there is a calm but tense atmosphere on the streets as zimbabwe's capital, harare, tonight. there's a calm but tense atmosphere on the streets of zimbabwe's capital, harare, tonight. the country's president, robert mugabe, is under house arrest after the military took control of the city and the state broadcaster in the early hours of wednesday morning. it insisted it was not a coup but an attempt to deal with what it described as criminals around the 93—year—old leader. what would have been unthinkable only a few weeks ago has happened: robert mugabe, the world's oldest leader, has lost control of the country he has ruled for 37 years. the military denied staging a coup, but it is clear that robert mugabe is no longer calling the shots. zimbabwe's ruling party, the zanu—pf, were emphatic. president mugabe is still in power. he's the man in charge of zimbabwe, officially, right now. a lot has happened. but what has happened is a not coup. the language is important, and key regional block, the african union, has given its full support to the country's legal situations. translation: the military has assured asked that this is not a coup d'etat.

the african union is against any unconstitutional change of government. we systematically condemn any regime change by arms, whether it be by the military or rebellion. the president still has his supporters, especially in rural areas. but in the capital, harare, news of his house arrest has been welcomed. translation: i want to thank the general for removing this tyrant. he was ruling this country like it belongs to his family. this boils down to an internal power struggle within the governing zanu—pf. on the one side, this man, emmerson mnangagwa, who was fired last week from his position as vice president. on the other, mugabe's wife, grace mugabe, known as "gucci grace" for her at extravagant spending, and one of the most powerful politicians in the country. it is believed that her being groomed to succeed robert mugabe is what sparked the takeover. the military has begun

to arrest those close to her. zimbabwe is waking up to a country that has changed dramatically. but whether it is the change they had been hoping for is far from clear. laura westbrook, bbc news. and you can follow the latest developments in zimbabwe by going to our website. that is bbc.com/news. and you can follow the latest developments in zimbabwe by going to our website — that's bbc dot com forward slash news. president macron says france and other european countries will step in to cover any funding shortfall for the main climate science body caused by president trump's plans to withdraw us contributions. he said climate change was the most

significant struggle of our time and accurate data was crucial. the greek prime minister, alexis tsipras, has announced a state of national mourning for those who died in flash flooding that's killed at least fifteen people near athens. local officials say the floods, which brought torrents of reddish mud flowing through three towns, are unprecedented. homes have been inundated and roads destroyed. russian officials say a new law which will categorise overseas media outlets as "foreign agents" could affect the us government broadcaster, voice of america. russian officials say a new laws which will categorise overseas media —— russia's lower house of parliament backed the measure, which was drawn up after washington ordered the russian state tv channel, rt, to register as a foreign agent. astronomers say they have discovered a planet about the size of earth, with a mild climate which could harbour life. called ross 128b, it's just eleven light years away. researchers believe the planet's temperature could range from —60 to 20 celsius, making it a promising place to search for life beyond earth.

50,000 children under the age of five are expected to die in yemen this year. that is according to the charity save the children. the crisis began in 2015 when houthi rebels believed to be backed by iran ousted the president and took control of parts of the country. a coalition led by saudi arabia began a campaign of air strikes in an attempt to restore the government. clive myrie has been to the front line city of taiz, where fierce fighting continues. it shouldn't be like this — children fed through plastic tubes, not because of nature, but because of man. nuwara is two years old and acutely malnourished. her skin, starved of nutrients, is flaky.

she's a prime target for infections that could kill her. translation: she had diarrhoea and vomiting when we first came to the hospital. now they feed her through a pipe. there seems to be nothing we can do. who can i blame? i don't know. the tragedy of the yemen war is that nuwara is far from alone in her suffering, there are half a million other children straddling life—and—death. it's estimated a child is dying of a preventable disease here every ten minutes. the city of taiz, population 600,000, sums up yemen's dystopian nightmare, it's a city sinking under the weight of war. no—one seems to be in control here, rubbish piles up in the streets. it fills the local canal instead of water, much of it bags of human excrement. cholera's rampant.

taiz sits on the front—line of this country's war between saudi—backed government forces and houthi rebels, allegedly supported by iran. win taiz, on the main highway running north to south across yemen, and you dominate the southern battlefield. a commander with forces loyal to the government points out the positions of the rebel army. translation: their coalition supports us with air strikes and light weapons and some heavy weapons, but not enough. their efforts are important to liberating yemen, but we need more heavy weapons. neither side in this war is making any significant territorial gains. the fighting simply grinds on with civilians inevitably caught in the middle. for the saudi—led coalition, air power after two years has not proved decisive.

