Region

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.

Ecuador’s first wind farm to generate electricity will begin to be built in September in the southern province of Loja, according to the Electricity Corporation of Ecuador (Celec). The project, worth 34 million US$, will provide a total of 15 megawatts to the national power system, and should be operational in 2012.

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.

Plans for a law condoning same-sex marriage are being considered by the ruling left wing coalition party, Frente Amplio, in Uruguay. A project created by Uruguay’s first transsexual lawyer, Michelle Suárez, will be unveiled shortly to the Constitution Commission and the Chamber of Deputies.

“A new Chile is born,” said President Sebastián Piñera as he personally welcomed 33 miners at the surface after their spectacular rescue from a collapsed mine in the Atacama desert 10 months ago. The country has indeed changed since then but not as La Moneda palace’s current occupant expected.