welcome to bbc news. i'm david eades. our top stories: new dangers for western forces in iraq drones carrying explosives — we've a special report on the game—changing new threat. a massive, smart, global sting — the fbi masterminds the arrest of hundreds of alleged criminals after monitoring their communications. the former bosnian serb military leader ratko mladic loses his final appeal against a genocide conviction linked to the balkan conflict in the �*90s. and exploring the hitherto unknown depths of the pacific — the diving scientists and their daring mission.

armed forces from the us and other western nations are facing a new threat in iraq. on two occasions, american airbases have come under attack from iranian—made drones fitted with explosives. it follows earlier rocket attacks on western forces but commanders say the drones are a game—changer in terms of threat. iran denies involvement but its proxies in iraq, the shia militia, have been growing in strength. our middle east correspondent, quentin sommerville, has been to northeastern syria, and iraq, and he sent this report. american troops have grown used to being in iraq. still watchful, they move between here and syria, almost as if the border didn't exist. they came to help fight

the islamic state group. thatjob�*s almost done, but another war is taking place here, mostly in the shadows. we're not the only people operating in this part of the world. the louisiana national guard have been operating here in north—eastern syria for about as long asjoe biden has been president. the number of americans here and in iraq keeps shrinking. there's about 2,500 of them now. their mission here, their enemy, is the islamic state group, but that's far from the greatest danger americans face here. us air bases have been targeted twice in recent months by iranian—made, military—grade drones. this is the aftermath of a drone strike which destroyed a cia warehouse in erbil. chanting.

and in baghdad, iran's proxies are running rampant. here they are cutting off the city's diplomatic green zone after one of their leaders was arrested. inside, the united states remains mostly silent. it's focused instead on its nuclear negotiations and is fearful of giving fuel to hardliners in iran's elections. from the us, there has been no military response yet to recent attacks. beyond this fortress, a terror campaign is underway. if you're western forces, you're fighting the islamic state group, you can be here in the centre of baghdad and you can be relatively safe, but the situation outside these walls is far more grim. and the people out there and all across iraq don't have the luxury

of that protection. chanting. young iraqis took to the streets to protest, among other things, foreign interference in their country. and they have been slaughtered. almost 700 have been cut down. they blame pro—iranian militia. and they chant, "who killed me?" please, have a seat. ali mohammed wants to know who it was that shot dead his brother, amjed.

across the middle east, iran and the united states continue to face off, but the victims in this shadow war are rarely americans, nor iranians. they are, once again, the people of iraq. quentin sommerville, bbc news, baghdad.

there is no hiding the fbi's sense of achievement. it is talking of a massive worldwide takedown of criminal syndicates, courtesy of an encrypted messaging system being used by organised criminals. with the active participation of europol and forces in australia, lithuania, sweden and the netherlands, gangs were tricked into using a secure device and app, which had actually been developed by agents who then monitored tens of millions of messages about drug dealing, money laundering and planned murders. our security correspondent, gordon corera, has the story. a shipment of tuna cans coming from ecuador into europe with more than 600kg of cocaine hidden inside, all discovered by law enforcement. more cocaine wrapped up with a batman label, a picture of it sent on a phone that criminals thought was secure, but which was really a trap.

that trap was sprung today... sirens and gunshots ..as law enforcement around the world made their move, with a wave of arrests against multiple organised crime groups. criminals believe that using a system called anom secured their communications. the problem was that the person behind it was an undercover informant for the fbi. they started by giving 50 devices to criminals in australia, people like this man, hakan ayik, now on the run, who in turn recommended it to others, unwittingly helping the authorities. so, how did it all work? the system was run by the fbi and australian federal police, who were able to access communications between 10,000 devices. 20 million messages were intercepted from more than 90 countries. details about drug deals, money laundering and planned murders were accessed. it was effectively a wiretap on the criminal underworld around the globe. the biggest users of the device were in germany, spain,

the netherlands, serbia and australia. there are some investigations in the uk, although the device was not widely used here. the amount of intelligence that we received was staggering. from seizing drugs, guns and millions of dollars in multiple currencies, to addressing more than 150 threats to life. in australia, there've been more than 200 arrests. police say the information even helped thwart a machine—gun attack in a cafe. and in europe today, there was more evidence of the operation�*s success. for nine months, we have been receiving intelligence to build criminal cases, and we have also had information that has helped us to prevent more than ten planned murders within sweden. this operation has dealt a serious blow to organised crime, not only because of those arrested, but because those still

at large will not be sure who or what they can trust. gordon corera, bbc news. i spoke further to fbi special agent in charge, suzanne turner, whose san diego field office led the investigation named 0peration trojan shield. i began by asking how difficult it was to run the operation without being discovered. yes. we would have liked to keep the operation up for as long as possible, but with the amount, the magnitude and scope and amount of transnational crime organisations utilising this for drugs, guns and violent crime, we worked with international partners to take it down. but we did have to work to keep it as encrypted it and as closed as possible. how easy was it to create anom, and to get the help to do it in terms of getting out all the right people, if i can call them that?

