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 given in 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 civilians of phone use. They do seem to indicate that the British and American security agencies have the ability to read private communications.”