With the contentious state secrets bill slated to clear the Upper House this week, citizens have been holding daily protests in front of the Diet building, denouncing the law as emblematic of the "rise of fascism."

About 40 people took part in a boisterous protest Tuesday afternoon criticizing the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and its attempt to railroad the bill through the Diet.

Some held up signs that described the bill as "Japan's embarrassment," while others called for the resignation of Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Shigeru Ishiba, who likened their protest activities to an "act of terrorism" on his blog Sunday.

Kumiko Inoue, 65, a regular participant in the protests, said she is worried that the bill's vague phraseology will essentially allow the government to choose at will what it wants to deem state secrets.

Top Chinese film director Zhang Yimou is facing a $164 million lawsuit after violating the country's controversial one-child policy, a lawyer said Friday, prompting renewed debate around the rules.

Critics say China's late-1970s family-planning law, which restricts most couples to one child, is selectively and sometimes brutally enforced, while the wealthy and well-connected are easily able to pay the fines levied for extra offspring.

But in recent days some users of China's popular online social networks have directed their anger at the policy itself, rather than Zhang, with some hoping the attention heaped on his case may hasten the eventual demise of the law, which authorities have recently moved to relax.

Up to 50,000 more citizens to be repatriated after crackdown on migrant workers in the Gulf kingdom.

Ethiopia has repatriated more than 100,000 citizens from Saudi Arabia following a violent crackdown on migrant workers, Addis Ababa's foreign ministry has said.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom said on Thursday that up to 50,000 more citizens were still expected to return.

"Last night arrivals from Saudi reached 100,620," Tedros said in a written statement.

"All citizens that were detained in Riyadh deportation camps are back."

An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state's Obamacare health insurance exchange and won't participate, the head of the state's largest medical association said.

"It doesn't surprise me that there's a high rate of nonparticipation," said Dr. Richard Thorp, president of the California Medical Association.

Thorp has been a primary care doctor for 38 years in a small town 90 miles north of Sacramento. The CMA represents 38,000 of the roughly 104,000 doctors in California.

"We need some recognition that we're doing a service to the community. But we can't do it for free. And we can't do it at a loss. No other business would do that," he said.

California offers one of the lowest government reimbursement rates in the country -- 30 percent lower than federal Medicare payments. And reimbursement rates for some procedures are even lower.

Prices are up by 5.6 per cent, with the cost of essential items such as milk and vegetables rising at an even higher rate just weeks before Christmas.
Food prices are ­rising at more than twice the rate of inflation in a fresh blow to ­struggling households.

The cost of feeding the ­family soared at eight times the rate of the average pay rise - ­meaning ­millions face a bigger battle than ever to put food on the table. Prices at the checkout are up 5.6 per cent, while inflation based on the Consumer Prices Index was at 2.2 per cent in October. The most worrying rise is in essentials such as milk, up by 11 per cent, and vegetables, up 9.4 per cent.

James Foord, of price the comparison website ­mySupermarket tracked the cost of more than 100,000 items at Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Aldi and online retailer Ocado.

He said: "The squeeze on family budgets shows no sign of ending just weeks before Christmas."

And the festive spirit could fall a little flat as a poll by our sister paper The Sunday Mirror also shows the price of popular ­Christmas drinks is up.

New report forecasts that food prices will rise above inflation next year and for the rest of the decade as growing global demand and climate change hit the industry

Food prices will rise faster than inflation next year and for the rest of the decade, forcing restaurant chains and caterers to cut back on serving "luxuries" such as fillet steak and prawns, it was claimed last night.

Some big name chains are already switching to cheaper cuts of meat - such as pork shoulder - and serving up smaller portions of salmon to keep a lid on cost, according to a report by consultants Prestige Purchasing.

David Read, Prestige chief executive, told the Daily Telegraph that food prices could rise by as much as 6 per cent next year, but at the very least were likely to jump by another 3.8 per cent.

He said Britain was in a new era where food prices would continue to soar because of growing global demand and the effects of climate change on harvest and higher commodity costs.

Takes sudden leave of absence after prostitution charge

Boston Archdiocese Monsignor Arthur Coyle has taken a leave of absence after being caught with a prostitute - who has a history of narcotic offenses - behind the Holy Trinity Polish Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts.

According to The Boston Herald, Coyle was arrested after offering to pay the sex worker $40 for oral sex.
Coyle, 62, of Lowell was arraigned yesterday in Lowell District Court where his bail was set at $500. He is scheduled to return to court on September 16 for a pretrial conference, Middlesex district attorney spokeswoman Stephanie Guyotte told the press.

A tersely worded statement from the archdiocese yesterday confirmed that Coyle had volunteered to take a leave of absence from his high profile post as episcopal vicar for the Merrimack Region, a post he has held since 2008.

Valentin Casa can't shake the recurring nightmares. And this day certainly isn't helping.

The 36-year-old farmer looks on as forensic investigators unearth a pair of finger bones and two copper rings from a mass grave in the village of Huallhua on the eastern steppes of Peru's Andes. The grave contains the long-buried remains of two women and 13 children, and Casa believes the bones and rings belonged to his mother.

