him.

(Additional reporting by Paul Hoskins, Adrian Croft, Avril Ormsby, Jon Hemming, Sonya Hepinstall, Jon Boyle, Stefano Ambrogi, Peter Griffiths and Georgina Prodhan; Writing by Tim Pearce)

Groups of youths in hooded tops fought running battles with police in Manchester in northwest England, smashing windows and looting shops. A clothes shop was set alight.

In Salford, greater Manchester, rioters threw bricks at police and set fire to buildings. A BBC cameraman was attacked. Television pictures showed flames leaping from shops and cars, and plumes of thick black smoke billowing across roads.

“Over the past few hours, Greater Manchester Police has been faced with extraordinary levels of violence from groups of criminals intent on committing widespread disorder,” Assistant Chief Constable Gary Shewan said.

“These people have nothing to protest against – there is no sense of injustice or any spark that has led to this. It is, pure and simple, acts of criminal behavior which are the worst I have seen on this scale.”

Further south in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, cars were burned and stores raided. A police station was firebombed by 30 to 40 males in Nottingham. No one was injured, police said.

In Liverpool’s Toxteth district, rioters set fire to two fire engines and a fire officer’s car, police said. Earlier, some 200 youths throwing missiles wrecked and looted shops, causing ‘disorder and damage’, police said.

Police said they had arrested 47 people in Manchester and Salford, and 37 in Toxteth. There were reports of minor disturbances in Birmingham and Leicester, in the Midlands, Milton Keynes north of London, and Gloucester in the southwest.

In London, commuters hurried home early, shops shut and many shopkeepers boarded their windows, preparing nervously for more of the violence that had erupted in neighborhoods across London and spread to other cities.

Gangs have ransacked stores, carting off clothes, shoes and electronic goods, torched cars, shops and homes — causing tens of millions of pounds of damage — and taunted the police.

But the streets of London were quiet on Tuesday.

Community leaders said the violence in London, the worst for decades in the huge, multi-ethnic capital, was rooted in growing disparities in wealth and opportunity, but many rejected the idea that anything but greed motivated rioters.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who cut short a family holiday in Tuscany to deal with the crisis, told reporters: “This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated.”

“People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets,” he said after a meeting of the government’s crisis committee, COBRA.

Another such meeting was set for Wednesday. Cameron also recalled parliament from its summer recess, a rare move.

London police said 16,000 police officers were on the streets on Tuesday night, compared with 6,000 on Monday night. London has a population of 7.8 million.

STRUGGLING ECONOMY

The unrest poses a new challenge to Cameron as Britain’s economy struggles to grow while his government slashes public spending and raises taxes to cut a yawning budget deficit — moves that some commentators say have aggravated the plight of young people in inner cities.

It also shows the world an ugly side of London less than a year before it hosts the 2012 Olympic Games, an event that officials hope will serve as a showcase for the city in the way that April’s royal wedding did.

“No one should wake in this wonderful city of ours to see such scenes of devastation and violence,” said Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh.

Police said they had arrested a total of 685 people in London since the looting began on Saturday. More than 100 police officers were injured.

A 26-year-old man died after being shot in Croydon, south of London, the first fatality of the riots.

Some Londoners, fearing more trouble, took steps to defend their communities. In Southall, west London, around 100 people gathered outside the Sikh temple in case of new rioting.

The London 2012 Organizing Committee hosted an International Olympic Committee visit “as planned” and said the violence would not hurt preparations for the Olympics.

But other sporting events suffered. England canceled Wednesday’s international soccer friendly with the Netherlands and three club games were called off.

On Westminster Bridge tourists took pictures of each other in front of the Houses of Parliament as normal, though the crowds were thinner than usual for an August evening.

“There are more police officers on the streets, we noticed that but we didn’t see anything else and we are kind of used to violence on the streets anyway,” said Pedro, a 23-year-old Brazilian tourist. “We had a good day, went shopping… drinking in a pub, tourist things.”

PRESSURE ON POLICE

The first riots broke out on Saturday in north London’s Tottenham district, when a protest over the police shooting of a suspect two days earlier led to violence.

Police are likely to come under fresh pressure over that incident after a watchdog said on Tuesday there was no evidence that a handgun retrieved by police at the scene had been fired. Reports initially suggested Mark Duggan had shot at police before they shot and killed him.

Tottenham includes areas with the highest unemployment rates in London. It also has a history of racial tension with local young people, especially blacks, resenting police behavior.

“It’s us versus them, the police, the system,” said one youth at a grim housing estate in the London district of Hackney, the epicenter of Monday night’s rioting.

“They call it looting and criminality. It’s not that. There’s a real hatred against the system.” His friends, some covering their faces with hoods, nodded in agreement.

Earlier Londoners rallied to clear up neighborhoods damaged in the riots. Hundreds of volunteers carrying brooms, dustpans, rubber gloves and black bags gathered on Tuesday in Clapham, south of the River Thames, to help clean up.

(Additional reporting by Paul Hoskins, Adrian Croft, Avril Ormsby, Jon Hemming, Sonya Hepinstall, Jon Boyle, Stefano Ambrogi, Peter Griffiths and Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Tim Pearce)