It's unclear what happened, but preliminary reports out of Genoa say that police armed with guns and search warrants raided "the headquarters of the umbrella group behind anti-capitalist riots against the Group of Eight summit" on Saturday evening. That apparently included the Independent Media Center, which was either was a target of the raid or swept up in it (the focus seems to have been on the "Genoa Social Forum," and they may have shared the same building). Often IMC reporters are activists who take part in street actions, though IMC organizers try to discourage this by advising reporters to hide their press pass when that happens. One sketchy AFP report, which alludes to a "brutal" raid: http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=asia/head... And what appears to be a reproduced Reuters article: http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=54267&group=webcast IMC reports saying police entered the newsroom: http://italia.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=5415&group=webcast http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=54208&group=webcast http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=54266&group=webcast http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=54245&group=webcast http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=54221&group=webcast CNN.com article from four days ago saying car bomb and letter bomb early this week put cops on high alert: http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/17/genoa.amnesty/index.html Politech archive on Seattle IMC tussle with FBI over web logs: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=imc -Declan **********