Charles Emir Richards via Facebook

Part-time photographer Charles Emir Richards posted this and dozens of other photos from protests in Besiktas on June 2 on his Facebook page, with the message, "You don't need my permission to share the photos. I think it is especially important that people outside of Turkey share them to let it be known what is going on here."

Charles Emir Richards via Facebook

Taksim, Istanbul on June 4

Charles Emir Richards via Facebook

Besiktas, Istanbul on June 2

Charles Emir Richards, an American living in Turkey, took to the streets of Taksim and Besiktas in Istanbul on June 1-4 not to join protesters, but to document the events between demonstrators and police in what he describes as a "war zone." The images in this blog post come from Richards’ Facebook page and are used with permission. NBC News’s Director of Photography, Jim Collins, contacted Richards via email to collect first-person reaction to his photos and the events that are occurring in his backyard.

Do you live in Istanbul full-time and is the area where you’ve been shooting near to where you live?
Yes, I do. I am half-Turkish and have been living here on and off for the past 15 years. Taksim is about a kilometer southeast from where I live. Akaretler, Besiktas a little less than a kilometer northeast. I am at a vortex of a triangle.

Are you a photographer?
I am a part-time photographer. It is my hobby gone crazy. I started shooting celebrity portraits for Rolling Stone over here and then, more recently, for Vogue and GQ. I don't take photographs as much as I should. Shooting the protests here for the past few days has convinced me that I was just wasting time, eating cake.

Would you consider yourself a protester?
 I wish I was brave enough to be a protester, but I am not. I agree with what they are fighting for and felt it was important to document it.

Are you concerned that the disturbances may threaten your home, property or safety in general?
Right now it is impossible to say what is going to happen. The prime minister is not bending, nor are the protesters. Everyone is meeting again in Gezi Park tonight (Editor's note: Friday). If (Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan had made even minor concessions I think a lot of people were ready to declare a victory for democracy, and go home. Now I don't know, I think the weekend will tell what direction things will take.

One thing I can say is that the protesters, even the most violent, have been extremely careful not to harm anyone's personal property. At any point they could have blocked the roads with private citizen's cars and burned them to block the police. They did not, and they did not entertain the idea of raiding or looting. If a store owner wanted to open shop and help they appreciated it, if not, fine.

Charles Emir Richards via Facebook

Taksim, Istanbul on June 4

For my personal safety, I have very practical concerns, the top of the list being hyperventilating in my gas mask and it fogging up. Not seeing anything during a police raid is the worst thing I can imagine right now. I have been detained by the police twice already. I got shot twice by projectile gas canisters, which brought tears to my eyes, but is actually OK because adrenaline doesn't let you feel more than a sting until hours later. One girl I talked to (said) she was hit by a plastic bullet, and that it hurts so much that you can't move. I find that both very disturbing and threatening.

Charles Emir Richards via Facebook

Charles Emir Richards posted this image on his Facebook page on June 3 with the following comment: "The police brutally beat this man with a baton and shield. I don't know what happened to him as I was detained and released by the police soon after I took this photograph. Akaretler was a war zone tonight."

What are the latest developments that you see on the streets there? Are the protests intensifying?
Last night, the crowd was ready to greet the prime minister with a wave of hostility on his flight back from Tunisia. People were really keyed up where I was last night. There were professional protesters in the crowd from Palestine handing out double-sided photocopies of safety guidelines for gas attacks by the barricades. Everyone was on the lookout for police provocateurs in the crowd.

The people at the barricades are growing in numbers and they are ready to fight. Inside Gezi Park, people are even more determined to continue peaceful protest.

Charles Emir Richards via Facebook

Charles Emir Richards posted this photo from Taskim, Istanbul on June 4 with the following comment: "The sad thing is that the evening started like this."

There were reports of massive police movement all last night and rumors that police reinforcements were being bused in from other cities. Despite this, I never saw a single officer the entire night.

What have you been doing with your photographs besides posting them to Facebook?
Nothing. I have been posting them on Facebook as it has been the only means to get the word out about what is going on here recently. The news media here went blank on the issue, that's when I thought I should go out and shoot and post on Facebook, I felt that a document should get out from somewhere, anywhere. Until yesterday, the local media pretended that nothing was going on. On June 2, when everyone was on the streets engaging the police, CNN Turk was broadcasting a documentary about penguins.

People went and protested in front of media buildings and pasted money on their walls and doors saying if you love money that much here it is, now do your jobs. Even after that they are reporting a very light version of the protests.

Editor's Note: This interview has been edited and condensed.

Charles Emir Richards via Facebook

Besiktas, Istanbul on June 1

Paul Goldman / NBC News

Israeli newspapers report on a group of female soldiers who were disciplined after photographs of the scantily clad women holding their rifles appeared on Facebook.

