Scottish independence: Salmond and Darling clash in TV debate

Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling went head-to-head before the 18 September referendum

Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling have clashed in a TV debate ahead of the Scottish independence referendum.

Scotland's first minister said the nation was being run by Westminster parties it did not vote for.
Mr Darling, leader of the pro-Union Better Together campaign, said independence campaigners had failed to answer key questions.
The STV debate, from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, in Glasgow, came ahead of the 18 September vote.
Mr Salmond told the 350-strong studio audience that very few people disputed Scotland could be a successful, independent country.
He said 49 of the 71 countries which took part in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games were the same size or smaller than Scotland, yet thousands of children with families were reliant on food banks, while the UK government was spending an "obscene" amount of money on nuclear weapons, based on the Clyde.

"For more than half of me life, Scotland has been governed by parties the we didn't elect at Westminster - and these parties have given us everything from the poll tax to the bedroom tax, and they are the same people who, through 'Project Fear' are telling us that this country can't run our own affairs," said Mr Salmond.
"My case this evening is simple - no one, absolutely no one will do a better job of running Scotland than the people who live and work in Scotland.
"On 18 September, we have the opportunity of a lifetime - we should seize it with both hands."

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Alistair Darling MP: ''No thanks to the risk of independence''

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Alex Salmond: "No one will do a better job of running Scotland than the people who live and work in Scotland"

Mr Darling said the referendum was about Scotland's future, not patriotism.
"There are times that, for the love of our family and the love of our country, it's sometimes best to say 'No' - not because we can't, but simply because it is not the best thing to do," he said.
"In six weeks' time, we will make the biggest decision that we've ever made here in Scotland - and remember this, if we decide to leave, there is no going back - there's no second chance."
Hitting out at Mr Salmond, the former UK chancellor said: "We cannot make this decision on the basis of guesswork, fingers crossed or his blind faith."
"Let's say with confidence, let's say with pride, let's say with optimism, 'no thanks' to the risks of independence and lets say 'let's have the best of both worlds, not just for us but for generations to come."

21st Century Fox withdraws bid for Time Warner

Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox has withdrawn its bid to purchase US entertainment giant Time Warner Inc for an estimated $80bn (£47bn).

Time Warner rejected Fox's initial offer in July.
The company wrote in a statement that Time Warner had "refused to engage with us to explore an offer which was highly compelling".
It added that the reaction in the company's share price since the proposal was unveiled undervalues Fox.
Shares in Time Warner plunged over 11% in after-hours trading after news of the withdrawal was announced.
As part of the announcement, Fox said it would authorise a $6bn share repurchase programme.
That pleased investors, who sent shares in the firm up over 6% in trading after markets were closed.
Fox's share price had declined by 11% since news of the takeover was announced.

F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone pays to end bribery trial

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Bernie Ecclestone tells waiting reporters "I'm going to take care of Formula 1"

A German court has agreed to end the bribery trial of Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone in exchange for a $100m (£60m) payment from him.

Mr Ecclestone's offer was based on an existing provision in German law.
Earlier on Tuesday German prosecutors accepted the offer from the 83-year-old billionaire who dominates motor racing.
He went on trial in April, accused of paying a German banker 33m euros (£26m; $44m) to ensure that a company he favoured could buy a stake in F1.
He denies wrongdoing.
The ruling means he walks free from the district court in Munich and can continue running the sport. It also means Mr Ecclestone is found neither guilty nor innocent.
His personal wealth is , which ranks him as the 12th richest UK billionaire.
If found guilty, he could have faced a 10-year jail term and the end of his decades-long dominance of motor racing.

Gerhard Gribkowsky, seen here at the start of his trial in October 2011, is now serving a prison sentence

A BayernLB banker, Gerhard Gribkowsky, was allegedly paid by Mr Ecclestone to ensure the F1 stake was bought by a company that he favoured, so that he would remain in charge of the sport.
Gribkowsky was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in 2012 for accepting bribes.
Mr Ecclestone says the payment was given to Gribkowsky after the banker threatened to make false claims about the F1 boss's tax status.
Prosecutors said Mr Ecclestone's advanced age and other mitigating circumstances gave grounds to accept the $100m offer.
'That's do-able' Mr Ecclestone has attended most of the hearings in person and arrived at the courthouse on Tuesday in a limousine, looking relaxed and accompanied by his wife, Fabiana Flosi.

