welcome to newsday, on the bbc. i'm mariko oi, in singapore. the headlines: donald trump's top economic aide resigns in protest at the president's threatened trade wars. the us gives a cautious response to news that north korea is open i'm kasia madeira in london. also in the programme: military experts in britain are testing the substance that's thought to have made a former russian spy and his daughter critically ill. and swimming in the plastic ocean — we'll speak to the diver who took these amazing pictures. live from our studios in singapore and london, this is bbc world news — it's newsday. good morning.

it's 9am in singapore and 8pm in washington where it's been announced that president trump's top eonomic advisor, gary cohn, is to resign. in a statement, he said it had been an honour to serve his country in the trump administration. he's rumoured to have been unhappy that mr trump could trigger a trade war by imposing tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. i spoke to our correspondent peter bowes who is following this story from los angeles. it has come as a surprise to some, perhaps not a surprise to others. it is known that he was unhappy with the president's very sudden announcement last week that took so many people by surprise, both outside and inside the white house, about tariffs on the imports of steeland aluminium. mr cohn, known to be a supporter of free trade policies as opposed to protectionist policies, it is said was trying to persuade the president to change his mind but had perhaps realised that he was losing that battle

and it is the timing of this resignation that is so significant. as you say, people said that he had considered resignation before, over a completely different issue — the far—right march in charlottesville, virginia, when mr trump said tyhat there were some good people in that much, in fact there were ku klux klan members involved in that — but this is completely different, thisi s to do with economic policy and a major announcement from the presidentjust a few days ago. as you said, president trump only several hours ago said that he is going ahead with these tariffs and that trade wars are not actually too bad. have we heard from president trump about his resignation? yes, we have. he has said a few words, saying, "gary has been my chief economic "adviser and did a superbjob in driving our agenda, "helping to deliver historic tax

cuts and reforms and unleashing "the american economy once again," and he thanks him for his dedicated service to the american people so no indication of there of any division between the two but, clearly, they saw this issue and this major announcement in very different ways. we have even heard from the aluminium industry, which is set to gain from these tariffs, opposing the move. do you think president trump is still going ahead with its? there is certainly a lot of opposition, not only for those in industry but from his own party as well. president trump, as we have seen on other issues, is very dogmatic about what he believes to be right, in terms of soldiering ahead, and doing things despite the opposition of those close to him. many have said this policy could backfire in a big way,

imposing these tariffs could make it harder for certain industries to do business which could ultimately lead to job losses. some republicans have said the gains being made by tax reforms and tax cuts, those could be overturned if this policy comes into effect. the us state department has formally confirmed that it believes the north korean government used the nerve agent, vx, to assassinate the half brother of the country's leader, kim jong—un. kim jong—nam was attacked at kuala lumpur‘s main international airport in february last year by two women who rubbed a cloth in his face. our correspondent laura bicker is in seoul. the timing is terrible but before we talk about this, the us has

consistently accused north korea of being behind this attack. and of course, malaysia and authorities last month announced that they believed the vx nerve agent was used to kill kim jong—nam. believed the vx nerve agent was used to kill kimjong—nam. this was believed the vx nerve agent was used to kill kim jong—nam. this was the estranged half brother of the current leader, kim jong—un. he estranged half brother of the current leader, kimjong—un. he had criticised his family's control in the past over north korea and two women on trialfor the past over north korea and two women on trial for murder. what is new is that at this moment, the state department has decided just while north korea looks as if it's on the cusp of talking to the us, the us has decided to impose further sanctions. i've got a quote from the state department. they said a public display of contempt for universal norms against chemical weapons further demonstrates the reckless nature of north korea and underscores that we cannot afford to a north korean wmd programme of any

kind. here is the us state department once again saying they will not tolerate north korea with any kind of nuclear wrap —— weapons or nerve agent. scathing words there on the timing absolutely terrible. we had that ford relations after the olympics with south korea and now this. how is it going to impact relations between north korea and washington? an astonishing 24 hours. few of us expected a meeting held in the capital, hosted by kimjong—un, would have the effect it has had. the headlines that came out of it, you can pick one of them, at —— and it would make a major headlines. they talked about getting rid of them nuclear weapons are now prepared to discuss this with the us. all of this has been announced by the south korean delegates who have returned from pyongyang. we are

hearing that kim jong—un has hounded the south korean delegate a letter to give to the united states. these ministers from seoul will go to washington to brief them. we are on the cusp of what could be a significant development on the peninsula. meanwhile, the us is keeping its stringent standards. they want maximum pressure and they wa nt to they want maximum pressure and they want to be not dashed in nuclear rises peninsula. is he genuinely prepared to give up his nuclear weapons? that is the question many sceptics are asking. is this a ploy to buy time, to try to get international sanctions lifted because by now, pyongyang's cash flow must be drying up with these stringent oil sanctions and many foreign workers are having to come home and north korea has done this in the past but here, in seoul, they believe having seen the effects of

