Mob in Pakistani city torches Christian homes

Fans rampage in Cairo after soccer riot verdict

Egyptian soccer fans of the Al-Ahly club celebrate in front of their club in Cairo, Egypt, after an Egyptian court confirmed death sentences against 21 people for their role in a deadly 2012 soccer riot that killed more than 70 people in the city of Port Said, Saturday, March 9, 2013. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Smoke and fire rises from the Egyptian Soccer Federation after protesters set fire following a court verdict in, Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, March 9, 2013. Fans of Cairo’s Al-Ahly club have stormed Egypt’s soccer federation headquarters, set it ablaze after a court acquitted seven of nine police official on trial for their alleged part in deadly stadium melee. A fire also broke out Saturday in a nearby police club, but it was not immediately known whether Al-Ahly fans started the blaze there too. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian court on Saturday confirmed the death sentences against 21 people for taking part in a deadly soccer riot but acquitted seven police officials for their alleged role in the violence. Suspected fans enraged by the verdict torched the soccer federation headquarters and a police club in Cairo in protest.

The trial over the melee that killed 74 people after a soccer game in the city of Port Said in early 2012 has been the source of some of the worst unrest to hit Egypt in recent weeks. After the court sentenced the 21 people — most of them Port Said fans — to death in late January, violent riots erupted in the city that left some 40 people dead, most of them shot by police.

On Saturday, the court announced its verdict for the other 52 defendants in the case, sentencing 45 of them to prison, including two senior police officers who got 15 years terms each. Twenty-eight people were acquitted, including seven police officials.

As expected, the court's decision failed to defuse tensions over the case, which has taken on political undercurrents at a time when the entire nation is mired in political turmoil, a worsening economy and growing opposition to the rule of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Shortly after the verdict was announced Saturday, suspected fans of Cairo's Al-Ahly club who had gathered in the thousands outside the team's headquarters in central Cairo went on a rampage, torching a police club nearby and storming Egypt's soccer federation headquarters before setting it ablaze. The twin fires sent plumes of thick black smoke billowing out over the Cairo skyline. Two army helicopters were being used to put out the fires.

At least five people were injured in the protests, a Health Ministry official told the MENA state news agency.

In anticipation of more violence, authorities beefed up security near the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police force, with riot police deploying in the streets around the complex in central Cairo.

Earlier at the courthouse across town, Judge Sobhi Abdel-Maguid read out the verdict live on TV, sentencing five defendants to life in prison and nine others to 15 years in jail. Six defendants received 10-year jail terms, two more got five years and a single defendant received a 12-month sentence.

The court's decision on the nine Port Said security officers on trial was among the most highly anticipated — and potentially explosive — verdicts. In the end, the judges sentenced the city's former security chief, Maj. Gen. Essam Samak, and a colonel both to 15 years in prison, while the others were acquitted.

Al-Ahly's fans accuse the police of collusion in the killing of their fellow supporters, arguing that they had advance knowledge of plans by supporters of Port Said's Al-Masry to attack them. They also accuse them of standing by as the Al-Masry fans set upon the visiting Al-Ahly supporters.

The court rulings can be appealed.

Many residents of Port Said, which is located on the Mediterranean at the northern tip of the vital Suez Canal, say the trial is unjust and politicized, and soccer fans in the city have felt that authorities have been biased in favor of Al-Ahly, Egypt's most powerful club.

The Feb. 2012 riot followed a league match between Al-Masry and Cairo's Al-Ahly club, with Port Said supporters setting upon the visiting fans after the final whistle. The deadly melee is Egypt's worst soccer disaster.

Before the fires broke out, thousands of Al-Ahly fans had gathered outside the club's headquarters in Cairo. They appeared divided on whether to welcome the verdicts or consider them flawed.

"We came for the rulings on the defendants from the police," said one fan who refused to give his name. "Why should I be happy when most of them were acquitted?"

In Port Said, a city that for weeks has been in open rebellion against the Islamist president, several hundred people, many of them relatives of the defendants, gathered outside the local government offices to vent their anger. They chanted slogans against Morsi's government and the verdicts.

Some people in a cafe watching the verdict live on TV hit their heads in frustration, while others broke down and wept. Some said they can live with the verdict because an appeal leaves room for hope.

"There's still an appeal process. God willing, our rights will be restored," said Islam Ezzeddin, a local soccer fan. "We are not thugs. I hope to God when there's an appeal, that we feel we live in a country of law and justice."

Several protesters in Port Said, a strategic city at the Mediterranean end of the Suez Canal, sought to disrupt shipping in the vital waterway by releasing small speedboats into the traffic lanes, although the effort failed to disrupt shipping. Others set fire to tires on the city's dock to prevent ships from coming in, but that again was quickly abandoned.

