O'Neal pleads self-defence: "American actor Ryan O'Neal defended himself following his weekend arrest for investigation of assault, saying he grabbed a gun and fired after his adult son swung a fireplace poker that grazed him several times. O'Neal told the Los Angeles Times the incident occurred after he arrived home with a group of friends, including his former girlfriend Farrah Fawcett. The group had been celebrating Fawcett's 60th birthday and that she was cancer-free after four months of treatment. The 65-year-old actor said his son, Griffin, had been visiting and grabbed a fireplace poker and started swinging it. His son grazed him four or five times, he said. He "aimed at my head, I ducked, he hit his own girlfriend in the head," O'Neal told the newspaper. "I got a little nervous at that point and fled to my room ... and I got my gun," he said. O'Neal said his son began to come up the stairs with the poker. "So I just fired it into the banister, and that scared him and he fled," he said. Sheriff's deputies arrested O'Neal for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon"


Another triumph for British gun controls: "A 16-year-old boy was shot and fatally wounded during a Saturday night disco at a crowded ice rink. James Smarrt-Ford was standing in a crowd of people yards from the rink edge at the packed disco in Streatham, South London, when a gunman opened fire, hitting him twice.... Detective Superintendent Gary Richardson, leading the murder hunt, said: "This was just a 16-year-old boy who went to the skating rink on a Saturday night." He said that police were trying to find out whether the dead boy had been with friends and what he had been doing during the evening. "We don't know who he came here with or how long he had been here." They were not sure whether he was the only target, or even the intended target. He appealed in particular for anyone who may have seen the gunman running down Streatham High Road at 11pm to come forward. Six youths and an 18-year-old man have been arrested, but Mr Richardson believed that the gunman had escaped. Yesterday detectives from Operation Trident, which covers black-on-black gun crime, were studying CCTV footage. Residents said that gangs of youths would descend on the arena on Friday and Saturday nights. "Every now and again there would be a crew or a gang who would come down," Sam Kinsey, 20, said. He added: "A knife attack wouldn't have surprised me, but it's not good to think of guns in Streatham."