Updated at 5:00 p.m ET: Demonstrators are filling Quebec's streets daily to support a four-month-old student strike against a tuition hike that has morphed into a movement against efforts to curb the right to protest and to impose austerity measures in Canada's largest province.

The walkout over an 80 percent increase in university and college tuition fees began on Feb. 13 with about 11,000 students. By late March, more than 300,000 people -- or about three-quarters of Quebec's student population -- were participating, organizers say.

The number of striking students had dipped to around 160,000 when the province's center-left government passed an emergency law on May 18 limiting where and when protests could be held and imposing potential fines of more than $100,000 on violators.

But instead of quelling the demonstrations, "Law 78" drove people who were unaffected by the tuition hike but angry over the legislation onto the streets, revitalized the strikers and sparked court challenges amid claims it endangers freedoms of expression and association.

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'A lot of anger'
The government also suspended classes until mid-August, essentially putting the students in a lockout. 

The movement has been dubbed the "Printemps Érable" -- or "Maple Spring" -- a play of words on the Arab Spring ("Printemps Arabe") protests that swept across the Middle East and North Africa.

“I think that our strike arrived at a good moment where a vast majority of the population has a lot of anger against the government,” Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, a spokesman for student association CLASSE, told msnbc.com. “This increase in tuition fees is only one part of the large broader austerity reforms” that include moves to privatize health care. Many Canadians consider universal health care to be a defining characteristic of their national identity.

"I think our mobilization just gives the opportunity to all those people who were just waiting … to go into the street,” he added. “The student movement … is really a movement to refute this change of the political cultural of Quebec."

1,600 arrested
Quebec, a predominantly French-speaking province situated between Ontario, New Brunswick and Labrador, has a history of student activism, including a strike in 2005 that lasted more than 50 days.

“The scale and the length of the conflict is unprecedented,” said Marcos Ancelovici, an assistant professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal who studies social movements. “The movement so far is really showing an incredible capacity to mobilize large numbers of people, and the government did not anticipate that at all, they didn’t see it coming.”

There have reportedly been mass protests on a few occasions in addition to the daily demonstrations, but Montreal police do not provide crowd numbers. At least 1,600 people had been arrested in connection with the demonstrations as of last Friday, police said, though they reported dozens more on their Twitter account over the weekend when the Formula 1 Grand Prix race was held. At least five of the arrests have been for people violating a new city bylaw that bans wearing scarves, masks and balaclavas at protests.

Some protesters have clashed with police and one time, smoke bombs were set off in Montreal's subway network, briefly stopping the whole system, though the student demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, the Canadian Press reported. The police have also reported on their Twitter account that protesters had broken windows and thrown objects at officers in recent days.

 

Four student associations are seeking a freeze on the tuition hike and have participated in four failed negotiation sessions with the government. The hikes on the current $2,110 tuition were initially $316 per annum over five years, but later were reset to about $250 over seven years -- or about an 80 percent increase -- in a compromise bid by the government, Canadian media reported.

In its budget report calling for the hikes, the government said that all of the universities had finished each fiscal period with a deficit since 2005. The total deficit for the institutions reached $469 million in 2009.

By 2010, the universities were underfinanced by an estimated $602 million, the government said, citing a report by the nonprofit Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities.

The additional revenue would go to improving the quality of education and research, and providing financial aid, the government said.

Even after the hikes, Quebec’s tuition fees will remain among the lowest in Canada, the CBC reported.

Though some observers criticized the province's leaders for not trying to resolve the issue earlier, the government said in a statement on May 31 that despite "constructive" exchanges between the two sides -- and counter-offers aimed at brokering a deal -- it was impossible to reach an agreement.

The provincial government acted in good faith to try and find an acceptable solution for all parties to exit the crisis, said new Education Minister Michelle Courchesne, noting that the students had rejected tuition hikes entirely.

The former education minister, Line Beauchamp, resigned in mid-May over the issue, according to the CBC.

The protests had begun to flag around that time because Premier Jean Charest's government appeared unwilling to back off the planned hikes or to offer significant concessions, Ancelovici said. 

