Experiments with truth: 7/12/10

- On Thursday, activists with Rainforest Action Network staged a sit-in at EPA Headquarters in Washington, where they occupied the lobby and used metal lock boxes to lock themselves together. The action was to bring attention to EPA’s newly approved Pine Creek mountaintop removal permit in Logan County, West Virginia.
- Newsstands were mostly empty, Internet sites weren’t updated and the airwaves were practically news-free in Italy on Friday as journalists went on strike to protest Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s bid to restrict wiretaps, a move he says is to protect the privacy of everyday Italians while journalists claim it’s a gag law aimed at protecting him and corrupt officials.
- On Saturday, calling it a Day of Action for Civil Liberties, some 1,200 protestors marched from Queen’s Park to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre to protest how police and governments are handling the G20 summit aftermath.
- Guillermo Fariñas, an opposition activist in Cuba, ended a 134-day hunger strike on Thursday, after indications that the government would make good on its promise to release 52 political prisoners.
- Defying curfew, thousands of people protested across the Valley in Kashmir for the fifth consecutive day Friday against the killing of unarmed civilians. he protesters staged a sit-in on the Cement Bridge for nearly 30 minutes.
- The National Health Service in Britain said they would immediately reinstate round-the-clock care to Angela Caviill-Burch’s quadriplegic husband after she went on hunger strike last week.
- In a protest against the unofficial ban imposed by the Sindh Government in Pakistan on the movement of wheat, flour mills across Punjab continued to observe a complete strike for the fifth continuous day on Monday.
- On Thursday four members of a group from Dalga Youth Organization were arrested as they held a flash-mob action of protest in front of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan. The youth activists were marking the one year anniversary of the arrest of the bloggers Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli.
- In Pakistan, a shutter-down strike was observed in Quetta and southern districts of Balochistan on Thursday to protest against the rationing of electricity and increasing cases of kidnapping for ransom.

