US: Three years after the start of the Iraq war, one thing New York police do not lack is experience in dealing with protesters - so when they were called to a disturbance at the military recruitment centre in Times Square last October, it sounded like just another routine demonstration.
Instead, they found 18 elderly women, many in their 80s and one aged 90, blocking the entrance and demanding to enlist in place of young men. They called themselves Grandmothers Against The War, and after they ignored polite requests to move on, police had no option but to arrest them, making sure the handcuffs weren't too tight, and cart them off - complete with canes and walking frames - to the holding cells.
They were finally acquitted yesterday, after a trial that caught New Yorkers' imaginations, even as it seemed to agonise the prosecutors saddled with the job of arguing that the "peace grannies", as they became known, should be jailed.
At the height of the proceedings, Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who became a celebrity for camping for months outside George Bush's Texas ranch after her son was killed in Iraq, showed up to lend her support.
The women are part of a growing network of American anti-war groups made up of senior citizens, including the Raging Grannies of Tucson, Arizona, who use the positive social stereotype attaching to grandmothers to further their cause.
The peace grannies intend to march with Ms Sheehan in a demonstration in New York today.