Protest

The news kept on churning while I vacationed in the Bay Area last week. Not that I'm complaining. It's why I love this industry called current events. It's just that now I'm playing catch-up. That is, if I don't slit my wrists first. I came home only to discover that Philadelphia's sports teams had gone from champs to chumps in about the time it takes to say "sloppy and dumb. " Now it looks like there won't be any NBA, either. Well, uh, there's always hockey. On the obituary front, it hurt to hear that civil rights lion the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, 89, and technology guru Steve Jobs, 56, died on Oct. 5. Both were freedom fighters who bettered our world with their fearless activism - one with marching boots, the other with a mouse.

HOUSTON - National Rifle Association leaders told members Saturday that the fight against gun control legislation was far from over, with battles yet to come in Congress and next year's midterm elections, but they vowed that none in the organization would ever have to surrender their weapons. Proponents of gun control also asserted that they are in their fight for the long haul and have not been disheartened by last month's defeat of a bill that would have expanded background checks for gun sales.

JERUSALEM - An Israeli protester set himself alight during a rally Saturday night marking the anniversary of a wave of demonstrations that swept the country to protest the high cost of living and other social issues, authorities said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the man in his 40s poured flammable liquid over himself at a protest in Tel Aviv and set himself on fire. He was later rushed to a hospital, where he was being treated for serious burns, Rosenfeld said. Israel's Channel 10 TV showed footage of the man on fire.

There she is, smartly dressed in red, trim and blond, eagerly plugging her new book on the perils of popular culture. Tipper Gore is sitting at a card table at Encore Books on Walnut Street, happy to autograph copies of her book, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. But wait - she is not swamped by similarly worried parents or even pin- striped shoppers on their lunch hours. Outside, a dozen teenagers stand holding protest signs. And inside, she is surrounded by kids with rainbow- colore d hair, spiked jackets, shredded jeans, and earrings.

About 50 people in wheelchairs blocked the driveway at the Greyhound bus terminal in Center City yesterday to protest the company's failure to provide access for the handicapped to its buses. Police made no arrests.

The Grim Reaper, dressed in the dark robe of death, walks around the chalk- outlined bodies of 75 protesters sprawled across the sidewalk in front of the Sun Co. building at 18th and Market streets yesterday. Pretending to be corpses, the demonstrators held signs to their chests in protest of any changes to ease laws enacted to reduce air pollution

Pro-life demonstrators sing and pray in the rain yesterday morning outside the Northeast Women's Center on Comly Road in Northeast Philadelphia. Their protest closed the clinic for a while until they were threatened with arrest and dispersed. Some then joined a demonstration at the Reproductive Health and Counseling Center in Chester, where nearly 100 people were arrested. The protests came two days after the Supreme Court ruling that permits tighter restrictions on abortion.

RECENTLY, I've seen numerous announcements of various groups planning to "protest the Republican National Convention. " These announcements do not talk about, say, "protesting Bush's policies" or "protesting Republican support of big business at the expense of labor and the middle class. " No, they say they will be protesting the convention - one of the hallmarks of our democracy. Direct your protests at the actual issues - rationally, calmly, one-by-one. Don't feed the conservative stereotype of liberals as emotional noisemakers.

Members of Dignity Philadelphia lock arms yesterday outside the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul. Some two dozen members of the group, an organization of lesbian, gay and bi-sexual Catholics, staged a demonstration inside and outside the cathedral to protest Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua's stand aginst the proposed domestic-partnership legislation before City Council. When the cathedral's pastor, Msgr. James Howard, began reading from Bevilacqua's letter, Dignity members got up from their seats and walked out of church.

MOSCOW - Russia's capture of a purported U.S. spy made the news for a second day here Wednesday, as the Foreign Ministry handed the U.S. ambassador a formal protest over the affair but otherwise appeared to want to let the matter rest. The sighting of the ambassador, Michael McFaul, fleeting as it was, provided an opportunity for Russian television to dwell at length on images of unkempt wigs, wads of euros (not dollars) and a compass that officials said they found in the accused spy's bag of subterfuge.