yes, so, this was an evolution from phantom secure, which my office here in san diego did and we dismantled in 2018. we had an app that was in development which we utilised to set up the platform, and we worked with the australian federal police, who had the technical capability to help us decrypt those messages. then we set up a platform and worked with international partners worldwide, and had international agreements where we reviewed those messages and disseminated them for actual intelligence. phantom secure was the app of choice, which you managed to pull down, which give you the opportunity to create the new platform. i mean, the scale is staggering. but, i guess, to a certain extent, it also means this operation is done, and do you go back to square one? no, not at all. i think this is just the beginning. i think what we have shown

criminals worldwide, one, we work together across the globe with all of our international partners, and we have shown we are able to infiltrate current companies and establish our own company. we have left the criminals wondering which company we will infiltrate next, and which company they might be using that is actually run by the government. it was a five—year programme in all, from its original inception. five years is a very long time in the criminal world, isn't it? and an awful lot of crime must have taken place during the build—up of your own networks, of getting the information, of getting all of the access to people you have then pulled in? where there are moments where you felt you should have gone sooner? no. the five years incorporated the phantom secure, which we dismantled, like i said, in 2018, and then we opened up and started our actual platform, anom,

in october of 2019. so, no. we reviewed all of these messages and if there were any immediate threats to life, we got those to the appropriate countries so they could mitigate threats, as you heard, and that has happened across multiple countries across the globe. so we were not concerned. we worked well with partner agencies to be able to action the intelligence and arrest the individuals and we arrested more than 300 before the actual takedown, so we were able to make an impact on going during the five years. i don't want to bring this too much down to persons and the impact, but when you saw some of the material coming back to you, you know, photos of consignments of the tuna, for example, the tuna tins, you knew exactly what you are looking for. there must have been an element of glee within the team? well, yes, i think that the — how brazen they were showed that they believed it was a secure communication. there was no hiding their conversations, there were no codes. so we knew whether shipments

were going and who was meeting them. so, yes, it was a great eye into all those criminal organisations that believed their communications were secure. i mean, i've got all the figures in front of me, i'm not going to run through them all in terms of the tonnes of cocaine and marijuana, the number of firearms, everything that has been pulled together, huge amounts of money as well. i guess there is also the reality that that is sort of a drop in the bucket of this organised criminal world we live in? yes, it sort of feels that way but i think the impact across the globe has kept many citizens safe, has made an impact in multiple countries and shows that we're going to work together and continue to work together to the criminal organisations. fbi special agent in charge, suzanne turner. let's get some of the day's other news: canada's prime minister, justin trudeau, has been addressing a vigil in london, ontario, being held for four members

of a muslim family who were run down and killed by a pick—up truck. police have charged a man with murder, saying there's evidence that it was pre—meditated. the 9—year—old boy from the family who survived in the attack remains in hospital in a stable condition. kamala harris says she's made progress in tackling the root causes behind the rise in the number of migrants heading towards the united states during her first overseas trip as vice president. the vice president said talks with the mexican leader were focussed on ways of improving economic prospects and security in order to curb illegal migration. details claiming to reveal how little income tax us billionaires pay have been leaked to a news website. the website alleges amazon'sjeff bezos paid no tax in 2007 and 2011, while tesla's elon musk�*s paid nothing in 2018. stay with us on bbc

world news, still to come: french president emmanuel macron is slapped in the face while on an official visit. the day the british liberated the falklands. and by tonight, british troops had begun the task of disarming the enemy. in the heart of the west german capital, this was gorby—mania at its height. the crowd packed to see the man who, for them, has raised great hopes for an end to the division of europe. it happened as the queen moved towards horse guards parade for the start of trooping the colour. gunshots the queen looks worried but recovers quickly.

