• To mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, nearly 40 people were arrested outside the White House on Thursday and detainees at the prison launched a hunger strike.

• Dozens of cars manned by Palestinians from the West Bank tried to leave Jericho on Tuesday morning in a non-violent protest action to protest and challenge the system of Israeli-only roads throughout the West Bank, but were stopped by Israeli forces, who blocked the four lanes entering and exiting the Palestinian city.

• On Monday, survivors of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy staged a protest at a park as part of the international campaign to demand that the Organizing Committee of the London Games set to begin from July 27, cancel the sponsorship by Dow Chemicals.

• Workers at consumer goods giant Unilever staged a noisy protest outside the firm’s London offices in a dispute over pensions which is set to escalate into a series of strikes starting next Tuesday.

• More than 9,000 lawyers boycotted court proceedings in Pakistan’s major cities on Tuesday in protest of a senior attorney’s slaying outside his home in Lahore.

• Workers at a Freeport McMoran mine in Indonesia on Tuesday halted their gradual return to work one day after gunmen shot two contractors dead on the road to the Grasberg mine.

• As many as 231 Air India flight attendants refused to work on Tuesday, which delayed four international flights, to protest non-payment of salaries and sustenance allowance since August.

• Greeks walked off their jobs across the nation today and as many as 20,000 marched through Athens’ central square to protest Prime Minister George Papandreou’s 6.6 billion-euro ($8.7 billion) austerity plan, challenging a government seeking European bailout funds to stave off default.

• On Monday, hundreds of activists stopped pedestrian traffic at the Perth Cultural Centre with a flash mob dance to raise awareness on climate change and push for the state to be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy.

• Madrid secondary school teachers launched a second round of strikes on Tuesday to protest what they say is an attempt by the local centre-right government to use the debt crisis to strangle public schools and benefit private ones.

• In Lebanon, residents of a neighborhood in Baalbek held a sit-in Sunday to protest a lack of  government action on the poor state of roads in the area.

• Advocates for California prison inmates conducting a hunger strike said the number of participants has swelled to 12,000, making it possibly the largest prison strike in recent U.S. history. State corrections officials said the number of striking inmates is far lower than reported by advocates.

• On Monday, over a thousand Palestinians converged on the International Committee of the Red Cross building in Gaza, Palestine, continuing a tent protest that began outside the walled compound on Sunday and bolstering a weekly sit-in by the families of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails have joined a hunger strike to protest against worsening prison conditions.

• Hundreds of Egyptian Copts and supporters organised an angry protest and started a sit-in Tuesday night to voice fury over their renewed feeling of persecution and injustice in the wake of last month’s sectarian tensions in Aswan, Upper Egypt.

• About 10,000 people marched through a restive village near the capital of Bahrain on Thursday for the funeral of a 14-year-old boy killed during a protest against the government the day before.

• At least 11 people were shot dead by Syrian security forces, backed by the army, when thousands demonstrated across the country today against the Baathist regime’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

• Another 137 people were arrested yesterday in the rolling sit-in outside the White House against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry oil from Canada’s tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries. Thus far, 843 people have been arrested since August 20.

• Hundreds of Australians and New Zealanders in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Wellington have taken part in protests against deteriorating human rights in Fiji today.

• A strike in provinces close to Metro Manila that was launched on Wednesday to protest continuing increases in oil prices was successful in paralyzing transportation routes in many parts of two regions—Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) and Bicol.

• Kurds in Turkey, which number around 20 million, have taken to the streets in Istanbul and elsewhere in the country to protest against political repression, cultural suppression, discrimination and a decision by Turkey’s election board to ban prominent Kurdish politicians from upcoming elections.

• Hundreds of relatives and family members of those who went missing over the period of 20 years of unrest in Indian-controlled Kashmir staged a sit-in protest in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital on Tuesday demanding the whereabouts of there loved ones.

• An estimated 80,000 Hong Kongers marched Sunday in honor of eight locals killed in a bus hijacking in Manila, denouncing the Philippine government for botching the rescue operation and demanding justice for the dead.

It has been a year since I came back to Bogotá after two years living in Egypt, where I got to know some of the young people leading nonviolent protests and cultural activities. If I had been part of the Mubarak government, I couldn’t have planned it better; I left Cairo just five months before the revolution began. As I followed the news of what was happening there in February and March, I was here in Colombia, but a part of me was over there, hoping to see change, waiting to be part of it.

