a warm welcome to bbc news. our top stories. hackers target twitter, a few names were taken over by scammers. a top american expert on coronavirus doctor anthony fauci says white house attempts to discredit him are bizarre. a team of scientists around the world say they have found unequivocal evidence of climate change thanks to a major piece of research. all eyes on china as details of its second quarter gdp are imminent, has a similar study the shock from coronavirus?

major celebrities twitter accou nts major celebrities twitter accounts have been hacked in what appears to be a large scale and coordinated attack. twitter says officially it is still investigating the issue and in the past half an hour it does appear that some users are now able to send tweets again. the accounts of elon musk, bill gates and the apple corporation are among those affected and as you can see the account of barack obama contains a post asking for bitcoin in giving back to the community. this is clearly a scam, all verify with the blue tech displayed similar messages. let us speak now to executive vice president of the security company in palo alto california. thank you for your time. what you make of this? it really does underscore the

complexity of the systems we depend on, there are administrative tools on twitter that humans need access to and when they have been compromised they have massive consequences. as you count ourselves fortu nate as you count ourselves fortunate that the losses are only a few hundred thousand us dollars. that is still quite a lot of money to a lot of people but it could have been a lot more. those vulnerabilities, those exploits would have been with untold numbers to people who could use it for insider trading or disinformation, but that said, they seem to have been used in an amateur way and for that we can be thankful. twitter did respond quickly. what do you think the point of it was? in this case, there was a very clear desire to commit a very basic form of financial crime. financial crime is harder if you are going to rob a bank or large numbers of people to do insider trading on your behalf, you have to figure out how to move the money and then hide all of the movements of that money. bitcoin presents none of those challenges and if he had all the sort of access

and you're not a sophisticated financial camel, this is one of your better options. these were big names, verified accounts, but a lot of people be worried about the security on twitter? they certainly ought to be and this is not the first time this has happened. administrative compromises that were to go back a number of years and we have even seen states like saudi arabia actually support internal twitter engineered to spy internal twitter engineered to spy on political systems. it is really a good time to reflect onjust how much really a good time to reflect on just how much we depend on new sources like twitter and how a lot of that is quite u ntrustworthy how a lot of that is quite untrustworthy and i would also mention that things that we think are private, like direct m essa 9 es think are private, like direct messages on twitter are really not private when the sort of attacks can occur and that is the sort of thing that we can see. ryan, with all your experience what is your best guess about what happened here? it seems in this case that an administrative tool that an administrative tool that can generate a token that

can represent access, the same thing you can use in a mobile app if you're using your own account, seems to have been compromised, we are seen actually some of the forums share screenshots, like that administrative tool and that will be the access that will allow you to use a wide range of twitter accounts with effectively the same message and effectively the same time. really interesting to talk to you. thank you. there appear to be fresh tensions between the white house and america's top infectious diseases expert, anthony fauci. dr fauci, a key figure in the white house coronavirus task force, has given an interview to the magazine — the atlantic. (00v) in it, a journalist asks: you are the government's top health adviser, and the government you're trying to advise is actively trying to discredit you. doctor fauci responds: well, that is a bit bizarre. i sit here and just shrug my shoulders and say, "well, you know, that's life in the fast lane."(biv)0n wednesday, president trump

was asked for his view on doctor fauci. we're all on the same team, including dr fauci. i have a very good relationship with dr fauci. and we're all on the same team. we want to get rid of this mess that china sent us. so, everybody‘s working on the same line and we're doing very well. we're doing well in a lot of ways and our country's coming back very strong. when you look at those job numbers — we've never had job numbers like we have right now. so it's coming back very strong. the row all comes as the number of cases continues to rise across the country. a further 67,000 cases and 900 deaths have been recorded in the last 2a hours. there are new outbreaks in alabama nevada and north carolina who are all beginning to report a jump in cases. 0ur north america correspondent, david willis, says there is no doubt the white house has tried to discredit dr fauci. over the weekend, the white house issued a series of

bullet points detailing why dr anthony fauci should not be trusted. then peter navarro doubled down today on all that in an article in the usa today. asked about that, president trump said that he did not agree with the opinions expressed by his trade representative, but nonetheless, he is known to have been very critical of doctor anthony fauci in recent weeks and one of the reasons for that is simply this, that dr fauci is the person that more americans trust to navigate their way out of the current crisis. more trust him than do donald trump in that regard and dr fauci at 79 years of age is someone who has navigated americans through the sort of thing before, under no fewer than six presidents,

republican and democrat both. what do you think this suggest, david, for the immediate future, as the pandemic itjust continues to rage across the country? well, it does indeed and we are now approaching 137,000 deaths and it is surreal, isn't it, that we have at this feeding going on between the white house and the top infectious diseases expert. cases of the coronavirus are on the rise in no fewer than 38 states and you mentioned more than 60,000 new cases, 10,000 alone in the state of florida and this is one of the points that anthony fauci has consistently returned to,, to the anger of the white house, making the point that many of the states, like florida simply reopened their economies to quickly and he has urged pushing the reset button, as he puts it, in an attempt to basically try to end the current surge in coronavirus cases here. david willis there.

