BBC News with Jerry Smit

Turkish riot police have fired teargas to disperse crowds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators who gathered in Taksim Square in central Istanbul after a day of sporadic clashes.

Istanbul’s mayor said in a brief television announcement that police would continue their operations night and day. The BBC’s James Reynolds says the square has been cleared and Gazi Park has now become the focus of the protests.

I was standing next to several young men who were catapulting objects towards the police in the square. I saw several fires near square. I couldn’t detect any protesters there but the most important thing is that Gazi Park itself remains absolutely packed with protesters, they still control the area. There are more people there tonight than I’ve ever seen in the last 12 days.

The government in Greece has unexpectedly announced the suspension of state-run TV and radio stations with immediate effect to save money. A government spokesman said the level of waste at the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation ERT was a scandal. He said the organization’s 2,500 employees would be sacked. They’ll be able to apply for work when the corporation re-launches as a smaller independent public broadcaster. Odin Linardatou is one of the employees affected.

“It’s without logic you know, I mean the people would happily see any active that is new, is a restructure maybe but not close down. Of course we had huge cuts in our salaries and we would have accepted it also if some of us were fired but that they can not accept in a democracy, in Greece is that Greece we not have a public broadcaster.”

The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner has condemned a government contractor Edward Snowden who leaked information about a controversial surveillance programme.

“He is a traitor. The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk. It shows our adversaries what our capabilities are and it’s a giant violation of the law.”

Congress is asking intelligence officials for more information about the mass monitoring of phone calls and internet use revealed by Mr. Snowden who is now in Hong Kong.

Google has asked the US Department of Justice to be allowed to publish the total number of security information request they receive from the government to prove it is not granted unrestricted access to use its data.

The South African President Jacob Zuma has said the whole nation is praying for Nelson Mandela to recover quickly. The 94-year-old former president remains in intensive care at a hospital in Pretoria where he’s been treated for a lung infection. Mr. Zuma said he was confident the doctors treating him were doing a good job. Mr. Mandela was admitted to hospital on Saturday. He’s been visited by family and security has been stepped up at the hospital.

News from the BBC

The Lower House of the Russian parliament has passed a controversial bill which bans the distribution of information about homosexuality to children. It also outlaws gay parade rallies. Gay activists say the law stigmatizes homosexuals. As MPs debated the bill Russian police arrested about 20 gay rights campaigners outside parliament during clashes with anti-gay groups.

The Ethiopian authorities have accused the Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi of waging psychological warfare by vowing to prevent Ethiopia from constructing a giant hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile River. A spokesman for Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said Mr. Morsi was trying to divert attention from problems at home. Aleem Maqbool reports from Cairo.

When it’s finished the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be by far the biggest hydroelectric power source in all of Africa. Construction started over two years ago but now the flow of the Nile is starting to be diverted down stream, Egypt has reacted with alarm. In an emotive address President Morsi talked it’d be gift of the River Nile to Egypt and the country’s historical rights to its waters. For its part, Ethiopia has insisted the work to build the dam will go on and that once the reservoir was filled the flow of Nile will return to normal.

In Kenya, hundreds of civil society activists had held a march in the capital Nairobi to protest against fresh attempts by members of parliament to increase their own salaries. Dancing protesters carried a giant papier-mache pig through the street before smashing it to pieces of the gate to the Kenyan parliament chanting ‘help the needy, not the greedy’.

The Argentine football association has banned away fans from attending football matches following the death of a supporter during a top division game near Buenos Aires. The ban will apply to all divisions of Argentine football until new measures are taken to address the widespread problem of violence in the game.

BBC News