it is not winning the day. their military intervention has become stuck, it's bogged down. any kind of victory here seems a long way off. explosions. while the fighting drags on, the neglect mounts in taiz. war dictates everything, not the banalities of peace. this is the local courthouse, what chance of law and order here? whole neighbourhoods have been abandoned. this man points out there are snipers down the road, we can't go any further. translation: there is no food. they're besieging us. we can't go move at all. 0ur lives are full of danger and no—one is helping us. taiz has been forgotten. and every citizen has a war story, though some require no words. muneer hassan lost three

limbs and his mother. "she was martyred," he told me, "shot by a sniper." "i wish this country was safe." few in yemen have the luxury of memories that don't include a time of war. through britain's colonial era in aden, the years of communism, civil war and now the proxy struggle of regional powers that see saudi arabia so prominent here. this is what's left of a department store, smashed by an air strike. after all the destruction and lives lost this war, like most modern conflicts, will only come to an end with a political solution and, at the very least, that requires the yemenis themselves to come together for the greater good. but the chances of that happening are as remote as they've ever been, so it seems yemen's pain is destined to endure.

all the malnourished children in this humble ward are victims of grand designs. the manoeuvrings of the middle east power players, from tehran to riyadh, yemen is stuck in the middle. born into this world as war babies, will they ever know peace? clive myrie, bbc news, in southern yemen. the us president has used a live tv address to give a long list of what he considers to be his foreign policy achievements. mr trump said he'd led the way in making clear that north korea would not be allowed to hold the world hostage to nuclear blackmail, while islamic state militants had suffered ‘crushing defeats‘. we will not allow this twisted dictatorship to hold the world hostage to nuclear blackmail.

i called on every nation, including china and russia, to unite in isolating the north korean regime, cutting off all ties of trade and commerce, until it stops its dangerous provocation on — and this is the whole key to what we are doing — on denuclearisation. we need to denuclearise and north korea. we have ended the failed strategy of strategic patience. and as a result, we are already seeing important progress, including tough new sanctions from the un council. we have a security council that has been with us and just about with us from the beginning. this 25—minute address had two aims: one, to hammer home the point that he went out there with a focus and has achieved what he wanted to do. his come back to negative headlines, saying that he had no real achievements.

that is disappointing for donald trump, and he felt he needed to go out and certainly note his achievements and make them clear. the second message, really, is to his base. remember, he came to the fore with this message of america first. and he kept emphasising this point that he was putting the american man and woman at the forefront of his mind, which is why he said he was there doing trade deals. the problem he has is that no firm — no significant announcements came out of this 25—minute speech. when it came to trade, we saw no brave new trade deals. when it came to north korea, he did emphasise that there was going to be this new campaign of maximum pressure, and that the era of strategic patience was over — but that's something that we already knew. and when it comes to what he touted as the "significant developments," ie the security council resolutions, which have imposed more sanctions

on north korea, well, we knew about those, too. so what we do know that has been a development in the last 2a hours is that china has sent a special envoy to north korea, which is the first time that they've done that in two years. so when donald trump talks about notable developments, is that what he was meaning? achieve and when it might be achieved. stay with us on bbc news. still to come: it's known as the male mona lisa and it's just sold for $400 million. and the world beatbox championships in new york. berliners from both east and west linked hands and danced round their liberated territory. and, with nobody to stop them, it wasn't long before the first attempts were made

to destroy the structure itself. it's keeping the candidate's name always in the public eye that counts. success or failure depends not only on public display but on the local campaign headquarters and the heavy routine work of their women volunteers. yasser arafat, who dominated the palestinian cause for so long, has died. the palestinian authority has declared a state of mourning for the leader who symbolised his people's hopes for independent statehood. in the wake of the colombian volcano disaster, rescue teams are trying to reach thousands of survivors who managed to clamber onto rooftops and trees above the sea of mud. after 17 years of discussion, the result was greeted with an outburst ofjoy. women ministers who'd long felt only grudgingly accepted amongst the ranks of clergy suddenly felt welcomed. this is bbc news.

