welcome to bbc news. my name is mike embley. our top stories: the us presidential campaign steps up a gear with the start of a very unconventional convention for the democratic party. opposition protesters in belarus have held a ninth night of protests against president alexander lukashenko whose re—election has been widely condemned as fraudulent. brazil's vice president has defended its handling of the coronavirus pandemic despite being the worst hit country outside of the united states. in the beginning, everybody was afraid that we would have people dying in the halls of the hospitals, and this did not happen. feeling the heat: california's death valley has registered the highest ever temperature recorded on earth.

hello and welcome. the democratic party in the us is beginning its convention, designed to drum up support forjoe biden and formally nominate him as the party's candidate for november's presidential election. but this year, the 4—day jamboree will take place almost entirely online due to the pandemic. it's based in wisconsin, a key swing state, but instead of the usual roaring crowds, speeches will be delivered remotely by video link. our correspondent laura trevelyan is in wilmington, delaware wherejoe biden will make his speech and accept the nomination on thursday. that is his home state. that is right. it is. this is very

first virtual political convention in history has begun in los angeles, actress evelyn goria, star of desperate cashback housewives, the first moderator of this convention. such a weird moment, how are democrats going to bring together speakers over the next two hours? how will they create excitement? there will be lots of moments with ordinary americans talking about their experience. the big speaker is senator bernie sanders, the former republican governor of ohio and also michelle obama. she will be the start of night. she will be the start of night. she paid her remarks save you days ago, so how much of a punch are they going to pack? that is what we will watch for tonight. exactly. what is the feeling about how this is going to sell to the voters? technically it sounds a bit of a nightmare. that's right!

technically a bit of a nightmare, but democrats are focusing on what they say are the three crises facing america right now. the pandemic, the economic calamity that followed that because of all the shutdowns are businesses, and this moment of reckoning over racial injustice in america. so joe biden‘s theme is that he wa nts to joe biden‘s theme is that he wants to reclaim the soul of america from president donald trump, wants to connect with americans, he wants to unite, so americans, he wants to unite, so he is presenting himself as that figure. tonight the theme of the convention planning is we, the people. the idea is the democrats will show americans of all stripes and types who are supporting joe biden, which they are trying to draw a contrast with what they say is the narrow and divisive appeal of donald trump. that is the aim of tonight's programming and it is now under way, and we have representative benny thomson, the chair, and he is opening the events right now. there is a danger that it plays into president trump's attack

lines, isn't it? he claims that joe biden is too old, sleepy and the democrats are hiding joe biden because of his tendency to mystique. that's right, and president trump has mounted very robe bust counter programming of his own. he has beenin programming of his own. he has been in two swing states today, he has a ready attacked former governor of ohio jon kay he has a ready attacked former governor of ohiojon kay sick, saying he is a loser, but this is an interesting moment politically because since january of 2017 when president trump was sworn in, he has had control of the microphone, control of the microphone, control of the stage. this week the focus is on democrats, their nomineejoe the focus is on democrats, their nominee joe biden, the focus is on democrats, their nomineejoe biden, his running mate kamala harris, and this is a moment for democrats to push back against that co nsta nt new to push back against that constant new cycle that is the presidency of donald trump. and joe biden is betting that by running what analysts call a front porch campaign, he has really been in his home the past few months because of coronavirus, but he appears to

have a lead in the polls between six and 12% depending on which pole you look at. the question is whether this week can solidify that. laura, thank you very much for that. anna greenberg is managing partner with gqr. she's a pollster and strategist. anna, you have about 20 years experience in polling, don't you? it experience in polling, don't you ? it is experience in polling, don't you? it is a much overused phrase, commonly uncharted territory, but it is true. how do you think this is going to play? the way every convention has, which is to say the networks play about an hour of it in prime time... those folks speaking, so from other voters, if they watch it... and in some ways we have no idea, we have no idea, we have never had... biden will get a convention bump from it, biden will get a convention bumpfrom it, like biden will get a convention bump from it, like other nominees have had in the past,

and the... if he got a bump or not because he is doing very, very, well... and i am sorry, talking about technical nightmares, we have a problem. we will go away and try and come back to you. hang on if you can. thank you very much. i should just tell you, for more on the democratic party's virtual convention any time, go to the bbc website. you'll find analysis of the current opinion polls and a feature on the republican governor, who's going to give a speech against president trump. that's all at bbc.com/news or download the bbc app. opposition protesters in belarus have been on the streets again calling on the president, alexander lukashenko, to go. they've dismissed his offer of a constitutional referendum followed by a possible fresh election as a ploy. earlier in the day, mr lukashenko addressed a group of workers in the capital minsk from where our correspondent

jonah fisher reports. car horns toot this was the day the workers turned on alexander lukashenko. thousands downing tools and marching to a tractor factory. chanting while the strikers rallied outside, belarus's beleaguered president arrived by helicopter to address those who'd stayed at work. he was no doubt hoping for a friendly crowd. what he got was a public relations disaster.

