Politics

Confronted with widespread public discontent, Tunisian Prime Minister Beji Caid el Sebsi on Thursday defended his government’s record and said it was doing “the impossible” to bring about elections.

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.

This is what different French public figures and some of the organisations principally committed to defending the gypsies have announced. Since last summer, the French Government of Nicolas Sarkozy has continued to apply all kinds of pressures so that the Romanian and Bulgarian gypsies, Community citizens, leave France for good.

President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo regretted on Tuesday that the ability to recover ill-gotten lands is not only in the hands of the executive, and urged the judiciary and the Legislature to intervene to find a solution. Land reform is one of the country’s historic debts and it requires the involvement of all social sectors, Lugo said at the ceremony for Children’s Day.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Three Chilean students on hunger strike were admitted today in a delicate state after 31 days of fasting which, from this week included the rejection of liquids, as a deepening of the protest demanding free and better quality education. They were admitted with heart and kidney problems.