Bernie Ecclestone in a court lift in Munich on Tuesday

Bernie Ecclestone (right) with lawyers Norbert Scharf (L) and Sven Thomas

Bernie Ecclestone has dominated the F1 business for decades

Asked by Judge Peter Noll if he could raise the $100m, Mr Ecclestone replied "yes". When asked if the payment could be made within a week, his defence lawyer, Sven Thomas, said: "That's do-able."
Judge Noll ruled that $99m would go to the Bavarian state coffers while $1m would be donated to a children's hospital. The sum is believed to be a record for such a payment.
Court spokesperson Andrea Titz said Mr Ecclestone: "The court did not consider a conviction overwhelmingly likely from the present point of view.
"With this type of ending... there is no ruling on guilt or innocence of the defendant."
'Really insolent' Under German law defendants can in certain circumstances "buy" termination of a trial.
The legal proviso exists in order to ease the burden on the courts and to deal with cases where reaching a judgment could prove difficult.
However a lawyer quoted by the Spiegelonline website, Franz Bielefeld, said it was unusual for the clause to be invoked in mid-trial - more often it is done before a trial starts.
Former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, of the Liberal FDP party, criticised use of the loophole in the Ecclestone case, saying it was "not just bad taste - it's really insolent".
She said it allowed rich people to go free, whereas the less well-heeled could face prison.

Afghan soldier attack on UK army camp kills US general

Camp Qargha is a military training academy located near Kabul

A US major-general has been killed in an attack by a man in Afghan military uniform at a British-run military academy near Kabul, US officials say.

Two British soldiers were among the wounded, along with several Americans, a German general and an Afghan general.
Afghanistan's Ministry of Defence said the Afghan soldier who opened fire was shot dead.
The US major-general is the most senior international soldier killed since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The BBC understands the shooting at Camp Qargha happened after a dispute broke out.
The attacker was a soldier who was recruited three years ago, Afghan defence ministry sources told the BBC.
Afghan 'Sandhurst' The incident is said to have occurred late morning or lunchtime after an argument between Afghans and an armed Afghan soldier.

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

The BBC's David Loyn says the Afghan Ministry of Defence has confirmed that several foreign soldiers have been injured

The Afghan soldier opened fire from a guard post at a large group of senior Afghan and international troops.
By the time he had emptied the magazine of his US-issue M16 rifle, more than a dozen people had been shot, our correspondent says.
The Afghan commander of the British-led officers' academy, General Gulam Sakhi, was among those wounded.
The training academy is modelled on UK military academy Sandhurst and will be the only British military presence in Afghanistan when operations end this year.

The US major-general was the highest-ranking international military casualty since the fall of the Taliban in 2001

It first took cadets last October. A UK MoD spokesman said the incident was under investigation "and it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time".
But the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said : "We can confirm that an incident occurred involving local Afghan and Isaf troops at Camp Qargha.
"The camp, also known as the Kabul ANA Officer Academy, is an Afghan National Security Forces facility. We are in the process of assessing the situation."
Previous shooting

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby: "The insider threat is a pernicious threat"

The academy is set in a long, low ridge of hills close to Kabul.
Its military history syllabus includes the analysis of Afghan tactics in past wars against the British, as well as during the mujahedeen wars against the Soviet army.
There were 10,000 applicants who applied ahead of its first intake.
Shortly after the academy opened there was a shooting incident when an Afghan soldier in a neighbouring barracks opened fire, injuring Australian and New Zealand troops providing security.
There are also troops from other nations at the site, including a large contingent of US soldiers.
Most of the UK's combat troops have already left Afghanistan, and almost all will have left by the end of the year.

Gaza conflict: Truce holding after Israel withdraws

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

People in Gaza have been returning to see what is left of their homes, as Jon Donnison reports

A 72-hour humanitarian truce is holding in Gaza, halting four weeks of conflict that has claimed more than 1,900 lives.

Israel and Gaza militants maintained fire up until the truce started at 08:00 local time (05:00 GMT).
Israel says it has withdrawn all forces to positions outside Gaza, and some residents there are now returning to discover the fate of their homes.
The truce has drawn an international welcome, and the focus for a longer deal will now fall on talks in Cairo.
'Durable solution' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement commending the armed forces.
"This was a complex operation that made heroes of soldiers under difficult combat conditions," he said.

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Martin Patience in Gaza and Bethany Bell in Jerusalem say there have been no reports of rockets since the ceasefire began

"There is no 100% guarantee for success but we did all we could to achieve our goal."
The EU and US have welcomed the ceasefire.
The EU called on all parties to respect the truce, and paid tribute to Egypt, which helped broker the deal.
It said: "We hope that this can be extended into a lasting ceasefire. We call on the parties not to miss this opportunity."