TEL AVIV - A group of female Israeli soldiers has been disciplined after photographs of the scantily clad women holding their rifles appeared on Facebook.

They were seen wearing only a combat vest and helmets on their heads in one photograph.

"The picture in question represents behavior unbecoming IDF [Israeli Defense Force] soldiers. The commanding officers disciplined the soldiers as they saw fitting,” the army said in a statement.

An IDF spokesperson said that "educational lectures took place on the base in order to prevent similar recurrences” after the pictures were discovered.

The photographs are the latest in a series of incidents in which Israeli soldiers have posted potentially embarrassing images on the internet.

A search on YouTube for “Israeli soldiers dancing” produces thousands of results, including a platoon of soldiers dancing in Hebron in the Palestinian West Bank to U.S. star Kesha's Tik Tok tune.

More Israel coverage on nbcnews.com

Ben Mitchell / Press Association via AP

The Rev. Bob Mason's Facebook plea attracted 200 mourners to the funeral of late Royal Marine James McConnell on Thursday.

LONDON -- More than 200 strangers attended a British veteran's funeral after a clergyman put out a plea on Facebook, fearing he would be buried without mourners, according to reports.

James McConnell, who served with the U.K.'s Royal Marines, died last month aged 70.

Staff at his nursing home in Southsea, Hampshire, thought they would be the only people at his funeral as he did not have any close family, ITV News reported.

The Rev. Bob Mason, posted a message on Facebook and contacted the Royal Marines Association.

The message, which was shared and reposted by members of the association and thousands of other Facebook users, said:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, In this day and age it is tragic enough that anyone has to leave this world with no one to mourn their passing, but this man was family and I am sure you will agree deserves a better send off. If you can make it to the graveside for that time to pay your respects to a former brother in arms then please try to be there."

Ben Mitchell / Press Association via AP

A motorcycle procession during the funeral of James McConnell, who died last month at the age of 70.

Hundreds responded to the message, braving the freezing temperatures to attend Thursday’s ceremony at Milton Cemetery in nearby Portsmouth.

'Dignified burial'
Mason, who conducted Thursday’s funeral, told local newspaper, The News: “I want to say a big thank you to all of those who turned up.

“Many people had concerns about him being buried with no family present but now they have seen him have a dignified burial.”

Among those attending was Arthur Bailey, 88, who was a soldier who served in several conflicts.

"I heard about it and just wanted to come along," he told The News. "This is what the armed forces family is for. It’s a credit to everyone who turned up."

Related:

In wake of Benghazi, rapid response Marine unit heading to Europe

How the US military can become a 'band of brothers and sisters'

Full Technology and Science coverage from NBC News

AMSTERDAM -- Riot police broke up crowds of youths who turned violent in a tiny Dutch town late on Friday after several thousand people descended on the community after a schoolgirl's Facebook invitation to her sixteenth birthday party went viral.

Media reports said six people were hurt, including three seriously, after disturbances broke out in the quiet northern Dutch town of Haren. Reports said shops were vandalized and looted, a car set on fire and street signs and lampposts damaged before police broke up the crowds.

Up to 600 riot police were on the scene during the disturbances, according to one media report. There were at least 20 arrests, media said.

Pictures from the scene showed party-goers wearing T-shirts with "Project X" written on them -- apparently a reference to the movie "Project X", in which three high school seniors throw a party that gets out of control as word spreads.

Some 30,000 people received the invitation from a girl announcing her birthday party on Facebook, according to media reports. The party was intended to be a small-scale celebration, but the girl did not set her Facebook event to private and the invitation went viral.

Catrinus Van Der Veen / AFP - Getty Images

Chairs burn in the northern Dutch town of Haren late on Friday after thousands of party-goers showed up to a teenager's birthday party.

"She posted the invitation on Facebook and sent it to friends, who then sent it to other friends and soon it spread like wildfire across the Internet," Melanie Zwama, Groningen police spokeswoman told the AFP news agency according to the BBC.

A Twitter account was set up to promote the event, and the Dutch Daily News identified a video posted on YouTube that also promoted the party.

Dutch DJs Yellow Claw and Afrojack -- who each have thousands of Twitter followers -- posted messages about the party on their accounts (in Dutch). 

Reports said up to 3,000 people showed up in the town of 18,000.

Haren had been bracing for the event for most of the week.

Catrinus Van Der Veen / AFP - Getty Images

Hundreds of youths gather in Haren, northern Netherlands, on Friday. Dutch mass-market daily De Telegraaf reported that tens of thousands of people received a Facebook invitation to a schoolgirl's birthday party.

NBC News' Nanette van der Laan and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Boris Streubel / Bongarts/Getty Images

Ariane Friedrich of Germany celebrates after winning the women's high jump during the IAAF World Challenge ISTAF 2010 at the Olympic Stadium on August 22, 2010 in Berlin, Germany.