But Law 78, a "special" measure specifically designed to subdue the student movement until the law expires in July 2013, has so far only served to galvanize opposition to the Liberal party's government and shifted momentum back to the protesters.

PhotoBlog: Quebec moves to restore order as striking students clash with police

Under it, students face fines in the thousands of dollars for blocking entrances to universities, while their associations are potentially subject to fines of more than $100,000. It requires police to be given protest itineraries eight hours before any gathering of more than 50 people.

'Its scope is very wide'
The Quebec Bar Association denounced Law 78 as endangering the freedoms of expression and association. A legal nonprofit has already filed two challenges against the legislation, said Pierre Thibault, an assistant dean at the University of Ottawa’s law school. He believes at least parts of the law would be struck down as unconstitutional.

“It’s quite unusual to have a law like Law 78 because its scope is very wide and that is part of the problem,” he said. “How can you impose this punishment to students? It’s hard for them to even pay their … fees.”

Law 78 also triggered a new style of protest in Montreal: A college teacher reportedly called for a type of demonstration made popular in Chile, Argentina and Spain to be used on the nightly marches: the banging of pots and pans, called “les casseroles” in French.

This law “galvanized everybody because suddenly people said well this is completely outrageous, we cannot let our freedoms, our rights be … restricted in this way,” Ancelovici said, noting that many families and senior citizens were now attending the protests and neighborhoods were organizing into assemblies.

Activists also grabbed hold of the concept and called for similar demonstrations to be held across Canada and in some European and American cities. Some in Occupy Wall Street are using the red felt square worn by Quebec protesters as a symbol of student debt (meaning "totally in the red") and are holding ongoing casserole protests in the U.S.

“I think the reason why people have been so eager to jump on board with this …. is because people feel that they are all having the same problem and that problem is with a broken economic system,” said Ethan Cox, a writer for alternative media nonprofit rabble.ca who helped to organize the casserole protests outside of Quebec. “That problem of austerity, that problem of misplaced priorities is a global problem and is one that affects people in the U.S. as much as it does here in Canada. And so I think that’s why it’s really struck a nerve.”

The protest has resonated with students in the U.S., where student debt passed $1 trillion earlier this year. Some New York City students have gone to Montreal to meet protesters and another group in Ohio has been discussing organizing Quebec-style student unions, said Jacob Remes, an assistant professor of public affairs at Empire State College who studies social movements in Canada and the United States.

Though Remes didn’t think a nationwide movement akin to what was happening in Quebec could occur in the U.S. due to the organizing it would require, he thought it could be possible in smaller locales.

In Quebec, not all are on board with the protests, Ancelovici said, noting that some of his students at the English-speaking McGill University were concerned about completing the term so they didn’t join the strike. Participation was also lower outside of Montreal, he said.

A poll conducted online after Law 78 passed showed a near split in sentiment over the legislation, with 51 percent supporting it and 49 percent opposed, according to the Montreal Gazette. The poll of 1,500 people also found that 64 percent sided with the government’s plan to raise the tuition, while 36 percent backed the freeze that the students are seeking.

With school out, Nadeau-Dubois acknowledged that it would be hard to keep up the momentum of the protests during the summer but said they would focus on the pots-and-pans brigade led by neighborhood groups. No matter the outcome, he said they had already won something.

“This movement gave us a lot of confidence in ourselves," he said. "We really realized our collective force, our collective ability to mobilize and to change things, and yeah, a lot of students are beginning to realize that we are doing something historical actually and that’s why, even if the individual cost of the strike is very heavy, they are … continuing to be on strike because they know that they are doing something that is bigger than themselves.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect that the government changed their initial hike from a 5-year plan of $316 per annum to a 7-year plan of $250 per annum.

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Police in Frankfurt, Germany, arrested about 400 "Blockupy" protesters Friday for defying a ban on anti-austerity demonstrations.

Several hundred people took to the streets to protest the European Union's austerity measures and the power of banks, as part of a four-day anti-capitalist "Blockupy" protest due to run until Saturday.

 According to Der Spiegel, around 5,000 police were on the ground backed up by water canons. There was no violence.

