welcome to bbc news. broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is mike embley. our top stories: claims that countless civilians were killed in mosul during last year's coalition air strikes against i.s militants. now one distro to us except the coalition. look, this was one of my daughters who got killed. and this was one of my sons. “— daughters who got killed. and this was one of my sons. —— know one distro gus. —— no—one destroyed us. anger in armenia, as parliament blocks the opposition leader's bid to become prime minister. he's called for strikes across the country. the youtube stars encouraging students to cheat. some are being paid to promote essay—writing websites to students and facebook says it's developing a new privacy control,

allowing users to delete their browsing history. nine months since the group known as islamic state was defeated in its stronghold of mosul, and it's still not clear how many iraqi civilians died in the battle. the range of estimates is huge — from at least a thousand, to more than 10,000. and reports suggest many were killed in coalition airstrikes. so far, only the us and australia have accepted any responsibility for civilian deaths, the official line from britain's ministry of defence is that officials have seen no evidence. 0ur defence correspondent, jonathan beale reports from mosul. this is the graveyard of the group called islamic state. it is also the tomb of an unknown number of civilians. the old city of mosul, where the extremists made their last stand. defeated with the help of unrelenting coalition air strikes. making their way through the shattered shell of the city,

a team of iraqi volunteers, trying to clear up the chaos. this was home to tens of thousands of people, trapped in the fighting. nine months on, it is still a toxic wasteland, littered not just with bombs, but bodies, too. they could be is fighters and their families, or the civilians they corralled to use as human shields. and next door, they have just found more. is suicide belts lie strewn in the rubble, but many innocents were killed alongside them. there are a lot of victims from the air strikes and a lot

of them are still buried under the rubble. we cannot pull them out with our bare hands. the coalition dropped or fired nearly 30,000 munitions on this one city. mostly american bombs, but british ones, too. the ministry of defence insists it has seen no evidence it caused any civilian casualties. but a source inside the coalition has told us, that is

simply not true. we have used an actor's voice to protect his identity. iam certain i am certain that british airstrikes have caused civilian casualties. to suggest that they have not, is nonsense. 0ur source told us of an raf strike on a truck bomb here in east mosul last year. he said two civilians were almost certainly killed in the blast, but the mod insists those killed were highly probably is fighters. uncertainty from the air and on the ground, too. this man says in the aftermath, women and men were screaming. he said some of them were wounded. 0thers told us, is were in the area, but the mod refused our request to view the cockpit video, nor will it reveal the co—ordinates

of other british air strikes. but back in the old city, there is no doubt that many were killed by coalition bombs. no—one destroyed us except the coalition. look, this was one of my daughters who got killed. and this was one of my sons. where, where, where did they take our civilians? there were just families in this house and in that house over there. so, why did it get hit? was isis there? the mod says it took extreme care but cannot eliminate the risk to civilians. but it has never had anyone like this on the ground to investigate. there are just estimates of the numbers of civilians killed. what looks like a macabre team photo is how these locals are trying to keep track of the dead. the coalition did help rid this city of the scourge of is, but at what cost? let's take a look at some of the other stories making the news. the most senior roman catholic to be charged with sexual abuse is to face two

separate trials in australia. cardinal george pell is the vatican treasurer. he's 76. at a brief hearing in melbourne, defence and prosecution agreed he should face one trial relating to his time as a priest in ballarat in the 1970s, and another from when he was archbishop of melbourne twenty years later. at least seven people have been killed by militants north of baghdad. the security forces are scouring the town of tarmiya for suspected members of the islamic state group. the government denied a claim by islamic state that it had taken control of the area. during the annual may day protests in paris, police have arrested nearly 200 masked demonstrators. reports suggest anarchist groups broke away from a peaceful rally to set fire to vehicles and smash shop windows, in protest at president macron's economic reforms. four people, including a police officer, were slightly hurt. the leader of armenia's protest movement, nikol pashinyan, has insisted that peaceful protests will continue, after the governing party blocked his efforts to become prime minister. crowds are expected to take to the streets again in the coming hours in the capital yerevan and mr pashinyan has called

for a general strike. lebo diseko has more. they had gathered here to watch what they see as democracy done. instead, thousands of supporters of nikol pashinyan were left stunned and disappointed, as parliament voted against the popular opposition leader as prime minister. he got just 45 of the 53 votes he needed. for many, it is an attempt either ruling republican party to block the people's choice. —— by the. nikol pashinyan is now calling for a campaign of civil disobedience. the general strike from wednesday morning, with roads and airports block. —— block. it is a far cry from last week ‘s celebrations on the treats of the capital yerevan.