Israel-Gaza attacks

8 July

Israeli offensive began

• 4,760+ air strikes on Gaza
  3,370+ rockets fired at Israel
  
• 1,867 people killed in Gaza
  UN estimates 68% of deaths are civilians
  
• 4 civilians killed in Israel
  63 Israeli soldiers killed
  
Figures as of 09:00GMT, 5 August. Sources: Palestinian Health Ministry, OCHA, IDF

AP

US state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the US would continue to help the sides achieve a "durable, sustainable solution for the long term".
Hamas, which controls Gaza, has been counting the cost to the territory of the Israeli offensive.
Deputy Economy Minister Taysir Amro said that it could be up to $6bn (£3.55bn).
The BBC's Martin Patience in Gaza City says it is now quiet there, with Palestinian fishermen heading out to sea, as other residents stock up on supplies and try to make sense of four weeks of destruction.

Many Palestinians have been returning to damage or destroyed homes

Israeli soldiers celebrate after returning from Gaza

Fishermen in Gaza returned to the sea as the truce took hold

Palestinians remove a body found under rubble in Rafah, southern Gaza

A young Israeli attends the grave of a soldier killed in the Gaza fighting

Some have been returning to homes they were forced to evacuate during the offensive.
In the northern town of Beit Lahiya, Zuhair Hjaila, told Reuters he had lost his home and his supermarket.
"This is complete destruction. I never thought I would come back to find an earthquake zone."
In the southern town of Rafah, resident Tawfiq Barbakh told Associated Press: "I never saw anything like this in my life. I don't know how many shells landed every minute but it felt like 20 or 30."

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Maram and David share their Gaza audio diaries with 5 live (Recorded between 28 July and 3 August)

On the Israeli side of the border, Israela Yoed, who has lived on the Kfar Aza kibbutz for 50 years, told Agence France-Presse she did not trust Hamas but was confident the truce would hold.
"I believe that we can make things better through negotiations. I won't leave; I'm not afraid," she said.
Another kibbutz resident, Orly Doron, was more sceptical: "We had three or four ceasefires during this war; we all saw they weren't kept."
The BBC's Bethany Bell in Jerusalem says that while the troops have withdrawn, it is likely the army will go on searching for militant tunnels along the border - always a cause of great concern in Israel.
'Sustained quiet' The latest ceasefire was brokered by Egypt in talks between Palestinian delegates in Cairo on Monday.
Israel did not take part but has now sent a team for indirect negotiations.

Israel-Gaza attacks

• 28 days of airstrikes
  19 days of Israeli ground operations
  

• Israeli military claims

  32 border tunnels collapsed
  3,000 missiles destroyed
  

UN estimates up to

485,000

people displaced in Gaza

Figures as of 09:00GMT, 5 August. Sources: IDF, UN

Getty

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi told the BBC a long-term truce would be hard to achieve.

"What Israel has done now is make peace all that much more difficult, because it has produced a sense of animosity, of anger, of distrust, of revenge," she said.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC that Israel had accepted a similar ceasefire deal three weeks ago and it was rejected by Hamas.
He said Israel's main focus for a longer-term deal would be on demilitarising Gaza to achieve a "sustained period of quiet".
The main Palestinian demands include the end of Israel's blockade of the territory and the opening of border crossings. They will also want internationally funded reconstruction.
Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on 8 July with the stated aim of ending rocket attacks and destroying tunnels used by Palestinian militants.
The latest figures from Gaza's health ministry list 1,867 deaths. Some 63 Israeli soldiers and four civilians in Israel have died.

Octopus snatches coconut and runs

By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Octopus snatches coconut and runs

An octopus and its coconut-carrying antics have surprised scientists.

Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.
One of the researchers, Dr Julian Finn from Australia's Museum Victoria, told BBC News: "I almost drowned laughing when I saw this the first time."
He added: "I could tell it was going to do something, but I didn't expect this - I didn't expect it would pick up the shell and run away with it."
Quick getaway
The veined octopuses (Amphioctopus marginatus) were filmed between 1999 and 2008 off the coasts of Northern Sulawesi and Bali in Indonesia. The bizarre behaviour was spotted on four occasions.

