Also coming up, most of the historic world war ii aircraft making up the battle of Britain Memorial flight have been grounded. One display has already been cancelled. And production was halted on the 6th of march Mission Impossible film, because its star tom cruise broke his ankle while performing a stunt while filming in london. This is bbc news and these are the top good morning. Its thursday 17th august. Im rebecca jones. Welcome to bbc Newsroom Live. Thousands of teenagers across england, wales and Northern Ireland have received their a level results this morning. In england, the results marked a major reform to the exams introduced by the government, including a move away from coursework and modular exams in 13 subjects and a decision to separate as levels to form stand alone qualifications. There was a fall of 0. 2 in the overall pass rate which was down to 97. 9 . But there was an increase in the number of students awarded the top grades with 26. 3 of entries receiving either an
now, actually pretty good since where it started pretty much in the 100 level, stocks are negative even though one of the big three credit agencies affirmed the u.s. government s aaa rating today, calling its credit worthiness exceptional. that s a sharp contrast to this month s downgrade by standard & poor s. we told you this this was going to happen yesterday. it did. protesters make san francisco s rush hour commute a mess. bay area rapid transit shut all four downtown b.a.r.t. stations last night to protesters angry over shootings involving b.a.r.t. police officers. b.a.r.t. blocked cell service at some stations last week so protesters couldn t coordinate on social media. well, phone service stayed on last night. news corps exec james murdoch may have to answer new questions in parliament on that phone hacking scandal. a british lawmaker says murdoch may have misled his committee about settlements paying to hacking victims. they want him clarify his statements. murdoc
phone hacking scandal that doomed a best-selling tabloid and rocked the very pillars of society. today, the parliamentary committee that grilled rupert murdoch and his son james last month released letters suggesting that illegal snooping, hacking, eavesdropping, were a lot more common at the now defunct news of the world than the murdochs led on. one such letter is from a reporter named clive goodman who was sacked and jailed for hacking the cell phones of the royal family. he writes to his paper s human resources department, this decision is inconsistent because, here s a name blacked out, and other members of staff were carrying out the same illegal procedures. he says this practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference until explicit reference to it was banned by the editor. now james murdoch appears to have some explaining to do. highly likely james murdoch will be invited back to give evidence. before that we want to take a very detailed account of