war on this peninsula, that whatever the motivation, it is worth taking that risk. a fascinating turn of events. we will continue to monitor all the reaction coming from the breaking news. tens of thousands of people in papua and new guinea are in need of supplies after a strong earthquake. the us secretary of state, rex tillerson, has criticised china's economic activity in africa. speaking ahead of a visit to six nations on the continent, mr tillerson said chinese investment had the potential to improve africa's infrastructure, but its approach had led to debt and created few — if any — jobs. additional troops are being deployed to the streets in sri lanka, after reports of further tension between muslims and the buddhist sinhala majority. muslim—owned property has been attacked by buddhists in kandy and the town of ampara.

earlier the government announced a state of emergency. a town in the rebel—held enclave of eastern ghouta, near damascus, has reportedly surrendered to syrian government forces. it's thought civilians in hammouriyeh put pressure on the rebels to evacuate the town. it follows reports of a chlorine gas attack in the town overnight. you might remember this photo of a little girl staring up in awe at a new portrait of michelle obama. it was taken by a tourist at the national portrait gallery in washington, dc. well, now the former first lady has met little parker curry. and they had quite a party. mrs obama posted this clip on her twitter feed, saying: "parker, keep on dreaming big for yourself...and maybe one day i'll proudly look up at a portrait of you!" uk counter—terrorism

officers are now in charge of the investigation into the suspected poisoning of a former russian agent, who once spied for britain. mr skripal and his daughter yulia are critically ill in hospital after they were exposed to an unidentified substance on sunday. the substance is now being tested by military experts. relatives of mr skripal have told the bbc russian service that the former spy believed the russian special services might come after him at any time. the russian government is denying any suggestion of involvement in the incident, as steve rosenberg reports from moscow. it sounds chillingly familiar. russia under suspicion of planning and executing an attack 2,000 miles away in britain. in 2006, the target was former russian agent alexander litvinenko, murdered in london. the man britain believes poisoned him is andrei lugovoy.

today, he dismissed claims that moscow had attacked sergei skripal as propaganda. translation: why do they say he was poisoned? perhaps he poisoned himself or had a heart attack. you talk about propaganda, but what about alexander litvinenko? the enquiry in britain into his death found that you had poisoned him, probably on the orders of vladimir putin. translation: there was no official investigation into litvinenko's death. there was an attempt to accuse russia and a russian citizen, me, of poisoning him in britain with polonium. as for the kremlin, well, it's been saying very little today about sergei skripal. president putin's spokesman told me earlier, "we have no information about what happened. "we cannot comment. " although he did add

it was a tragic situation. but catching spies has become one of vladimir putin's priorities. yesterday, he congratulated russia's security service, the fsb. it uncovered 397 spies last year. spy—mania, and now a former double agent collapsing in britain. moscow denies any connection, but it can only add to the chill in relations between the uk and russia. steve rosenberg, bbc news, moscow. you're watching newsday on the bbc. still to come on the programme: a success story from india — how the country has managed to dramatically reduce the number of children forced into marriage. and this bottle from 1886 was found ona and this bottle from 1886 was found on a beach in australia but it's not

for drinking, but did give its finders some reason be cheerful. first, the plates slipped gently off the restaurant tables, then suddenly the tables, the chairs and people crashed sideways and downwards, and it was just a matter of seconds as the ferry lurched on to her side. the hydrogen bomb. on a remote pacific atoll, the americans have successfully tested a weapon whose explosive force dwarfed that of the bomb dropped on hiroshima. i had heard the news earlier and so my heart went bang, bang, bang! the constitutional rights of these marchers are their rights as citizens of the united states, and they should be protected, even in the right to test them out, so they don't get their heads broken and are sent to hospital. this religious controversy, i know you don't want to say too much about it, but does it worry you that it's going to boil up when you get to the states? well, it worries me, yes,

but i hope everything will be all right in the end, as they say. this is newsday on the bbc. i'm kasia madeira. our top stories: donald trump's top economic aide has resigned in protest at the president's threatened trade wars. the us state department says the north korean government used a nerve agent to kill kim jong un‘s half—brother, in malaysia last year. let's take a look at some front pages from around the world. here in singapore, the straits times leads with the korea summit proposed to take place next month. if all goes to plan, kimjong—un, pictured here having dinner with a south korean delegation, will meet his counterpart from the south in the demilitarized zone, which separates the two countries. the top headline in the japan times is "kim applauds openhearted

