
June 19
Turkey's 'standing man' to join ranks of icons?
The image was stark: a silent, solitary figure standing in passive defiance to the Turkish prime minister's demand for protesters to clear Taksim Square in central Istanbul.
Thursday, June 20, 2013

The image was stark: a silent, solitary figure standing in passive defiance to the Turkish prime minister's demand for protesters to clear Taksim Square in central Istanbul.
President Barack Obama is refusing to describe the type of military support the U.S. will give to Syrian rebels even as he praises a decision by world leaders at a just-completed summit to seek a negotiated peace.

Pope John Paul II has moved a step closer to sainthood.

The families of several British soldiers killed or injured in Iraq can sue the government for failing to protect them, the country's highest court ruled Wednesday.

A Milan court on Wednesday convicted the designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of tax evasion.

The former head of Italian aerospace and defense giant Finmeccanica , accused by prosecutors of making bribery part of the company culture, went on trial Wednesday for his alleged role in the payment of bribes to secure a crucial 560 million euro ($670 million) helicopter contract in India.

Iraqis in two Sunni-dominated provinces voted Thursday in provincial elections marked by tight security measures that left streets in former insurgent strongholds largely deserted.

Some comments by Brazilians participating in protests across South America's biggest country:
Days after floods killed more than 100 people - possibly many more - rescuers used helicopters and climbed through mountain paths to reach nearly 4,000 people trapped by landslides in a narrow valley near a Hindu shrine in the northern Himalayas, officials said Thursday.
The United Arab Emirates broadened its crackdown on perceived threats and risked deepening its rift with Egypt on Wednesday with plans to bring 30 Egyptian and UAE suspects to trial for alleged coup plotting linked to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt's top Muslim cleric declared Wednesday that peaceful protests against the president are permitted, in a snub to hard-line Islamist backers of Mohammed Morsi who declared that those behind opposition protests planned for June 30 are heretics.

Appealing for a new citizen activism in the free world, President Barack Obama renewed his call Wednesday to reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles and to confront climate change, a danger he called "the global threat of our time."
Britain's Supreme Court quashed sanctions against an Iranian bank penalized over its alleged links to Iran's nuclear weapons program, saying Wednesday that Bank Mellat had been arbitrarily singled out.

Turkey's state-run agency says police have detained 13 more demonstrators suspected of involvement in violence during protests that have swept the country.

Unmanned aircraft have helped rescue stranded hikers, worked to contain wildfires and gathered data at nuclear accidents. One helped a Russian tanker find its way through Arctic ice to bring oil to a stranded Alaskan community.

Hezbollah fighters joined Syrian forces in battling rebels in a Damascus suburb that is home to a revered Shiite Muslim shrine, in a push to secure the area around the ornate, golden domed mosque.
A court in Myanmar has found two Muslim women guilty of sparking a recent outbreak of sectarian violence, one of them by bumping into a Buddhist novice monk.
China says it has sentenced 11 people for inciting religious extremism and related crimes in the northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang.
The former head of the Italian aerospace and defense giant Finmeccanica goes on trial in a case involving alleged bribes to win a 560 million euro ($670 million) helicopter contract in India.

Pope Francis has given a 17-year-old boy with Down Syndrome the ride of his life - sort of.