Protest

WASHINGTON - The massive leaks about U.S. spying systems caused sharp political and legal aftershocks Tuesday as the Justice Department prepared to file criminal charges against Edward Snowden, a government contractor who has publicly admitted disclosing highly classified telephone and Internet data-gathering operations. The vast scope of the government surveillance sparked the first federal lawsuit challenging its legality, a bipartisan effort in the Senate to declassify secret court orders that authorize the operations, and requests from Google and Facebook for permission to disclose more about National Security Agency requests for users' emails and other online communications.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Hundreds of riot police firing tear gas stormed a central Istanbul park Saturday, tearing down tents and clearing out demonstrators in a bold, if politically risky, move by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stem more than two weeks of antigovernment protests. The police assault at twilight sent hundreds of protesters scurrying for cover as street clashes echoed through the city. The swift and overwhelming action by security forces highlighted the country's deepening political divide and the potential danger Erdogan faces in further provoking a large segment of Turks critical of what they see as his authoritarian tendencies.

Desperate? Clever? Too little, too late? It's hard to know what to make of the news that Research in Motion, the company behind BlackBerry, has taken credit for the "WAKE UP!" "protest" that took place outside an Apple store in Sydney, Australia, last week. "We can confirm that the Australian 'Wake Up' campaign, which involves a series of experiential activities taking place across Sydney and Melbourne, was created by RIM Australia," the company told The Age. Even before it was revealed who was behind the "protest," caught on video by Australian video blogger Nate Burr and viewed around the world, it was clear that it was a marketing stunt.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Besieged Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed Friday to freeze construction in a popular Istanbul park after an emergency meeting with antigovernment protesters in Ankara, easing fear of further violence after two weeks of widespread chaos and bloodshed. The meeting, which lasted more than three hours, appeared to be a last-minute effort by the prime minister to avert a police crackdown to remove thousands of demonstrators from Gezi Park who opposed the development plan.

There were rock stars and rappers, and there were nurses to take blood donations. Music boomed off the sides of skyscrapers for blocks around. In between patriotism-tinged performances, earnest announcers climbed onto a stage in a square, under a sign that read "Saving Lives," and told hundreds of cheering youths about all the good things that would be done with the donated blood. Monday was Generation Day in Moscow, an event of vague origin, organized by networks of pro-Kremlin youth groups apparently to drown out another event.

Environmental activists showed off a new form of protest throughout the country and around the world Saturday: a "Global Frackdown. " On Saturday, activists at roughly 100 events around the globe were scheduled to protest a controversial oil and gas extraction practice called hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Organizers dubbed their activities in North America, Europe and Australia a " Global Frackdown. " More than 50 Code Pink members gathered near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

JERUSALEM -- Thousands of young ultra-Orthodox men protested Thursday night against a government proposal to, for the first time, draft them into the military. More than 20,000 protesters gathered at an Israel Defense Forces recruiting office in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem. Some threw stones at police and set garbage cans on fire, according to a police spokesman. Others carried signs condemning government “edicts” and saying, “Your fate is in your hands.” “We say 'no' to the enlistment of yeshiva students, even if all of us will be forced to go to jail en masse," protest spokesman Pini Rosenberg told the Israeli news website Ynet.

  Ang Lee's acclaimed 3-D movie "Life of Pi" is a front-runner to win a top visual effects award at the Oscars. But some of the people who worked on the film's dazzling visual effects aren't celebrating. In fact, they're planning to stage a protest to call attention to their own plight -- and that of California visual effects workers in general. A group of visual effects workers has arranged to have a plane fly a banner over the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood during the red carpet Academy Awards pre-show to protest their circumstances.

Israel has never been an egalitarian state. But in its heyday, it was more egalitarian than most states in the world. The poverty wasn't acute and the wealth wasn't ostentatious, and social responsibility toward the poor and needy was shown not only on the economic level but on the emotional level too. In the earlier Israel, those who worked — and almost all the women and men worked very hard — could make a modest but respectable living for...

