• Chilean students throw rocks, get blasted by water cannons while protesting education system

    Eliseo Fernandez / Reuters

    Students throw stones towards riot police during a protest against the government in Valparaiso city, about 121 km (75 miles) northwest of Santiago, May 12. Thousands of students marched through the streets on Thursday to demand for changes in the public state education system.

    The Santiago Times says: Unlike many other Latin American countries, Chile has one of the most privately-funded higher education systems in the world. Chilean university fees are among the world’s highest as compared to per capita gross domestic product (GDP).

    Victor Ruiz Caballero / Reuters

    International estimates for Chile’s per capita GDP in 2010 are between US$11,800 and US$11,900, according to the International Monetary Fund and the CIA World Factbook, respectively.

    Victor Ruiz Caballero / Reuters

    According to Times Higher Education, the fees for a public regional university in Chile are about US$3,200. The prestigious public school Universidad de Chile has fees of around US$8,000 and large private universities can go as high as US$9,600.

    Roberto Candia / AP

    “Chile is a very poor country, and it’s time for the government to start helping out its students financially,” José Manuel Morales, university senator at Universidad de Chile, told The Santiago Times. “The main goal of this demonstration is to get the state to take charge of higher education.”

    Read the full story here.

    Victor Ruiz Caballero / Reuters

     

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  • Adem Altan / AFP - Getty Images

    A demonstrator falls after he was hit by a jet of water during protests against the government's education policies, at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 5. Turkish riot police used water cannons to prevent the university students from marching to the ruling Justice and Development Party headquarters.

    Water cannon tosses Turkish protester

    By Jonathan Woods, msnbc.com

    I wince every time I see a photo like this. Several years ago as a volunteer firefighter I was in a house fire and was hit with a hose stream that threw me into a wall. The stream that hit me came from a 1.75" hand line on an adjustable nozzle. The stream the above protester was hit with was likely a smooth bore nozzle, which means water flows unrestricted under high pressure. Getting hit with a stream of water like that would be incredibly painful.