MAINZ, Germany – Ariane Friedrich, a 28-year-old German high-jumper currently training for the 2012 London Games, is taking on more than one Olympic-size challenge: she is also publicly challenging an alleged stalker. The athlete from Frankfurt says that she recently received an email with a sexually explicit photo from a stalker.

In what some see as a controversial move, she chose to out the stalker on Facebook –- posting his full name, excerpts from the email he sent her and his hometown.

“It’s time to act, it’s time to defend myself. And that’s what I’m doing. No more and no less,” Friedrich wrote on her Facebook page on Saturday. 

In Germany, where strict online data protection laws exist, Friedrich's decision to “name and shame” her alleged stalker is receiving broad attention and has triggered a heated debate about the moral and legal implications of the online allegations. 

Fears of a Web mob
Friedrich, who is not just an athlete, but also a police officer, also filed a legal complaint against her offender, according to German media reports.

While the move has triggered lots of positive responses from her fans on her Facebook page, with posts calling her “courageous,” there was also growing criticism.

“As much as I can understand your anger about the stalker, you as a police officer should not just pillory somebody on the Internet,” one person wrote on Friedrich’s Facebook page. 

Gero Breloer / AP

Germany's Ariane Friedrich reacts in the women's high jump final during the World Athletics Championships in Berlin in this August 2009 file photo.

“The reaction of Mrs. Friedrich is of course understandable, but she reacted too fast,” Dr. Thilo Weichert, a data privacy law expert in Kiel, Germany, told NBC News.
 
”It needs to be checked first, if the named person is really the correct one. Anybody can use a wrong name on Facebook,” Weichert said.

On Monday, many of the critical Facebook posts referenced a recent incident in which the equivalent of a lynch mob turned against a 17-year-old in the northern German city of Emden after police had arrested him for questioning in the murder of an 11-year-old girl.

The teen was later declared innocent and released, but the social media storm led to a gathering of an angry crowd in front of the police station. Afterward the boy and his family felt so harassed that they moved to an undisclosed location.

Don’t need the distraction
Friedrich’s coaches aren’t exactly welcoming the move. On Saturday, Guenter Eisinger, her coach and manager, tried to downplay the incident, saying he is concerned that the growing media attention will negatively affect her preparations for the Summer Games.

“The issue has nothing to do with the public,” Eisinger told German news agency dpa on Saturday. “We can do without any stress factors.” 

DigitalGlobe

An image from DigitalGlobe's WorldView 1 satellite shows Russia's Vostok Station in Antarctica, the site of a drilling operation that has just reached a subglacial freshwater lake. Lake Vostok may have lain undisturbed for 20 millions of years more than two miles beneath the surface, and thus could harbor living organisms unlike anything scientists have ever seen. The picture was taken on Feb. 8 from an altitude of 308 miles (496 kilometers).

The Russians say that drilling down to a 20 million-year-old lake in Antarctica, more than two miles beneath the surface, is the equivalent of putting an astronaut on the moon. If that's the case, this satellite photo from DigitalGlobe is the equivalent of watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at work.

The photo of Russia's Vostok Station was taken on Wednesday, just a couple of days after Russian researchers reached Lake Vostok in a delicate drilling operation that's been in the works since 1989. Scientists believe the gigantic subglacial reservoir may contain microbes or other organisms unlike any we've seen so far. The achievement also sets the stage for even more ambitious drilling projects that could take place someday on Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter; or on Enceladus, a frozen Saturnian moon that spews forth geysers of water ice. Both those moons are thought to harbor huge subsurface oceans — and perhaps life as well.

The technological challenges involved in the drilling project, as well as the long-term implications raised by studying Lake Vostok, led the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Valery Lukin, to say that "it's fair to compare this project to flying to the moon."

When the folks at DigitalGlobe's analysis group heard the news from Vostok Station, they checked into whether one of their three satellite eyes in the sky got a good look at the operation. They weren't disappointed. WorldView 1, orbiting more than 300 miles above the planet, got a clear shot showing the drilling tower and other structures at the facility.

"This goes to our ability to see anywhere on Earth on a daily basis," Chuck Herring, a director in DigitalGlobe’s analysis center, told me today.

The sun is illuminating the scene from the bottom of the picture, which means Vostok's structures and vehicles cast shadows that stretch up toward the top of the frame. The biggest shadow is cast by the station's main residence and office building, just above center. The drilling tower casts a long, thin shadow with a flag on top, above and to the left of the main building.

The shadows arrayed below and to the right of center are probably the vehicles used for overland transport to the Antarctic coast, said Peter Doran, an expert on polar lakes at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "They have these amazing, large vehicles with tracks," Doran told me. "They remind me of something out of 'Mad Max.'"

The square-sided area near the very center of the picture is apparently a built-up berm, most likely part of a storage facility for supplies or ice cores.

