Protest

CLEVELAND -- The Cleveland Indians yesterday filed a formal protest to Major League Baseball of the Orioles' 7-4 victory Saturday night. In the game, the Orioles were awarded a run 3 1/2 innings after it actually scored. Crew chief Ed Montague ruled a run should have been counted in the top of the third inning when the Orioles had men on first and third and one out. Ramon Hernandez hit a liner that Indians center fielder Grady Sizemore made a diving catch on. Nick Markakis, the runner at third, crossed the plate before the Indians had stepped on first to double up Miguel Tejada, who admittedly lost track of how many outs there were and was bound for third when Sizemore's throw was heading to the infield.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli police raided the grounds of Islam's third-holiest shrine yesterday, chained the compound's gates behind them, and fired tear gas and stun grenades into a crowd of thousands of Muslim worshipers to quell a rock-throwing protest over Israeli excavation work nearby. The clash outside Al Aqsa mosque set off protests across the Muslim world and scattered violence in the West Bank. It came a day after the rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah agreed to end months of factional fighting, a step that some Israeli leaders believe could lead to stepped-up attacks against the Jewish state.

ROSTOCK, Germany -- Sporadic violence erupted yesterday in this port city as radicals, their faces hidden by hoods and bandanas, broke from a largely peaceful anti-globalization protest and attacked police with sticks, bottles and Molotov cocktails ahead of this week's summit of leading industrialized nations. Authorities said 146 police officers were injured, 25 of them seriously; 17 demonstrators were arrested. About 14,000 police officers lined the streets and harbor as helicopters skimmed overhead and boats patrolled the waters in one of Germany's tightest security operations since the end of the Cold War. The city had been bracing for as many as 100,000 demonstrators, but police estimated the crowd at 25,000.

EF Education, the all-women's entry in the Whitbread Round the World Race, has filed a protest against U.S. boat Toshiba, accusing skipper Dennis Conner's boat of a right-of-way violation on the first night of Leg 7 from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore.EF Education notified race headquarters and Toshiba of its intent to protest shortly after the alleged incident early Monday.Both boats were sailing downwind on starboard tacks about a half-mile apart, EF Education said, when Toshiba jibed to port and onto a collision course.

Several Baltimore community groups and a city councilman have joined the growing nationwide campaign against United Paramount Network's new sitcom "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer," which they say pokes fun at a traumatic African-American experience: slavery.About 15 people from area groups held a 30-minute protest yesterday outside UPN's network affiliate in North Baltimore and announced plans for a telephone assault on the show's advertisers the morning after the show premieres locally on Channel 24."

In a protest of working conditions they claim are hazardous and crimping their education, about 20 students went on strike yesterday at a downtown cosmetology school.Wearing white hairdresser uniforms, the students -- most nearly finished the 1,500-hour training program -- stood outside the Baltimore Studio of Hair Design at 18 N. Howard St. as clients filed in to have their hair styled.The students' complaints include inadequate ventilation, moldy bathrooms, dangerous stairs and broken or malfunctioning equipment.

MOSCOW -- Workers filed in and out of the Mikoms Meat Factory yesterday, trying to find out if they would ever get the five months of pay still owed them when the gates permanently slammed shut, throwing 2,300 people out of work.Across the street, Ronald McDonald sat fixed to a bench, one leg jauntily crossed over the other, a bemused smile on his statue face. A placard next to him advertised a Flubber Happy Meal.The juxtapositions of dashed hopes and tantalizing promises are ubiquitous here, and the number of disgruntled and dispossessed citizens runs to the millions.

Police wearing riot helmets and armed with batons stopped a minor clash between union and nonunion workers yesterday at a protest at a cancer center being built at Johns Hopkins Hospital.No arrests or injuries were reported, and the picket continued without incident. Police said the scuffle broke out between several protesters who were picketing over the use of nonunion workers on the project and about five nonunion workers, who walked through the picket line and onto the site.Tactical police -- called to relieve already-taxed Eastern District patrol officers who had arrived when the protest started at 6: 30 a.m. -- were on North Broadway when the incident occurred about 8 a.m.Police quickly brought the scuffle under control, but about a dozen officers formed a partial ring around the marchers, separating them from the gate, to prevent further trouble.

Facing NAACP protests, Justice Clarence Thomas withdrew yesterday from a planned speaking engagement next week at a Delmarva Peninsula youth festival.The Supreme Court justice "cited his concern for the safety and well-being of the children involved," said George Krupanski, executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Delaware, a sponsor of the weeklong Festival for Youth. Thomas was to speak Jan. 18 at the festival's closing banquet."I do not think that it is prudent or wise to put these children in that position, even though I do not personally object to peaceful demonstrations by those who have contrary views or opinions," Thomas said in a letter sent by fax to Krupanski late yesterday.

