Protest

With the Olympics only a few weeks away, the global Occupy movement has started ramping up its activities in London, and a vacant house owned by British artist Anish Kapoor was the site of a one-day protest that began Friday.  The Mumbai-born Kapoor, whose eye-teasing pieces have become local landmarks in Chicago and outside Nottingham Playhouse in England, also created the 377-foot tall Orbit Tower in East London's new Olympic Park,...

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson says he's fed up. The freshman from Wisconsin, who knocked off progressive stalwart Russell Feingold in last year's election, said Tuesday that he would stage a procedural protest on the Senate floor until the Democratic leadership puts forth a 2012 budget. “So unless we receive some assurance from the Democrat leadership that we will actually start addressing our budget out in the open, in the bright light of day, I will begin to object. I will begin to withhold my consent," Johnson, a businessman from Oskosh, Wis., said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

The Allied Pilots Assn., representing the 10,000 pilots who fly for American, is planning an hourlong demonstration at LAX today, beginning at 10:30 a.m.  The protest, between Terminal 4 and the Bradley terminal, comes after a federal bankruptcy judge allowed the company to impose new pay and work rules on pilots  . . . .  Meanwhile, hundreds of American flights have been canceled this week as pilots call in sick or increase maintenance reports...

The British, it seems, are not enamored of British Petroleum, even when it shells out big bucks to support the nation's greatest literary treasure. A group of actors staged their own protest play Monday night before a performance of "The Tempest" at Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, to express their displeasure with a sponsorship deal involving the oil giant. BP is supporting the World Shakespeare Festival, a joint venture between the Royal Shakespeare Co. and the Globe Theatre that is being billed as the biggest Shakespeare festival ever held.

Russian punk band Pussy Riot, which is awaiting the verdict in a trial of its three members on hooliganism charges, has over the last six months generated worldwide attention after a clip of the group protesting connections between the Russian Orthodox church and Vladamir Putin's administration drew the ire of powers that be. In the process, Pussy Riot has become a symbol not only of defiance in the face of authoritarian power but also of the ongoing...

Reporting from San Francisco -- For an organization that wants us all to live more lightly on Mother Earth, Greenpeace sure has a lot of stuff. Cases of humpback whale costumes and a forest-green ambulance marked "Climate Emergency Response. " Inflatable boats and a two-man airship. Handcuffs, 70 purple umbrellas and a climbing wall where protesters train before rappelling down the headquarters of corporate America. Decades worth of props are housed in a fading yellow warehouse half the size of a football field in San Francisco's Dogpatch, an industrial neighborhood squeezed between a freeway and a shipyard.

More than 100,000 people took to the streets Saturday in the biggest show of protest in Russia's capital since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. "Russia without Putin!" the crowd chanted as it protested alleged election fraud during the recent parliamentary vote that saw Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party garner nearly 50% of the vote. Many in the crowd said they were fed up with Putin, who served as president for eight years beginning in 2000 and is now seeking a return to the presidency in an election scheduled for March.

MEXICO CITY -- FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, on Tuesday denied a protest from the Costa Rican Football Assn. which challenged the results of last Friday's World Cup qualifier against the U.S. in suburban Denver. The game, won by the U.S. 1-0, was played in a blizzard that covered boundary lines on the field and made it difficult for players to pass, run or even see. But in dismissing the challenge, FIFA did not address the conditions, basing its ruling instead on a technicality.

Days after the Bahraini government banned demonstrations by opponents, about 2,000 residents of the mostly Shiite Muslim village of Sitra turned a funeral into the first protest under a new three-month state of emergency, a show of deepening resistance against the regime. The government has arrested more dissidents and human rights workers, destroying their homes and also beating relatives, witnesses said. Many other activists have now gone into hiding in this tiny country, their family members said.