JERUSALEM - Forming human chains and using metal barriers, Israeli police held back thousands of ultra-Orthodox protesters who tried to prevent a Jewish women's group from praying at a holy site Friday, the first time police have come down on the side of the women and not the protesters. The reversal followed a court order backing the right of the women to pray at the Western Wall using religious rituals Orthodox Jews insist should be practiced only by men. Wearing prayer shawls, phylacteries, and skull caps reserved for men under strict Orthodox tradition, the women sang and prayed out loud.

ROME - Thousands of supporters of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi rallied in a northern Italian city Saturday to protest the media mogul's recent conviction by a Milan appeals court for tax fraud, cheering their hero as police in riot gear separated them from jeering opponents. The backers turned out for the "Everyone for Silvio" rally by his Freedom People party in a square outside the cathedral in Brescia, a small industrial city that is a bastion of the conservative leader's political support.

Gambling foes filled the audience at Wednesday's hearing before the state Gaming Control Board, silently standing to strongly protest the building of another casino in Philadelphia. About 75 people, mostly from Chinatown, held anti-casino signs during back-to-back testimony from gaming opponents at the end of the fourth and last day of public input on a second license. The protesters represented a coalition of community groups called No Casino in Our City. While most of the earlier speakers were endorsing one project or another, the 11 people to testify at the end of the hearing denounced gambling as bad public policy that was promoting addiction.

The same coalition of labor unions that shouted down Mayor Nutter during his budget message to City Council in March is organizing a two-day protest May 22 and 23, tied to a U.S. Conference of Mayors event in Center City. "NO MORE Mayor 1% Nutter," says a flier advertising the protest, an afternoon rally May 22 outside the Westin Hotel at 17th and Chestnut Streets followed by a morning rally and march to City Hall the next day, when Council may be voting on a budget. "The mayor represents himself one way nationally with the U.S. Conference of Mayors," said Cathy Scott, president of AFSCME District Council 47, "but a very different way when he is dealing with local city workers.

Hundreds of city students gathered Tuesday outside Philadelphia School District headquarters to protest budget cuts that threaten to strip their schools of counselors and support staff, swell class sizes, and chop all extracurricular activities. Musicians sang and played instruments. Teenagers toted handmade signs, waving them at cars beeping their approval. Others lined up to give brief speeches shouted into a bullhorn. "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts," they chanted. Students from around the city - including Central, Bodine, Girls High, Franklin Learning Center, Academy at Palumbo, Masterman, Furness, Frankford, Shawmont, and other schools - were represented in the crowd, which spilled onto North Broad Street.

HOUSTON - National Rifle Association leaders told members Saturday that the fight against gun control legislation was far from over, with battles yet to come in Congress and next year's midterm elections, but they vowed that none in the organization would ever have to surrender their weapons. Proponents of gun control also asserted that they are in their fight for the long haul and have not been disheartened by last month's defeat of a bill that would have expanded background checks for gun sales.

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya's prime minister warned of a perilous security situation Sunday after armed men stormed the Interior Ministry and a state-owned television station after blocking access to the Foreign Ministry. Two years after the country's civil war, Libya is struggling to maintain security, build a unified army and rein in militias, which include rebels who fought to oust longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. About 200 armed men surrounded the Foreign Ministry building in Tripoli, demanding the ministry hire former fighters who helped overthrow Gadhafi.

SAVAR, Bangladesh - "Save us, brother. I beg you, brother," Mohammad Altab moaned to the rescuers who could not help him. He had been trapped for more than 24 hours, pinned between slabs of concrete in the ruins of the garment factory building where he worked. "I want to live," he pleaded, his eyes glistening with tears as he spoke of his two young children. "It's so painful here. " Altab, whose fate was unclear Thursday night, should not have been in the building when it collapsed Wednesday, killing at least 238 people.

BAGHDAD - Security forces stormed a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq on Tuesday, sparking deadly clashes in several towns and sharply intensifying rage at the Shiite-led government. The unrest and a spate of other attacks, mostly targeting Sunni mosques, killed at least 56 people. The violence could mark an ominous turning point in the four-month Sunni protest movement, which is posing a stubborn challenge to Iraq's stability a decade after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks on three Sunni mosques, and it was unclear whether there was any connection to the storming of the protest camp.