Protest

Fast-food workers and their supporters are calling for a $15-an-hour minimum wage as they prepare to picket in nationwide protests Thursday. That raises the question: If they're successful, will burger prices soar? Expert opinion is mixed. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. More than doubling that level would be an unprecedented leap.  Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley, said it's unclear whether a minimum wage bump would have enough of a ripple effect to affect consumer wallets.

KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine's president faced growing street protests at home Friday after he rejected an agreement to tie his nation's political and economic future to the West, instead keeping intact Ukraine's historical links with Moscow. The news that President Viktor Yanukovich came away from the European Union summit in Lithuania empty-handed angered thousands of mostly young demonstrators who gathered in Kiev's Independence Square, site of massive protests that triggered the Orange Revolution against pro-Russian rule nearly a decade ago, to demand that the president be impeached and the association agreement with the EU be signed.

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.

Adding to the mysteries in your column is Rankman slotting in USC as No. 25. If a 7-3 Notre Dame team that beat No. 14 Michigan State and No. 22 Arizona State doesn't deserve to be ranked (and they don't), then how can a 7-3 USC team that lost to Notre Dame (and ASU) merit a ranking? Gerry Swider My prayers were answered! Thank goodness, you are all alive! I thought the entire Domer Nation had retreated to an underground bunker with a year's supply of canned beans. The Irish's fan base camp was last seen in January leaving the Fort Lauderdale area for a long hike toward Mt. Alabama.

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?

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.

JERUSALEM -- Thousands of young ultra-Orthodox men protested Thursday night against a government proposal to, for the first time, draft them into the military. More than 20,000 protesters gathered at an Israel Defense Forces recruiting office in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem. Some threw stones at police and set garbage cans on fire, according to a police spokesman. Others carried signs condemning government “edicts” and saying, “Your fate is in your hands.” “We say 'no' to the enlistment of yeshiva students, even if all of us will be forced to go to jail en masse," protest spokesman Pini Rosenberg told the Israeli news website Ynet.

A U.S. Airways flight was canceled after passengers protested that a blind man and his seeing-eye dog had been kicked off Wednesday evening, according to the airline and local media reports. Albert Rizzi, who lives in Long Island , N.Y., said the trouble began after he boarded the flight from Philadelphia to Long Island's MacArthur Airport and the seat in front of his didn't have stowage space for his guide dog, Doxy. A flight attendant insisted that Doxy stay under a seat, and other passengers offered their spaces.

The tiny congregation in Los Feliz looked long and hard for a new pastor - someone joyful and brave, committed and kind, welcoming to all and unwilling to talk down to any. Pretty much from its founding in 1905, Mount Hollywood Congregational Church has charted its own course: integrating early, protesting injustice often, trying hard to change the world for the better. Its 50 or so active members, while diverse in age, ethnicity and background, are very much in sync in their spiritual style.

The sun beat down on protesters, policemen and curious shoppers alike as a crowd of roughly 100 people gathered outside the Wal-Mart in Paramount on Wednesday to call for better wages for store employees. The event was planned by several labor groups, including Our Walmart and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. Organizers called it a precursor to the holidays and accused Wal-Mart of paying low wages and manipulating workers' schedules in retaliation for labor activism. They said roughly 20 workers were on strike from six Southern California stores; other participants included employees on their days off and a large contingent of Northern California workers who were bused down.

Four days after Calabasas High School teacher Brian Ludmer was wounded in the Los Angeles International Airport shooting rampage, students walked out of classes to protest gun violence. He was shot in the leg during Friday's shooting but is in good condition at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, officials said. “We know he's going through a lot and needs a lot of donations because his medical bills are really rising quickly,” Calabasas High student Sam Kaufman told KTLA-TV . PHOTOS: Calabasas students protest gun violence Describing his reaction to news of the shooting, Kaufman said: “It was really scary because how much more close to home could it get?

CAIRO -- The trial of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi opened Monday but swiftly went into recess because Morsi, confined in a defendant's cage, refused to wear a prison-issued jumpsuit as ordered by the judge, Egyptian state television reported. The former leader was flown from a secret location on Monday to a heavily fortified Cairo court complex, marking the start of his trial on charges of incitement to commit murder. Chants erupted inside the closed courtroom upon Morsi's arrival, and the judge threatened to halt the proceedings if order was not restored, the private CBC channel reported.

A plan to double film permit fees on public lands has produced a rare moment of bipartisanship in Washington. Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles) joined more than 50 other representatives from both sides of the aisle this week, sending a letter to the U.S. Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture requesting that fees for filming on public lands not be increased. The departments, squeezed by budget cuts, are considering a plan that would double filming fees. On the set: movies and TV Cardenas and a bipartisan group of representatives contend the higher fees would drive more production out of the country.

  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.

ISTANBUL, Turkey --  As night fell in the Turkish capital Sunday, thousands of protesters continued to march in protest against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, beating drums and rattling the shutters pulled down tight on storefronts as they called for the premier's resignation. A weekend of dramatic protest left Turkey reeling, with thousands of dissidents taking to the streets following a brutal police crackdown, presenting the country's leadership with the most cohesive challenge to its leadership it has faced during more than a decade in power.

Labor and community advocacy groups staged a brief sit-in outside the office of Los Angeles County's chief executive Friday calling on the county to scrutinize the property tax assessments of a major downtown property owner. The activists from the ReFund LA Coalition say commercial property giant Brookfield Office Properties structured its recent acquisition of four downtown skyscrapers   to take advantage of a tax loophole and avoid having the properties reassessed at fair market value as required by Proposition 13 when a change of ownership occurs.