2,500 inmates keep up California prison hunger strike

More than 2,500 prisoners in 17 prisons in California remained on hunger strike on Monday, more than a week after refusing food to demand an end to a policy of housing prisoners believed to be associated with gangs in near-isolation for years on end.

The hunger strike is the third - and largest - in a year over solitary confinement in California prisons, where some inmates are kept in isolation cells for up to 23 hours per day, and are also alone when they are allowed out for an hour of exercise. (Reuters)