Cairo was a tough place to be—so hot, so brown, and hard for a woman, especially a woman who comes from green mountains, from a country with uncountable rivers, lagoons, and lakes. But what I missed the most while living there was my bike. I never saw a woman cycling, nor a businessman. Bread deliverers were on bikes, along with the very badly-paid workers risking their lives on a daily basis by crossing the 23-kilometer-long bridges that go through Giza and Zamalek to Heliopolis. Besides them, it was just a few foreigners living in wealthy neighborhoods dared to use a “steel horse” to go around on weekends.

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In what’s believed to be a first for any United States government agency, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit forestalled a planned protest on Thursday against the latest police shooting of an unarmed man by cutting cellphone service. The action has raised all sorts of questions regarding free speech and the right to assemble peaceably. As Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University told the Christian Science Monitor:

“I think you can on the one hand argue it was a momentary discomfort for somebody who has other means of communication,” says Professor Policinski. “On the other hand, it’s a very disquieting development. Here you have a government agency indiscriminately closing down all kinds of speech in order to prevent a perceived possibility of violence.”

The hacktivist group Anonymous has certainly sided with the latter opinion. On Sunday they broke into a BART’s website and posted company contact information for more than 2,000 customers. The group also urged its members and followers to bombard BART with emails and faxes, as well as file complaints with the FCC. A physical protest is also being planned for later this afternoon at the Civic Center BART station.

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• Spanish activists, known as “the Indignants,” have set off from Madrid on a long march to Brussels to protest what they see as governments bowing to financial markets and ignoring the needs of their own people in the economic crisis.

• Thousands of Greek taxi drivers marched in central Athens on Tuesday to protest government plans to open up their sector to competition.

• Police in Denmark detained six environmental activists on Tuesday protesting the felling of trees in a forest to make room for a research centre for wind turbines.

• Three leaders of a Starbucks Corp union in Chile have begun a hunger strike as their members push on with the first labor stoppage at company-operated Starbucks cafes.

• Young protesters seeking to oust Senegal’s aging president filled the streets outside a central courthouse in the capital, Dakar, on Tuesday, a day after the police arrested a rapper and prominent democracy activist.

• About a dozen activists—including Illinois Representative Luis V. Gutierrez—were arrested after they sat down on the White House sidewalk Tuesday, following a rally where demonstrators denounced the Obama administration for deporting more than one million immigrants in the last two years.

• About 200 protesters gathered Tuesday morning outside the Convention Center in Philadelphia to demand wheelchair-accessible taxicabs. The rally was held on the 21st anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

• India’s biggest traders’ association held a series of demonstrations Tuesday against proposals to allow supermarket chains like Wal-Mart and Tesco into the country’s retail sector.

• Hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the streets across Yemen on Sunday to demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the anniversary of his rise to power in  1978.

• Dozens of tents have been erected in Tel Aviv, with plans for further encampments in other Israeli towns and cities, to protest high house prices.

• Several Indian and Pakistani citizens Saturday gathered near Rajghat, Delhi and formed a human chain on Saturday to protest the July 13 Mumbai blasts that left at least 19 people dead and injured 130.

• Journalists at the BBC walked off their jobs Friday to protest planned job cuts as a result of lower government funding.

• Greenpeace activists dressed as polar bears occupied the Edinburgh offices of Cairn Energy on Monday as the environmental group stepped up the pressure on the company over its Arctic exploration plans.

• Around 2,000 farmers, backed by student groups and academics gathered in front of the presidential office in Taipei late on Saturday to protest government proposals that would make it easier for farm land to be forcibly turned over to developers.

• Around 200 people gathered at the Jordan Press Association headquarters earlier today to denounce an attack on journalists by riot police on Friday.

• Greek taxi drivers blocked roads to Athens’ airport and main harbor today, holding up thousands of tourists at the start of a two-day protest against plans to liberalize their trade.

• Several hundred people attended a protest march against the EU-IMF austerity programme in Dublin on Saturday.

• A small group of mass transit activists against freeway expansion unfurled a banner overlooking the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday that read “L.A. Beyond Cars.”

• Tens of thousands of Greek workers from all age groups and professions marched on parliament in Athens yesterday to vent their anger at the country’s politicians and their austerity plans. Meanwhile unions held a nationwide general strike – Greece’s third this year. Despite violent clashes between police and rioters, the vast majority of the demonstrators remained peaceful.

• A small group of women rallied outside the Saudi embassy in Washington DC on Wednesday to protest the kingdom’s ban on female drivers. The demonstrators wanted to express support for a planned nationwide protest in Saudi Arabia Friday.

