this is bbc news. the headlines: president trump has hit out at his former lawyer, michael cohen, after claims he secretly recorded them talking about payments to a former playboy model. mr trump said it was inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client, and insisted he'd done nothing wrong. survivors of the boat sinking in the us that clamed seventeen lives have been giving their accounts of the disaster. one woman — who lost nine members of herfamily — as they ‘wouldn‘t need them'. police in los angeles have arrested a suspect following a siege at a supermarket. the suspect was being pursued by law enforcement after a shooting when he crashed his vehicle and ran inside.

the technology giant facebook, has suspended a social media firm that analyses the personal data of millions of users. it's part of an investigation into possible links between the company, crimson hexagon, and the russian and us governments. our technology correspondent rory cellan—jones has more on why facebook is taking action and how this case compares to its relationship with cambridge analytica. what it does have a problem with is surveillance. using the data and selling it to governments. the wall streetjournal reported it had contracts with the american government and with an organisation in russia some kremlin links. therefore, facebook suspended its access to the data, launched an investigation. the company hasn't said much, but its chief technology officer, chris bingham, wrote in a blog: "crimson hexagon only collects publicly available social media data that anyone can access." he also said yes, we do have government contracts but we impose strict limits on what they can do.

"under no circumstances is surveillance a permitted use case." they are saying they have done nothing wrong. cambridge analytica was accused of collecting 87 million people's facebook details, a lot of their private data, without their consent. harvesting their data without consent and using it. there is no allegation so far here that this company has done that. it's not how it collected the data, that was probably 0k, it's what it then did with it that is being investigated by facebook. now on bbc news, we look into the latest war of words in the middle east in our world: weapons of mass deception. since last year, the arab gulf has been at war. it is a war of words and images. the weapons include hacking, lobbyists, and accusations of fake news.

qatar is under daily attack on social media. its ruler is ridiculed on the internet, its accused of supporting terrorism. qatar also has a long history of supporting people who want to kill americans. president trump, after visiting saudi arabia, quickly joined in the attack. for its part, qatar denies any support for terrorism. you can spread false news very quickly but, the longer it goes on, and you start wondering, 0k, where is the link between qatar and isis? for the public the question of who is telling the truth is more difficult than ever. translation: the arab audience is becoming increasingly confused. they no longer know which tv channel they should believe. just after midnight,

the attack begins. much of the population is asleep but the official qatar newsagency website is streaming round the clock, as usual. then something strange happens, the news ticker, at the bottom of the screen, starts to quote a speech apparently by the emir of qatar. he is reported to have made some astonishing statements. he's seemed to be supporting iran, saying it was... the emir supposed words flatly contradicted america's policy toward iran — a country which the us considers to be

a sponsor of terrorism. but that was not all. according to the ticker, the emir had also said that qatar was interested in establishing a... it was an extraordinary statement. qatari support for hamas would be a challenge to the us, which officially lists it as a terrorist organisation. within minutes, pro—saudi media and the united arab emirates picked up on the controversial reports and went on to cover them extensively. qatar was swift to deny the emir‘s alleged statements. six weeks later, the washington post newspaper claimed the united arab emirates, known as the uae, was responsible for hacking the qatari newsagency website. the uae‘s foreign minister,

dr anwar gargash, rejected this accusation. we've categorically said we had nothing to do with the whole episode and i think, you know, five—six month now, down the road, the qataris have not really shown us anything to show that the uae is involved. two weeks later, president donald trump weighed in to an already tense situation. in a series of tweets, he attacked qatar. referring to his recent trip to saudi arabia, he said that, amidst all the pomp and ceremony, the king had promised to tackle the funding of extremists.

