BBC News with Iain Purdon.
Thousands of protesters have converged on Taksim Square in Istanbul hours after the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected demands to drop a plan to redevelop a park in the city. He said extremists who were manipulating demonstrations which began as an environmental protest last week. James Reynolds is among the protesters in Istanbul. A lot of them just sitting on the verges of the park, others are chanting as one group which have been dancing a tango, other people are buying slices of watermelon and having barbeques. Most people here say that they will continue to protest and to come here in order to stop the government for redeveloping this area. And people here say that they were disappointed but not surprised by the Prime Minister's comments. People here say that if he's been stubborn their point of view, then they will be stubborn as well. One man said we would stay here till the ends; if they want to get us, they would have to use an awful lot of tear gas.
Austria says it will withdraw its UN peacekeepers from the Golan Heights after fighting between Syrian government forces and rebels. Officials say the mission is no longer tenable. Austria provides nearly 400 soldiers about a third of the UN peacekeeping mission. A UN spokesman, Kieran Dwyer insisted their work would go on. The mission in the Golan was set up 40 years ago to monitor the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria. This is no less important today than it was all those years ago. And with the fighting becoming more and more intense, this is a really serious risk to regional spillover of the conflict inside Syria. So rather than talking about the mission now becoming viable, what we focusing on it is making sure that it remains viable.