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une 17, 2013 – 16:30 AMT
Social media users report that during the anti-government protests in Turkey, police officers entered an Armenian cemetery in Sisli district of Istanbul. According to the posts, the policemen use the gravestones as barricades. They also break up the stones to throw them at the protesters.
By Jonathon Burch and Humeyra Pamuk
ISTANBUL/ANKARA | Sun Jun 2, 2013 7:13pm EDT
(Reuters) – Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Turkey’s four biggest cities on Sunday and clashed with riot police firing tear gas on the third day of the fiercest anti-government demonstrations in years.
The din of car horns and residents banging pots and pans from balconies in support of the protests resonated across neighborhoods in Istanbul and Ankara late into the night, as hundreds of demonstrators skirmished with riot police.
Roads around Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s office in Istanbul were sealed off as police fired tear gas to push back protesters, and police raided a shopping complex in the centre of the capital Ankara where they believed demonstrators were sheltering, detaining several hundred.
Erdogan blamed the main secular opposition party for inciting the crowds, whom he called “a few looters”, and said the protests were aimed at depriving his ruling AK Party of votes as elections begin next year.
Interior Minister Muammer Guler said there had been more than 200 demonstrations in 67 cities around the country, according to the Hurriyet newspaper.
The unrest erupted on Friday when trees were torn down at a park in Istanbul’s main Taksim Square under government plans to redevelop the area, but widened into a broad show of defiance against the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Erdogan said the plans to remake the square, long an iconic rallying point for mass demonstrations, would go ahead, including the construction of a new mosque and the rebuilding of a replica Ottoman-era barracks.
He said the protests had nothing to do with the plans.
“It’s entirely ideological,” he said in an interview broadcast on Turkish television.
“The main opposition party which is making resistance calls on every street is provoking these protests … This is about my ruling party, myself and the looming municipal elections in Istanbul and efforts to make the AK Party lose votes here.”
Turkey is due to hold local and presidential elections next year in which Erdogan is expected to stand, followed by parliamentary polls in 2015.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) denied orchestrating the unrest, blaming Erdogan’s policies.
“Today the people on the street across Turkey are not exclusively from the CHP, but from all ideologies and from all parties,” senior party member Mehmet Akif Hamzacebi said.
“What Erdogan has to do is not to blame CHP but draw the necessary lessons from what happened,” he told Reuters.
WIDE SPECTRUM
The protests, started by a small group of environmental campaigners, mushroomed when police used force to eject them from the park on Taksim Square.
As word spread online, the demonstrations drew in a wide range of people of all ages from across the political and social spectrum.
The ferocity of the police response in Istanbul has shocked Turks, as well as tourists caught up in the unrest in one of the world’s most visited destinations.
Helicopters have fired tear gas canisters into residential neighborhoods and police have used tear gas to try to smoke people out of buildings. Footage on YouTube showed one protester being hit by an armored police truck as it charged a barricade.
The handling of the protests has drawn rebukes from the United States, European Union and international rights groups.
On Friday, the U.S. State Department said it was concerned about the number of injuries and on Sunday, Laura Lucas, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, reiterated the importance of respect for freedom of expression, assembly and association.
“Peaceful public demonstrations are a part of democratic expression, and we expect that security forces will exercise restraint and that all parties will continue to work to calm the situation,” she said.
For much of Sunday, the atmosphere in Taksim Square was festive, with some people chanting for Erdogan to resign and others dancing. There was little obvious police presence.
But in the nearby Besiktas neighborhood, riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to keep crowds away from Erdogan’s office in Dolmabahce Palace, a former Ottoman residence on the shores of the Bosphorus.
There were similar scenes in Ankara’s main Kizilar square.
Erdogan is due to fly to Morocco on Monday as part of an official visit that also covers Algeria and Tunisia. Sources in his office said his trip would go ahead.
Erdogan has overseen a transformation in Turkey during his decade in power, turning its once crisis-prone economy into the fastest-growing in Europe.
He remains by far Turkey’s most popular politician, but critics point to what they see as his authoritarianism and religiously conservative meddling in private lives in the secular republic.
Tighter restrictions on alcohol sales and warnings against public displays of affection in recent weeks have also provoked protests. Concern that government policy is allowing Turkey to be dragged into the conflict in neighboring Syria by the West has also led to peaceful demonstrations.
On Sunday, Erdogan appeared on television for the fourth time in less than 36 hours, and justified the restrictions on alcohol as for the good of people’s health.
“I want them to know that I want these (restrictions) for the sake of their health … Whoever drinks alcohol is an alcoholic,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Can Sezer in Istanbul, Umit Bektas, Orhan Coskun and Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Mike Collett-White and David Brunnstrom)
Reformist-backed cleric Hassan Rouhani has won Iran’s presidential election, securing just over 50% of the vote and so avoiding the need for a run-off, BBC News reported.
Crowds gathered in Tehran to hail Rouhani, who said he had achieved a “victory of moderation over extremism”.
A turnout of 72.2% was registered of the 50 million Iranians who were eligible to vote for the successor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was well behind in second place.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei congratulated Rouhani on his victory. “I urge everyone to help the president-elect and his colleagues in the government, as he is the president of the whole nation,” he said.