DigitalGlobe

This wider version of the WorldView 1 picture of Vostok Station shows more of the Antarctic wasteland surrounding the facility. Compared with the close-up, this view is rotated roughly 65 degrees clockwise. The skiway on which supply planes land can be seen running diagonally from top center to lower left, while the ice road to Russia's Mirny Station on the coast runs from the settlement toward lower right.

Paul Morin, director of the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota, said one of the most remarkable things about the picture is ... how unremarkable it looks. "Stations like this look very much the same," he said. "Vostok is one of the most remote places on Earth. These guys have done an amazing feat, drilling at this location."

Doran said it was reassuring to see that everything looked normal, considering all the worries that researchers had about the Vostok drilling operation. Some observers feared that once the drill reached the lake, there'd be an explosive upwelling of water from the reservoir. To get international approval for the operation, the Russians had to conduct a detailed engineering analysis demonstrating that they were proceeding safely and surely.

"Even with all the numbers, you just had to wonder whether they had it right," Doran said. Based on the DigitalGlobe imagery,"it's clear that nothing really unusual happened," he said.

Morin said the imagery from DigitalGlobe and other providers has made a huge difference for scientists studying Antarctica's forbidding frontier. "Before commercial imagery, we had better pictures of Mars than we had of Antarctica," he observed. Aerial imagery of Vostok Station will be particularly helpful for scientists on the outside. "We have to stay abreast of what all these stations look like, because occasionally we have to go there," Morin said.

DigitalGlobe's Herring said his company is building up "a tremendous amount of imagery" every day — five times as much as any other commercial satellite image provider. "Right now our raw imagery archive grows by two petabytes of data per year," he said. That's 2 quadrillion bytes of data, which is a big or a small number, depending on your perspective. It's more image data than all the pictures that are stored on Facebook, but just a tenth the amount of data processed by Google on a daily basis.

No matter how you see it, keeping track of 2 quadrillion bytes' worth of images is a challenging task, but Herring said DigitalGlobe is up to the challenge.  "Combining our constellation with the analysis center, we've seen a huge value, a tremendous amount of value for our customers," he said.

WorldView 1 and DigitalGlobe's other satellites will continue to keep watch on Vostok, "to monitor change and understand the facility, and validate what's said in the press about what's going on there," Herring said. For now, the Russians have closed up shop at the drilling site and hunkered down for the Antarctic winter. The researchers will return to their field work in a few months.

In the meantime, the Russians will have to lay out their plans to extract water samples from the lake itself. "If they're going to do that, they've got to write a new document that would be approved by an international body," Doran said. "They're not done. This was just the first pinprick."

Where in the Cosmos? Today's satellite picture of Vostok Station served as this week's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. Every week, we're serving up a mystery picture and asking Facebook fans to tell us what the picture shows. It took only four minutes for Martin Lynge of Nuuk, Greenland, to register the right answer — and as a reward, we're sending Martin a pair of 3-D glasses (courtesy of Microsoft Research) plus a 3-D picture of yours truly that will serve to scare the neighbors in Nuuk. To get in on next week's "Where in the Cosmos" contest, be sure to check out the Facebook page and hit the "like" button.

More fun with space pictures:

• Feb. 3: Moon craters and Mars colors
• Jan. 27: 3-D color map of the universe
• Jan. 20: Stephen Hawking's curios explained 

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

PADANG, Indonesia -- A 30-year-old Indonesian civil servant who was viciously attacked by a mob after posting on Facebook that "God doesn't exist" is now threatened with jail time for blasphemy.

“He has triggered unrest among local residents," Dharmasraya Police Chief Chairul Aziz told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

The man, identified as Alexander, was arrested Friday on charges of blasphemy for his writings on his Facebook page. He had created a Facebook fan page titled Ateis Minang (Minang Atheist) and gained more than 1,238 Facebook "likes" before it was taken down from the social network site, according to the Post. 

On his page, Alexander wrote about his Muslim upbringing, how he didn't believe in angels, demons, heaven or hell and how he stopped practicing his faith in 2008, according to media reports. He posted comments regarding the Islamic faith, including "God doesn't exist" and "If God exists, why do bad things happen? There should only be good things if God is merciful."

Aziz said Indonesia's Council of Ulema, the ruling Islamic authority, charged Alexander with defiling Islam by using passages from the Quran to denounce God, The Telegraph reported on Friday.

If convicted of blasphemy, Alexander could face up to five years in prison.

Dozens of residents in his hometown in Pulau Punjung, West Sumatra province, stormed into Alexander's office on Wednesday and carried on their heated debate over religion, police said. Alexander was beaten, including by some of his colleagues.

Dharmasraya Regent Adi Gunawan told the Jakarta Post Alexander he has not taken any action to remove the man from his job on the planning board.

“I will await the legal process and decide later about his employment status,” Adi told the newspaper.

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