Five charged for 'hate crime' in London

British police said yesterday they had charged five people over a suspected hate crime attack on a 17-year-old Kurdish Iranian asylum-seeker in south London. The teenager was badly beaten by a group of around 20 people while he was at a bus stop with two friends outside a pub in Croydon on Friday night. Police said the teenager's condition was "serious but stable and is not believed to be life-threatening."