as long as they'll - pay to go and see me, i'll get out there and kick 'em down the hills. - what does it feel like to be the first man to cross the channel by your own power? it feels pretty neat. it feel marvellous, really. this is bbc world news. the latest headlines: iran denies its behind the latest threat for western forces in iraq — drones carrying explosives. one of the largest international police operations has resulted in hundreds of arrests and the seizure of tens of millions of dollars. the former bosnian serb military leader ratko mladic is to spend the rest of his life behind bars after losing his appeal against a genocide conviction. the judges upheld the life sentence handed down four years ago for atrocities during the break up of yugoslavia, including the srebrenica massacre in 1995, when more than 8,000 bosnian muslim men

and boys were killed. the bbc�*s anna holligan reports from the court in the hague. munira has been waiting more than two decades for this moment. ratko mladic presided over a state—sponsored killing machine. through the crimes of persecution, extermination... his crimes, persecution, extermination, deportation, and genocide among them, were committed as part

of a politically engineered plot to systematically remove muslims from the land, to seize and ethically cleanse territory, to become part of a greater serbian republic following the bloody break—up of the former yugoslavia. in srebrenica, it tookjust four days for ratko mladic�*s forces to execute approximately 8,000 muslim men and boys. un forces were present but failed to prevent the massacre. some of the survivors had hoped ratko mladic would use his last public appearance to offer an apology that could help reconciliation in the still divided region. i'm sorry to say it but i can really see evil in his eyes. the man has no sorrow for anything that happened. i mean, nothing. he doesn't care. he couldn't take the floor and say, "i'm sorry it went so far." and it's a shame because this way, his ideology of division,

of nationalism, of hatred is still living in many people after him. and one dissenting opinion from the presiding judge could inflame tensions and be used used as ammunition by those who seek to deny the genocide. these women have spent their lives in pursuit ofjustice on behalf of their husbands, fathers, and sons killed in srebrenica. and many of them feared this day would never come, but the judgement delivered inside this tribunal means the man they consider to be most responsible for their suffering will spend the rest of his life behind bars. anna holligan, bbc news, in the hague. a number of leading websites were taken offline for a short time on tuesday, and so far there's no official explanation as to why. those affected included amazon, the uk government website and media sites like the new york times

and the guardian. issues had been reported early by the cloud computing provider fastly, on which a lot of these major websites depend. doug madory is director of internet analysis at kentik, which monitors networks for large telecom companies. he told us more about the outage. i do not think anyone believes there was any cyberattack or anything that looks like it was caused by an internal software update that went awry and ended up taking down a lot of the services of cdn. there are some big names caught up in this. can you explain the way in which the system works now, because it might be a surprise to some that so many organisations have sort of gone down like dominoes here? yes, so most people will be familiar with the company they get their service from,

their mobile provider or the isp that provides a service to their house or work office. but in the internet ecosystem, the things that make the internet work, an important part of that are the content delivery network, cdns, their specialised global networks that serve up all of the files into your phone when you use the internet. in the course of the day you are interacting with these things constantly, even if you are not using your phone and fastly may not be in name, it is certainly familiar within the internet industry, it may be familiar with your viewers, but it is a company that many people are interacting with throughout the day. normally you don't know anything about it normally because it works fine. but one of these big cdns go wrong, we will notice it. they seemed to notice quite quickly. you would look at this as a glass half full

type of scenario. fastly is a very important cdn to the global internet, lots of famous properties are served by it. so when they have an outage they go down. this company was very quick to rectify the outage. within an hour it was restored. and we don't see a lot of cdns go down, it's not that common that it happens. this could have been worse. doug madory there. the french president emmanuel macron has been slapped in the face while on an official visit to the south—east of france. the incident overshadowed what the president has billed as a listening tour to "take the country's pulse" less than a year before presidential elections, where he's expected to seek a second term. courtney bembridge has the details. emmanuel macron saw the crowd and spontaneously approached

the barrier, but the first person he greeted held on to his arm and slapped him. here it is again, from another angle. the man reportedly shouted, "down with macronism" — referring to his leadership style. as police dragged the attacker away, the president continued his visit seemingly unperturbed, shaking hands with supporters and later taking selfies with crowds on the street. he told a french newspaper, "we must not let ultraviolent people take over the public debate." translation: it is deplorable. whatever you think of the person, it is deplorable. translation: slapping a president is not done, j even if people are not happy — it isjust not done. translation: it is a question of respect, respect _ for the function at least. a fierce critic of president macron, far—right leader marine le pen tweeted...