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The protesters are angry at the misery they say governments are inflicting on people with their response to the crisis, which has intensified since inconclusive elections in Greece this month fueled concerns about its future in the euro zone.

"The Greek austerity measures are making Greece go kaputt even faster," said protester Leonard Loch, 37, from Hamburg. 

 The "Blockupy 'alliance criticized the massive police presence in Frankfurt, which is the seat of the European Central Bank and the largest financial center in continental Europe. The demonstrators were "all prudent and were holding back," Frauke Distelrath, spokesperson for the activist group Attac, told Die Welt. 

A court on Monday authorized a rave dance party organized by protesters on Wednesday and protests scheduled for Saturday, but ruled against them taking place on the other days. 

On Wednesday, police peacefully removed demonstrators from outside the ECB's Frankfurt headquarters and detained 150 demonstrators on Thursday for defying a ban on protests.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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LONDON -- An eviction notice has been served on dozens of Occupy protesters who have set up camp in a park next to Team USA's Olympic track and field training base.

About 50 demonstrators are occupying Mile End Park – two miles from the main London 2012 site and next door to a sports stadium where American athletes will prepare for events in July.

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The park is also visible from the priority traffic lanes that will be used to whisk VIPs and other participants from central London to the Olympic Village, which is located to the east of the U.K. capital.

The protesters say they are part of the anti-capitalist Occupy movement, which has seen sit-ins and clashes with police in cities including New York, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Oakland.

An Occupy London camp was forcibly removed from the grounds of St Paul's Cathedral by police at the end of February, resulting in 20 arrests.

Local authorities have now secured a court order to close down Occupy Mile End, which began five weeks ago and includes about a dozen tents, a campfire and makeshift toilet facilities.

Police evict Occupy London protesters from camp

Tower Hamlets Borough Council applied for the order following complaints from local residents. The manager of a nearby nature reserve also accused camp members of damaging important trees by taking branches for firewood, according to a report in the East London Advertiser newspaper.

One of the protesters, who gave his name as Jim L., told msnbc.com the group had agreed to leave the site voluntarily on Sunday.

"This is one of Britain's poorest boroughs and we don't want to take council resources away from things like schools and hospitals so we have agreed to vacate the site without costing the council a penny," he said.

Mark Taylor, spokesman for the Mile End Residents' Association, said locals were "looking forward" to a "constructive and companionable relationship with Team USA."

He said: "We are very pleased that the council has secured a possession order to reclaim the park for its intended purpose. It's very sad that trees had to be pulled down for firewood and children's activities disrupted before the council acted."

Council officials insisted that nobody from the United States Olympic Committee, Team USA or the London 2012 organizers had expressed concern about the Occupy protest on their doorstep.

A spokesman for the council told msnbc.com: "The USA track and field team will be training at Mile End Stadium during the Olympic Games. They have funded extensive improvements to the stadium, and will be providing a variety of community benefits including free coaching sessions and opportunities to watch the team training.

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"We are working with the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) on security issues, understandably these issues are sensitive and therefore we are not able to comment in detail, but we do not anticipate that these will impact on the local community."

The council said it would go to the High Court to have the protesters moved if they did not leave the site, which is owned by a private trust on behalf of the council for use as a public park.

Brits revel in gloom ahead of London Olympics, but don't believe the gripe

Jim L. said the Occupy camp would move to a new, unidentified, site on Sunday. He added that there was little chance of protests targeting the Olympic Games.

"It would be impossible because of the security, in my own view," he said. "We're not against the Olympics as everybody likes a bit of sport, but I believe it is just one big advertising event for the benefit of corporate sponsors."

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He said the camp location had been chosen to highlight the issue of poverty in Tower Hamlets and not because of the proximity to Team USA's stadium.

"There are huge problems here -- lack of affordable housing, unemployment and poverty," he said. "This is not so much a protest as a process, which is why we've come here – to listen to people and gather support. There isn’t much point in trying to occupy private land in order to disrupt the institutions of capitalism.”

American competitors at the Games will have several bases across London for different sports. Other sites include the University of East London campuses in Docklands and Stratford.

