this is bbc world news, the headlines: israel has evacuated hundreds of syria's white helmets civil defence volunteers and their families to jordan. the operation was the result of international cooperation. they'd been trapped by a government offensive in a southern syrian border area. at least 1a people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack near kabul airport, just minutes after the vice president arrived in the country. abdul rashid dostum had returned to afghanistan following a year of self imposed exile in turkey. 11 taxi drivers have been killed in south africa after gunmen ambushed them using automatic rifles. the victims were on their way back tojohannesburg in a minibus after attending the funeral of a colleague. a survivor who lost nine members of her family in the tourist boat tragedy in missouri, has said passengers were told not to bother with life jackets. 17 people died when the boat sank in stormy weather on thursday. at 10 o‘clock clive myrie will be here with a full round up of the days news.

first the bbc has uncovered an arsenal of media weapons being used in the war of words in the gulf. will people in the region ever know the truth in an age of fake news? we investigate 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,

quicklyjoined 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 0wenjones 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?" 0ur 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. 0n 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 than1 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. i think you'd agree it's been a pretty remarkable summer for heat and dry weather, as if things could not get any hotter it looks like this upcoming week could potentially be the hottest of the year so far. not for everyone, the further north and west you are across the uk the more cloudy and breezy it will be with rain at times. when icy cool

not quite as hot as what we are going to see further south and east. pretty u nco mforta ble going to see further south and east. pretty uncomfortable from the heat and unity both by day and night, plenty of sunny spells around and it looks like it will stay largely dry bar the odd or thunderstorm. if we look at the pressure chart its low pressure towards the north—west of the uk, further south and east closer to the area of high pressure over the near continent. again it will be a north south—east split, more cloud across this north—west corner, some patchy rain, it will be warm in eastern scotland with shelter but by far the highest textures on monday afternoon will be england and wales with 27—30dc somewhere in the south—east. as we head into tuesday at a similar picture, tangle of weather fronts across the north—west and the uk, try to sink south east but end up fizzling out, could be the odd

shower through central parts of the uk, maybe the odd thundery one, a bit uk, maybe the odd thundery one, a bhdw uk, maybe the odd thundery one, a bit dry and bright, across much of england and wales, temperatures in the low 30s. similar picture on wednesday, maybe the threat of an afternoon shower or thunderstorm being set off from the heat and unity into the afternoon as temperatures once again reach 30 — 33 celsius somewhere in the south—east. closer to the high teens, low 20s in the north and west. we stuck to look to the atla ntic west. we stuck to look to the atlantic or perhaps a change from thursday onwards this will pressure edging forward, we reach thursday and the more active weather front brings more of a breeze. 0utbreaks of rent in northern ireland, much of scotla nd of rent in northern ireland, much of scotland and perhaps western parts of england, some of it could be thundery but ahead of it another hot day of temperatures ranging between 27 and 31 or 32. on thursday the low

area of low pressure pushes further east so we will see further outbreaks of rain across many northern and western areas but again ahead of it we are still in that hot and humid airand ahead of it we are still in that hot and humid air and by friday we are looking at a probably 50 temperature reaching around 30 to 32 celsius, it's going to be a very prolonged, hot spell. further something pushing them because as these weather fronts make inroads and spread east from friday and saturday he will not as the blue colours here just beginning to feed their way and, it will feel cool and fresh, we will lose the humidity by the time we reach the start of next weekend, there will be some showers and a strong breeze but elsewhere are good spells of sunshine and it might be the far city tours onto warmth, temptress into the upper 20s, further west closer to the seasonal norm it looks like further ahead it would be quite as hot as what we will see the next

four or five days, if you showers around and some spells of sunshine and then sounds of it drying up and becoming warmer again. tonight at ten, the brexit secretary says he's confident the uk won't crash out of the eu, without a deal. dominic raab says he believes an agreement is possible within months, if brussels shows ambition. the energy that we're going to bring to these negotiations, the ambition and the pragmatism, we get a deal done in october.