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The Venezuelan Minister for Energy and Oil, Rafael Ramírez, said bringing home the gold is a measure that will strengthen the economy and sovereignty. He also defended the government project to nationalise gold mining in the country. The Venezuelan executive announced on Wednesday that it will recover the gold deposited in countries such as the UK, the USA and Canada.

Despite the very low wintry temperatures and the heavy rainfall all day last Thursday in the city of Santiago, Chilean students went on with the massive social protest which has been described as the unprecedented “march of the hundred thousand umbrellas against profiteering in education”.

This was the prayer of the thousands of placards that, under continuous rain and a temperature close to freezing, were carried through the streets of Santiago today by almost 100 thousand people, obediently sticking to the new route outlined by the government in order to distance the protest and its conscience-raising role from the centre of the capital.

Police tightened security in main cities on Wednesday in case of anti-government protests even though organisers had a day earlier postponed the vigils after deadly riots last month. Several shops and banks did not open for business in Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu – the 3 main towns affected by last month’s security crackdown on protesters which killed 19 people, police said.

North Korea vowed Wednesday to bolster its nuclear deterrent, describing an exercise by United States and South Korean troops as preparation for a “war of aggression” against the communist state.

Tens of thousands of protesters staged a spontaneous mass rally in New Delhi on Wednesday in support of a hunger strike by anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare. Organisers estimated the size of the crowd marching from the India Gate monument in central Delhi at between 60,000 and 70,000.

The greed of people as they accumulate wealth and resort to Riba (transactions involving usury and interest) are the causes of the current global credit crisis, according to an eminent and erudite Muslim and one of the leaders of the Muslim community in India.

Late Wednesday night (17 August, 2011) Anna Hazare’s team accepted Delhi police’s latest proposal for holding their protest against the government’s version of the Lokpal Bill, from August 16, at Jai Prakash Narayan Memorial Park, next to Feroze Shah Kotla grounds, New Delhi. The Humanist Party supported this campaign.

Protesters prepared to take to Madrid’s streets Wednesday to decry the cost of a rock festival-style, million-strong youth party for Pope Benedict XVI in the midst of an economic crisis. On the eve of the 84-year-old pontiff’s arrival in the Spanish capital to celebrate lavish World Youth Day events, more than 100 groups opposed to the visit are protesting.

Whilst the blame game about the UK riots rages in the national and international Media and the State uses the opportunity to get more draconian, punitive and discriminatory, we must keep an eye on the structural changes that the neoliberal agenda is introducing, even as we speak about those changes being the root of the problem.