let's get some of the day's other news. police in moscow have detained around a—hundred protesters who'd taken part in an unauthorised gathering against recent constitutional amendments which allow president putin to stay in powerfor another sixteen years. there were chants of "putin, go!" from sections of the crowd. a reservoir behind ethiopia's disputed grand renaissance dam on the river nile has started filling with water. satelite images showed water levels rising a day after talks with egypt and sudan ended without agreement. sudan and egypt both fear the four billion dollar dam could lead to water shortages in their own nations. indonesian officials say at least 20 people have died after heavy rains caused flash floods on sulawesi island. hundreds of buildings were buried in thick mud after three rivers burst their banks. over a thousand people have been evacuated to temporary shelters.

us secretary of state, mike pompeo says he will visit britain and denmark next week. this comes after britain placed a ban on using 56 technology from chinese telecoms giant huawei. the ban came after the us blocked huawei's access to us chips. the trump administration has been urging all countries to shun huawei, calling the company an arm of the chinese state. here's what mr i think we are watching american businesses understand the political risk in operating in place like hong kong, and they are seeing that their supply chains are potentially being poisoned by the human rights violations, literally the stain of the century in human rights violations, taking place in western china today. i think american businesses are seeing, this is not pleased we are comfortable with. i am watching as they are making different decisions on how to allocate capital inside of their businesses and inside of their supply chains as well. this is all a response to the

actions of the chinese communist party and i think so long as the chinese communist party continues to engage in the activities that it has been undertaking now for an awfully long time, we will see, you will see them confronted in ways that they have not been confronted before, not only by the united states but by freedom loving democracies. joining me from new york now to discuss these comments further is professor ann lee, from new york university and author of a book ‘will china's economy collapse? can you think of a time when relations between us and china have been worse? yes. when chairman mao was running china, the us had put sanctions on china and it would not allow china and it would not allow china to sell many of its goods, so back then, us china relations were also pretty bad, but i would say that today is

probably worse, just because china is such a powerful nation and it is significant in the world, so to but heads with the us is certainly a bigger deal thanit us is certainly a bigger deal than it was then. and where do you think these tensions are likely to lead next? i think they are going to continue going unfortunately there is no saying how low they can go, really, i think it is just up to our imaginations. well, you have a very informed imagination, what do you think is most likely to happen? well, it is very possible that it could eventually devolve into some kind of military conflict, i really hope it does not go to that point, because they are talking about two nuclear powers and things can really escalate out of control, if people do not find a way to work things back and try to

resolve issues diplomatically. so, i hope the worst—case scenario never develops. what do you think is most likely, that they would try to fight this out in a way economically? that is what appears to be the first phase, obviously we have a trade war with china and now also a technology worker, with mike pompeo and pressuring other companies not to use huawei equipment, certainly it can get worse, and we know that president trump can try to keep chinese students from coming to the us as well and prevent investors from investing in us technology companies and, it has been wide and it has been a broad net, certainly it has not

just been economic, because the us is also saying that china has no rights in the south china seas and that also can inflate into something beyond economic threats. very interesting to talk to you, thank you very much. thank you. stay with us on bbc news, still to come: with just a loudspeaker and a storybook, meet the man helping mexico's children during lockdown. after months of talks and missed deadlines, a deal has been struck to keep greece within the eurozone. the immediate prospect of greece going bust, in the worst crisis to hit the eurozone, has been averted. emergency services across central europe are stepping up their efforts to contain the worst floods this century. nearly 100 people have been killed.

broadway is traditionally called "the great white way" by americans. but tonight, it's completely blacked out. it's a timely reminder to all americans of the problems that the energy crisis has brought to them. leaders meet in paris for a summit on pollution, inflation and third—world debt. this morning, theyjoined the revolution celebrations for a show of military might on the champs—elysees. wildlife officials in australia have been coping with a penguin problem. fairy penguins have been staggering ashore and collapsing after gorging themselves on their favourite food, pilchards. some had eaten so much, they could barely stand. this is bbc news, the latest headlines. a number of high—profile twitter accounts have been simultaneously hacked to spread

