BBC News with Sue Montgomery
The Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied he was behind a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last month. He made the comments in an interview with the US television network CBS, as Katy Watson reports.
“President Assad has timed this interview well, as members of Congress return from a summer break on Monday and start debating a resolution to support action in Syria. The Assad government is watching Washington closely. And giving an exclusive interview to a major US television network allows him to tell his version of events and sway public opinion in the US. President Assad said the Obama administration needed to show evidence that was his government behind the attack. He wouldn't confirm or denied that he had chemical weapons, but said that if the government did have them, there would be in centralized controls, so nobody would have access to them. He went on to suggest the rebels had something to do with it and there would be retaliation by allies for any attack on Syria.”
America's National Security agency, the NSA and Britain spy agency GCHQ are reported to have cracked the security codes which protect data on smart phones. According to the German magazine Der Spiegel. Here's Stephen Evans.
“Der Spiegel said its information was that the American NSA and the British GCHQ had set up teams for each type of smart phone to work out how to crack the codes meant to protect privacy. Having succeeded, the agencies could then read users' contact list and lists of who had been called. The document Spiegel seen do not show whether or not there has been mass surveillance of phone use. They do seem to indicate that the British and American security agencies have the ability to read private communications.”
Earlier results in Moscow's Mayor Elections suggest the current Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who's backed by the Kremlin, is said to be re-elected with more than 20% of the votes counted, he appears to (have) won just over 50%. But his main challenger, the leader of the protest movement Alexei Navalny, said he didn't recognize the results currently being announced. Daniel Sandford in Moscow says the contest is very significant.
“Democratic politics have been pretty dead in Russia for the last ten years. Elections for governors and Mayors were just simply got read off and that everyone else who wanted to be involved in running the country just joined the Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia, and that was the way you got into politics, you didn't challenge the establishment, you joined it. That all started to change last year with the street protests in Moscow when people here, a small core people in Moscow, sort of saying if really got to stop this fiddling of elections in this as they were fake politics.”
A militant group based in the Sinai Peninsula has said it carried out a bomb attack in Cairo on Thursday that targeted the Egyptian Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim. The minister was not hurt in the attack.
BBC News
A group of armed men in Guatemala has killed 11 people and wounded another 15 in an attack at a bar in a remote town of San Jose Nacahuil. Some of the victims were found dead hiding in the liquor store's bathrooms and nearby alleys. The motive was not clear. But Guatemalan police are investigating the possible involvement of the country's notorious gangs or maras. More from Leonardo Rocha.
“Guatemala is one of the most violent countries in Latin America, but residents in this small town of San Jose Nacahuil said they never seen anything like it. Many gathered to weep outside the bar, while on Saturday night an armed gang shot dead 11 people before escaped in a stolen car. One report says the gang have been at the bar minutes before the attack, people have been thrown out by the owner only to return shortly afterwards to carry out a random attack against the customers inside.”
Police in the American state of Arkansas have shot dead a 107-year-old man. This is the man, Monroe Isadore, pointed a gun at two people at a house in Pine Bluff city and then shot at officers called to the scene. Police reinforcements were called and they released gas into the room. Isadore fired again at police returned fire killing him.
The International Olympic Committee meeting in Buenos Aires has voted to reinstate wrestling as a sport. In the program for the 2020 Olympic Games which will be held in Tokyo. Wrestling which was thrown out as a game as earlier this year for failing to modernize beat rival bids from squash, baseball and softball. Nenad Lalovic, the President of the International Wrestling Federation, said it was impossible to put a monetary value on wrestling's readmission to the Olympic club. “This crisis gave us the strength to change and we finally found out that we can change, and this is the most valuable experience of all this journey, let's go with like that.”