Protest

CAIRO - The highest-level inquiry into the deaths of nearly 900 protesters in Egypt's uprising has concluded that police were behind nearly all the killings and used snipers on rooftops overlooking Cairo's Tahrir Square to shoot into the huge crowds. The report, parts of which were obtained by the AP, is the most authoritative account of the killings and determines that the deadly force used could only have been authorized by Hosni Mubarak's security chief, with the ousted president's full knowledge.

TOKYO - Thousands of people rallied in a Tokyo park Saturday, demanding an end to atomic power and vowing never to give up the fight, despite two years of little change after the nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan. Gathering two days ahead of the second anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that sent the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant into multiple meltdowns, demonstrators said they would never forget the world's worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, and expressed alarm over the government's eagerness to restart reactors.

A unusual coalition of Philadelphia's diverse unions - bringing together everyone from firefighters and electricians to teachers and longshoremen - is organizing strong protests against the Nutter administration's handling of municipal labor negotiations. "We need to have the mayor understand that labor in general is upset with what he's doing in collective bargaining," said Patrick J. Eiding, president of the Philadelphia Council, AFL-CIO. "He's acting more like dictator than negotiator.

More than 70 shouting protesters disrupted Wednesday's meeting of the Delaware River Basin Commission, refusing to be quiet or sit during the business session. Eventually, after a brief recess greeted by cries of "Shame! Shame!" from the audience, the commissioners decided to move up a public comment session that had been scheduled for the end of the meeting. Advocates, including the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and more than 50 other environmental groups, have asked the commission to broaden its oversight of natural-gas pipeline projects.

CAIRO - A security agency headquarters was set on fire as protesters battled police for a third straight day in Port Said on Tuesday, and Egypt's Islamist president considered handing the military full control of the restive Mediterranean coastal city in a sign of the collapse of control there. A handover to the military would be recognition of the failure of President Mohammed Morsi's government to bring calm to Port Said, which has been in turmoil since late January. Furious at the president and the security forces, residents have been waging a campaign of protests and strikes amounting to an outright revolt against the central government.

They were charged with "defiant trespass. " But after a Common Pleas Court jury on Tuesday acquitted the 12 Occupy Philadelphia protesters arrested in a 2011 bank sit-in, the trial judge shook their hands and called them the "most affable group of defendants I've ever come across. " "I think what this really shows is that when the people of Philadelphia make a decision, they want someone accountable," said Aaron Troisi, a 26-year-old working toward a master's degree in education at Temple University.

A JURY acquitted a dozen Occupy Philly demonstrators Tuesday in their appeal of misdemeanor convictions stemming from their 2011 arrests during a sit-in at a Wells Fargo Bank branch. The Common Pleas jurors deliberated over three days before finding the defendants not guilty of conspiracy and defiant trespass, the Inquirer reported. Common Pleas Judge Nina Wright Padilla asked all 12 to approach so she could shake their hands. "I hope you continue your work in a law-abiding way," she said.

A Philadelphia jury has deliberated a second day without reaching a verdict in the trespassing trial of 12 Occupy Philadelphia demonstrators charged in a foreclosure sit-in at a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Center City in 2011. The Common Pleas Court jury deliberated about six hours Monday - after three hours on Friday - before telling Judge Nina N. Wright Padilla that it wished to break until Tuesday. The 12 Occupy demonstrators were arrested Nov. 18, 2011, when they staged a protest inside the bank at 17th and Market Streets and refused to leave.