Langdon School, in the nearby Poplar area, will be home to the Canadian Olympic team.

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LONDON -- A range of security challenges threaten London’s 2012 Olympics from Islamic extremist and right-wing terrorists to cybercriminals and “encampment style protests,” Home Secretary Theresa May said Wednesday.

The British government has strengthened its policies toward Occupy-style protests ahead of the games, May told a conference on security in London.

 

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May also called on organizers to ban tents and related equipment from games venues, and advocated a “rapid follow-up action by the police … using all available powers to remove encampments and equipment” if protesters did get through. 

Anti-capitalists protesters have been camped outside London's St Paul's Cathedral since October as part of the international movement inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protest.

• Rev. Jesse Jackson to London protesters: 'Jesus was an Occupier'
  

“I have stressed to the police that they must act swiftly in support of London 2012 organizers … should the receive a complaint (of an Occupy-style protest),” she said at a conference organized by defense think tank RUSI.

Attractive target
Four billion around the world were expected to watch the Olympics on television, making it an attractive target for terrorists and protesters.

Despite the May’s comments, the police “had no plans whatsoever” to stop legal protests, Commander Richard Morris of London's Metropolitan Police said.

The threat of “aggressive camping” was one of the new and evolving threats to Olympic security, Professor Michael Clarke, RUSI’s director-general said.

The games will see the U.K.’s largest peacetime security operation and involve tens of thousands of security officials, with 13,500 military personnel, 12,000 police and 10,000 private contractors. 

Al-Qaida and related jihadi groups, right-wing extremists and Northern Irish militants are also a threat, Robert Raine, the director of Olympic safety and security for the Home Office, said.

Dow Chemical sees more bad Olympics publicity

The issue of security is particularly relevant one to Olympics organizers. The decision to award the Olympics to London was announced on July 6, 2005.  Just a day later, London suffered its worst peacetime attack when four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters.

The U.K.’s alert level is expected to be raised to “severe” during the games, meaning that an attack is considered to be highly likely, officials said.

Protests continued for a sixth day across Romania, as hundreds gathered in the capital city Bucharest and in about 40 other cities, calling for President Traian Basescu’s resignation and denouncing the government’s austerity measures and systemic corruption.

As night fell Tuesday, about 200 anti-government protesters gathered in downtown Bucharest, yelling slogans such as "Resignation!" and "Down with Basescu!" Officials reported the number rose to about 1,000 protesters by the end of the day.

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Protesters have raged for several days over austerity cuts, falling living standards and widespread corruption. Gathered in freezing temperatures, they chanted "Freedom!,” holding banners reading "Hunger and poverty have gripped Romania!"

Some protesters waved Romanian flags with the center cut out, reminiscent of the 1989 anti-communist protests.

Live video from the protests in Bucharest's University Square.

Romania is one of the newest and poorest European Union members, but the country is not part of the Eurozone. Romania's economy shrunk more than 7 percent in 2009, and the country needed an International Monetary Fund bail-out to pay its public sector wages. To qualify for another installment of the IMF loan, Romania agreed to implement new austerity measures, including a 25 percent cut in public wages.

The cuts were characterized as “brutal and unthinkable in a West European country” by Andreas Treichl, the president of Austria's Erste Group, the largest foreign investor in the Romanian banking sector.

Officials said about 13,000 protesters hit the streets across the country since Friday. Police said they fined 247 people Monday, and 36 were charged with illegally carrying knives, vandalism or disturbing public order during Monday's protests in Bucharest and other Romanian cities.

The French publication Le Monde noted that, while the number of protesters is relatively modest, their actions represent a “shock” in a country where civil society seemed struck with apathy.

“It was an outburst,” Romanian freelance journalist Vlad Ursulean told msnbc.com. “The cynicism disappeared.”

Ursulean covered the protests in Bucharest on Sunday, watching closely as riot police clashed with protesters. Riot police used tear gas and batons against the demonstrators, some of whom hurled rocks at the police. At least 59 people were injured in the clashes, officials said.

