Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

A man holds up a banner reading 'Austerity - That's Enough' as a march to protest the government's austerity measures prepares to set off from the Embankment in London on Friday.

Updated at 8:25 a.m ET: LONDON - Thousands of anti-austerity protesters marched in London on Saturday to protest against public spending cuts enacted by a government fighting off accusations that it is run by an upper-class elite that ignores the plight of recession-hit voters. 

The march comes at a time when Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative-led coalition is reeling from the resignation on Friday of a senior minister accused of calling police "plebs," a class-laden insult for working people. 

Conservatives faced a barrage of negative headlines on Saturday over the departure of Andrew Mitchell, the "Chief Whip" or party enforcer, four weeks after he swore at police guarding the gates to Cameron's Downing Street office. 

Class wars: 'Gate-gate' scandal swamps UK PM David Cameron

A second row involving George Osborne, the finance minister -- who sat in a first class train carriage with a standard class ticket before paying for an upgrade -- played into the hands of critics who say the Conservatives are privileged and out-of-touch. 

"Who Do They Think They Are?" asked the Daily Mail newspaper in a front page headline, while the Financial Times said the bad news over Mitchell and Osborne capped a "dismal week for the Tories", the center-right party that is trailing in the polls. 

Nurses, cleaners, librarians and ambulance drivers are among tens of thousands marching past the Houses of Parliament to a rally in Hyde Park in one of the biggest anti-austerity protests this year. Marches will also take place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Glasgow, Scotland. 

General strike?
Under grey autumnal skies, police closed roads around parliament in Westminster before the start of the march at 1100 GMT (6 a.m. ET). 

Trade union leaders are seeking to pile more pressure on Cameron at the event where they will tell protesters that the government's economic plan has failed, prolonging Britain's second recession since the financial crisis. 

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The head of the head of the RMT transport workers union was set to say that Saturday's march was a step towards a nationwide strike, Sky News reported.

"The marches are a building block towards the objective of coordinated action and a general strike.  That is why RMT says, march today, strike tomorrow," Bob Crow was planning to say, Sky News reported without citing a source.

Reuters reported that Brendan Barber, head of the Trades Union Congress, an umbrella group which represents 54 unions, planned to say the following:

"Austerity isn't working. It is hammering the poorest and the most vulnerable ... Ministers told us that if we only accept the pain, recovery would come. Instead we have been mired in a double-dip recession." 

Coalition under pressure
The coalition government has responded to calls from unions and the opposition Labour Party to do more to boost growth by relaxing planning laws and boosting lending to businesses. 

A downsized parade as Spain's celebrates national day amidst austerity cuts

But its latest attempt to ease the pressure on squeezed households backfired this week when Cameron said the government would legislate to force energy companies to give customers their lowest tariff. The surprise announcement appeared to take his own ministers by surprise and sowed confusion over what he meant and whether it would actually happen. 

However, Sajid Javid, a Conservative Treasury minister, said the government was right to focus on cutting borrowing and that data last week indicating a fall in unemployment and inflation showed that its economic policies were on track. 

"There is a still a lot to do," he told Sky News. "I don't pretend for a second that we are out of the woods, but this government is facing up to the problem, it is not sticking its head in the sand like (Labour opposition leader) Ed Miliband." 

Asked about the perception that the Conservatives are out of touch, he said: "I think that what matters is what is actually happening out there in the real world." 

Spain, Portugal hit with anti-austerity protests

Opponents of the unions say the government should stick to its plan to eliminate a budget deficit that stood at 8 percent of gross domestic product last year, the biggest of any major European country. 

"The government must not listen to militant union leaders," said Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which describes itself as an independent free-market thinktank. "The cuts we have seen are tiny and further concessions to these protesters would be wholly unaffordable." 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Mark Humphrey / AP

An opening ceremony cast member walked with the Indian team during the Opening Ceremony at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Friday.

A woman managed to gatecrash the Indian Olympic team’s march round the stadium at the Games' opening ceremony, it has emerged.

The interloper –- said to be one of the thousands of volunteers who took part in the show –- walked alongside flag-carrier and wrestler Sushil Kumar at the head of the team at Friday's event, causing anger among Indian Olympic officials.

In stark contrast to the athletes, who were dressed in blue and yellow, the interloper was dressed in a red jacket and light-blue pants.

She also sported a broad smile in some of the photographs.

Sebastian Coe, chairman of Games organizers LOCOG, told the daily press conference Sunday that he could confirm “that she was a cast member [of the opening ceremony show], who clearly got slightly over-excited.”

Military drafted in to fill empty seats at London Olympics

“I think there’s a very important point here to take into consideration – and I don’t minimize the fact she got into the Opening Ceremony –  she could not have got in the opening ceremony without having gone through all our security protocols anyway,” Coe said.

“Don’t run away with the idea she had walked in off the street to do that,” he added.

London protesters decry 'Corporate Olympics'

He said he would be speaking to Indian officials about what happened.

The Deccan Chronicle newspaper identified the woman as a graduate student from Bangalore, India.

Read more on the Olympics from NBC News

Indian Olympic official P.K. Muralidharan Raja was quoted by the paper as saying they had been "initially told that she would accompany the contingent ’til the track, but she went on to take the entire lap. There was another man also, but he stayed back and did not enter the stadium.”

Harpal Singh Bedi, Indian Olympic team press attache, told a press conference that the gatecrasher "not only walked, she led our contingent. It looked like she was the leader," according to an AP Television report.

"... if this had happened in India, people would say 'you don't know how to run the Games, security problems,' ... I think this was definitely a security lapse," he added.

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• Go behind the scenes with our 'TODAY in London' blog
  

Manu Fernandez / AP

Demonstrators protest against austerity measures announced by the Spanish government in Barcelona, Spain on July 19, 2012.

