7 die, 288 wounded in Protests due to Food Price increase in Mozambique

Violent protests over high food prices are continuing in Mozambique, with at least seven people killed since demonstrations began on Wednesday.

Shops were looted, cars set on fire and roads barricaded on Thursday, while troops attempted to clean up streets and restore order in Maputo, the impoverished nation's capital.

Witnesses said police opened fire on protesters in a poor suburb of the city, but there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

According to local television, one person drowned on Thursday after falling in a pond while escaping police.

Maoist Insurgency Trips Up Rising India

Mining, critical for India’s growth as a global power, erodes traditional livelihoods and fuels armed struggle

LONDON: The Maoist insurgency raging through India’s rural heartlands has come to dominate the domestic security agenda in recent months, but this internal struggle for power should also be seen as a vicious by-product of India’s emergence as a global player.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeatedly describes the Maoists – otherwise known as Naxalites after the town of Naxalbari in north India, where the movement’s first uprising took place in 1967 – as India’s “gravest internal security threat.” That much of India’s mineral potential exists in its poorest regions, where the Maoists are strongest, represents a direct threat to the country’s growth trajectory at a time when it struggles to meet demand for coal, iron ore, steel and other commodities.

Although the Naxalite movement is somewhat diffuse, the primary threat comes from the Communist Party of India (Maoist), led by a Politburo of 13 members, with an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters and pockets of influence in at least 20 of India’s 28 states. A series of high-profile attacks dominated the news in 2010, including a 6 April ambush in the state of Chhattisgarh that left 76 paramilitaries dead and a 28 May train derailment by a Maoist-affiliated group that killed 148 civilians.