talks with seoul". to illustrate the story, this picture — showing smiles all around when the north korean leader met south korea's head of the presidential national security office on tuesday. the gulf news reports on the state of emergency declared tuesday in sri lanka. the government in colombo says this is just a preventive step after a number of clashes between buddhists and muslims, but insists the country is still safe for travellers. yesterday on newsday we told you about unicef‘s new study which shows a significant drop in the number of child marriages across the world in the last decade. india has seen one of the biggest reductions in recent years. but overall it's still the country with the highest number of women who've been married underage. our global affairs correspondent, naomi grimley, has been to rajasthan in the north—west of india, to find out how girls there are fighting back against the age—old practice. monica is out shopping

for the day's food with her mum. it's a scene of domestic harmony. butjust a few months ago, monica's parents tried to marry her off, age 13, at the same time as an elder sister. the marriage never happened because on the day of her wedding, monica found the courage to report her own parents to a children's hotline. translation: i called up and i told them everything. that i'm young and i don't want to get married and i want to study further. i ask them, "can you please do something that stops my marriage?" if i'd got married, nobody would have allowed me to play or talk. my in—laws would have just made me work. ganesh, did you know it was against the law? translation: we did know that it is a criminal offence

and we did feel bad, but we are a family of labourers — sometimes i don't get work for a whole month. so we thought since are marrying off one daughter, we should marry off monica too, and save on the expense. in the end, ganesh and his wife promised the police they would not marry monica off before she comes of age. the authorities in this part of rajasthan say they see dozens of cases of child marriage every year and many more go unreported. in the case of monica, her eleventh—hour call for help was answered by a woman ready to jump into action. meet preeti yadav, a guardian angel on a moped. speed is often the essence of herjob. she's the woman who handles the local child marriage cases, which come to light via the hotline. it was preeti, together with a specialist police team,

burst in on monica's wedding at the very last moment. translation: when monica called up on the same day of her wedding, we had a tricky challenge as we had only three hours to save a child. she was in a wedding dress when we arrived and she gave us a little smile. she knew that we'd come to stop her wedding. she was happy then. preeti is part of a broader fightback against child marriage in a state where 35% of young women say they were married before the age of 18. (singing). "don't marry me off," sing these pupils at a girls boarding school. they know all about what the law says and education remains one of the best defences in stopping early marriage. over in the desert village of usansa, the wider community is getting involved as they watch a puppet show tackling the issue. afterwards, the villagers rise

to their feet and pledge to abandon child marriage. it's a poignant moment and a sign that in this part of india, things are beginning to change after years of entrenched custom. back at monica's house, she chats to her new friend preeti on the stoop of the family home. so nearly a childhood loss. now, through an act of teenage rebellion, it's a childhood regained. naomi grimley, bbc news, western rajasthan. a british diver has filmed himself swimming through a sea of plastic in bali, putting renewed focus on just how polluted our oceans really are. the area is known as manta point, and attracts thousands of tourists because of its marine life and pristine waters. but look at this video taken a couple of days ago by

richard horner. you can see him swimming through plastic waste. rubbish is common on bali's beaches during the rainy months, as it washes ashore from neighbouring java island. well, richard hornerjoined me from nusa lembongan in bali. we see it randomly, butjust not on that scale. so we see the occasional cloud of it and it comes and goes with the currents within a few hours, but that was horrifying, that amount. the pictures that we're seeing, it looks like it's a lot of food waste as well. was there any smell to it as well? not really. it probably just smelled like driftwood that you'd find on the beach, because the smell would mostly come from the organic matter that would naturally get washed out into the sea anyway, even before plastic. but the plastic

doesn't really smell. it's just the algae and the foliage breaking down. and could you tell where the plastic was from? when we — i didn't look on that day, but when we normally look at the labels on the packaging, i think all the stuff that i've seen has been from indonesia, but with the indonesian through—flow current that we have dominating here, it could come from further north up in the north of southeast asia perhaps. i mean, keeping those beaches clean is in the interests of the local government. are you aware of any actions taken by the authorities to make sure that these waters remain clean? partially, we have, like, every single water bottle and every single glass bottle is collected. like, you just never see them, if they're on the ground,

so a lot of people deal with it themselves. so would you say that people's awareness isn't exactly as high? yeah, ithink, obviously, when i was growing up, we had to keep britain tidy campaign that kind of brainwashed us in a good way, but people here haven't that yet. and perhaps they could. our next story could be the plot of a film. a family from perth in australia has found the world's oldest known message in a bottle, almost 132 years after it was thrown into the ocean. experts have confirmed that it's an authentic message from a german vessel. it was thrown into the overboard as part of an experiment into ocean currents and shipping routes. ato a to wedge island, we went forward

