Sedat Suna/EPA-Landov

A local protest in a square known for them unexpectedly struck a chord across Turkey. But no one seems clear on what comes next, reports Mike Giglio.

The crowds in Taksim Square had free rein in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday. For days, Istanbul’s main square and the normally bustling pedestrian thoroughfare that spills into it had been the scene of clashes between police and protesters, with 1,000 people reportedly hospitalized. But the cops pulled back on Saturday, and the tear-gas clouds cleared. Thousands of jubilant protesters remained through the day, chanting against the government and shooting off fireworks.

Sang Tan/AP

Accusations of sleaze have mounted since Cameron approved an independent press regulator in response to the Rupert Murdoch hacking scandal. Peter Jukes reports.

Allegations of a secret, now-concluded “affair” that reportedly left Prime Minister David Cameron “stunned” and threatened to derail the government’s agenda were published by the Mail on Sunday. “This revelation is dynamite. None of us could believe it when we first heard it. Then we just thought, ‘What a complete mess,’” a source told the Mail. “Such disclosure could ‘blow out of the water’ any major political set pieces planned by No. 10” according to the newspaper.

Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty

Swears in newly-elected parliament members.

Pakistan handed over power from one democratically elected government to another for the first time in its 66-year history, Saturday, when swearing in new members to its National Assembly. Pakistan’s new lawmakers are already tasked with some major challenges, such as the country’s seriously suffering economy, violence instigated by the Taliban, and other extremists and energy shortage that results in up to 20 hours a day without power for some.

Read it at THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Over 1,000 died—mostly civilians.

Over 1,000 people were killed in Iraq in May, making last month the deadliest the country has seen in years, according to the U.N. The majority of those killed were civilians. The fact that there hasn’t been this kind of violence in Iraq since the sectarian fighting of 2006-2007 suggests another civil war may be on the horizon. Martin Kobler, the U.N.’s Iraq envoy, called the 1,045 civilian and security personnel casualties—compared to April’s 712—”a sad record” and warned that “systemic violence is ready to explode at any moment if all Iraqi leaders do not engage immediately to pull the country out of this mayhem.”

Read it at BBC

Yusuf Sayman

A small protest against the razing of a popular public park has spiraled into widespread demonstrations against Turkey’s government. Mike Giglio reports.

In central Istanbul’s Taksim Square, clashes between police and protesters are commonplace. Activists from myriad political groups regularly flood the city’s main square to make their stand. The agitators are usually met by Turkey’s feared riot police, who disperse them with tear gas, water cannons and batons. Police chase demonstrators down nearby Istiklal Street, Istanbul’s famous and bustling pedestrian thoroughfare, past cafés and brand-name shops as storekeepers close their windows to keep out the tear gas.

Garcia Vilanova/AFP/Getty

The loss of 33-year-old Detroit native Nicole Lynn Mansfield in Syria potentially marks the first known American combatant killed in the country’s grinding civil war. Mike Giglio on how a mom with a ‘heart of gold’ allegedly joined the bloody battle against Assad.

Nicole Lynn Mansfield grew up a Baptist in Flint, Michigan, but converted to Islam after starting a relationship with an Arab man who’d immigrated to the United States, Mansfield’s family told the Detroit Free Press on Thursday. The couple married and later divorced, but Mansfield held on to her new faith, dressing in a headscarf and at one point moving to Dubai. But her family had no idea that she’d ventured into Syria, they told the newspaper, until the FBI came calling.

Gary Edwards/Corbis

Prosecutors are investigating whether to sue Facebook for not removing posts that drove a young girl to her death.

Could Facebook be held liable for an Italian teen’s suicide? If an Italian prosecutor has his way, the social networking giant could face criminal manslaughter charges. Carolina Picchio was a 14-year-old girl from Novara, Italy, near Milan, with an enviably pretty face and a bright future. Then, late on the night of January 4, she jumped out of her bedroom window from her family’s fourth-floor apartment. She died instantly when she landed headfirst on the pavement below.

Reuters, via Landov

The Syrian conflict threatens to draw America, Russia, and Europe into a wild inferno engulfing the entire Mideast. By Jamie Dettmer

An assassin’s bullet among sectarian tensions was all it took to push the European powers into the catastrophic “war to end all wars” in 1914. By slaying an Austrian archduke, a Serbian gunman triggered a chain of events that savagely changed the face of Europe by bringing about World War I.It is a moment in history worth remembering as we once more teeter on a historical precipice.When it comes to the Syria conflict, recent developments may hurl us off the cliff.

Cynthia Goldsmith/Maureen Metcalfe/Azaibi Tamin, via CDC

The WHO calls it a ‘threat to the entire world’ and 26 are dead. Why all of the scary talk about the strange, deadly virus coming out of the Middle East? Kent Sepkowitz explains.

Margaret Chan, secretary-general of the World Health Organization, raised a few eyebrows and dropped a few jaws this week with her proclamation that the weird new corona virus circulating mostly in the Middle East posed a “threat to the entire world.”She might be right, sort of. The virus is a close cousin of the contagion that caused SARS, the acronym for the severe acute respiratory syndrome that appeared dramatically in South China and Hong Kong in 2002, spread rapidly, and ended up causing more than 8,000 cases, including 775 deaths.

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The 26-year-old Dutchman and suspect in Natalee Holloway’s disappearance—now serving time for the murder of a Peruvian girl—is set to marry, his lawyer confirms.

It’s wedding bells for Joran van der Sloot, the 26-year old Dutchman who is serving 28 years in a Peruvian prison for the murder of Peruvian college student Stephany Flores. Van der Sloot gained notoriety in 2005 in connection with the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, 19, from Alabama, who disappeared on a school trip in Aruba. Van der Sloot was the last person to be seen with Holloway on the night before she was scheduled to fly back to America.