While authorities said violence only erupted when soccer hooligans infiltrated the protests, Ursulean said the crowd of protesters was diverse and the soccer fans made up a small part of it. One of the protesters told the riot police he wouldn’t be in the street if he could afford to feed his daughter, Ursulean reported.

Prime Minister Emil Boc said on Monday the violence was “unacceptable.”

“Each citizen who protests and is unhappy concerns me,” he added on Tuesday.

Protests were sparked last week, when Raed Arafat – a high-ranking health ministry official – resigned in opposition to government plans to privatize the country’s medical emergency system. But the anti-regime sentiment grew quickly among the protesters, and demonstrations spread.   

The prime minister said Tuesday that Arafat, a naturalized Palestinian, will return to his job, in what was seen as a step to defuse the public anger at the government. But protests continued in spite of this development, hinting at “a deep-seated expression of the population’s frustration,” political science professor Lavinia Stan told msnbc.com.

“The protests have taken a life of their own,” Stan said. If they continue and remain peaceful, they could pose a serious problem to President Basescu and the government, she said. Local and parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place later this fall.

Opposition parties tried to capitalize on the protests, demanding early elections, but protests remain apolitical for now. A protest march led by the opposition is now scheduled for Thursday.

“Everything seems a lot like the Occupy movement in its early stages,” Chris Williamson, a Peace Corps volunteer who’s been living in Romania for almost two years, told msnbc.com.

“There are a lot of people who are angry about different problems, but there isn't a set goal or plan for anything.”

An IMF mission coming to Romania to review the country’s loan deal is still on schedule for Jan.25.

LONDON - A British court on Wednesday approved the eviction of anti-capitalist Occupy protesters from outside London's St. Paul's Cathedral.

Judge Keith Lindblom backed local authorities trying to remove the encampment, which has been outside the 300-year-old church since mid-October.

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The Occupy London protest against capitalist excess was inspired by New York's Occupy Wall Street movement.

 

Local authority the City of London Corporation has argued that the right to protest does not justify a semi-permanent campsite affecting the rights of worshippers.

The cathedral is also a popular tourist site.

• Rev. Jesse Jackson to London protesters: 'Jesus was an Occupier'

Occupy responds
Supporters of the anti-capitalist movement quickly responded to the ruling.

FromTheSham tweeted: Saddened by the judgement. Waiting outside Royal Courts #occupylsx have announced they will appeal.

Dorian Smith was less-than-complimentary: #occupylsx "You can't evict an idea" - helps if you could decide on an idea first though.

The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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LONDON -- Veteran activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson compared the global anti-capitalist movement to the U.S. civil rights struggle, the battle against apartheid in South Africa and the fight for Indian independence during a visit to an Occupy camp in London on Thursday.

"Jesus was an Occupier, born under a death warrant, a Jew by religion, born in poverty under Roman occupation," the two-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination told a crowd near Saint Paul’s Cathedral. "Gandhi was an Occupier, Martin Luther King was an Occupier, (Nelson) Mandela was an Occupier."

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A man dressed in a well-tailored dark wool jacket and crisp checked shirt – not your stereotypical Occupy protester – cried as he watched Jackson. "He is my hero," he said.

While the crowd enthusiastically joined Jackson for a chant, not everybody was supportive and a few heckles punctuated his speech. 

One man who shouted that the Occupy movement wasn't addressing the needs of the homeless was detained before he reached the podium where Jackson was standing.

Another Occupier, who said he's been camped out since the protest began on Oct. 15, said he welcomed Jackson. However, he remained skeptical.

"I have mixed feelings – someone told me he's quite a wealthy person," said John, 34, who declined to give a last name. "You don't know his agenda."

F. Brinley Bruton is a senior writer for msnbc.com based in London

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FRANKFURT, Germany - A suspicious envelope sent to Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Josef Ackermann - the face of capitalism in Germany - was a functioning letter bomb, investigators said Thursday.

German police told Reuters that a group calling itself the Informal Anarchist Federation had claimed responsibility for the package, which was intercepted late Wednesday.

