• Russian riot police broke up an Occupy-style protest against President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, forcing dozens of people out of a central Moscow park where they had staged a week-long sit-in and detaining about 20 people. Protesters then moved to Kudrinskaya Square in Moscow, where they remain encamped.

• In Chile, a crowd estimated at more than 100,000 marched through the streets of Santiago on Wednesday to support the demands of the nation’s students.

• Thousands of student protesters flooded the streets in Montreal on Wednesday evening after Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced a proposal for a new ‘emergency law’ in a bid to end the ongoing 14-week-old student uprising and strike.

• About 2,900 Moroccan judges began a week-long strike to protest against judicial corruption and interference by the executive branch that they say undermines their independence.

• Two Greenpeace activists were arrested after being pried from a giant iPod in front of Apple’s headquarters Tuesday during a protest against using dirty energy to power data centers.

• Dozens of Spaniards lined up outside a bank in Madrid on Monday to close their accounts to protest the unfair seizures of homes.

• Israeli and Palestinian officials announced Monday that more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners had agreed to end a nearly month-long hunger strike in exchange for concessions by Israel, including a modification to its practice of detention without charge or trial.

• A three-week-long protest on UC Berkeley agricultural research land in Albany came to a quiet close early Monday when police arrested nine protesters who had set up an urban farming camp.

In arguably the most radical political climate north of the Rio Grande, a strike by university students in Quebec has led to the biggest upsurge in civil resistance Canada has seen in decades. There’s energy and uncertainty in the streets of Montreal, the province’s largest city. The symbol of the movement: the little red felt square (“squarely in the red,” as in, broke), is ubiquitous, pinned on the jackets and backpacks of students and supporters. Protest banners hang from university buildings and posters plaster signposts. Students are everywhere, as are the police, who dart around the city in vans, frequently deploying in full riot gear.

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• Tens of thousands of Czechs staged one of the biggest protests since the fall of Communism on Saturday, marching in Prague against spending cuts, tax rises and corruption, and calling for the end of a center-right government already close to collapse.

• On Sunday, 150 Palestinian prisoners joined with 1,200 others being held in Israeli jails who started an open-ended hunger strike on Tuesday to protest the conditions in which they are being held.

• In Montreal, 89 people were arrested Saturday after trying to disrupt the second day of a conference on the development of northern Quebec.

• Tens of thousands of Egyptians demanded on Friday that their military rulers stick to a pledge to hand over power by mid-year after a row over who can run in the presidential election raised doubts about the army’s commitment to democracy.

• In Bahrain, tens of thousands people marched along a motorway from Budaiya, an area to the west of the capital, Manama, on Friday to demand an end to the crackdown on dissent, ahead of the Formula 1 Grand Prix on Sunday.

• Thousands demonstrated in the Rome on Friday to protest government plans to introduce legislation that will make it easier for companies to sack employees.

• Less than 24 hours after their release, University of Texas students arrested after staging a sit-in at President Powers’ office gathered with supporters Thursday on the steps of the UT Tower to continue in their campaign against sweatshop labor.

• Tens of thousands of teachers, doctors, police officers and other public workers went on strike on Wednesday in Slovenia over proposed pay cuts under austerity measures to rein in the euro-zone member’s budget deficit.

• On Saturday, thousands of students in Quebec were joined by residents young and old for a protest against planned tuition hikes that coincided with the anniversary marking Premier Jean Charest’s taking power nine years ago.

• In Pakistan, a crippling strike paralyzed life in the provincial capital of Quetta on Sunday as people protested Saturday’s target killings of nine people, including eight Hazaras, and the government’s failure to improve the law and order situation.

• About 30 members of Afghan Young Women for Change staged a protest march in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul Saturday, denouncing violence against women.

• On Saturday, up to 4,000 opposition supporters marched through the southern Russian city of Astrakhan in support of a hunger-striking local politician who says he was robbed of an election victory by vote rigging.

• Police arrested about two dozen people who barricaded themselves inside the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic on Chicago’s South Side on Friday to protest its planned closing.

• Ten Cuban former political prisoners protesting their “total abandonment” in Spain launched a hunger strike on Friday to press their demands for government assistance.

• Tens of thousands of students protested on Thursday against a 75 percent tuition hike at universities in Canada’s mostly French-speaking Quebec province, bringing downtown Montreal to a standstill. Since mid-February, nearly 300,000 students have boycotted classes, blocked bridges and held smaller protests around the province.

• More than 1,000 indigenous protesters reached Ecuador’s capital Thursday after a two-week march from the Amazon to oppose plans for large-scale mining on their lands. The protesters were joined by thousands of anti-government protesters in Quito.

• Hundreds of farmers gathered in the Vietnamese capital on Thursday to demand the return of rice fields they say were confiscated by heavily armed police just days after receiving an eviction notice.

• More than 1,000 people gathered in a downtown Brattleboro park on Thursday to call for the closure of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. It was the first day of the plant’s operation after the expiration of its 40-year license. Over 130 protesters were arrested for unlawful trespass as part of a civil disobedience action.

• More than a thousand people rallied in New York City’s Union Square on Wednesday evening with the parents of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager who was shot dead in Florida in late February.

• Portuguese workers halted trains, shut ports and paralyzed most public transport in the capital Lisbon on Thursday to protest austerity measures and labor reforms imposed as a condition of a 78-billion-euro ($103 billion) bailout.

• Three Tibetans who have been on hunger strike outside the UN headquarters for the past month ended their protest Thursday after the UN said investigators would look into events in Tibet.

