Protest

Chinese state media confirmed Monday that a steel factory executive was beaten to death after thousands of workers gathered to protest the takeover of their company. Chen Guojun, an executive at Jianlong Steel Holding Co., died Friday after an angry mob in the northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua beat him and then blocked ambulances from reaching him, according to the China Daily.

LATTA, S.C. - Police Chief Crystal Moore was born and raised in this tiny farming crossroads and served as a volunteer police dispatcher while she was still in high school. She became the town's first female officer with a sterling 23-year record on the force - until she was ordered into the mayor's office this month and summarily fired. Mayor Earl Bullard handed Moore a list of seven reprimands citing, among other alleged transgressions, questioning authority and failing to maintain order at a council meeting.

Officials surveyed damage Sunday from a volatile Occupy protest that resulted in hundreds of arrests the day before and left the historic City Hall vandalized after demonstrators broke into the building, smashed display cases, cut electrical wires and burned an American flag. Police placed the number of arrests at about 400 from Saturday's daylong protest — the most contentious since authorities dismantled the Occupy Oakland encampment late last year. Mayor Jean Quan condemned the local movement's tactics as "a constant provocation of the police with a lot of violence toward them" and said the demonstrations were draining scarce resources from an already strapped city.

Members of the American Postal Workers Union are launching protests Thursday in 27 states to decry a partnership between the U.S. Postal Service and office supply company Staples Inc. to run postal counters at its retail stores.   The agreement between the Postal Service and Staples, announced in November, created a pilot program to operate 82 postal counters at Staples locations across the country. The quick-service counters will be staffed by Staples employees.  Organizers plan to demonstrate at a Staples location in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, one of four protests planned in California.

SACRAMENTO -- California prison officials have put 14 inmate leaders of a statewide protest over solitary confinement conditions into yet deeper isolation. The protest is now in its 10th day, with 2,312 inmates refusing state meals and 271 refusing to go to work or attend classes. Lawyers for inmates in the Secure Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison arrived to find their clients had been moved to administrative segregation, used to punish inmates who have violated rules.

About 25 University of California healthcare workers were arrested Friday afternoon in Westwood during a protest over staffing levels, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. In a planned act of civil disobedience, the protesters blocked the intersection at Westwood and Wilshire boulevards and refused to leave, said LAPD Sgt. A. Bone. Officers arrested them and took them to the West Los Angeles community police station for booking.  The protest began about 2 p.m. LAPD officers were monitoring the event to make sure that the protesters didn't get run over by traffic, Bone said.

The inflatable puppy in a hot dog bun was designed to turn heads and stop traffic. And no doubt it would on so many other corners, in so many cities other than this one. Even at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, it was a bit odd to see a bunned, 10-foot-long dog lying on its side, with big black eyes and a belly striped with ketchup and mustard. But was it any odder, really, than to walk through a web of Spider-Men - one rail-thin, one chubby, one wearing a bulging fanny pack?

A demonstration in support of anti-government protests in Venezuela is scheduled Saturday afternoon at the federal building in Westwood, one of more than 100 taking place across the U.S. and the world, organizers said. The protest is being organized by Jovenes Independientes (Independent Youth), a group of Venezuelans living in the U.S., that sprung up since the protests aganist the government of that country's president, Nicolas Maduro, began about 10 days ago. Demonstrators gathered outside the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles Friday night to protest the failure of Gustavo Dudamel, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a Venezuelan, to speak out against Maduro.

There were rock stars and rappers, and there were nurses to take blood donations. Music boomed off the sides of skyscrapers for blocks around. In between patriotism-tinged performances, earnest announcers climbed onto a stage in a square, under a sign that read "Saving Lives," and told hundreds of cheering youths about all the good things that would be done with the donated blood. Monday was Generation Day in Moscow, an event of vague origin, organized by networks of pro-Kremlin youth groups apparently to drown out another event.

Less than two weeks after federal officials rebuked the Albuquerque Police Department for a rash of unjustified officer-involved shootings, an officer fatally shot a 19-year-old woman suspected of stealing a vehicle before pointing a gun at police, authorities said. Mary Hawkes became the first person to be killed by Albuquerque police since the Justice Department released a scathing report that called for a "systematic change" to address what it said was a long-ingrained culture of deadly force in the Police Department.