driving in two different cars, we will with my friends and my son and his girlfriend and my wife and her friend thought they would walk, we went driving. she is wandering along the dunes and sees a bottle on the ground and thinks there is a lot of rubbish, she bends down and pick it up rubbish, she bends down and pick it up thinking she is computer something in the bin when she gets home, but she picks up a bottle that looks exactly like. this is a bottle i have bought from the same manufacturer. inside it it turns out was a scrawled note, some wet sand. the bottle had no lead on its topic when we tipped it out, all when my sons got frantic it out, out came this beautiful notes topic we were —— beautiful note. we waited until we got home, she put it in the oven because it was damp. when we unravelled it will we had this lovely message to say that this note was dropped over at this date on this day, on route from cardiff to

makassar, probably carrying coal. it was dropped about 900 kilometres west of just a loco was dropped about 900 kilometres west ofjust a loco and we think it has spent about one year in the ocean, ended up on the beach and has been covered by sand and for almost all that time has probably laid underground and harmed with the note in great condition. going back to the fact that you didn't want to damage the note, but you put it in the other in. you are a brave man. how did you authenticate that this was genuine and not 80 a joke? —— may be. we kept it for two gays and we did ourown may be. we kept it for two gays and we did our own research, i contacted some bottle experts to make sure it was the right vintage. i contacted the national maritime new zealand, the national maritime new zealand, the western australian museum and the western australian museum and the german authority that has now taken overfrom the german authority that has now ta ken over from the the german authority that has now taken over from the group that did these experiments and over a period of probably three weeks i would get

various bits of information. i had the western australian museum saying that our guys in the netherlands have confirmed the bottle is of the right age, then the national maritime museum saying that they had found a registration for the boat in a journal. then we had the primo piece of evidence was the german weather service went to their library and out of 39,000 different journals they pulled out the one from the boat and on the fourth of june there is an entry in that page, in thatjournal june there is an entry in that page, in that journal where the june there is an entry in that page, in thatjournal where the captain writes: bottle thrown overboard. that was the very last piece that we needed and the museum needed to confirm it is a real, genuine find. you have been watching newsday. hello again.

it felt like we had two different seasons across the uk yesterday, north to south. across northern areas in scotland, we had heavy snow causing transport disruption again. and temperatures struggled to get much above freezing. whereas further south, 11 degrees celsius and, indeed, we had some cloud breaks. and with the light winds around, it didn't feel too bad at all where the sunshine bothered breaking through. further north in scotland, though, it was another snow day, particularly over the high ground, and that snow again caused problems through those higher central belt motorways. now, looking at the weather picture at the moment, the last of the snow clearing away from the north highlands, but aside from that, we've got some clearer slots around. so a colder start to the day with a few frost patches around. a little bit of ice is a possibility first thing in the morning. certainly, a chilly start to the day for most of us. and then all eyes down towards the south—east, really. you've got a little area of low pressure that's moving in. now, there's a bit of uncertainty with this rain. but it could end up being much more extensive across south—east england

and east anglia, and slower to move away as well. so that's a possibility. by either way, by the time we get to the the afternoon, the cloud should be breaking up. further north and west, we've got a few showers, they'll be wintry over the high ground, but the weather not causing too many problems. a few showers later in the day, arriving across the south—west, but for many areas, cloud will break at times to give some sunny spells. temperatures coming up in scotland. we're looking at highs of 6 in edinburgh and aberdeen. further south, temperatures again just about reaching double figures in the afternoon brightness. you might remember thursday was going to be a dry day, but there's been a big jump in the weather forecast, and now, we've got a band of rain and perhaps even a bit of hill snow working across wales and england first thing in the morning. but that is uncertain detail at the moment. there will be some further wintry showers coming in across the north—west and temperatures ranging from 6 to 10 degrees, many areas breaking up as we go through the afternoon.

north—westerly breeze for many areas after a cold start through the day, we should see some sunny spells coming through. a band of rain approaches here and clouding over in london as well. highs of 11 or so. looking ahead to the weekend, this area of low pressure will push a band of rain northwards and the cold air is still there, so we could see a spell of snow over some of the higher hills, the northern pennines and perhaps into parts of scotland as well. it will turn milder all the while. that is your weather. i'm kasia madera, with bbc world news. the white house top economic advisor, gary cohn, has announced his resignation. mr cohn was said to have been unhappy with the president's threat to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. the us state department has confirmed that north korea used the nerve agent, vx, to kill the half—brother of kimjong—un in malaysia last year. and this video is trending on bbc.com. remember this photo of a little girl staring up in awe at a new portrait of michelle obama ?

well now the former first lady has met little parker curry and posted this clip saying, "parker, keep on dreaming big for yourself...and maybe one day i'll proudly look up at a portrait of you!" that's all from me now. and the top story here in the uk. military experts in britain are testing the substance thought to have made a former russian spy and his daughter critically ill.