scenes of joy the treats of the capital yerevan. scenes ofjoy in after the unpopular prime minister was forced to resign. it was called the velvet revolution, change without a bullet fired and it followed weeks of protest, demanding the prime minister stepped down the. nikol pashinyan was the man many wa nted nikol pashinyan was the man many wanted in thatjob, earlier he warned mps of major unrest if they fail to vote him in. translation: armenian people are revising, we are ina waiting armenian people are revising, we are in a waiting period, this is national and is unstoppable. -- awakening. nikol pashinyan is now urging supporters to stay on the streets to stop the ruling party from stealing the people speak recently he says a revolution of love and tolerance continues. a day after a bbc investigation into the illegal sale of codeine cough syrup, nigeria's government has banned its import and production. thousands of young people are sourcing it without prescription, often from employees of pharmaceutical companies

and becoming addicted. mark zuckerberg has told facebook‘s annual conference for developers that the company is working on a new privacy control that will allow users to delete their browsing history. responding to the uproar over the misuse of millions of people's personal data by the political consultancy cambridge analytica, the facebook ceo called it a major breach of trust. he insisted the platform was taking a number of steps to make sure it never happens again. first, as you all know, we are restricting the data that developers will be able to get people. secondly, we need to find any other bad apps that are out there. we are currently in the process of investigating every single nikol —— app and if we find anything

suspicious will bring in independent auditors to do a full audit and if any data was disused we will be in that developer and tell anyone whose data was effected. michael nunez deputy tech editor at mashablejoins me now from new york. what did you make of this, a lot of nervous developers going to this conference this year. a lot of people expected mark zuckerberg to address the cambridge analytica data scandal upfront and to his credit he actually did. he started the conference off with several thoughts about the scandal and then with each segment, with each announcement, i think he cautioned those announcements of with how they were going to a dress this into the future. do you think the announcement will address those concerns? i think some of it will. for example, facebook announced that they are going to be launching a dating service in the near future. that is very clearly a strategy that

they are employing to gather more information about people's romantic lives and so in that sense, they are still data mining, which was much of the concern for most people. in that sense, they are not really addressing what people are most concerned about. the reality is that facebook is going to continue to operate by this data mining principle, they just operate by this data mining principle, theyjust need to give users greater understanding of where thatis users greater understanding of where that is being used, where it is shared and give them an opportunity to opt out. to be plain, data mining is their business. that's right. facebook rates its money by profiling its users have been selling those profiles, whether they are anonymous or not, they sell that information to advertisers. the more information to advertisers. the more information they have about you, your political leanings, any of your tendencies or your personal beliefs, they are able to use that as a tool

for basically emotional manipulation to get you to buy products. that is ultimately what brings facebook value. how seriously did you take his assertions that we find the bad apps. his assertions that we find the bad apps, bring in auditors and banned those. i think some of those steps we re those. i think some of those steps were warranted and commended. but i think anyone who has been following the cambridge analytica scandal closely understands that was just one actor among tens of thousands and there is no getting that information back. that has already been disseminated across the world and data firms are going to use that going forward because they have already being given access to that stuff. in a lot of sense, it is too little too late, but you do at least commend facebook or trying to address some of the case concerns —— for trying to address these concerns

and there was a lot around giving users the control about information they are sharing and that has been very awesome, in my book. very commendable. in mainstream media would talk about facebook as if it is social media but for a whole load of young people who are the new customers he needs, they have nothing to do with facebook largely because their parents, grandparents and teachers are on it. can you restate the question? we tend to talk about facebook as if it is social media but for a whole load of young people out there they have nothing to do with it, do they?” think there has been a migration of younger people from facebook to other apps. the problem is that facebook owns all of its greatest competitors, something like instagram, where a lot of people spend their time, and so is whatsapp, which is another mobile application that facebook bought for application that facebook bought for a lot of money and it is because

their user growth was growing at a faster rate than facebook‘s. people are leaving facebook, they are using other things in place of facebook, such as messenger and whatsapp and instagram. the problem is facebook owns those things and they have a stranglehold on social networks in general. thank you very much indeed. stay with us on bbc news, still to come: scotland's bid to cut binge drinking. it's the world's first country to bring in minimum pricing for alcohol. nothing, it seems, was too big to withstand the force of the tornado. the extent of the devastation will lead to renewed calls for government help to build better housing. internationally, there have already been protests. sweden says it received no warning of the accident. indeed, the russians at first denied anything had gone wrong.