being accessible to the public carries significant risks, as politicians and other public figures around the world well known. translation: for the security services it is always _ a complicated exercise. these are moments of stress and anxiety. sometimes though, public figures fight back. this was the pope in 2019. a woman grabbed his hand and pulled it before he slapped it away, looking none too pleased. and this is 2001, when the uk's then deputy prime minister, john prescott, visited north wales. he was egged and responded by punching the man. this was the aftermath. when people are getting attacked in their own... then in 2019, an australian teenager egged a fringe politician over his islamophobic comments. the 17—year—old was punched and tackled to the ground, but swiftly became an internet sensation, now forever known as egg boy. courtney bembridge, bbc news.

no more fisticuffs. have a look at this. if you find it extraordinary that 90% of the surface of mars has already been mapped, how more amazing is it that only 5% of the earth's oceans have had the same treatment? well, world oceans day is one opportunity to grow awareness about what lies beneath the seas, from new creatures to potential medical discoveries — and of course, the risks faced by climate change. all day on tuesday, the schmidt ocean institute has been livestreaming an expedition at the bottom of the ocean around the phoenix islands — you can see the live shot there — with the help of a cute underwater robot called subastian. they are gathering materials, new plants and creatures, to assess just what the ocean can give up in terms of so far undiscovered organisms and microbes. this is the machine itself — subastian. it is a

couple of kilometres below the water now gathering that material. a bit quiet at the moment, but it is a live stream. that's what happens. this is bbc news. hello there. for many of us, the temperatures are going to continue to build as we move through this week. both by day and it is going to feel warmer and muggier at night as well, as we start to import some very warm and humid tropical air right across the uk. but further north and west, we will continue to be played by low pressure and some weather fronts, so thicker cloud with some patchy rain at times. so for today, we've got higher pressure to the south, low pressure out from the atlantic, pushing these weather fronts into the north and the west, which will bring thicker cloud at times for scotland, northern ireland, western parts of england and wales. anywhere here could see the odd spot of rain, and some of the rain could be quite heavy for a time across northern ireland and scotland. turning a little bit lighter into the afternoon. some brightness for the northeast of scotland, where it will be warm. but by far, central,

southern and eastern england, which will see the sunniest of skies, will see the highest temperatures — 25 or 26 degrees. but even further west, with the cloud, it's going to feel warm and muggy. and as we head through wednesday night, tropical moist, humid air spreads right across the uk. so it's going to be a pretty muggy night for all areas. lows not falling below 1a to 16 degrees for many of us. now, as we head on into thursday, we've still got low pressure to the northwest. more isobars on the chart, you'll notice. so it is going to be a windier day for scotland, northern ireland, and it's here where we'll have most of the rain. the western isles and the northern isles could be quite wet. further south, more cloud around generally, even into england and wales. but again, the best of the sunshine will be towards the eastern side of england. a breezier day for all. windierfurther north. those are the mean wind speeds, gusts will be higher than that. and it's going to be another warm and humid day but because there's a bit more cloud around, i think highs of 22 or 2a degrees. now, on into friday, similar picture again, could see quite a bit a cloud around here and there. a little bit of drizzliness across the western hills, where it will be quite misty. best of the sunshine to the east of high ground, and another warm and

humid day to come, particularly for england and wales — 25 or 26 degrees. something a little bit fresher for a time across scotland, you will notice — 15 to 18 or 19 degrees. but as this area of high pressure builds back in for the weekend, it pushes the area of low pressure and these weather fronts back out into the atlantic. so it looks like things are going to turn more settled again for the weekend, with increasing amounts of sunshine, so temperatures will respond, and it's going to turn very warm or even hot in places, as temperatures across central and southern england could be close to 30 celsius.

this is bbc news, the headlines: the us military and troops from other western nations are facing a new threat in iraq. american airbases have come under attack from iranian—made drones fitted with explosives. commanders say the drones are a game—changer. iran denies involvement. hundreds of suspected criminals have been arrested in a global sting operation organised by the fbi. gangs used what they thought was a secure messaging app developed by the authorities, who were able to monitor messages about drug dealing, and planned murders. a number of leading websites were taken offline for a short time on tuesday, and so far there's no official explanation as to why. those affected included amazon and the uk government website. issues had been reported early by the cloud computing provider fastly.

now on bbc news — hardtalk.