A new study from the American Council on Education says that student-led protests are having an impact on college and university campuses across the country.

Tens of thousands of Americans will decline to report to work Thursday because of labor disputes, a surge that coincides with a fledgling sense of empowerment among workers who struggled for years to reap the gains of the economic recovery and which could mark a political and economic shift in the balance between employers and their employees.

About 40,000 Verizon workers up and down the East Coast walked off the job on Wednesday after contract negotiations broke down. The nation’s second-largest telecommunications carrier by revenue wants to be able to transfer employees to another city for up to two months, outsource more work to non-union contractors and close down U.S.-based call centers that could be moved to Mexico or the Philippines.

Bangladeshi villagers staged further protests on Tuesday after police opened fire and killed at least four people demonstrating against the planned construction of two large Chinese-financed coal-fired power stations.

 On Wednesday, a group of kids and teenagers will face off in an Oregon courtroom against the US government and the fossil fuel industry. The young people, from states as far away as Florida, Arizona, New York, Hawaii, and Alaska, are suing President Obama and several federal agencies for inaction on climate change.

A giant leak of more than 11.5 million financial and legal records exposes a system that enables crime, corruption and wrongdoing, hidden by secretive offshore companies.