chanting outside the plant was maria kalesnikava, pretty much the only opposition leader who hasn't been arrested or fled the country. translation: for 26 years, the authorities have humiliated us. thank you for not being afraid. we are not the little people, we are the nation. are you worried about your own safety? no, i'm not worried. i feel very safe here with my people in belarus. what is your message to the international community as they watch what is happening here? we are very thankful for the support of belarus and, please, only with love and dialogue we can change our lives and our countries. another sign of the president's weakening grip on power came at state tv, where programming was disrupted this morning. outside, striking employees chanted "tell the truth". for the last week,

government—controlled media has almost entirely avoided the demonstrations and the torture of activists. the momentum is certainly with the protesters, who seem to grow in confidence with every passing day. it's very hard to see any way back from this politically for the president. the last few days have shown belarusians willing to take to the streets and to stand up against him. that surely can't be reversed. the big question now is more when and how he goes and whether it happens peacefully. jonah fisher, bbc news, minsk. the convention is getting under way. 20 years experience but this is uncharted territory. how do you think this is going to play with the voters?

in some ways, it won't be much different to previous conventions because prime—time television in the us only ever played one hour a night, just what they are going to do now. most voters will experience at the same way they have before stop the cable will show more. in some ways it is not that different. in other ways, we have no idea! wejust don't know. the spontaneous moments that you have in conventions, the emotion you have, for example ba rack obama's the emotion you have, for example barack obama's speech in 2004, jesse jackson in 1988, those kinds of moments where you get energy from the crowd, those aren't going to happen. sometimes they are transformative moments. sometimes they are tra nsformative moments. it sometimes they are transformative moments. it is really ha rd to transformative moments. it is really hard to say but i think for a lot of voters it actually won't be that different than previous conventions. so much harder to feel enthusiasm when you are not seeing enthusiasm being generated in front of you. that's right, it is like a baseball game where people are playing in silence. on the

other hand, biden is so far ahead it would be hard to know if he was going to get a convention bump anyway. trump is atan convention bump anyway. trump is at an all—time low right now, and it is sort of unprecedented where the election is right now. it is not like 1992 where bill clinton got a huge bump out of the convention. it may not make a difference one way or the other. what is your sense about polls? you have a lot of experience in looking at them. i think for non—us viewers, you need to understand the national polls are one indicator of how things are going, but you have to look at the individual states because ultimately the president is elected by the electoral college, and if you look at the states that matter like wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, arizona, either biden is very close or ahead in most of those states. it is actually looking pretty favourable for biden and i think kamala harris's nomination energises for some of the folks who have not been as excited aboutjoe biden

because there is a new generation of leaders in this party, there is some resistance to older white men as leaders, and so right now it looks pretty good. i think as a democrat, what we worry about is ifjoe biden wins, there is some monkey business, and that trump delegitimise the election just like in belarus, and people aren't used to that in the united states. they are very used to the peaceful transition of power, is to democracy working. in other parts of the world not so much. that is not our experience in the united states. anna, thank you very much. thank you for being with us. still to come, beating all records: california's death valley has registered the highest ever temperature on earth.

washington, the world's most political city, is today assessing the political health of the world's most powerful man. indeed i did have a relationship with ms lewinsky that was not appropriate. in fact, it was wrong. in south africa, 97 people have been killed today, in one of the worst days of violence between rival black groups. over the last ten days, 500 have died. chanting: czechoslovakia must be free! czechoslovakia must be free! chanting: czechoslovakia must be free! russia is observing a national day of mourning for the 118 submariners who died on board the kursk. we all with them now. with — in our hearts. the pope has celebrated mass before a congregation of more than 2.5 million people in his hometown of krakow. "stay with us, stay with us," chanted this ocean of humanity. "well, well," joked the pope, "so you want me to desert rome? "

this is bbc news. the main story this hour: preparing to anointjoe biden, the democratic party in the us begins its unconventional convention, as the pandemic forces the event online. let's have a bit more on that story. brad bannon is a democratic pollster and strategist. he's in boston. what are you making of this event? technically it could be a nightmare. how do you think it will play with the voters? this is a historic event in american politics, a virtual national convention has never happened before so we will find out when we find out. i think they have done a greatjob of