the latest headlines: zimbabwe's army takes over the country and places robert mugabe under house arrest. but the generals claim it's not a coup. save the children has warned that 50,000 young children are expected to die in yemen this year from hunger or disease. the us secretary of state rex tillerson has called for a credible and independent investigation into myanmar‘s rohingya crisis. over the past few months, hundreds of thousands of rohingya refugees have fled myanmar because of what's been described as "textbook ethnic cleansing." justin rowlatt has been to what's rapidly becoming the world's biggest refugee camp in the port city of cox's bazar. a bangladeshi army speedboat patrols the river that marks the border with myanmar. from the boat, you can see tents and hundreds of people trapped

on the beaches. they are desperate to escape. so desperate they will take incredible risks. some 60 people arrived on this raft made of plastic containers, lashed together with rope. one big wave could have broken it apart. yet babies and grandparents made the journey. they tell the same, now—familiar stories of violence and horror. "they kept us on a beach for a month and a half," she says. "we had so little food. the army shot my husband, blinding him in one eye." like many new arrivals, they are in terrible shape. noor is two and half years old and severely malnourished. if she doesn't receive nutritious foods soon it could affect her development for life. one in four children are now malnourished. we actually expect the situation to deteriorate before it improves. we have a nutrition crisis here, now. 12,000 people will be given food at this one feeding station today.

it is basic nutrition — just rice, lentils, and a little oil, but it is enough to keep you alive. there are now more than 800,000 rohingya refugees here. no wonder they are calling this the mega camp. just look at it — there are now more people living here than in washington, dc. and every day, it grows and grows. things are getting more orderly. the mega camp is getting roads and bridges. thousands of toilets have been dug in just the last few weeks. geophysicists use drones to find aquifers deep underground. the blues, those are our clays and shales.

and the reds are aquifers — clean water. so that's telling you where to drill. how important is clean water in a situation like this? it is fundamental to everything here. without that, we will have outbreaks of disease — cholera, typhus within days or a few weeks at the most. but the truth is this is still basically a giant, open—air prison. soldiers guard the roads out of the camp. refugees aren't allowed to leave, and they can't go back to myanmar. despite all the evidence of atrocities, earlier this week, the myanmar government issued a report that exonerated its army from any blame. justin rowlatt, bbc news, bangladesh. president trump spoke for more than 20 minutes about his trip every year, eight million tons of plastic are thought to find their way into the world's oceans. now, scientists in the uk have found man—made fibres inside creatures in the deepest trenches of the pacific ocean. 0ur science editor, david shukman, has been looking at the research. a startling creature

in the mariana trench, the deepest part of the ocean. a realm so alien it feels utterly unlike anything we're familiar with. i think it's a sponge. no, it's trash! until the cameras pick up sights like this. we now know it's the pollution you can't see that might be more damaging. carrier bags and other plastic waste break up into millions of tiny fragments. research a few years ago revealed how these plastic particles can be ingested, even by the smallest marine creatures. now a research aquadition in the pacific has made another shocking discovery, when nets were sent all the way down, to the bottom of the mariana trench. back in their labs, at newcastle university, the scientists had an unwelcome surprise. every creature they brought up from the deep had swallowed some plastic waste. being remote is no defence. i think it's quite worrying

and it was quite a surprise. i think when we entered this we figured we would probably see something, find something of interest. we didn't expect to find so much of it and there are areas, for example, the bottom of the mariana trench, every single anthropod we looked at, had at least one fibre in its stomach. the scale of plastic pollution in the oceans is so vast it's hard to grasp. there's an estimated five trillion pieces of plastic out there, weighing something like 300 million tonnes, with up to 13 million tonnes more being added every year. now some of this waste floats at orjust below the surface, but some of it sinks. last year scientists found tiny fragments of plastic in marine creatures 2,000 metres deep in the atlantic.

that was depressing enough. but this latest discovery is nearly 11,000 metres down, nearly seven miles, at the deepest part of the pacific. and that shows that nowhere in the oceans is safe. when we first started thinking about the problem of plastics in the oceans, people were talking about big islands of plastic. the truth is it's everywhere. so it's not going to be easy to go and just scoop up that plastic. we have to actually stop it at the source. the biggest pieces can kill seabirds. i saw for myself how this young albatross almost choked on a plastic hook. there are projects to stop waste entering the oceans, but products used once and then thrown away are a legacy threatening every corner of the planet. david shukman, bbc news. a painting by leonardo da vinci has just sold for a record breaking sum in new york. the 500—year—old masterpiece named salvator mundi went under the hammer in a marathon 18—minute bidding war after being billed as the greatest artistic rediscovery of the 20th century. the purchase breaks the previous sale record of a top painting