a cryptocurrency scam. the top doctor in america's fight against coronavirus describes efforts by some in the white house to discredit him as "bizarre". the latest figures on china gdp's growth are out. china's economy grew 3.2% in the second quarter from a year earlier. the growth was faster than the 2.5% forecast by analysts in a reuters poll, and followed a steep 6.8% slump in the first quarter, the first such contraction since at least 1992 when quarterly gdp records began. mariko 0i joins me now live from singapore. you know how significant this is. tell us. it seems like the chinese economy is on track to have a the shaped recovery. remember a lot of economies have been forecasting at least for the rest of the world that we may see a very for the rest of the world that we may see a very u shaped

recovery or an l shaped, not exactly recovery, but according to the latest data from china, in the three months in between april and june, the economy grew by 3.2%, as she said, it was much better, than what economies have been forecasting, and definitely a lot better than the contraction that we saw in the previous quarter when the economy shrunk by almost 7%. it seems like all the stimulus measures that the authorities announced as the economy emerged from that lockdown seem to be working, so factories are getting busier and we also saw industrial production numbers coming out, up production numbers coming out, up some 4.6%, but one sector that still has not recovered as quickly as they had hoped is the retail sector. retail spending is still down by 2% and that will be the challenge for the authorities to get people to start spending money again. that makes sense even to me. thank you very much.

a prolonged heatwave in the siberian arctic this year is "unequivocal evidence of climate change", that's according to an international team of scientists. they say the record high temperatures would be impossible without man—made global warming. that matters because the arctic drives much of the weather we experience, as our chief environment correspondent, justin rowlatt, reports. six months of record—breaking temperatures have fuelled massive forest fires in the siberian arctic this year. great plumes of smoke were visible on satellite images last month. the red areas on this map show just how exceptional temperatures have been — more than five degrees above average across much of siberia. that included the highest temperature ever recorded north of the arctic circle, a sweltering 38 centigrade, and now a met office—led international study has concluded this period of exceptional weather would have been impossible had the world not been warmed by man—made greenhouse gas emissions.

in the winter of 2018, the uk experienced a beast from the east, a period of exceptionally cold and snowy weather. it shows us that what happens in the arctic doesn't stay in the arctic. there are six main weather systems around the uk, and four of those six come from the polar regions or from the arctic directly, so whilst a lot of this is uncertain, if something happens in the arctic, it's going to be reasonable to assume something's going to happen in the uk, too. today's report is yet more evidence that the growing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is changing our climate. what we're seeing really is unprecedented. it's the strongest result we've ever seen, actually. we've never seen a change in the probability of an event of more than 600 times. we've never seen a result like that. many storms and floods in europe are also reckoned to have been driven by conditions in the arctic. and we know the polar region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

the long—term impact that will have elsewhere is less certain. looking at the geological record, we don't think we've had c02 levels this high for about 5 million years, so we really don't know what to expect into the future. we are in uncharted territory. the reduction of arctic sea ice cover and melting of the permafrost has accelerated during this year's heatwave. that will drive even more warming and, in turn, means we can expect more extreme weather around the world. justin rowlatt, bbc news. more than a hundred people have died and almost four million people have been affected by monsoon floods in south asia, following a period of relentless rainfall. the north—east indian state of assam is among the worst affected, with more than fifty deaths in the past few weeks, while tens of thousands of people have been forced to move to relief shelters. in neighbouring bangladesh, around a third of the country

is submerged following some of the heaviest rains there in a decade, and more than a million people have already been forced to leave their homes for higher ground. in the first verdict of its kind, a south korean court found that a woman adopted by an american couple almost four decades ago, must be recognised as the daughter of an 85—year—old south korean man. the ruling provides hope for the thousands of korean—born adoptees who want to know the identities of their birth parents. but for kara bos, the adoptee who brought the case, it's been a painful struggle that is still not over. when you finally decide as an adoptee to kind of open pandora's box, you have no idea what to expect. my name is kara bos — or my korean name, as stated on my file, is kang mee sook — and i was adopted to america when i was around two years old. it wasn't until i had my

daughter that i understand the real unconditional bond that's really built during the initial couple years of caring for a child. i also then thought of my mother and how that must have beenjust so painful, to have to make that excruciating choice of abandoning a child. dna obviously doesn't lie, so i had a true biological link for once in my life. but his family was unwilling to help or to release any kind of information, or even help me actually at all. the fact that they can't see the bigger issue involved with this, like, the fundamental issue of the fact that it's just a girl looking for her mother, they can't even be human about that, i can't comprehend it, to be honest. i just can't. that's when i started to get upset about the injustice of it all.