producing the four nights and i think it will go off really well and i think it will be a grand sendoff forjoe biden on his way to the white house. what does joe his way to the white house. what doesjoe biden need to do? i think it is to do two things. first of all, if you look at the national polls, joe biden is clearly ahead, depending on what national poll you look, he is anyway ahead from high single digits to low double digits so he is clearly ahead but i think he has work to do. first thing he needs to do is, a lot of the people who are voting forjoe biden are not voting forjoe biden are not voting forjoe biden, they are voting forjoe biden, they are voting against donald trump and i thinkjoe biden has to reinforce his vote by making his case. there is a lot of temptation among democrats, myself included, to spend all oui’ myself included, to spend all ourtime myself included, to spend all our time beating up against the president but the reality is,

ifjoe biden is going to when it is, it has to be on his own credit, he has to convince americans it will make a better president than donald trump would instead of just president than donald trump would instead ofjust bashing donald trump. he would have to explain how to invigorate the economy because if donald trump has any milage, it is that. if you look yesterday, nbc news and wall street journal released a national poll and joe biden had a 20% advantage over the president on fighting the pandemic, he also had an advantage on race relations, infighting global warming but when it came to the economy, the president had a slight edge, ahead ofjoe biden by a few points. there is an axiom in american politics, it is the economy, stupid. people vote with the pocketbook. joe biden needs to demonstrate to

americans that he is the president, not donald trump, who can fix the american economy which is in a tailspin stop at the end of the second quarter, the gross national product went down by a third. that is a pretty sorry state of affairs and joe biden has to ta ke affairs and joe biden has to take advantage of that and show he has the skills and capabilities to fix the american economy which is in dreadful shape. thank you very much. thank you. brazil is the worst—hit country from covid—19 outside of the us — more than 100,000 people have died and it has nearly 3.5 million cases. the country's vice—president has defended the handling of the pandemic, as well as it's management of this year's fires in the amazon that have now started to burn. our south america correspondent katy watson spoke to brazil's vice president hamilton mourao. of course we regret the deaths of more than 100,000 brazilians, ok?

but the federal government and the state government, they did everything that we could. we were successful in adapting the curve of the pandemic to the capacity of our public hospitals because, in the beginning, everybody was afraid of this, that we would have people dying in the halls of our hospitals — and this did not happen, ok? and also, we had a lot of measures to mitigate the economic and social problems. i think we are doing a good job. jair bolsonaro has made it clear on how he has felt about social distancing, he's pushed back on the wearing of facemasks. he himself has had it, so has the first lady. a lot of people feel that perhaps the leadershipjust doesn't care. you have to understand

the nature of brazilian people. brazilian people are not a very disciplined one, ok? so, it is impossible to come top down and say, "ok, you have to do this, you have to do that." even governments, local governments, and the mayors of the main cities, they have a lot of difficulties to keep people in their homes. we have a lot of shanty towns in our main towns, so it's not easy to keep a social distance. so these inequalities make the fight very difficult in the way that, for instance, that people in europe did against the pandemic. fires are burning in the amazon. last week, bolsonaro branded them "a lie". despite a ban on fires, they are still burning. how can the government deny they are happening? well, we don't deny what's happening at any moment. one thing must be very sure and very clear — that the forest is not burning. there is one part of the legal amazon where people are established.

jair bolsonaro called it a lie, you know, he said that. and there is a ban on fires at the moment, and there are fires happening. that land that is, as you talk about being humanised, used to be forest. i mean, this government does not have a good record of protecting the amazon. we have been monitoring this very closely. in this month of august, when the fires really are starting to grow more, we will be fully trying to stop these fires going higher than last year. you said in the past that you didn't want brazil to be labelled by the rest of the world as an "environmental villain," but many people in the world do see brazil's government acting like that. people say that we are a villain because of the de—forestation that happened

in the amazon area, or the fires. but we have very clean energy metrics, ok? we don't burn coal or oil, ok? so we are not the villains in this. but we know that it is our responsibility to enforce the law and make people obey it. we understand this, and we are going to do this. brazil's vice president. let's return now to our top story, the us democratic national convention. this whole process started with upwards of two dozen presidential candidates. now it's down tojustjoe biden. but is he the right person to unite the party? the bbc spoke to democratic millennials and generation z voters, who make up a third of the us electorate, and asked what they would want a "president biden" to do on day! of his presidency. here's what they had to say. joe biden is... the best option that we have. an incredible american. really our only shot of restoring humanity to the white house. a liberal and a moderate. a listener.

