The rallies came as a 24-hour national strike disrupted flight and rail services, and closed schools.

Activists are angry at government plans to overhaul pensions and raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Union leaders say more strikes and protests are possible if the government fails to give an adequate response.

“If they don’t respond and they don’t pay heed, there’ll be a follow up, and nothing is ruled out at this stage,” Bernard Thibault, leader of the large CGT union, told a rally in Paris.

The NSA said those arrested were members of illegal organizations such as the Haq, Al Wafa, Objection and the Bahrain Freedom Movement based in London. They were also charged with destabilizing the government for inciting rioting, organizing rallies, committing arson and defying laws.

The Interior Ministry identified Shiite Muslim activist Ali Abdulemam as among those arrested. The others, according to prosecutors, were academics, taxi drivers, civil servants, dentists and administrators.

The party line that we are likely to be hearing from now until the November elections is that Obama “inherited” the big federal budget deficits and that he has to “clean up the mess” left in the economy by the Republicans. This may convince those who want to be convinced, but it will not stand up under scrutiny.

No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.

Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.

“This legislation will force Americans into a government-mandated, ‘one size fits all’ retirement account,” Wilson said, adding that it would “disproportionately impact younger and lower-income workers, who will now have less ability to save for new home purchases or pay off college expenses and debt, all of which occurs earlier in a worker’s career.”

“This is another attempt by government to tell individuals what they have to do with their own money, stripping them of the right to make their own personal investment and life decisions,” Wilson added.

Wilson noted that the “investment ‘options’ that are offered will be defined arbitrarily by the Department of Labor in regulation.”

A British newspaper said Sunday that a top Pakistani cricket player confirmed its allegations of corruption on the Pakistani national cricket team.

The News of the World, a tabloid known for using undercover video and other unorthodox methods, says it secretly filmed cricket player Yasir Hameed on Tuesday, two days after it claimed three players had been involved in a scam run by gamblers.

Under the agreement, some plants will now remain in production until the 2030s, instead of being phased out by 2021 as the previous government wanted.

There will also be new fees on utility companies to fund renewable energy.

Al Jazeera’s Martin Asturias, reporting from the scene of the incident near the town of Santa Maria Ixtaguacan, said that 23 bodies have been pulled from the mud so far.

Those buried Sunday were working to rescue victims of a previous landslide, which swept over a bus on Saturday and killed at least 12 people.

The government estimates that 38 people have died in the past two days of flood-triggered landslides, but the 12 people killed Saturday combined with the 23 bodies recovered from the second landslide amounts to a death toll of 45 - a number that is likely to rise as more bodies are found.

In past, Madani, was charged for giving inflammatory speeches and suspected to have organized terrorist activities. He was, arrested for allegedly masterminding the Coimbatore bomb blasts in 1998, which killed 58 people, an allegation that could not stand the scrutiny of the trial court, and the honourable Supreme Court of India exonerated him of all the charges. 

Now Madani arrested for his alleged involvement in 25 July 2008 Bangalore serial blasts in which a woman lost her life and many sustained injuries.

So hushed with suspense was the Senate that the few muffled coughs in the crowded galleries echoed across the chamber. Veteran Capitol correspondents had never seen before, during a Senate roll call, so many individual Senators intently keeping their own running tallies of the votes. As the tension mounted. Vice President Richard Nixon got up from a seat in the back of the chamber and walked over to Pennsylvania’s Republican Senator Hugh Scott to watch Scott’s tally sheet. On the Democratic side of the aisle, John F. Kennedy sat somber-faced, his chin propped on one hand, his other hand nervously fiddling with a pencil. It was the most dramatic scene of Congress’ postscript session: the nip-and-tuck roll call on the Kennedy-backed proposal to provide compulsory medical care for the aged.
When the clerk finished droning his way through the roll, the tally stood at 46 nays, 42 ayes. Dick Nixon swung behind the chair of New York’s Republican Senator Jacob Javits, his top Senate ally in the medical-care battle, and smilingly patted him on the shoulder. Jack Kennedy stood up and stalked out of the chamber. ...

... With Jack Kennedy thoroughly trounced—by Dick Nixon in the Senate and by Howard Smith in the House—all that remained of the original Kennedy-Johnson list of short-session “must” measures was the only genuine, non-politicking item in the lot: foreign-aid appropriations. At week’s end, despite a stern warning from Ike that “a cut of this size will jeopardize the security of the country,” both houses voted $3.7 billion for foreign aid—$560 million less than the President had asked for. (Afterward, the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended an additional appropriation to restore $190 million of the cut.) That done, Kennedy, Johnson & Co. made ready to get the disastrous post-convention session over with and get out of town.