ROME (Reuters) – Anti-greed protesters rallied globally on Saturday, denouncing bankers and politicians over the international economic crisis, with violence rocking Rome where cars were torched and bank windows smashed.

Galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests began in New Zealand, touched parts of Asia, spread to Europe, and resumed at their starting point in New York with 5,000 marchers decrying corporate greed and economic inequality.

After weeks of intense media coverage, U.S. protests have still been smaller than G20 meetings or political conventions have yielded in recent years. Such events often draw tens of thousands of demonstrators.

The demonstrations by the disaffected coincided with the Group of 20 meeting in Paris, where finance ministers and central bankers from major economies were holding talks on the debt and deficit crises afflicting many Western countries.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has gathered steam for a month, culminating with the global day of action. It remains unclear what momentum the movement, which has been driven by social media, has beyond Saturday.

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ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek protesters tried to disrupt collection of an unpopular new property tax on Thursday and transport workers went on strike in a growing wave of protests against harsh new austerity measures.

With the socialist government of Prime Minister George Papandreou trying to push new cuts through parliament to meet demands from international lenders, opposition has strengthened ahead of a planned general strike on October 19 which is expected to shut down much of the country.

On Thursday, protesters occupied the printing offices of Greek power utility PPC, which is set to collect the property tax, with a few dozen protesters hanging banners reading: "We are not going to stop providing electricity to the poor people even if they put us in jail."

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It isn’t hard to find the home of Pakistan’s most famous killer. At every corner in this maze of tightly packed streets, mere miles from the army’s headquarters, taxi drivers and street vendors readily gesture toward the birthplace of Mumtaz Qadri, the police bodyguard who, nine months ago, pumped 27 bullets into Salmaan Taseer, the Governor of Punjab. Taseer had opposed the country’s blasphemy laws, which were, in turn, championed by religious conservatives like Qadri. Along the way, banners hanging from electricity pylons hail the “bravery” and “greatness” of the assassin many in Pakistan chillingly regard as a “hero of Islam.”

Nowhere is this status plainer than outside the crowded, 32-room, multi-storey compound where Qadri lived with his wife, now one-year-old son, and 70 other relatives. Vast billboards are mounted on the side, depicting him as a holy warrior astride a white horse. A poster declares the 27-year-old “the Prophet’s policeman.” Graffiti daubed on a nearby wall salutes him as a ghazi, a title conferred on famed warriors in Islamic history. And in the narrow street, hundreds were gathered to march for his release from prison. While the crowds were not as huge as those that came out to support Qadri when he arrested, their persistence and the wide acceptance of their intolerant attitudes continues to be a worrisome omen. (See “Pakistan’s Police and Army: How Many Enemies Within?”)

“O, ghazi, when you are taken up to meet the lord,” declaims a thickly bearded man with moist eyes and a faint quiver in his voice, “please don’t forget about us poor, sinning folk down here!” The crowd around him says they fear Qadri will soon be hanged. Last week, a local terrorism court handed down a death sentence for the self-confessed crime. (“This is the punishment for a blasphemer,” Qadri had boasted from the back of a police wagon, smiling sinisterly at cameras, shortly after his arrest.) The judge, Pervez Ali Shah, has since been forced into hiding after extremists last week bayed for his blood. Hefty rewards were offered for a third assassination of its kind this year. In March, two months after Taseer’s slaying, Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minorities Minister and the only Christian member of the cabinet was gunned down outside his mother’s home in Islamabad.

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TUNIS (Reuters) – Islamists stormed a university in Tunisia Saturday after it refused to enrol a woman wearing a full-face veil, a staff member said, highlighting tensions over religion that are likely to dominate an election later this month.

Tunisia votes on October 23 in the first election since a revolution that inspired the "Arab Spring" uprisings. The vote has pitted Islamists against secular Tunisians who say their liberal values are under threat.

"The General Secretary of the university was attacked this morning with extreme violence by a group of religious extremists," said Moncef Abdul Jalil, a faculty head at the university of Sousse, about 150 km (93 miles) south of the Tunisian capital.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian forces killed at least eight people when they opened fire to disperse protests against President Bashar al-Assad after Friday prayers in Damascus and Homs, activists said.

Rami Abdel-Rahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said three died in the Damascus suburb of Douma, one in Zabadani near the Lebanese border and four in Bab Sbaa, a district in the central city of Homs. He said at least 25 people were wounded.

Activists said protesters also came under fire in the tribal region of Deir al-Zor on the border with Iraq and in the city of Hama.

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