Charging a violation of federal conflict-of-interest rules, attorneys for a security guard company filed a formal protest yesterday of the award of a $2.1 million contract by the Baltimore housing authority.In a four-page letter sent late yesterday to housing authority officials, lawyers for Watkins Security Agency Inc. charged that awarding the one-year contract to Solidarity Security and Investigative Services Inc. was "contrary to law" and should be reversed.The letter noted that its bid calls for security guards to be paid at $10.21 per hour, while Solidarity's bid calls for a higher $10.35 hourly rate.

The former Marine officer Matthew Hoh, who resigned his Foreign Service post in Afghanistan because he feels the war is pointless and not worth dying for, deserves all the attention he's gotten and more. The Obama administration faces hard decisions there, and the man made a good case against deeper American involvement. He says that our presence among the Pashtun people, the rural, religious people, is only aggravating a civil war between them and the urban, secular (and, it seems, fraudulent)

A Columbia restaurant that was vandalized twice in three weeks in late March and mid-April because of foie gras on its menu was the scene of a peaceful protest Friday. About 15 people representing the Humane League of Baltimore stood in front of the Iron Bridge Wine Co. on Route 108 wearing T-shirts that read "Got Compassion?" in reaction to the restaurant's servers being adorned in T-shirts reading "Got Foie Gras?" The six-year-old Howard County restaurant has been at the center of a running debate about serving the popular French delicacy made from the fattened livers of geese and ducks.

So much tea, so little hot water. No, it was a cold rain that soaked the tea bags decorating various umbrellas and handmade signs Wednesday on Annapolis City Dock, one of hundreds of rallies held across the country to protest ... well, it's a pretty long and not entirely agreed-upon list. Taxes, first and foremost, given that this was April 15, the day income taxes were due. President Barack Obama, for another, even though the legislation he signed in February will reduce taxes for most Americans, at least in the short term.

John Hogan had just returned after 15 years helping the poor in a tiny Guatemalan village when he learned about a protest against the Vietnam War planned by a group of Catholic activists. Forty years ago last spring, Mr. Hogan and eight others seized hundreds of draft records from the Catonsville U.S. Selective Service office, doused them with homemade napalm in a parking lot and set them ablaze. The actions of the protesters, known as the Catonsville Nine, sparked a dramatic trial, inspired generations of activists and is remembered as one of the country's most famous acts of civil disobedience.

About 30 students from a tutoring and advocacy group continued to protest the mayor's proposed budget by pitching tents outside City Hall before deciding late last night to heed a police ultimatum to clear the area. Dozens of high school and college students from the Baltimore Algebra Project have slept on the lawn since Tuesday. City police asked them to leave by 9 p.m. yesterday. The students remained well past the deadline, chanting and waving signs asking for $3 million to help pay for Peer-to-Peer Enterprises, a mentoring program that Mayor Sheila Dixon has said should be funded through the city school system.

BEIJING -- Residents took to the streets of a provincial capital over the weekend to protest a multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant backed by China's leading state-run oil company. It was the latest instance of popular discontent over an environmental threat in a major city. The protest against a $5.5 billion ethylene plant under construction by PetroChina in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, reflected a surge in environmental awareness by urban, middle-class Chinese determined to protect their health and the value of their property.

At least five groups with divergent agendas are expected to stage protests or peace rallies today in Annapolis as Middle East leaders meet on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy. Shalom International, which vehemently opposes any talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and Americans For a Safe Israel have obtained permits from the city to protest. Another group, Neturei Karta International, which bills itself as an anti-Zionism organization, also plans to protest. Annapolis police said there was no way to be sure how many protesters or peace demonstrators will show up today.

Chanting their familiar refrain, "No education, no life," an estimated 300 city students and supporters met at City Hall and marched along downtown streets yesterday demanding that the governor pay the school system $800 million from a court decision. Under the leadership of the Baltimore Algebra Project, the protesters demanded funding to comply with a 2004 ruling that said the city schools had been unlawfully underfunded by $400 million to $800 million since 2000. The Baltimore Algebra Project, a student-run tutoring group, had planned the protest for weeks.

An embarrassment of blossoms was heaped upon the offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services last week - a hundred, perhaps even a thousand, bouquets of protest. They came from people (most of them Indians) who are working here legally but have been waiting years for green cards, and have been jerked around in the past few weeks by an announcement that a certain number of green cards for highly skilled immigrants would be made available as of July 2, if the final paperwork was submitted, followed by an announcement that no green cards would be available as of July 2. The protest organizers hit upon the idea of flowers.

ROSTOCK, Germany -- Sporadic violence erupted yesterday in this port city as radicals, their faces hidden by hoods and bandanas, broke from a largely peaceful anti-globalization protest and attacked police with sticks, bottles and Molotov cocktails ahead of this week's summit of leading industrialized nations. Authorities said 146 police officers were injured, 25 of them seriously; 17 demonstrators were arrested. About 14,000 police officers lined the streets and harbor as helicopters skimmed overhead and boats patrolled the waters in one of Germany's tightest security operations since the end of the Cold War. The city had been bracing for as many as 100,000 demonstrators, but police estimated the crowd at 25,000.