TEHRAN - Relatives of Iranians jailed on various security charges held a protest Tuesday outside the offices of President Hassan Rouhani , alleging that the prisoners are being detained unfairly. The demonstration came as Iranian officials denied reports of violent clashes last week in the capital's Evin Prison, where dissidents say many political prisoners are held. Opposition websites and relatives of prisoners reported that authorities stormed a cellblock at  Evin and that many inmates were injured.

RIO DE JANEIRO - In 50 days the best athletes in the world's most popular sport will convene in Brazil, one of soccer's sacred spiritual homes, for the game's most important tournament. It will be a powerful, uplifting tribute to the "beautiful game" that Brazilians have shaped for decades and the new status of a confident, rising global power in Latin America. Locals and foreigners will marvel at shiny new stadiums and glide across the continent-sized country on upgraded infrastructure.

When 18 USC students staged a sit-in Tuesday outside the office of university President C.L. Max Nikias to protest the school's business dealings with a vendor - the parent company of which has ties to factories in Bangladesh - school officials took a tough stance. The students were told that if they didn't pipe down or get going by the end of the business day, they would be given “a letter of interim suspension,” as Ainsley Carry, the vice provost of student affairs, said later in a statement.

MOSCOW - Vowing that the Russian takeover of Crimea would not be repeated elsewhere in the east of his country, Ukraine's interim president gave separatists until Monday to lay down their arms and surrender government buildings they have seized or face a crackdown by military forces. Those separatists who don't fire on security forces and who surrender their weapons will not be prosecuted, President Oleksandr Turchynov said Sunday. "The Council of National Security and Defense has decided to carry out a large-scale anti-terrorist operation with the use of armed forces of Ukraine," Turchynov said in a televised address Sunday afternoon.

After spending a week whisking away nearly 400 cattle they said were illegally grazing on federal land in the Nevada desert, officials facing a battalion of protesters with horses and guns decided to free those cattle in a stunning reversal Saturday afternoon. A line of cattle calmly filtered out of a federal holding area at about 3 p.m. as protesters and law enforcement watched from alongside Interstate 15 near the Nevada-Arizona state line. "Due to escalating tensions, the cattle have been released from the enclosures in order to avoid violence and help restore order," the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said in a short statement.

Environmental activists showed off a new form of protest throughout the country and around the world Saturday: a "Global Frackdown. " On Saturday, activists at roughly 100 events around the globe were scheduled to protest a controversial oil and gas extraction practice called hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Organizers dubbed their activities in North America, Europe and Australia a " Global Frackdown. " More than 50 Code Pink members gathered near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

  Ang Lee's acclaimed 3-D movie "Life of Pi" is a front-runner to win a top visual effects award at the Oscars. But some of the people who worked on the film's dazzling visual effects aren't celebrating. In fact, they're planning to stage a protest to call attention to their own plight -- and that of California visual effects workers in general. A group of visual effects workers has arranged to have a plane fly a banner over the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood during the red carpet Academy Awards pre-show to protest their circumstances.

TEHRAN - Protesters at a boisterous rally after Friday prayers demanded that Iran retain its nuclear “rights,” as the public voiced its displeasure with the lack of concrete results from ongoing negotiations with world powers. Echoing earlier comments from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, the protesters vowed that Iran would not shut down its nuclear program or relinquish its uranium enrichment capabilities. “Full nuclear cycle is our inalienable right!” chanted the protesters, who expressed fear that Iran's leadership would cave in to demands from the six world powers to dismantle the nation's nuclear program.

CARACAS, Venezuela - A marathon meeting between President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leaders that ended early Friday kept alive the possibility of a compromise between the two sides to halt Venezuela's slide toward anarchy. Maduro hosted 11 opposition leaders Thursday night at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, the capital, and the political foes leveled bitter accusations. Each blamed the other for the violence that has left 41 people dead and more than 1,000 injured since February.