A spokesman for the Suez Canal Authority, Tareq Hasanein, told Egypt's official MENA news agency that shipping in the international waterway was proceeding normally, with 41 vessels transiting the canal on Saturday.

However, the national railways chief, Hussein Zakaria, ordered trains headed to Port Said to terminate their services at Ismailiya, another Suez Canal city south of Port Said. He said the measure was taken out of fear for the safety of passengers.

Port Said has been the center of the heaviest violence in Egypt's latest wave of unrest. The ongoing turmoil began on Jan. 25, when hundreds of thousands across the country marked the second anniversary of the start of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak's regime.

Cairo, the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, and several cities in the Nile Delta north of the capital have all been swept up in the unrest as well.

During clashes between police and protesters the past week that killed eight people, Port Said also saw dangerous frictions between police and the military. Army troops trying to break up the clashes at one point fired over the heads of police forces, which had been shooting tear gas in their direction.

At least some of the anger city residents feel for the police was defused on Friday, when police handed over security control in the city to the military.

No police could be seen anywhere in Port Said on Saturday. A military helicopter hovered overhead and army checkpoints were set up on main streets.

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Batrawy reported from Port Said. Associated Press writer Mariam Rizk contributed to this report from Cairo.

Japan's cleanup lags from tsunami, nuke accident

NARAHA, Japan (AP) — Two years after the triple calamities of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster ravaged Japan's northeastern Pacific coast, debris containing asbestos, lead, PCBs — and perhaps most worrying — radioactive waste due to the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant looms as a threat for the region.

So far, disposal of debris from the disasters is turning out to have been anything but clean. Workers often lacking property oversight, training or proper equipment have dumped contaminated waste with scant regard for regulations or safety, as organized crime has infiltrated the cleanup process.

Researchers are only beginning to analyze environmental samples for potential health implications from the various toxins swirled in the petri dish of the disaster zone — including dioxins, benzene, cadmium and organic waste-related, said Shoji F. Nakayama of the government-affiliated National Institute for Environmental Studies.

Apart from some inflammatory reactions to some substances in the dust and debris, the longer-term health risks remain unclear, he said.

The mountains of rubble and piles of smashed cars and scooters scattered along the coast only hint at the scale of the debris removed so far from coastlines and river valleys stripped bare by the tsunami. To clear, sort and process the rubble — and a vastly larger amount of radiation-contaminated soil and other debris near the nuclear plant in Fukushima, the government is relying on big construction companies whose multi-layer subcontracting systems are infiltrated by criminal gangs, or yakuza.

In January, police arrested a senior member of Japan's second-largest yakuza group, Sumiyoshi Kai, on suspicion of illegally dispatching three contract workers to Date, a city in Fukushima struggling with relatively high radioactive contamination, through another construction company and pocketing one-third of their pay.

He told interrogators he came up with the plot to "make money out of clean-up projects" because the daily pay for such government projects, at 15,000-17,000 yen ($160-$180), was far higher than for other construction jobs, said police spokesman Hiraku Hasumi.

Gangsters have long been involved in industrial waste handling, and police say they suspect gangsters are systematically targeting reconstruction projects, swindling money from low-interest lending schemes for disaster-hit residents and illegally mobilizing construction and clean-up workers.

Meanwhile, workers complain of docked pay, unpaid hazard allowances — which should be 10,000 yen, or $110, a day — and of inadequate safety equipment and training for handling the hazardous waste they are clearing from towns, shores and forests after meltdowns of three nuclear plant reactor cores at Fukushima Dai-Ichi released radiation into the surrounding air, soil and ocean.

"We are only part of a widespread problem," said a 56-year-old cleanup worker, who asked to be identified only by his last name, Nakamura, out of fear of retaliation. "Everyone, from bureaucrats to construction giants to tattooed gangsters, is trying to prey on decontamination projects. And the government is looking the other way."

During a recent visit to Naraha, a deserted town of 8,000 that is now a weedy no-man's land within the 20-kilometer (12-mile) restricted zone around the crippled nuclear plant, workers wearing regular work clothes and surgical masks were scraping away topsoil, chopping tree branches and washing down roofs.

"They told me only how to cut grass, but nothing about radiation," said Munenori Kagaya, 59, who worked in the nearby town of Tomioka, which is off-limits due to high radiation.

Naraha's mayor, Yukiei Matsumoto, said that early on, he and other local officials were worried over improper handling of the 1.5 trillion yen ($16 billion) cleanup, but refrained from raising the issue, until public allegations of dozens of instances of mishandling of radioactive waste prompted an investigation by the Environment Ministry, which is handling decontamination of the 11 worst-affected towns and villages.