empathetic. essential to save our democracy. joe biden is a moderate continuation of the status quo. the last resort. but he is not a horrible last resort. in the united states young people under the age of 35 make up a third of the country's electorate. this demographic turned out to vote in record numbers in the 2018 mid—terms. nearly doubling the young voters who went to the polls in 2014. we don't know yet if that will be the case into the 2020 general election but we do know that young people are likely to lean democrat. hi, how are you? so we talked to a dozen young democratic voters from all across the country to ask what they think of their party's nominee. joe biden was not the favourite for a lot of younger people. joe biden was not my number one choice. i don't think he has that certainje ne sais quoi that i would want in a president. but since winning the nomination,

he has done something that i did not expect, he has reached out to the more liberal wing of the democratic party and really brought in staffers from other campaigns to advise him on climate policy. ifjoe biden is elected, what should he do on day one of his presidency? 0h. that's a really good question. oh, man. i think he should arrest donald trump but i don't think that will be possible. going definitely back into the paris climate agreement. try to rejoin the world health organization. to overturn the muslim ban that impacts people like myself as a muslim. community investment into the black community. if he is so confident that he has the african—american vote then he needs to be able to provide for african—americans when he's in office. we're in the middle of a pandemic, i think everybody is asking, like, what's next on healthcare? many of us are going to lose our health insurance because we age out of being on our parents's insurance.

joe biden will be able to get us back to a point where not everything is horrible. i want the terror that has been caused by this current administration to end. he has good intentions and wants to help people which is more than could be said for our current president. sometimes that's enough. we will know how all that works out soon enough. what could be the highest temperature ever reliably recorded on earth —130f — may have been reached in death valley national park in california. it comes amid a heatwave on america's west coast, where temperatures are forecast to rise further this week. paul hawkins has more. it is already one of the hottest places on earth, the lowest point in the united states, surrounded by mountains, it acts like an oven, trapping the heat in the valley, sending temperatures soaring, with little rainfall for respite. add this summer's heatwave into the mix, which has caused problems like wildfires and blackouts across california,

and they think they may have recorded the highest ever temperature on earth, the highest ever temperature on earth, 130 degrees fahrenheit, 54.4 degrees celsius, but it needs to be verified. they look at such things as corroborating evidence from other sources, whether there are any discrepancies in the equipment or the procedures that were used, or if there's any other reason to doubt its veracity. in fact, the greatest warming is occurring in the higher altitudes, such as the arctic, particularly, and in the northern hemisphere, the temperatures in the arctic on average are 3, 4, 5 even eight degrees above pre—industrial levels already, so we are seeing uneven warming and very high warming in some places, including places like the arctic, where it is especially significant because of the effect that it has on the ice.

much more on the bbc website and our twitter feed. thank much more on the bbc website and our twitterfeed. thank you for watching. hello there. monday was another day of impressive cloudscapes across the uk, but big lumpy clouds like these tend to produce intense downpours and thunderstorms, and that is exactly what we saw. this is the radar picture. it shows that those showers and storms look quite extensive across england and wales. some of them were heavy enough to give some localised flooding but equally a few spots fell between the showers and stayed completely dry. and tuesday is going to be a similar sort of day. some slightly more persistent rain though across north wales and northern england for a time, and generally quite a cloudy start across the north of the uk. for scotland, the skies should brighten. we'll see some sunshine, but a scattering of heavy showers into the afternoon. these could give some localised flooding. not quite as many showers further south at this stage, through the midlands,

wales, east anglia, towards the south of england. but again where they do show up, they are likely to be heavy and thundery. top temperatures between 18—23 celsius. now, most of the showers will fade during tuesday evening, but into the early hours of wednesday, rain will swing its way in from the south—west, and this signals the start of a very unsettled spell of weather. in fact, this is more of an autumnal weather chart than one you'd expect to see during the summer. low pressure firmly in charge. that's going to bring some outbreaks of rain at times through the middle part of the week. but also, some very, very strong winds — unusually strong winds for this time of year and that could cause some disruption. now on wednesday, it's likely we'll see outbreaks of rain drifting northwards across much of england and wales, into northern ireland and perhaps southern scotland by the end of the afternoon,

but the winds will be picking up all the while from the south—west. gusts of 40 mph or more for exposed coasts here. temperatures on wednesday, well, no great shakes for the time of year — 18—22 celsius. now, it stays unsettled and very windy as you move out of wednesday into thursday. low pressure still firmly in charge, various frontal systems swinging around the low, and quite a few white lines, isobars, on the chart. that shows that it will be windy. these are the wind gusts we can expect. it will be windy for all parts of the uk, but particularly for western coasts, where wind gusts are likely to get to 40—50 mph. pretty unusual for this time of year.

this is bbc news. the headlines: the democratic party in the us is beginning its convention designed to drum up support forjoe biden and formally nominate him as the party's candidate for november's presidential election. but coronavirus restrictions mean the 4—day event will take place almost entirely online withjoe biden giving his acceptance speech from his home state of delaware. opposition protesters in belarus have held a ninth night of protests against the president alexander lukashenko, saying his re—election was fraudulent. thousands of demonstrators took over independence square in central minsk. the opposition candidate svetla na tikhanovskaya has suggested she could act as an interim leader. scientists believe death valley in california has registered the highest temperature ever recorded on earth. an automated weather station in furnace creek measured 54.4 celsius.