Tens of thousands of Brazilians again flooded the streets of the country's biggest city to raise a collective cry against a longstanding lament — people are weighed down by high taxes and high prices but get low-quality public services and a system of Government infected with corruption.
That was the repeated message on Tuesday night in Sao Paulo, where upward of 50,000 people march in front of the city's main cathedral gathered.
While mostly peaceful, the demonstration followed the rhythm of protests that drew 240,000 people across Brazil the previous night, with small bands of radicals splitting off to fight with police and break into stores. Mass protests have been mushrooming across Brazil since demonstrations called last week by a group angry over the high cost of a woeful public transport system and a recent 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares in Sao Paulo, Rio and elsewhere.
The local Governments in at least four cities have now agreed to reverse those hikes, and city and federal politicians have shown signs that the Sao Paulo fare could also be rolled back. It's not clear that will calm the country, though, because the protests have released a seething litany of discontent from Brazilians over life's struggles.
lass=IJomIJIJIJIJIJent developments showed that there are foreign hands behind the opening of the Taliban office in Qatar. Unless the peace process is led by Afghans, the High Peace Council will not participate in the Qatar negotiations,” the statement said, referring to the organization he set up in 2010 during earlier peace efforts.
US President Barack Obama, currently visiting Europe, defended Washington’s push for a political reconciliation alongside the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, save for an ongoing training and advising presence
after 2014.
“We still believe that you’ve got to have a parallel track to at least look at the prospect of some sort of political reconciliation,” Obama told a news conference in Berlin, adding: “Whether that bears fruit, whether it actually happens, or whether, post-2014, there’s going to continue to be fighting, as there was before ISAF forces got into Afghanistan, that’s a question that only the Afghans can answer.”
Stating that Karzai himself recognizes the need for political reconciliation, Obama said: “The challenge is how do you get those things started while you’re also at war. And my hope is, and expectation is, is that despite those challenges, the process will proceed.”
He spoke of extensive conversations held with President Karzai both before and after the Taliban opened the office in Doha on Tuesday.
“As I think has been reported, there were some concerns about the manner in which the Taliban opened it, some of the language that they used,” Obama said.
Some areas of friction were anticipated at the outset, he said, adding: “That’s not surprising. As I said, they’ve been fighting for a very long time. There’s enormous mistrust. Not only have the Taliban and the Afghan government been fighting for a long time, they’re fighting as we speak.
“We’re in the middle of a war. And Afghans are still being killed and, by the way, members of the international forces there are still being killed.”
His apparent reference was to the death of four US soldiers who were killed in a Taliban attack at an Afghan air base, putting yet another question mark on the proposed talks.
A Taliban spokesman had claimed credit for launching the rocket attacks on Bagram airbase, the largest military base for US troops in Afghanistan.