i think this day is momentous for all of us adoptees, just to have a right, finally. i'm starting to really close off to everything that i'd kind of opened up to — my identity with korea and korea as a country, as a society — because i have been hurt and rejected now countless times. i want to just go home right now. and my home is with

my family in amsterdam. we will stay across that story of course. lockdown has been difficult for so many people — parents especially. having to educate and entertain your children while a deadly pandemic sweeps the globe is a particular challenge. but in a suburb of mexico city one man is doing what he can to help — as the bbc‘s tim allman explains. percy bauld garcia is an architect by trade, but he has become so much more. one day he and his mother were in their apartment when they heard a child say, i am bored. apartment when they heard a child say, iam bored. so apartment when they heard a child say, i am bored. so he decided to do something about it. with his loudspeaker and a microphone, he reads stories to the children of this estate. translation: it means that whatever is going on in that department, depression or watching a movie or at the daily lockdown experience, it is put on hold the moment you

start laughing, dancing or letting yourself go. he tends to focus on tales about the environment, what he calls the circle of life. he also plays music, providing young people with a few brief moments of jov- translation: he is playing and when she hears the music, she sta rts when she hears the music, she starts shouting at me, mum, the storyteller! then she wants to listen to him and talk to him. he says he wants to open spaces for the children in their minds so they can express their feelings and thoughts. 0ne so they can express their feelings and thoughts. one day, and one story at a time. disneyland paris, europe's biggest tourist attraction —— has reopened its doors after four months of lockdown. there's a lot of concern about what it might do to infection rates, and there are lots of new rules, but also plenty of hard—core fans who went back, and told us about their experience. there's sanitiser everywhere, they've got — in all the queues

for the rides, there's screens, so you're screened away from everybody. there's markers in all the lines all over the park to keep the distance into shops and restaurants. so they're really looking after us well. it it feels very, very safe here. it's not that busy, they‘ re keeping capacity very low at the moment. we had to make a reservation today, so we've got that to get into the park. you can't turn up without a ticket, so you need a reservation first. and it's — yeah, it's going very well. we had some apprehensions but, having got here, i think we feel more safer here than we do even in our local supermarket. yeah. everything's outdoors, the capacity levels are so low. it's really a great experience. it's different, but it's a lot of fun. that is it for now. thank you very much for watching.

hello there. prospects do look better for thursday, but wednesday didn't look or feel much like summer at all. we've had this damp, muggy air stream bringing in an awful lot of cloud and some drizzle earlier on too. there was some sunshine that did develop in the far southwest of england, but even those breaks in the cloud have been filling in overnight. it's a cloudy start to thursday, mild as well — typical temperatures 12 to 1a degrees. may still be early drizzle around and some western hills may stay cloudy all day. but we're likely to see things brightening up elsewhere and some sunshine where we get a bit more shelter, eastern parts of northern ireland, east wales, eastern england and particularly eastern scotland. and where we get some warm sunshine coming through, temperatures will lift into the low 20s, with the highest temperatures probably around aberdeenshire and the murray firth — 23 or 2a degrees here.

where it stays quite cloudy, though, 18 is going to be a typical temperature in the afternoon. that's what we're expecting in manchester, old trafford, for the first day of the second test match. should be dry, mind you. there is some rain arriving in the northwest of scotland, though, later on thursday. and that weather front will take that rain very slowly southwards. it's going to stagger its way southwards. it may get stuck throughout friday across southern scotland, northern ireland, northern england and perhaps north wales. to the north and south of that, there will be sunshine coming through, but differing temperatures. across much of scotland, it's cooler, fresher air, so temperatures will be a bit lower on friday. but towards england and wales, especially in the southeast, it's the peak of the heat. 25 or 26 around the london area. that weather front still on the scene, then, on friday and still moving very slowly southwards on saturday. it's slowing down quite a bit, actually. eventually, we'll find this cooler and fresher air following in its wake. but we've got some cloud and rain moving a little further south across england and wales. unlikely to reach the southeast of england until the evening. to the north, across

northernmost parts of england, northern ireland and scotland, we're into some sunshine. a few showers in the northwest. into the southeast of england, again, the highest temperature is 23 or 2a degrees here. some rain, though, likely overnight. maybe a bit of rain left to clear away in the far southeast on sunday. once that goes, it's sunny spells across the board. there will be a few showers, again, particularly for western parts of scotland, but we're into cooler and fresher for all areas — with a top temperature into the low 20s. $:/endfeed.

this is bbc news, the headlines.

some of twitter‘s top users have had their accounts hacked. a post urging people to send cryptocurrency appeared on the feeds of high profile names including joe biden, bill gates, barack obama and jeff bezos. verified users were temporarily stopped from tweeting. the compa ny‘s investigating. president trump's leading advisor on the coronavirus pandemic, dr anthony fauci, has described efforts by some in the white house to discredit him as bizarre. he said a series of attacks on him reflected poorly on the trump administration. china's revealed its gdp figures for the second quarter — showing a modest 3.2% growth in its economy after lockdown measures ended and policymakers stepped up stimulus packages.. it comes after a 6.8% decline in the first quarter — the first contraction since at least 1992 when its records began.