only when radioactive levels started to increase outside russia were they forced to admit the accident. for the mujahideen, the mood here is of great celebration. this is the end of a 12—year war for them. they've taken the capital, which they have fighting for for so long. it was 7:00am in the morning, the day when power began to pass from the minority to the majority, when africa, after 300 years, reclaimed its last white colony. very good to have you with us. this is bbc news. the latest headlines: there've been fresh claims that civilians were killed in mosul in iraq during last year's coalition air strikes against is militants. a bbc investigation has discovered

that some stars on the video sharing platform youtube are being paid to promote essay writing websites to school children and students on a big scale. a company based in ukraine is paying the online personalities to encourage people to pay for essays. the universities minister told the bbc that the revelations undermined education and said youtube which is owned by google had a moral responsibility to act. 0ur education editor bra nwen jeffreys has this exclusive report. back in the action, boy! youtube channels reach millions each day. i'm back with another prank. we're checking out a compilation of really stupid people! the creators have huge influence, influence that business wants to buy. want to give a shout—out to all of you... i'm going to ask for 5k likes if you want a part two this time. our investigation has uncovered the youtube stars selling cheating, paid by a company in ukraine, promoting a service to students that

could land them in serious trouble, targeting teenagers using the people they trust. and don't waste your time doing your essays. let these people do it for you. if you guys are struggling in school or college, check out edubirdie.com to hire a super—smart guy to do your essays for you. super—smart geek. plagiarism—free! we're helping you cheat. you won't get in any troubles, guaranteed. it's going to get you an a+. this is clearly wrong, it's clearly wrong because it is enabling cheating, potentially on an industrial scale. it's normalising cheating. we're not talking about the video ads you usually see. these are youtubers themselves, talking about pranks, gaming, dating. then they tell you about a company called edubirdie. ok, so i'm going to interrupt this video and give a shout—out to the sponsor, edubirdie.com.

if you guys are playing too much fortnite and have no time to write your essays... go to edubirdie.com, 100% plagiarism free. this is for every school kid watching my videos, i know that there's loads of you out there. we found more than 250 channels with videos sponsored by edubirdie, videos viewed hundreds of millions of times, and that's just the ones in english. some youtubers say they'd never accept this kind of sponsorship. how do you balance studies with social life? ibz and courtney are students at cambridge university. they promote hard work and study on youtube channels. having seen the edubirdie ads, were they in any doubt this was the selling of cheating? no, not at all. in plain sight, i think as soon as you hear it, whether the influencer mentions cheating or not, you know, ok, i'm not doing this work, i'm about to hand in work that i didn't write, it's not copy and pasted,

it won't be plagiarised, but it's not my work, it's cheating. how powerful is that message when it comes from a youtuber you trust? you will see big youtubers saying it, and that can influence small youtubers to promote it as well, and then it will have a massive impact on young children and teenagers. and now imagine you have all these essays to do, and now you have a solution that is being promoted by your favourite person. so how easy is it for students to buy essays? we asked edubirdie.com to write two from scratch, one english gcse, the other degree level. we got them marked. a "c" for the english essay and 60% for the university assignment. not quite the a+ promised on youtube. edubirdie told us youtubers had creative choice and total freedom in what they said and it was clear that anything obtained through the website should only be used as a sample or a reference. but it's notjust adults being offered cash. this 15—year—old is one of several

children who have accepted edubirdie money. they basically write your essays for you and it's100% plagiarism—free. his mum told us she was shocked. she didn't know her son was taking sponsorship. it's so insidious. they‘ re making it look like it's cool, actually, like it is a lifestyle choice. we showed some of the videos to the universities minister. these are the people to do it for you, written by doctors... cheating is wrong, it undermines quality, it undermines standards. never mind what edubirdie says, it is wrong. this is something that is corrosive to education, and i think youtube has got to step up to the plate and exercise some responsibility here. i wanted to speak to someone at youtube's london headquarters where some of their most successful channels are on display. instead, in a statement,

the company said this. and the company added they "would be working with youtubers so they better understand that in—video promotions must not promote dishonest activity." if you can't be bothered to write your essays. the perfect option for you! none of the youtubers would do an interview. alpay b told us "whether a student wants to cheat or not, it's totally their choice, everyone has got their own hustle." branwen jeffreys, bbc news. let's take a look at some of the other stories making the news. a fire in a skyscraper in sao paulo in brazil has left at least one person dead. the 26—storey building collapsed after being engulfed in flames. the abandoned offices had been occupied by about 150 squatters.

