HONG KONG

Pro-democracy protesters’ demands called ‘impossible’

The embattled chief executive of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said pro-democracy protesters were making “impossible” demands on Sunday and warned their movement had “spun out of control,” as the sit-in entered its third week with no sign of a solution.

Dozens of tents have sprung up on the streets of central Hong Kong as students prepare to carry through on their threat for a “long-term occupation” if the government refuses to come to the negotiating table to discuss their demands for democracy and Leung’s resignation.

The Hong Kong government, with China at its back, is refusing to even talk to student leaders unless they end their protests and drop their demand for genuine democracy when the chief executive’s role next comes up for election in 2017.

KINGSTON, Jamaica

Tropical Storm Gonzalo chasing Hurricane Fay

Hurricane Fay toppled utility poles and knocked out power to thousands of people in Bermuda before moving out over open ocean on Sunday, just as a new storm raced toward the eastern rim of the Caribbean threatening to become a hurricane.

Fay strengthened into a hurricane Sunday afternoon but was expected to return shortly to tropical storm strength, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Forecasters said Gonzalo could reach hurricane strength by the time it hit Puerto Rico’s southern coastline Tuesday morning. After tracking across the U.S. Caribbean territory of about 3.6 million people, forecasters expect Gonzalo to curve over the open Atlantic and stay away from the U.S. East Coast.

ST. LOUIS

Police arrest 17 protesting shooting of 18-year-old

Officers arrested 17 protesters and used pepper spray to subdue some of them Sunday in a St. Louis neighborhood not far from the suburb where violence erupted this summer after the shooting of a black man by a white policeman.

The arrests were the only incident in an otherwise peaceful weekend of demonstrations in the city to protest the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson in August.

Early Sunday morning, about 200 protesters gathered in Shaw, a south St. Louis neighborhood where last week another black 18-year-old was killed by a white police officer, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said. The protesters marched toward a QuikTrip convenience store and tried to force open its doors, Dotson said.

– From news service reports