Chatter: Turkey still protesting

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NEED TO KNOW

Turkey rises. It's now day four of what are shaping up to be Turkey's fiercest anti-government protests in years, and the demonstrators show no sign of going home. What started as a sit-in to protect an Istanbul park from being bulldozed has become a nationwide outcry against what protesters claim was a heavy-handed police response, wilful deafness on the part of the government, and so much more.

Overnight, crowds continued to clash with riot police in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and other cities. The question now is whether the protests will maintain the formidable momentum they gathered over the weekend throughout a new working week.

Deadly Chinese fire. More than 100 people are dead after a fire at a poultry processing plant in Jilin province, northeast China. Firefighters are still at the scene, where flames are still reported to be smouldering hours after they broke out early this morning.

What caused the blaze remains unclear, but it appears that narrow exits and a locked gate contributed to keeping workers trapped inside the burning building. Authorities warn that more bodies may yet be found.

WANT TO KNOW

WikiLeaker in the dock. Bradley Manning, the US Army private accused of providing WikiLeaks with the biggest stash of confidential government documents ever leaked, goes on trial today. Military prosecutors will present 21 charges against him, the most serious being that he aided America's enemies, undermined national security, and put lives at risk.

Manning has pleaded guilty to 10 counts, but maintains that any laws he broke, he broke to expose wrongdoings and stir public debate. To prosecutors, he's a traitor; to his defenders, many of whom plan vigils today in dozens of cities worldwide, he's a hero.

Europe is underwater. No, that's not yet another tired metaphor for the debt crisis: dozens of towns in central Europe are quite literally under several feet of water after torrential downpours through the weekend.

A state of emergency has been declared in parts of the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany, as governments ordered thousands of homes evacuated and called in troops to help the emergency effort. At least three people have died in floods and landslides since Saturday, and eight more are still missing. 

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Kissing girls gave Michael Douglas cooties. If by "cooties" you mean cancer, by "girls" you mean his wife, and by "kissing" you mean... um... well, let's just call it kissing in a special place.

The Hollywood actor has claimed his recent throat cancer was caused by the human papillomavirus or HPV, the same sexually transmitted little nasty that can lead to genital warts and cervical cancer. So how did the virus end up in his throat, you might wonder? Allow Douglas to make things a little too clear for you: oral sex. Now, he's no doctor – he's just played one, and we're pretty sure that's not the same thing — but it seems that medical research suggests his explanation could be plausible.

Even so, there's no hard feelings between Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones. If you have throat cancer, Douglas (again: not a doctor) claims, "cunnilingus is also the best cure for it."

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