and the finger was pointing squarely at qatar. trump's support for the saudis only made the crisis worse. qatar's neighbours then move to isolate it. air, land and sea routes were either closed or disrupted. the economic impact on a small gulf state, sandwiched between now hostile neighbours, was initially devastating. diplomatic and business ties were cut and qataris were told to leave saudi arabia, the uae and bahrain. while president trump was tweeting, there was another computer hack, this time the target was the uae. a group called globalleaks released hacked e—mails from the account of yousef al otaiba, the uae ambassador to washington. soon after, in august, 2017, an online investigative magazine,

called the intercept, published a long article based on the e—mails. the hacking war has continued into 2018. e—mails embarrassing to both qatar and the uae have been released in recent months. so how did relations in the gulf drop to such a low point? the gulf crisis did not come out of the blue. qatar and its gulf neighbours have been at odds for years over a series of issues, amongst them, qatar's working relationship with iran and its support for some groups active in the arab uprisings of 2011, like the controversial muslim brotherhood in egypt. the qatari station, aljazeera, was a prominent broadcaster of the arab spring. managing director giles trendle believes their coverage was a cause

of the current coverage. aljazeera was on the street, it was listening to the people, we were reporting on these events as they were taking place and i think there are some regimes tha found that to be threatening and disruptive and i think the forces of change, the popular demands were a threat to some regimes and i think it is maybe now payback time. now those tensions were being played out in a battle of words and pictures on the region's main satellite tv stations. the saudi funded station, al arabiya, claimed... the state owned qatari tv channel hit back. as their governments traded

accusations, where could arab viewers find the truth? there are two big satellite players. first aljazeera. it created a revolution in arab media when it launched in 1996. then there's al arabiya, its rival since 2003. both stations have some of the biggest tv news audiences across the region. aljazeera is owned by the qatari government, while al arabiya, though based in dubai, is saudi owned. a saudi precondition to restoring relations was that the qataris should close down aljazeera, which they believe to be biased, butjust how fair was the news coverage by both sides

of the gulf crisis? and was it legitimate coverage or was it propaganda? we asked dina matar, an expert on arab media, to examine footage broadcast by both sides on the same day. translation: watching these clips, the issue of fake news raises its head. on one of them, the al arabiya one, you see that there's a crisis. in the video you see that there are people queueing up to buy basic supplies. the other video shows a different situation. they are conducting interviews with lots of people sitting in the souq, smoking shisha, saying everything is normal, there's no problem. even the officials are saying that there's no problem. it shows that supermarkets and malls are functioning normally. so who do we believe?

who do we believe? al arabiya declined to speak to us. in a written statement to the bbc, they said... aljazeera journalist, jamal elshayyal, says he has never seen any government interference at his channel. i can categorically say i have never received an editorial decree or guideline from the qatari government, at any point, be it in writing, verbally,

in any way, shape or form. yes, the qatari government funds aljazeera, we are based here, however we enjoy i would say an unprecedented amount of freedom when it comes to our reporting in the arab world. washington, dc, where the gulf rivals are also fighting for supremacy. instead of tv, here they are using another weapon — lobbying. and their target this time is of the us administration and congress. in march this year, crown prince mohammad bin salman met donald trump at the white house. the president announced that the us would be selling saudi arabia $12.5 billion worth of us military hardware. $525 million — that is peanuts for you. should have increased it. jamal khashoggi is a prominent saudi journalist who fled his country in 2017, following his criticisms

of the country's rulers. according to him, the saudis are desperate to keep president trump on side. saprac, the saudi american public relations affairs committee, is an organisation that pushes saudi interests in the us. its activities include a website, called the qatar insider, which publishes reports on qatar's alleged support for terrorist groups. we realised that we needed to have a role on educating the american people about what is

going on in the middle east so, when it comes to the qatar insider, yes, it is a project of saprac to make the americans aware of the facts and nothing but the facts about the bad behaviours of the qatari regime. across town, we visit a law firm called nelson mullins. one of its clients is the qatari government. senior lobbyist chris cushing says strict us laws govern how he can act on behalf of a foreign state. i register on behalf of qatar, which is a client of mine, on behalf of malawi, which is a client of mine, and other foreign clients. there are lobbyists on every side of every issue and there is high level of scrutiny, there's a high level of professionalism. beyond washington's registered

