Asia

Indian activist Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption hunger strike drew thousands of supporters to central New Delhi on Saturday as his populist campaign sought to face down the government. The 74-year-old spoke briefly to the crowds from a high podium before he reclined on cushions to be feted with speeches, chanting and live music during the second day of his public fast.

Without decent roads people cannot go about daily life with ease, children cannot get to schools easily and farmers cannot get their crops to market. Also, vehicles quickly deteriorate and break down and the cumulative effect is one of dis-communication, heavy costs for repairs on local economies already under stress and a disabling of people’s lives generally.

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.

Police detained veteran anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare as he prepared to start a banned hunger strike against the government, provoking widespread outrage. Hazare, 74, was taken into custody by plain-clothes officers at an apartment in New Delhi early Tuesday morning, an hour before he was due to lead a parade to a public park where he was to begin a “fast unto death”.

Five Filipinos, two of them domestic helpers and two former helpers, are fighting in Hong Kong’s High Court for right of abode, which other immigrants can get after seven years in Hong Kong. The plaintiffs in three judicial reviews want the court to declare that the rule denying helpers residency contravenes the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.

Thousands of protesters faced off with riot police in northeast China to demand a chemical plant be relocated after a toxic pollution scare sparked urgent evacuations, state media said. Residents in the port city of Dalian gathered in front of the municipal government’s office, shouting demands as hundreds of police looked on, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

India’s embattled prime minister said his government was taking the “strictest possible action” to stamp out corruption after a string of recent scandals. “We are taking the strictest possible action in cases of corruption that have surfaced,” Manmohan Singh said from the ramparts of New Delhi’s 16th-century Red Fort in an Independence Day speech on Monday.