• Several people were arrested on Tuesday after a rally in a Phoenix intersection to protest immigration policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

• About 20,000 Russians angry over an election campaign slanted in Putin’s favor and reports of widespread violations in Sunday’s voting rallied in Moscow on Monday. Riot police quickly moved in, dispersing the crowd and detaining hundreds of demonstrators.

• Lakotas on Pine Ridge Indian land in South Dakota were arrested as they blockaded tar sands pipeline trucks from entering their territory on Monday.

• Thousands of students and activists marched on the California State Capitol in Sacramento Monday to protest cuts in higher education in an action dubbed “Occupy the Capitol.”

• As U.S. President Barack Obama met with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington Monday, over 100 protesters converged at a park in front the White House, urging the United States not to support a potential Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

• A dozen female environmental activists in Ecuador were detained inside the Chinese embassy Monday for protesting Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s decision to sign a deal with a Chinese firm to open a massive copper mine in the Amazon.

• On Saturday, over 100 Bulgarian environmentalist staged a protest rally against looming amendments to the Forestry Act.

• On Friday, thousands of Bahrainis launched what they said would be a week of daily sit-in protests in a Shiite village to commemorate an uprising crushed a year ago.

• On Friday, over twenty-five hundred students protested the possible deportation of 18-year-old student and valedictorian Daniela Pelaez at the North Miami Senior High School.

• Several hundred public school students rallied in support of teachers at the offices of Premier Christy Clark at the World Trade Center in Vancouver on Friday.

Students protesting in Valencia. Photo by Nicholas Hegel McClelland for TIME.

• Thousands of demonstrators turned out in European cities on Wednesday to protest against austerity measures. In Spain, students across the country staged sit-ins and noisy demonstrations over crisis spending cuts, labor market reforms and recent police violence against protesters. Meanwhile, unions staged demonstrations in Paris, Athens, Lisbon and Brussels.

• Several thousand supporters of two-time President Jean-Bertrand Aristide filled the streets of Haiti’s capital Wednesday on the eighth anniversary of his ouster, accusing the country’s current leader of not doing enough to improve their lives.

• Students, educators and Occupy Wall Street activists held demonstrations Thursday across California to protest state budget cuts to education, partially shutting down at least one campus, the University of California, Santa Cruz.

• Some University of Florida students gave low grades Thursday to faculty member and state Senate President Mike Haridopolos, filling out evaluations criticizing his support of university budget cuts and taping them to the front of UF’s administration building.

• Dozens gathered outside the Timms Centre at the University of Alberta on Thursday where Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe was being awarded an honorary degree to protest the company’s efforts to privatize water.

• More than 100 Ohio State students held a protest on Thursday against growing college costs and what they say is increasing administrative pressure to run the university like a business.

• About 200 Arcelor Mittal workers from across Spain protested on Thursday against a decision by the company to close its steel factory in Madrid.

• Around 200 residents of Kenya’s coastal island of Lamu protested on Thursday against a planned huge port to be constructed near the UNESCO-listed isle, accusing the government of ignoring their concerns.

• About 10,000 demonstrators took to the streets Thursday in northern Azerbaijan to protest alleged corruption by a district official.

A view of Alberta's tar sands, which were once covered by lush boreal forests

In a statement released this afternoon, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would have linked Canada’s tar sands to Texas’s refineries. Obama had already effectively rejected the pipeline in early November, when he put off a ruling until after the 2013 elections. But the fossil fuel lobby and their allies in Congress pushed through legislation in mid December that forced the president to make a decision within 60 days. The White House seems to have taken such bullying as an opportunity to reiterate its earlier point: a decision will not be made this year.

While environmentalists should be excited that their efforts played a clear role in making the pipeline a complex campaign issue, there is no indication that Obama won’t eventually allow a tar sands pipeline, if reelected. Congress gave the Obama administration a huge out by allowing him to  reject the pipeline on procedural grounds, which he more-or-less noted in his statement today:

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Methane is bubbling up from the bottom of Alaskan lakes–the result of ancient organic matter thawing and decomposing from its once icy chamber in an ever warming climate. This is just one of several ways the melting of Arctic permafrost could create a precipitous increase in greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and speed up global warming. As the New York Times noted in a recent feature on this foreboding phenomenon, “researchers are worried that the changes in the region may already be outrunning their ability to understand them, or to predict what will happen.”

As complex as this unraveling chain of events may seem, it’s not nature, but politicians–particularly those in Washington–who have made it so. Although they exhale the same amount of carbon dioxide as the average human being, theirs is just as potent and polluting as the gas bubbling out of that lake. The latest example of this can be seen in the Senate’s passage of a bill that requires the president to make a decision within 60 days on the Keystone XL pipeline–which would link Canada’s tar sands to Texas’s oil refineries or, more accurately, the dangerous melting of Arctic permafrost.

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Environmental victories are so rare that apparently even environmentalists don’t quite know how to kick back and rejoice. At a rally in Trenton, New Jersey on Monday, discussion veered between joyous celebration of Friday’s announcement by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to indefinitely postpone a vote that would have paved the way for 20,000 natural gas wells in the region and serious preparation to one day block their construction through nonviolent direct action.

These activists can be excused, however, for mixing business with pleasure because even more rare than an environmental victory is one that’s complete and total. Much like the recent announcement by the Obama administration to delay a decision on the KeystoneXL pipeline that would transport tar sands oil from Canada to Texas, the DRBC vote delay was hardly an indictment of extreme carbon-based extraction that poisons water and the atmosphere. If anything, it’s a temporary roadblock to something government seems all too happy to allow.

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