• Several thousand people gathered in downtown Chicago on Tuesday to protest bank bailouts and tax cuts for the wealthy and demand jobs and funding for schools.

• Czech transportation workers went on a one-day strike yesterday to protest government plans to overhaul public finances with measures including a value-added tax increase.

• Up to 1,000 people turned out in the capital, Minsk, on Wednesday in a rare protest of economic hardship, defying a warning by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko that he would “strike hard” against them.

• Hudreds of Yemenis rallied in the capital, Sanaa, on Thursday to call on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

• Activists dressed as Transportation Security Administration agents staged a mock TSA pat-down at the Capitol in Austin, Texas on Tuesday as part of an effort to bring a bill into the special session that would make it a misdemeanor for TSA agents to pat-down passengers at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

• About 200 demonstrators gathered outside New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s offices on Monday to push for rent control. State Sen. Bill Perkins and a dozen others were arrested for blocking the entrance to the governor’s office.

• On Tuesday night, a collection of labor officials, students and social service workers began a sleep-in outside City Hall, vowing to stay there, nonstop, “till Bloomberg’s budget is defeated!”

• On Tuesday, Greenpeace activists dressed as Ken dolls rappelled down the side of Mattel headquarters near Los Angeles to unfurl a banner saying Barbie packaging contributes to rainforest destruction.

• About 80 tents have sprung up in and around State Street in Madison, Wisconsin since Saturday in an effort to revive the protests against Governor Walker and his budget cuts that began four months ago.

• A group of hackers known as Anonymous has taken down a Turkish government website to protest recently introduced Internet filters that many consider to be censorship.

• Hundreds of Mexicans began a weeklong caravan on Saturday to protest the country’s bloody drug war, led by a crusading poet whose son was murdered by suspected cartel hitmen.

• The daughter of a North Carolina lawmaker and her third-grade class wrote to him and other elected officials protesting possible cuts in state education spending.

• More than 100 cars blocked a 2-kilometer stretch of Independence Avenue in Minsk on Wednesday to protest rising gasoline prices. It was the first show of public dissent in the Belarus since demonstrators were jailed for protesting the results of last year’s elections.

• A train carrying waste from a Dutch nuclear plant was delayed three hours on Tuesday by 10 Greenpeace activists who chained themselves to the rails. Police made 33 arrests during the protest.

• 200 teachers gathered outside the capitol in Austin, Texas on Monday to protest the state Senate’s passing of a bill that empowers districts to cut teacher salaries and institute more furlough days.

• Iraqi and Kurdish refugees held in a British detention center in Oxford have started a hunger strike to protest plans to deport them to Baghdad.

• Thousands of people gathered in makeshift protest camps in Spain’s principal cities on Thursday to protest the nation’s two main political parties as inept at dealing with the country’s economic woes, including high unemployment. The largest demonstration occurred in the heart of Madrid for a fourth straight day.

• Ugandans are taking to the streets to protest rising fuel and food prices and rapid inflation in the so-called Walk to Work protests, named after a handful of opposition leaders who were arrested back in April as they walked to work in solidarity with those who can no longer afford to take public transportation.

• More than 150 exiled Chagos islanders and their relatives gathered in London on Thursday to press for a return to the Indian Ocean archipelago from which they were exiled 40 years ago, and to discuss the area’s environmental future.

• More than 200 women traveled to London on Wednesday to explain to their local MPs how they will be affected by the state pension age rising to 65 by 2018, instead of 2020 as planned by the previous government.

• Students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute held a second graduation ceremony on Saturday to protest the school’s choice of commencement speaker, ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, whose company they criticize for its environmental record. The “counterpoint commencement’’ featured Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute, a sustainability think tank, as its speaker.

• Activists in the north of Sweden are occupying BASF’s potato warehouse and blocking the exit in order to hinder the German chemical company from planting the risky GMO potato “Amflora.”

• As part of the first significant protest in West Virginia over the rapidly growing exploration of the Marcellus shale field, about 100 people gathered in front of the Monongalia County Courthouse on Wednesday to argue that state regulators aren’t up to the job of properly overseeing the natural gas industry and preventing air and water contamination.

• Residents of North Fair Oaks, California gathered around a 65-foot-tall tree nicknamed “Granny” on Monday after learning days earlier that utility crews were planning to cut it down. They have so far managed to save a centuries-old California valley oak tree in the path of a San Francisco water pipeline.