As a boy 27 years ago, Casa watched from behind trees as soldiers and their paramilitary allies dismembered and killed his mother and other women and children left behind by fleeing Shining Path rebels. Civilians suspected of backing the rebels were hunted down and killed. Two weeks later, troops and their civilian confederates caught and killed men from Casa's village, including his father, whose throat they slit.

Three decades later, this isolated corner of Peru is witnessing the biggest exhumation to date of victims of the nation's 1980-2000 internal conflict. The worst of its carnage occurred on these hills between the Andes ridge and Amazon jungle.

"Everybody here is traumatized," Casa says as he watches the work underway. "Whoever says he isn't is lying."

"The following is the text of a speech/commentary delivered by Fidel Castro on Cuban radio and Tv, Saturday evening, November 23, 1963, one day after the assassination of President Kennedy. The speech gives the reader insight into the immediate analysis of the assassination which a political expert such as Castro was able to make.

This English translation of the speech was released by the Cuban delegation to the United Nations in 1963. It is here reproduced with minor editing of grammar and punctuation."

Excerpted from History Will Not Absolve Us (1996) by Martin Schotz

Concerning the Facts and Consequences of the Tragic Death of President John F. Kennedy

November 23rd, 1963

by Fidel Castro

Always, when something very important has happened, national or international, we have thought it desirable to speak
to the people, to express our opinions. And in every such case to express the orientation of the Government, the orientation of our Party, so that each one of us all know the attitude we should adopt in each one of these situations.

It is true that we are somewhat accustomed to various types of unexpected events, important, serious events, because since the victory of the Revolution our country has had to face a series of problems, a series of situations that have prepared the people to carry forward their victorious revolution.

Therefore, because of the events of yesterday in the United States in which the President was murdered, because of the
repercussion these events can have, because of the role that the United States plays in the problems of international policy, because of this, we believe that we should make a specially objective and calm analysis of these events and of their possible consequences.

The government of the United States, the former administration of Eisenhower and the Kennedy administration, did not practice precisely a policy of friendship toward us. The policy of both administrations was characterized by its aggressive, hostile, and implacable spirit toward our country.

Our country was the victim of economic aggressions intended to cause the ruin of our economy and the starvation of our
people; it was the victim of all kinds of attacks that caused bloodshed; hundreds of our compatriots have lost their lives,
defending themselves from attacks of U.S. imperialism, and not only this. The hostility and the aggressiveness of U.S. imperialism toward our country took us to the brink of war which was fortunately avoided, took the world to the brink of thermonuclear war.

And even when we were not facing a situation like the crisis of October, and the time of the invasion of Giron [Bay of Pigs], we were all perfectly aware that if the plots they were planning against our country had been carried through, that is to say, if imperialism had been able to establish a beachhead on our shores, that struggle would have cost our people tens of thousands, and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of lives.

We have been victims of the constant hostility of the United States. And among the rulers and the leading men of the United States, there falls on Kennedy an important responsibility in these events.

Nevertheless, the news of the murder of the President of the United States is serious news and bad news. We should analyze it thoroughly in order to understand it; above all, analyze it serenely and dispassionately, as revolutionaries should analyze these things.

I say it is bad news, leaving aside the human question, in that the sensitivity of man, any man, is affected by an act of this
nature, by a crime, by a murder. I say that leaving these questions aside, I always react and I am sure that this is the
reaction of the immense majority of human beings - we always react with repulsion toward murder and toward crime.

We cannot consider this to be a correct weapon of struggle - no, we cannot consider that. Above all under the conditions in which it happened, because - like all these things - it is always necessary to consider the atmosphere, the things, the
circumstances.

In other settings, under other circumstances, whatever they may be in a normal situation, in a peaceful situation, a deed of this nature is never justifiable. Especially in the middle of a crowd, in the presence of women, all these things, which above all - I say - are the circumstances that lead us to take a condemnatory attitude toward something, even though some deeds of a political nature, some crimes of a political nature, may or may not be justified.

In the circumstances that surrounded the assassination of President Kennedy, we believe it has no justification.

But analyzing the question from the political, objective point of view, I also said it was serious news, bad news.

In 2008 just before his 90th birthday, the United States gave Nelson Mandela a special present, striking him from a decades-old terror watch list and ending what US officials called "a rather embarrassing matter."

By then the anti-apartheid icon had long left behind the jail cells where he was incarcerated for 27 years, and was already enjoying retirement and his status as one of the most revered statesmen of the 20th century after becoming South Africa's first black president.

In past years, US officials have beaten a path to his door in his family village hoping some of his almost saint-like aura would rub off on them.

On Thursday, when Mandela died at age 95, President Barack Obama hailed him as belonging "to the ages" and ordered that flags on US government buildings be flown at half-mast -- a rare tribute to a foreign leader.

Yet decades ago many in America did not share in the adulation of Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC), which had been billed a terrorist organization by both South Africa and the United States. His severest right-wing critics painted him as an unrepentant terrorist and a communist sympathizer.

It was even reported that the CIA had helped engineer Mandela's 1962 arrest when an agent inside the ANC supplied South African security officials with a tip-off to track him down.