lobbyists though, lies another world of influence pedlars, many of them, including some reputable think tanks, benefit from foreign money, some of it from governments. such sums are supposed to be made public but in practice, they are often not disclosed, to preserve reputations, according to chris cushing. think tanks take domestic corporate money and take foreign money and spend it on behalf of those individuals with minimal or no disclosure. probably every think tank here in washington dc has taken foreign money or wants to take foreign money and has not had the good fortune to get it yet. big money, millions and millions of dollars. and they do not disclose that. the hudson institute, one of washington's biggest thing tanks, says it does not lobby or take foreign money from any non—democratic foreign governments, foreign governments not allied with the united states, or any individuals acting on behalf of such governments, but cushing thinks it had a particular agenda at one conference, held in october of last

year titled, "countering violent extremist — qatar, iran and the muslim brotherhood". a conference he attended. the qataris should fully implement the mou on countering terrorist financing, which was... they have a series of speakers, that go out there and praise the united arab emirates, praise saudi arabia, and point the finger at qatar. the bbc contacted the hudson institute, which says it does not comment on the quality and character of its own public events, adding that: memory sticks containing a film were left on the seats of conference delegates. the film expresses many anti-qatari statements. from the beginning, qatar has been an outlier. qatar also has a long history of supporting people who want to kill americans.

anywhere where sunni radical islamism is operational, and has a significant operation going, we find the footprint of qatar. the film was made by a company called policy impact communications. they're a washington pr firm that specialises in government affairs. the chairman is william nixon, who's listed on the film's credits as executive producer. official records show that in late 2017, a uae company paid him to lobby the us congress on america's relations with qatar. in a written statement to the bbc, mr nixon said: the hudson institute told us that a member of the film's

production team asked a hudson staff member if they could distribute the film. thinking nothing of it, he agreed. in retrospect, the institute say they prefer it hadn't happened. lobbying and controlling the output of television stations are just two fronts of the battle for influence. but a new and important struggle is also taking place online. in recent years, arab audiences have flooded onto social media to get their news. every month, over 100 million users access facebook. in saudi arabia, three quarters of the population are using the messaging service, snapchat. but can they trust the information they are getting there?

at the university of exeter, professor mark owenjones monitors social media across the gulf. twitter was seen, and facebook was seen as the zeitgeist of the arab uprisings and it was increasingly important to authoritarian regimes in the region to have a handle on how people use these platforms. these regimes now push their propaganda on twitter using electronic robots, or bots. the bots look like accounts belonging to real people, but they're fake. they share or retweet messages hundreds or sometimes thousands of times to make them seem more popular than they really are. as an experiment, we asked professorjones to create a bot called laleh, which would look like a real person and approach other twitter users. ok, so i would like you to meet laleh, laleh karahiya. the idea of this bot was to create a good bot, a bot that calls people out for using sectarian hate speech. what laleh does is every time

someone on twitter tweets certain offensive terms, certain sectarian hate speech, laleh will send a reply to them on twitter and say, "hey, do you think this word you used is sectarian hate speech?" our experiment is innocent enough but, used maliciously, laleh could be spreading propaganda and false information around twitter. the gulf crisis has revealed another way in which twitter can be manipulated. this time it involves hash tags. these are key words in a tweet that allow people to search for a message on twitter. the more times these hash tags are re—tweeted, the more popular that message appears to be. both sides in the gulf crisis have benefited from hash tags that look

as though they've spread widely, but does that mean these messages are truly popular? or is itjust that they have been re—tweeted by bogus bots? ben nimmo is a seniorfellow at the atlantic council, an american think tank that focuses on international affairs. he's also an expert on bots. we asked him to scrutinise a list of pro and anti-qatar hash tags to decide which were genuinely popular and which were being pushed by bots. the first hash tag i looked that is one called qatarisnotalone, which is obviously a pro-qatari hash tag. when i look for the bot involvement, what i found was that that first spike that we saw, it was all re—tweets of a single tweet from this account called hassanbink703.