Protesters defying a blunt warning from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan engaged in running battles Tuesday with police who unleashed clouds of tear gas and blasts of water cannons in an effort to end nearly two weeks of protest. After daylong street battles, protesters who were chased away in the early morning swarmed back into Istanbul's central Taksim Square, which has become a focus for grievances in a country long regarded as a model of democracy and economic growth in the Muslim world.

Raleigh, N.C. - The Rev. Deborah Cayer arrived at the state Legislature building here Monday night wearing a protest button and toting an umbrella. She had tucked her driver's license into her skirt waistband. That was all she carried. She had come prepared to spend the night in jail. Along with 83 other opponents of the Republican-led legislature, Cayer and several fellow clergy members were arrested at a rainy "Moral Monday" protest. Their civil disobedience - they ignored police orders to disperse - was the latest in a growing series of protests over the conservative agenda of North Carolina's Republican-run state government.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - With swagger and grand designs, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose to power more than a decade ago, heralding a new Islamist-based democracy he envisioned as a model for a Muslim world caught in the grip of autocrats, kings and despots. But more than two weeks of protest against Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian rule have brought a reckoning to a leader who, despite his political astuteness, has miscalculated the fervor from a large part of an electorate opposed to the creeping religious conservatism of his Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Erdogan is still very much in control, and few would venture that the crisis will bring him down, but the protests have hurt him politically and exposed misgivings within his party.

WASHINGTON - The massive leaks about U.S. spying systems caused sharp political and legal aftershocks Tuesday as the Justice Department prepared to file criminal charges against Edward Snowden, a government contractor who has publicly admitted disclosing highly classified telephone and Internet data-gathering operations. The vast scope of the government surveillance sparked the first federal lawsuit challenging its legality, a bipartisan effort in the Senate to declassify secret court orders that authorize the operations, and requests from Google and Facebook for permission to disclose more about National Security Agency requests for users' emails and other online communications.

When Xi Jinping visited Los Angeles last year as vice president of China, Sue Zhang dined with him. Now, Xi is China's president, and Zhang is scrambling to catch a glimpse of him during his stay in the Palm Springs area for a two-day summit with President Obama. The informal talks, which begin Friday afternoon, are a chance for the two leaders to get to know each other and discuss issues such as cybersecurity and North Korea. Xi has not scheduled any meetings with local Chinese Americans.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan returned to Turkey on Friday morning in a defiant mood, calling for an end to the anti-government protests that have rocked the nation during the last week. In a speech from atop an open-air bus to thousands of supporters, Erdogan, back from a four-day trip to North Africa, said, "These protests must end immediately. " "No power but Allah can stop Turkey's rise," continued Erdogan during an address to the scores of Justice and Development Party faithful who had gathered at Istanbul Ataturk Airport, according to local news reports.

WASHINGTON -- Seven protesters disrobed in the office of House Speaker John Boehner Tuesday afternoon as part of a staged protest against cuts to funding for AIDS programs. Their bodies painted with slogans such as “AIDS cuts kill,” the group stood in Boehner's office for about 20 minutes until the protest was broken up by Capitol Police, according to Sahil Kapur, a reporter for Talking Points Memo, who witnessed the protest and posted a continuous stream of tweets and photos.

How to interpret the recent unrest on the streets of Istanbul and about 50 other Turkish cities? Specifically, is it comparable to the Arab uprisings over the last 2 1/2 years in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain? On one level, they appear unrelated, for Turkey is a far more advanced country, with a democratic culture and a modern economy. But two connections - autocracy and Syria - do tie them together, suggesting that the Turkish demonstrations could have a potentially deep importance.

If there was a moment when the United States could have intervened in Syria, it looks like that moment has passed. Shiite militants, including Hezbollah - partly at the behest of their paymasters in Iran - are racing to the defense of Bashar Assad's regime. According to a witness account in the New York Times, there were some 11,000 Hezbollah fighters in the besieged town of Qusair alone. A Shiite religious student in Najaf, Iraq, told the Times that his colleagues believe the leader of Qatar, a backer of Syrian rebels, is a long-prophesied demonic figure who, it is foretold, will raise an army in Syria to wipe out Shiites in Iraq.