"I want them to remind them again what the cleanup is for," Matsumoto said in an interview. "Its purpose is to improve the environment so that people can safely return to live here. It's not just to meet a deadline and get it over with."

The ministry said it found only five questionable cases, though it acknowledged a need for better oversight. Another probe, by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry found rampant labor violations — inadequate education and protection from radiation exposure, a lack of medical checks and unpaid salaries and hazard pay — at nearly half the cleanup operations in Fukushima.

About half of the 242 contractors involved were reprimanded for violations, the ministry said.

An Environment Ministry official in charge of decontamination said the government has little choice but to rely on big contractors, and to give them enough leeway to get the work done.

"We have to admit that only the major construction companies have the technology and manpower to do such large-scale government projects," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue. "If cleanup projects are overseen too strictly, it will most likely cause further delays and labor shortages."

Minoru Hara, deputy manager at a temporary waste storage site in Naraha, defended the 3,000 workers doing the work — the only people allowed to stay in the town.

"Most of the cleanup workers are working sincerely and hard," Hara said. "They are doing a good job of washing down houses and cleaning up gardens. Such criticism is really unfair, and bad for morale."

Labor shortages, lax oversight and massive amounts of funds budgeted for the clean-up are a recipe for cheating. And plenty of money is at stake: the cleanup of a 20-kilometer (12-mile) segment of an expressway whose worst contamination exceeds allowable radiation limits by 10 times will cost 2.1 billion yen ($22.5 billion), said Yoshinari Yoshida, an Environment Ministry official.

"While decontamination is a must, the government is bearing the burden. We have to consider the cost factor," said deputy Environment Minister Shinji Inoue as he watched workers pressure wash the road's surface, a process Yoshida said was expected to reduce contamination by half.

The cleanup is bound to overrun its budget by several times, as delays deepen due to a lack of long-term storage options as opposition among local residents in many areas hardens. It will leave Fukushima, whose huge farm and fisheries industry has been walloped by radiation fears, with 31 million tons of nuclear waste or more. Around Naraha, huge temporary dumps of radioactive waste, many football fields in size and stacked two huge bags deep, are scattered around the disaster zone

The cleanups extend beyond Fukushima, to Iwate in the north and Chiba, which neighbors Tokyo, in the south. And the concerns are not limited to radiation. A walk through areas in Miyagi and Iwate that already were cleared of debris finds plenty of toxic detritus, such as batteries from cell phones, electrical wiring, plastic piping and gas canisters.

Japan has the technology to safely burn up most toxins at very high temperatures, with minimal emissions of PCBs, mercury and other poisons. But mounds of wood chips in a seaside processing area near Kesennuma were emitting smoke into the air one recent winter afternoon, possibly from spontaneous combustion.

Workers at that site had high-grade gas masks, an improvement from the early days, when many working in the disaster zone had only surgical masks, at most, to protect them from contaminated dust and smoke.

Overall, how well the debris and contaminants are being handled depends largely on the location.

Sendai, the biggest city in the region, sorted debris as it was collected and sealed the surfaces of areas used to store debris for processing to protect the groundwater, thanks to technical advice from its sister-city Kyoto, home to many experts who advised the government in its cleanup of the 1995 earthquake in the Kobe-Osaka area that killed more than 6,400 people.

But Ishinomaki, a city of more than 160,000, collected its debris first and is only gradually sorting and processing it, said the U.S.-educated Nakayama, who worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before returning to Japan.

"There were no technical experts there for the waste management side," he said. "They did some good work with chemical monitoring but in total, risk assessment, risk management, unfortunately they did not have that expertise."

Ultimately, just as they are choosing to live with contamination from chemicals and other toxins, the authorities may have to reconsider their determination to completely clean up the radiation, given the effort's cost and limited effectiveness, experts say.

Regarding the nuclear accident, "there has been so much emphasis on decontamination that no other options were considered," said Hiroshi Suzuki, a professor emeritus at Tohoku University in Sendai and chairman of the Fukushima Prefectural Reconstruction Committee.

Some places, such as playgrounds, obviously must be cleaned up. But others, such as forests, should just be left alone, since gathering or burning radioactive materials concentrates them — the opposite of what is needed since the more diluted they are, the better.

To a certain extent, policy is being dictated by politics, said Suzuki.

Before the accident, residents believed they were completely safe, he said. "The authorities want to be able to tell them once again that the area is safe. To do this they need to return it to the state that it was in before the accident."

Naraha resident Yoshimasa Murakami, a 79-year-old farmer, said he has low expectations.

A month after the government started cleaning his spacious home he has not seen a major decrease in radiation, he said while sitting on a balcony overlooking his traditional Japanese garden.