Ayatollah Khamenei will ratify the vote on August 3 and the new president will then take the oath in parliament.
Rouhani, who has pledged greater engagement with Western powers, said: “This victory is a victory for wisdom, moderation and maturity… over extremism.”
But he also urged the world to “acknowledge the rights” of Iran.
Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar announced that Rouhani had won 18,613,329 of the 36,704,156 votes cast. This represented 50.71% of the vote.
Qalibaf won 6,077,292 votes to take second place (16.56%).
Saeed Jalili came third and Mohsen Rezai fourth.
The winning candidate needed more than 50% of all ballots cast, including invalid ones, to avoid a run-off.
June 14, 2013 | 18:21
A new state
ment of the heads of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing states will be issued soon, Russian presidential aide said.
Yuri Ushakov informed about three documents which will be signed by Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama within the framework of the G8 summit. One of them is joint statement on Karabakh which will be issued by leaders of Russia, U.S. and France.
The G8 summit will be held on June 17-18.
Minority Turks rule Bulgaria
Delyan Peevski, probably the most controversial Bulgarian MP has been elected to lead Bulgaria’s National Security Agency, DANS.
The Parliament voted Friday to approve the nomination of Prime Minister, Plamen Oresharski, who proposed to have Peevski, Member of the Parliament from the liberal 
ethnic Turkish party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) to lead DANS.
In a move, stunning both MPs from the opposition center-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party, GERB, of former Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, and parliamentary reporters, Oresharski proposed at the beginning of the sitting to have a new item on the agenda – election of new DANS Director.
The request caused outraged GERB MPs to leave plenary hall.
Oresharski then proceeded to nominate Peevski.
“A difficult situation calls for non-standard decisions. The PM’s nomination is one such decision and some will see it as controversial, but it is needed,” the leader of the left-wing Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, said.
He was the only one to make a statement on the nomination from the parliamentary tribune.
During the first vote 114 MPs voted for Peevski’s nomination, 10 against, and 1 abstained. The far-right, nationalist Ataka voted against.
After hearing that the vote was taking place, GERB MPs came back running in plenary hall and asked for a second vote.
204 MPs took part in the second vote – 116 voted for, all GERB MPs (87) – voted against. Only 1 BSP MP abstained.
With the vote of BSP and DPS, Peevski became the new DANS Head.
He already took the oath of office as well.
Peevski recently became one of the most active MPs, after being tightlipped and frequently absent during the previous General Assembly.
Speaking in the parliamentary hallway, Borisov said this was the end of the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
The news already caused uproar in Bulgaria. Citizens are uniting on Facebook to stage a protest rally Friday evening.
I am stuck in Nice France because of rail worker protest..
After two days of air traffic controller strikes, French rail workers walked off the job Thursday to protest a reorganization of the national rail and train companies,
Up to 70 percent of train journeys in France were canceled on Thursday. The action began Wednesday night, affecting overnight international travel, and ends Friday morning.
The strike came just as an action by air traffic controllers protesting an EU plan to simplify the continent’s patchwork airspace was ending. Thousands of flights around France were canceled over the past two days, but traffic was returning to normal Thursday.
Wednesday, 12. June 2013 by Sibel Edmonds
“50 years ago, America wanted to believe it was a nation of ideals, and many people did believe that. So what changed?”
The US government has been violating the Constitution and trampling on the bill of rights since virtually the inception of the country. The history of the US, like the history of every other country, is littered with the corpses of nice-sounding ideals, from false flag frame-ups to lead the nation into war to the persecution and even execution of political dissidents. But the point is that 50 years ago, America wanted to believe it was a nation of ideals, and many people did believe that. So what changed?
It is amazing how all dictators claim rebellion is by a “fringe group” or by “radicals” and not be the majority of the people. Isn’t this exactly what the recent group of 
Sultan-or-Dictatordeposed dictators said before they were overthrown by the people? And, of course Social Media is the enemy, because it can not be controlled as in the case of radio, t.v. and print mediar. When a ruler calls the shots on what the media can publish then an invisible line has been crossed – well that line has been crossed. Erdogan is an autocratic ruler, howbeit one elected by the people. Time for a change.
WASHINGTON—The Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced last month that the next Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (DDG) will be named USS Paul Ignatius and USS Daniel Inouye.
“As secretary of the Navy it is my privilege to name these ships to honor a respected naval leader and a true American hero.” Mabus said. “For decades to come, the future USS Paul Ignatius and USS Daniel Inouye will represent the United States and enable the building of partnerships and projection of power around the world.”
The future USS Paul Ignatius (DDG 117) honors Paul Ignatius who served as secretary of the Navy 1967–1969 and as assistant secretary of defense under President Lyndon Johnson. The future USS Daniel Inouye (DDG 118) is named to honor former Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii. Inouye was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in Tuscany, Italy, during World War II and later became a U.S. senator. USS Paul Ignatius and USS Daniel Inouye will be the first naval ships to bear these names.
Arleigh Burke-class destroyers conduct a variety of operations from peacetime presence and crisis management to sea control and power projection. They are capable of fighting air, surface and subsurface battles simultaneously and contain a myriad of offensive and defensive weapons designed to support maritime warfare.