Anti-G8 summit protesters danced to blaring music and marched down the streets of Tokyo in heavy rain yesterday, accusing the Group of Eight rich nations of causing poverty and world instability. The protests came as Japan tightened security ahead of this year?s July 7-9 gathering in Hokkaido. Protesters walked down Tokyo?s central shopping districts carrying signs proclaiming various agendas such as ?shut down G8 summit? and ?G8=hunger?. ?Issues like environmental destruction and poverty in Africa, these are all caused by the G8 governments,? said Yu Ando, a 31-year-old working for a municipal government in western Japan. For the summit at Lake Toya, domestic and international NGOs such as Oxfam plan to protest a range of topics including globalization, the food crisis and wars. Leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States will discuss soaring food and oil prices, along with climate change and African development. Japan has also invited eight other nations, including Brazil, China and India, to hold talks on climate change on the sidelines.

The Group of Eight wealthy nations are looking at investing more than $10 billion a year to support new technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, including carbon dioxide capture and storage, a Japanese daily reported yesterday.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pledged at a United Nations food summit this month to release at least 300,000 tonnes of imported rice from storage into the world market to ease the global food crisis and urged other countries to do likewise.