He set a dosimeter on the grass. It measured radiation nearly five times the target level and almost the same as the 1.09 microsieverts per hour found when officials surveyed it in December.

Murakami had come to the house for the day. He, his wife and daughter now live 50 kilometers (30 miles) away in Koriyama city.

He visits a few times a week to keep an eye on the cleanup workers. At nearly 80, Murakami says he doesn't mind about the radiation, but his wife does. And if he returns, his other relatives and grandchildren will be afraid to visit.

"Then, what's the point?" he said.

"I don't think decontamination is going to work," Murakami said. "The nuclear crisis is not fully over, and you never know, something still can go wrong."

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Case raises questions on consent to sadomasochism

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Can mentally ill people consent to sadomasochistic sex? Can anyone consent to abusive and degrading sexual acts?

Connecticut's highest court has decided to take up those questions in the case of a Greenwich woman suing a man she alleges had an abusive sexual relationship with her daughter, who had multiple mental and physical ailments. Arguments before the state Supreme Court are scheduled for Wednesday.

While sadomasochism was glamorized in the popular 2011 book trilogy "Fifty Shades of Grey," the practice has long been on questionable legal ground.

Some lawyers believe people can't consent to being assaulted or abused under common law, while others say established legal principles provide sexual rights to most people, including elderly people in nursing homes and the mentally ill. There are few court rulings, however, dealing directly with BDSM, short for bondage, discipline, dominance/submission and sadomasochism.

In the Connecticut case, Mary Kortner sued fellow Greenwich resident Craig Martise in 2006, saying her daughter could not have consented to sadomasochistic and abusive sex acts with him because of her mental state. A state jury, however, found in favor of Martise in 2009, concluding there was a sadomasochistic relationship but no proof that Kortner's daughter couldn't consent.

"This was a shocker to everybody who was watching it," Kortner said. "All the allegations were true. He was guilty."

Caroline Kendall Kortner, who died in 2010 at age 39 from an undisclosed illness, had been diagnosed with clinical depression, borderline personality disorder, bulimia and anorexia, and she tried to commit suicide twice, according to court documents. She also had a stroke in 2001 that left her partially paralyzed from the waist down and incontinent, court records say.

In 1994, a probate court had ruled her incapable of managing her own affairs during a period when she refused to eat and appointed her mother as her conservator.

Martise, 49, was never criminally charged. His lawyer, Philip Russell, said the relationship involved two consenting adults and there is no merit to any of Kortner's claims.

"It's like 'Seinfeld.' It's the case about nothing," Russell said, referring to TV show famously labeled as being about nothing.

Russell accused Kortner of being upset at Martise over his relationship with her daughter and trying to publicly embarrass him after losing the lawsuit and failing to persuade police to arrest Martise.

"This case is everything that's bad about the legal system," Russell said.

Russell also said Caroline Kendall Kortner was a habitual liar who had made several unsubstantiated sexual assault claims against other men. Russell said she once appeared at a deposition in a wheelchair and neck brace, but surveillance video shows her later the same day walking happily around her neighborhood without the neck brace.

Caroline Kortner, known as Kendall, met Martise, a married man with children, on the Internet and their physical relationship spanned several months in 2003, court documents say.

According to Mary Kortner's lawsuit, the relationship included Martise dragging her daughter by a leash and dog collar, slapping her with his hand and a belt, pinching and twisting body parts, tying and gagging her and dripping burning hot wax on her. The jury in Stamford ruled there was no proof to the dragging and pinching allegations.

Mary Kortner alleges her daughter protested and objected to Martise's actions, but he continued the mistreatment. She said her daughter suffered physical injuries from the alleged abuse, and Mary Kortner once asked for a $500,000 judgment against Martise in the lawsuit.

Russell and other lawyers said they couldn't recall any legal precedents in the country on whether mentally ill people can consent to sex or sadomasochism. Russell said mentally ill or disabled people have the right to sexual activity under established legal principles.

But there are worries in the BDSM community about facing criminal charges because common law says people can't consent to abuse, said Valerie White, executive director of the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund in Sharon, Mass.

"You have to be very, very careful," she said.

In 2000, police in Attleboro, Mass., arrested two people on assault and other charges during a raid of a sadomasochistic sex party and seized paddles, whips, chains and other paraphernalia. But a judge later threw out the evidence and dismissed most of the charges because police didn't have the right to enter the premises.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated sex-trafficking and forced labor convictions against a New York man dubbed the "S&M Svengali." But the court's ruling addressed technicalities and not the practice of S&M. The man, Glenn Marcus, was sentenced to nine years in prison for abusing a woman he photographed for his website dedicated to sadomasochism.