Protest

Protesters outside City Hall on Friday said they were outraged that Municipal Court Judge Patrick Dugan, who acquitted former police Officer Jonathan Josey of assaulting a woman attending the Puerto Rican Day Parade, was married to a police officer. "Married to a Cop / Endorsed by FOP / How 'Impartial' / Can Dugan Be," read one sign at the noon rally, attended by about 40 people. Dugan is married to Officer Nancy Farrell Dugan. He was endorsed for election by the Fraternal Order of Police.

A Philadelphia jury will resume deliberations Monday in the trespass trial of 12 Occupy Philadelphia demonstrators charged in a 2011 foreclosure sit-in at a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Center City in 2011. The Common Pleas Court jury deliberated for three hours Friday before telling Judge Nina N. Wright Padilla it wanted to break for the weekend. The demonstrators were arrested Nov. 18, 2011, when they staged a protest in the bank, 17th and Market Streets, and refused to leave.

ASSIUT, Egypt - Thousands of brick workers blocked railroad tracks from a southern city to Cairo for a second day Sunday to protest rising industrial oil prices, causing the cancellation of some services, security officials said. The government lifted industrial fuel oil subsidies last week as part of a reform program, prompting labor protests by quarry and brick factory workers. Egypt has been gripped by unrest in recent days, partially because of public discontent with new government measures designed to deal with a crippling budget deficit.

As the march toward the largest mass school closing in Philadelphia history continues, the voices of detractors grow louder. Thursday night, the voices were very loud indeed. First, about 100 people burst into a School Reform Commission meeting with bullhorns and signs, interrupting a resolution recognizing National School Counseling Week. "Our children are not for sale!" the group chanted, waving pictures of Gov. Corbett and Mayor Nutter, whom the protesters accused of having a school-privatization agenda that the commission is now pushing.

More than 500 people from the region joined thousands of protesters Sunday in Washington, calling for strong action on climate change and a stop to the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline would transport oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Opponents say it would worsen climate change by encouraging further development of the tar-sands oil resource. They spent several hours in the bitter cold and a strong wind cheering, waving signs, listening to speakers, and marching around the White House, although President Obama was in Florida for a golf game.

QUETTA, Pakistan - Members of the Pakistani Shiite Hazara community Sunday threatened to hold widespread protests if the government did not arrest within 48 hours the people responsible for a massive bombing that killed 81 people in a southwestern city. Saturday's blast at a produce market in Quetta underlined the precarious situation for Shiites living in a majority Sunni country where many extremist groups don't consider them real Muslims. Scores were wounded in the blast. Most of the dead and wounded were Hazaras, an ethnic group that migrated from Afghanistan over a century ago. Shiite Muslims, including Hazaras, have often been targeted by Sunni extremists in Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capital, as well as in the southern city of Karachi and northwestern Pakistan.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Mariela Castano's daughter was so worried about her mother's participating in a protest over conditions at immigrant detention centers that she begged her to take along identification in case she was detained herself. Castano, an illegal immigrant from Peru, was among about 100 protesters who gathered Wednesday in Liberty State Park for an annual Ash Wednesday march. They hoped to call attention to a system that advocates say puts profits above humane treatment. "I believe in this cause, and I believe in God, so I'm taking the risk of speaking out," Castano said in Spanish.

CAIRO - Egyptian women are growing increasingly angry and militant as they deal with one of the unintended consequences of the Arab Spring: an epidemic of sexual assault that law enforcement has failed to contain. The backlash, which includes self-defense courses for women and even threats of violent retaliation, is fueled by ultraconservative Islamists who suggest that women invite assault by attending antigovernment protests where they mix with men. At marches against sexual harassment in Cairo, women have brandished kitchen knives in the air. Stenciled drawings on building walls depict girls fighting off men with swords.

Framing the impending elimination of the police department in predominantly minority Camden, and its replacement with a Camden County-run force, as a "civil rights struggle," the NAACP pledged Tuesday to fight the plan. "It is our belief that the reason why they are doing this in Camden is because of the race and ethnicity of the city. It's because of the race and ethnicity of the police department," New Jersey NAACP president James E. Harris said at a rally at City Hall. "The message today is, we've got lawyers in the fight, and our lawyers don't back down from a fight," Harris told the crowd of about 100, including representatives of NAACP chapters from across the state, city police and firefighters, and residents.