The octopuses use the coconuts as a shelter

The eight-armed beasts used halved coconuts that had been discarded by humans and had eventually settled in the ocean.
Dr Mark Norman, head of science at Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and one of the authors of the paper, said: "It is amazing watching them excavate one of these shells. They probe their arms down to loosen the mud, then they rotate them out."
After turning the shells so the open side faces upwards, the octopuses blow jets of mud out of the bowl before extending their arms around the shell - or if they have two halves, stacking them first, one inside the other - before stiffening their legs and tip-toeing away.
Dr Norman said: "I think it is amazing that those arms of pure muscle get turned into rigid rods so that they can run along a bit like a high-speed spider.
"It comes down to amazing dexterity and co-ordination of eight arms and several hundred suckers."
Home, sweet home
The octopuses were filmed moving up to 20m with the shells.
And their awkward gait, which the scientists describe as "stilt-walking", is surprisingly speedy, possibly because the creatures are left vulnerable to attack from predators while they scuttle away with their prized coconuts.

The veined octopus is a meaty feast for predators

The octopuses eventually use the shells as a protective shelter. If they just have one half, they simply turn it over and hide underneath. But if they are lucky enough to have retrieved two halves, they assemble them back into the original closed coconut form and sneak inside.
The shells provide important protection for the octopuses in a patch of seabed where there are few places to hide.
Dr Norman explained: "This is an incredibly dangerous habitat for these animals - soft sediment and mud couldn't be worse.
"If they are buried loose in mud without a shell, any predator coming along can just scoop them up. And they are pure rump steak, a terrific meat supply for any predator."
The researchers think that the creatures would initially have used large bivalve shells as their haven, but later swapped to coconuts after our insatiable appetite for them meant their discarded shells became a regular feature on the sea bed.
Surprisingly smart
Tool use was once thought to be an exclusively human skill, but this behaviour has now been observed in a growing list of primates, mammals and birds.

They do things which, normally, you'd only expect vertebrates to do Tom Tregenza, University of Exeter

The researchers say their study suggests that these coconut-grabbing octopuses should now be added to these ranks.
Professor Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary ecologist from the University of Exeter, UK, and another author of the paper, said: "A tool is something an animal carries around and then uses on a particular occasion for a particular purpose.
"While the octopus carries the coconut around there is no use to it - no more use than an umbrella is to you when you have it folded up and you are carrying it about. The umbrella only becomes useful when you lift it above your head and open it up.
"And just in the same way, the coconut becomes useful to this octopus when it stops and turns it the other way up and climbs inside it."
He added that octopuses already have a reputation for being an intelligent invertebrate.
He explained: "They've been shown to be able to solve simple puzzles, there is the mimic octopus, which has a range of different species that it can mimic, and now there is this tool use.
"They do things which, normally, you'd only expect vertebrates to do."

Pornographic videos flood YouTube

By Siobhan Courtney Interactive reporter, BBC News

Jump media player

Media player help

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

The BBC's Interactive reporter Siobhan Courtney talks about the investigation into the 'video attack'.

Video-sharing website YouTube has removed hundreds of pornographic videos which were uploaded in what is believed to be a planned attack.
The material was uploaded under names of famous teenage celebrities such as Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers.
Many started with footage of children's videos before groups of adults performing graphic sex acts appeared on screen.
YouTube owner Google said it was aware and addressing the problem.
Disturbing videos
The BBC was made aware that scores of sexually explicit and inappropriate material was uploaded.
In one video titled Jonas Brother Live On Stage, a user posted a comment saying: "I'm 12 years old and what is this?"

This kind of raid showed how easy it is to upload porn to a website that millions of people browse on a daily basis "Flonty"

Under other uploaded videos, online users posted comments such as: "Take the tags off, you'll get us caught." Another said: "Your gonna kill us all!"
As the disturbing videos were being uploaded, many viewers added them to their favourites and rated them highly.
One user believed to have uploaded some of the pornographic material videos is Flonty, whose profile states that he is 21 and from Germany.
He told the BBC: "I did it because YouTube keeps deleting music. It was part of a 4Chan raid."
4Chan is a bulletin board focusing on Japanese manga and anime but some of its more extreme sections have been described on online messageboards as "sick" and "horrifying stuff".
"Anything and everything can, and usually does, happen here. We have our very own unique culture, and there is no group quite like us anywhere out there".
Community guidelines
When asked if he was concerned that children can freely watch such inappropriate material on YouTube, Flonty replied: "Children will find inappropriate material around the internet anyway.
"This kind of raid showed how easy it is to upload porn to a website that millions of people browse on a daily basis".
Google spokesman Scott Rubin told BBC News: "We are aware of the slew of pornographic videos that were uploaded.
"We are addressing them as we would any video that violates our community guidelines.
"In addition, any account we discover that has been set up specifically to attack YouTube will be disabled."