firefighters fear more people may have been trapped inside — and others killed when the building collapsed. the blaze is thought to have been caused by a gas explosion. gates have been installed in venice to help control the flow of tourists at key attractions in the city. the unesco world heritage site attracts some 30 million tourists a year leading to large queues and clogged streets. the cities mayor said he is trying to ensure the safety of visitors and local residents. the scottish government has become the first country in the world to introduce a minimum price for alcohol to try to stop excessive drinking. the cost of some of the cheapest drinks has now tripled. critics say the move will hit people on low incomes disproportionately. here are some of the key facts. all of the evidence says that while

it is not going to solve the problem on its own, without action that targets the affordability of alcohol, then we won't make the progress we need to see. it started off about four cans of beer per day. then it started to be crates of beer. then it was a bottle of wine every night. and some beer and you could get free bottles for a tenner. —— three. when alcohol prices rise, deaths

from alcohol fall. when alcohol prices fall, deaths from alcohol rise. people think they're not influenced by price, but they are. we have a lot of customers on a low income, a tight income, they don't have a lot to spend. 0n income, a tight income, they don't have a lot to spend. on a friday or saturday they want a bottle of cheap cider because that is all they can afford. i think it is unfair on them. contrasting views there on minimum

pricing for alcohol in scotland. plenty more about it on our website — that's at bbc.com/news. thank you for watching. good morning. the day ahead is a "getting better" kind of day. after a particularly wet start for some, some heavy rain around first thing, rain will clear most areas at least through the day, and then we're into a story of sunshine and one or two showers. this is the weather system bringing in the wet weather overnight, into the morning. clearing away from western scotland, northern ireland as we start the day, so temperatures will take a little bit of a dip late in the night here. but elsewhere, not quite as cold a start to the day as we saw yesterday morning, but for the commute,

it will be a thoroughly wet one. eastern scotland, through a good part of central england and eastern wales, a few showers in the east. but a few get away with not too much wet weather early on, but it does turn wetter through the middle part of the day. as the rain clears from central and western parts, we see sunshine and just one or two showers. some of those showers could be wintry over the tops of the scottish mountains, some hail mixed in too. and temperatures down a little bit on what we saw through tuesday, but pleasant enough in the south where you have the sunshine. now, the rain will be last to clear east anglia, south—east, roughly late afternoon and early evening, and clear skies to take it into wednesday night. a few showers continuing for parts of scotland in particular, but most will be dry. but what does happen through wednesday night into thursday is that, with the jet stream dipping southwards just temporarily, we'll see some slightly cooler air push its way in. so it'll be a chillier start once again on thursday morning. don't be surprised, eastern scotland, central and eastern england, if there's a touch of frost in one or two areas. but a lovely sunny start totheday—_

here, before cloud increases and that cloud will thicken up in northern ireland, western scotland, producing some spots of drizzle, some heavier bursts of rain for 0rkney and shetland through the afternoon. but after that chilly start, south—westerly winds push in, weekend. and-high pressure, ,i ,.7 f.f dominates, mainly across southern

areas. have to watch these weather fronts bringing some occasional rain to scotland and maybe northern ireland, particularly through saturday night into sunday. and most places will stay dry. this is bbc news. the headlines: a source inside the coalition fighting the islamic state group has told the bbc he believes civilians have been killed as a result of british air strikes. it comes as teams of iraqi volunteers are discovering human remains at sites across mosul. the uk‘s ministry of defence says "everything possible" is done to minimise the risk to civilians. the armenian opposition leader, nikol pashinyan, has called for a general strike after the governing republican party voted against his election as prime minister. addressing tens of thousands of supporters massed in the capital yerevan, he urged them to block roads, railway stations and airports. the chief executive of facebook, mark zuckerberg, says the company is working on a new privacy control that will allow users to delete their browsing history. he also revealed plans to launch a dating service

on the social network. now on bbc news: today in parliament.