MADRID -- Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards marched on Thursday evening against the center-right government's latest austerity measures, passed after more than a week of demonstrations across the country.

Parliament on Thursday approved a package of 65 billion euros ($80 billion) of spending cuts and tax hikes as part of measures to avert a full European bail-out, bringing more hardship in a severe economic downturn in a nation where one in four are jobless.

Demonstrators took to the streets in towns and cities across Spain, thronging the thoroughfares of Madrid and Barcelona, waving flags and bearing banners decorated with scissors to symbolize spending cuts.

In Madrid, crowds of firefighters wearing helmets and t-shirts with the slogan "Firemen in danger of extinction" blew horns and let off firecrackers. Earlier, police officers and members of the Civil Guard joined the protests.

"We have lived through bad times, but this takes the biscuit," said 58-year-old fireman Francisco Vaquero.

Earlier Thursday, angry civil servants had blocked traffic in several main Madrid avenues, The Guardian newspaper of London reported. Protesters punctured tires on dozens of riot police vans.

The sight of demonstrators on Spain's streets is nothing new. Young "Indignados" (Indignants) protested in their thousands against unemployment last year. One in four Spaniards is without work.

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But since Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced spending cuts and tax rises last week there have been daily demonstrations drawing protests from public service workers like police that have previously stayed away.

Civil servants, whose pay was cut by up to 7 percent when their Christmas bonus was canceled, have used their coffee breaks this week to protest outside the ruling People's Party headquarters in Madrid.

This article includes reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press.

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Slideshow: Triple tragedy for Japan

Kuni Takahashi / Kuni Takahashi

An earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear meltdown -- residents of Japan's northeast coast suffered through three intertwined disasters after a massive 9.0 magnitude temblor struck off the coast on March 11, 2011.

Launch slideshow

The family of a 58-year-old Japanese woman who set herself on fire after the 2011 quake and tsunami will file a lawsuit against the operator of a nuclear plant that went into meltdown after the giant wave hit, local media reports say.

They will seek $910,000 in damages in the death of Hamako Watanabe from the Tokyo Electric Power Co., according to The Japan Times and The Mainichi. They plan to file the lawsuit -- which would be the first over a suicide linked to the nuclear crisis -- on May 18 in Fukushima District Court.

Her husband, Mikio Watanabe, 61, said his wife suffered depression in the aftermath of the accident on March 11, 2011.

The couple lived about 25 miles from the Fukushima power plant and their home had been designated as being within a planned evacuation zone. She killed herself at a garbage incinerator after going back to clean the house in Kawamata, The Japan Times said, citing sources. 

"The accident changed everything in our lives,” Watanabe told The Mainichi. “I decided to go to court because I thought no more victims should cry themselves to sleep."

The couple had moved around after the 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunamis struck, triggering meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and leaving nearly 16,000 dead.

Slideshow: Devastation in Japan after quake

AP

A 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggers a tsunami, causing enormous damage and killing thousands.

Launch slideshow

As of last Saturday, Japan had shut down the last of its 50 usable nuclear reactors amid strong opposition from the public and local governments to keeping them up and running, The Associated Press reported.

Tsunami town's fishermen vow to 'bring joy back'

Hamako Watanabe's workplace was shuttered after the tsunami, and she began to show signs of insomnia and had a poor appetite. A group of lawyers representing victims of the nuclear crisis said her depression and suicide were due to the nuclear disaster, The Mainichi reported.

'Can it be the end of nuclear power?' Japan to shut down last reactor

Tepco declined to make comment to the newspapers, though the family notified the utility on April 20 of its intention to file the lawsuit. Tepco said in a letter dated May 1 that it would consider the matter.

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Massoud Hossaini / AFP - Getty Images

Members of the group Afghan Young Women for Change take part in a protest denouncing violence against women in Kabul, Afghanistan Saturday.

Members of Afghan Young Women for Change staged a protest march in Afghanistan's capital Kabul Saturday, denouncing violence against women, according to AFP photographs.

Some among the group of about 30 women were pictured holding placards that read "Where is justice?"

They took to the streets following the killing of five Afghan women in less than a month in three provinces of the country, AFP said.

Concern is mounting among some Western officials, activists and some of the country's lawmakers that women's rights could be compromised under any power-sharing deal between the government and the Taliban, which President Hamid Karzai has been seeking to end the war, Reuters reported.

Massoud Hossaini / AFP - Getty Images

Afghan police keep watch from behind a wire fence during the protest.

Activists were outraged last month when Karzai appeared to back recommendations from his powerful clerics, the Ulema Council, to segregate the sexes and allow husbands to beat wives under certain circumstances, reminiscent of Taliban rule, Reuters said.

The Islamist group banned women from most work, education and the right to vote during their 1996-2001 rule, laws which halted Koofi's medical studies following her bachelor degree in law and political science.

Massoud Hossaini / AFP - Getty Images

Afghan Young Women for Change activists hold placards that read "Where is justice?"

And there other indications that Karzai and his government, by extending an olive branch to the Taliban, have started to clamp down on political rights.

Lawmaker Fawzia Koofi has announced she will stand for the Afghan presidency at the next election.

Koofi -- lucky to be alive after she was condemned to die shortly after birth for being a girl -- has become an outspoken Afghan member of parliament and a champion of women's rights.

The 36-year-old expects harsh opposition, threats of violence and pressure against her family as her campaign gets underway to replace Karzai, who must step down that year after serving the constitutional limit of two consecutive terms.

"I am sure my campaign will be the noisiest. I will have lots of troubles against me," the politician from the country's remote northeastern Badakhshan province told Reuters in an interview this week.

"It's very easy to terrorize a woman in Afghanistan. It's very easy to create accusations against a woman, and then her political life will be finished," she added.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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