It raised fears that a wave of protests against the failures and excesses of bankers could turn more violent, and prompted police across Europe to warn banks to be extra vigilant.

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Deutsche Bank spokesman Klaus Winker said the bank alerted police immediately after the package came to the attention of mailroom workers during a routine screening.

The New York Police Department said it had been alerted to the scare late Wednesday, causing the department to dispatch patrols to the bank's offices in the city "solely as a precaution."

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said the return address on the letter was the European Central Bank — the governing body for the 17-nation common European currency, which has its headquarters just across the park from Deutsche Bank in downtown Frankfurt.

Ackermann, 63, a Swiss who is the first non-German to head Germany's biggest bank, is one of the few senior managers in the country always surrounded by bodyguards. He is the highest-paid chief executive of a German blue-chip company, earning 9 million euros ($12 million) in 2010.

A previous Deutsche Bank head, Alfred Herrhausen, was murdered in 1989 by leftist Red Army Faction guerrillas who blew up his car.

"Initial investigations show that this was an operational letter bomb," the Criminal Investigations Office for the state of Hesse and Frankfurt prosecutors in a statement.

'Other ways of protesting'
Frankfurt's offshoot of the Occupy protest movement, which is critical of banks and has been staging protests in New York, Washington, London and many other cities, said it had nothing to do with the attempted attack.

"We condemn any action that is linked to violence," said Frank Stegmaier, an activist in the Occupy Frankfurt group, which has been camping outside the European Central Bank in the German financial capital since mid-October.

"Occupy has other ways of protesting," he added.

Security has been stepped up at Deutsche Bank offices around the world, banking sources said. One insider said the number of threats against Ackermann had increased in recent months and his security would be increased, although there were no plans to cancel public appearances.

Two Greek commercial banks said they had already been operating under top security conditions after similar letter bomb incidents last year.

One banking source said that since 2006 every item of mail sent to members of Deutsche Bank's executive committee was put through a security check.

European leaders were to meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to try to agree on a way out of a sovereign debt crisis that has triggered a wave of government austerity measures and caused Germans to fret they may have to foot the bill.

• Europe acts to soften recession's blow

Some experts said the euro zone debt crisis could have triggered the attempted attack.

"It seems likely the incident is linked to the groundswell of public anger toward the banking sector, as highlighted by a number of anti-capitalist protests around the world," said Louise Taggart, Europe and Eurasia analyst at AKE Group.

"A likely explanation is that the letter bomb was sent from Greece, which is facing a particularly difficult economic situation following the implementation of severe austerity measures," she said.

A letter bomb sent to Chancellor Angela Merkel last year originated in Greece and is thought to have been linked to an anarchist group in reaction to the extreme austerity measures.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Police stripped an Occupy Melbourne protester down to her underwear Tuesday, an act that promptly went viral on YouTube and prompted an ethics investigation.

The protester, identified only as Sarah, 20, was wearing a tent converted into a costume when police moved in on her and similarly clad demonstrators, the Melbourne Sun Herald reported.

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The video shows officers using a knife to cut away Sarah’s tent as she protests "This is not consensual" and witnesses yell "Shame" and epithets at the police.

Officers are shown walking away with the seized tent as Sarah is left in just bra and panties on the grass and other protesters bring her a blanket.

The incident was part of a police sweep in which three protesters were arrested as officers enforced city orders requiring demonstrators to take down tents and tarpaulins, The Associated Press reported.

Victoria police late Tuesday said the Ethical Standards Department was investigating the stripping.

''The Ethical Standards Department has subsequently received a physical assault complaint in relation to this incident and is investigating. As this investigation is ongoing we will not be commenting further.''

Police earlier told the Sun Herald that they warned protesters that if they chose not to wear clothes under the tents, they would be given time to dress before the costumes were seized.

Three of four protesters cooperated, police said.

"The fourth, a female, refused to comply with direction," police said , according to the Sun Herald report.

Protest organizers said in a statement that police targeted Sarah and knew she was not clothed underneath the tent.

"The severed costume was violently torn from her body while the protester herself was discarded, semi-naked and crying on the ground," they said. 

This story includes reporting by The Associated Press.

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