by an eye—watering $2110 million. decades after its debut, beatbox battling is still going strong, and the competition is only getting tougher. we caught up with some of the brightest and best at the world beatbox championships in new york. no matter how good a contestant is, anything can happen. my name is antony. i began the boxing for the

fun of it. —— beatboxing. that turned into wanting to show others might beatboxing. that turned into trying to make an impact on the world with my beatboxing. welcome to the 2017 american beatbox championships. if you want to really learn how to beatbox, go back and look at how these rudders did it. it was different for me because people did not know what i was going to do. —— brothers. and now people can go on line and google you. i am the

first beatboxer ever to, like, tour europe extensively. this was around the napster time, before youtube, before instagram, even before myspace, setting the pavement for what was to come. the music has really touched me in a way that changed me forever. the extraordinary musical freedom of beatboxing in new york there. pope francis is not a man of bling.

he's known to drive a simple ford for trips inside the vatican walls, and shuns expensive vehicles on trips abroad. now, he's got the keys to this, a white, special edition lamborghini huracan, worth $250,000. but the pope won't actually be cruising the dream car on rome's cobbled streets anytime soon, as he won't be keeping it. the vatican say the vehicle will be auctioned, with proceeds going to three different charities. one of them includes a fund to rebuild homes and churches for christians forced out of iraq by so—called islamic state militants. hi there. for many of us it is going to be another pretty cloudy start to the day on thursday, but there will be some significant weather changes, because this cold front is going to be sliding its way southwards as we go on through the day and behind that we're going to see the skies turning much brighter with much more in the way of sunshine. before we get there, though, for the early rises, we've got a few fog patches knocking around, across south—east england, this morning.

a lot of cloud too. there's the band of rain affecting northern ireland and scotland first thing. this band of rain, remember, will clear southward and then it's going to brighten up with sunshine. so let's see how things progress through the morning. that band of rain will be moving away from northern ireland, but heading in across wales, where it will turn wet through thursday morning. there will be some brighter spells, perhaps across south—west england, maybe across the midlands as well. but for east anglia and south—east england, probably quite a grey start to the day, either with low cloud or with fog first thing in the morning. the rain across northern england could be quite heavy for a time during the morning. behind that, the skies brighten up significantly but it's not completely dry in scotland. here there will be a number of showers, particularly across north—western areas of the country, blustery winds setting in here as well. through the rest of thursday, our band of rain pushes southwards. now there could be a few breaks in the clouds ahead of that band of rain. and in any case, as the rain band works towards south—east england, probably arriving in the london area around four o'clock in the afternoon, you can see there's barely any rain left on it. to the north, as the sunshine comes

out, down go the temperatures. 6—9 degree celsius in those sunnier moment in the north of the uk. during thursday evening, the band of rain finally clears away from south—east england. with clear skies, it's going to be a cold night. towns and cities temperatures getting down to three degrees or so, in london. 0ut into the countryside, the lowest temperatures could get down to —5, in the very coldest spots. i think there will be a fairly widespread frost in the country, perhaps not so in scotland because here there's going to be fairly brisk winds. and those winds will be with us on into friday as well. bringing plenty of blustery showers across northern and western areas. but for most of us, friday is a decent end to the week, really, with plenty of sunshine around. temperatures a little below par for the time of the year. we're looking at highs between 7—10 celsius. the weekend weather prospects not looking too bad. most of us will see some sunshine but, again, there will be some showers knocking around, particularly across northern and western areas and quite a chilly wind to boot on saturday and maybe some rain arriving late in the day on sunday in the west. saturday then a reasonable start to the weekend,

temperatures 6—10 degrees celsius. sunny spells and just a few showers pushing southward during the day. that's your latest weather. bye for now. hello. this is bbc news. the latest headlines: the african union has said the takeover of power by zimbabwe's army and detention of president robert mugabe "seems like a coup." many zimbabweans have grudgingly welcomed the move, and there've been no reports of serious violence. mr mugabe's wife grace, who was bidding to succeed him as president, is reported to have fled to namibia. 50,000 children under the age of five are expected to die in yemen this year, according to the charity, save the children. the saudi—led coalition has been asked by the un to lift its blockade of yemen's sea ports immediately so vitalfood aid can get in. a painting by leonardo da vinci has sold at auction in new york for $400,000. that's the highest price ever paid for a work of art. salvator mundi, or saviour of the world, has been dubbed the "male mona lisa". now on bbc news, it is