The cities have had enough of Turkey’s conservative Prime Minister; Lou Reed gets a new lease on life; Hate speech might be catching up with a notorious French pol; Tornados ravage America’s heartland, again.

Police in Istanbul pulled out of the main square, after a protest to save some trees quickly spiraled into a nationwide, anti-government protest by a wide coalition of groups opposed to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.  The PM is popular with rural and religious conservatives but advanced secularists in the cities are getting sick of him, one protester telling reporters Erdogan “wants to turn this country into an Islamist state.” 

Iraq says it uncovered an al Qaeda plot to use chemical weapons, as well as to smuggle those weapons to Europe and America.  They seized mustard and sarin gasses, and remote control toy airplanes.

A mother and her baby were among nine people killed in a Tornado in Oklahoma, occurring less than two weeks after an even bigger storm killed 24 dead in the exact same area.  Both Senators from the state of Oklahoma are climate change deniers.

A jailed member of the Russian Punk Rock band Pussy Riot has ended her hunger strike, after jail officials met her security demands.  Maria Alyokhina had earlier been moved to a prison hospital after refusing food for 11 days.  She had accused Russian prison officials of a crackdown on inmates to turn them against her.

Walking on the wilding side might have finally caught up to 71-year old Rocker Lou Reed.  His wife Laurie Anderson reveals Reed is recovering from a liver transplant performed last month at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.  Reed is well-known for addiction themed songs like addiction-themed "Heroin" and "I'm Waiting for the Man", as well as “Walk on the Wild Side”, “Sweet Jane”, “I Love You Suzanne”, and “Dirty Boulevard”.  And if you read this far you already know that Lou is one of the greats, and Google is your friend.  Anderson says Reed isn't back to full strength, but “he's already working and doing tai chi.” 

Poachers murdered an environmentalist in Costa Rica. Jairo Mora was reportedly found face down with his hands tied on Moin beach, 170km east of the capital, San Jose.  He was believed to have been trying to protect endangered sea turtle nests from the poachers, who can make more than A$300 a day selling the eggs on the black market.

French far right leader Marine Le Pen could face criminal hate speech charges.  She may have thought being a member of the European Parliament granted her immunity from such prosecution, but a EP committee removed this protection this week.  At issue are comments she made in 2010 likening the sight of Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France. 

Japan’s government officially disowned the offensive comments of Osaka’s idiot mayor Toru Hashimoto, that Imperial Japanese soldiers during World War II needed the services of sex slaves kidnapped from Korea, China, and the Philippines.  Defense minister Itsunori Onodera told an Asian security conference in Singapore that Japan stands by its past apologies.