the spike in popularity was caused by accounts all with suspiciously similar names, retweeting the message the second it was posted. when a number of bot accounts work together like this, it's called a botnet. this is a very simple botnet, none of these has a human being behind it, these have all been preprogrammed to share content. this is a botnet which is helping to drive traffic on that hash tag, so you're getting 100 tweets in the space of a couple of seconds. that's a high volume and what it's doing is make the hash tag look more visible and make it look more popular. the pro-qatari bots on the left here, are being artificially multiplied by the botnet. but on the right there are anti-qatari bots at work. they've been pushing tweets and hash tags insulting qatar and its emir, tamim bin hamad al thani. on the fifth ofjuly, 2017, one particular account began sending anti-qatari messages and hash tags.

they accused qatar of killing people in the libyan civil war. they blamed it for spreading extremism, for funding terrorism. these tweets, like those of the pro-qatari bot, hassanbink703, were shared thousands of times. every single one of those top five tweets was posted by the same account, saudq1978. and counting the number of retweets it gained, adding them up, 20,000 retweets of those five posts. that represents a quarter of all the traffic on that hash tag. nimmo's conclusion is that bots were used to make these tweets appear more popular. we don't know who's behind the bots, but the tweets they boosted came from one single account, owned by this man, saud al-qahtani. he's a media adviser

to the saudi royal court. with more than 1 million followers online, he's also one of the country's biggest opinion formers. the bbc tried repeatedly to contact saud al-qahtani to comment on this but without success. the people of the middle east are drowning in a sea of fake news. their media has gambled with any reputation it may ever have had for truth and fairness. not even the end of the gulf crisis will solve that. well, looks like the temperatures are going to soar over the coming

days in some parts of the country. we got up to 29 on saturday. sunday will be similar. so we are technically already in a heatwave, but the really hot air is set to return from monday. temperatures will be in excess of 30 celsius, but this is true mostly for south—eastern parts of the uk. in the short term, we have weather fronts close to north—western parts of the uk. in fact, this weather front is responsible for bringing a lot of cloud through the early hours of sunday morning, and also very humid air, stuck in this air mass which is coming off the atlantic. so temperatures dropping no lower than 15 degrees in belfast, 18 degrees in london. but it is quite overcast, quite murky, mist, even a little bit of drizzle in some areas. so it's sort of a damp feel to things, but it is still

very, very warm. now, sunday starts off pretty overcast, and i think the clouds will be thickest through the day across north—western areas, even some spots of rain. but the best chance for the clouds to break up, if sunshine is what you want, then i guess it's good news for the folks across southern areas. and those temperatures will once again get up to around 28 at least in london, 26 in norwich. mid—20s into yorkshire, even newcastle will be around 2a celsius. mid—20s for belfast, for aberdeen there. a little bit fresher across western scotland, maybe not quite so warm there in glasgow, but warm enough. and that's how we're going to end the weekend. so bright rather than sunny skies, but cloudy here in the north—west, with some very light rain on and off. and next week, or rather the week ahead, we'll see more weatherfronts just about pushing into north—western areas, so slightly fresher atlantic air. but ahead of the weather fronts, my goodness, the air is coming all the way from africa, from spain, portugal, across france. and we could see some of the highest temperatures we've seen so far

this summer, affecting some south—eastern, eastern and maybe central parts of england. 33 is not out of the question. this is sort of a more conservative estimate there. for london and for norwich, at least 31 degrees, possibly already hitting 33 in one or two spots. but notice northern ireland and scotland, a lot more comfortable here. temperatures mostly into the 20s, and the possibility of a little bit of rain, at least some showers. now, look at those temperatures in london. over 30 degrees pretty much all through the week. mid—20s, so more comfortable, i think, for you in cardiff. that's it from me. is the —— welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is nkem ifejika. our top stories... on the brink of a new era: cuba's national assembly considers a new constitution that would bring sweeping reforms. police in los angeles arrest

a suspect after a hostage siege at a grocery shop. one woman's been killed. survivors of a boat sinking in the us that claimed 17 lives say the captain told passengers not to use life jackets. president trump attacks his former lawyer in the row over alleged payments to a former playboy model. and knowing the ropes in paris: a novel way of getting a bird's eye view of the french capital.