this is bbc world news, the headlines: china is facing deepening isolation as growing numbers of countries impose travel bans because of fears over the new coronavirus. the us and australia have blocked chinese citizens and foreigners who've recently visited china from entering their countries. european leaders have expressed sadness at the uk finally leaving the eu. france's emmanuel macron has emphasised britain's "unrivalled ties" with the french. president trump is a step closer to being acquitted in his impeachment trial after the us senate voted against calling witnesses. he has been accused of abusing his power and obstructing congress. in tennis, the american, sofia kenin, has won herfirst ever grand slam title.

she pulled off a surprise victory over spain's garbine muguruza in the australian open. kenin lost the first set, but fought back to win. the men's final takes place on sunday. at 10 o'clock, reeta chakra barti will be here with a full round up of the day's news. first, it's time for our world. in the spring of 2017, off the coast of gaza, fishermen made an extraordinary discovery.

their incredible find became known as the gaza hoard. it contained hundreds of ancient coins. but, within months, the coins had disappeared. gaza lost a unique treasure. so what's happened to the gaza hoard, and why is the world of international coins such a mystery?

abu ahmed is a fisherman who barely makes enough money israel and egypt maintain a tight blockade of gaza by land, sea and air, citing the security concerns. fishermen found dozens of some of the rarest coins of the

the coins found by the fishermen were silver alexander the great decadrachms, minted more than 2,000 years ago in babylon, modern—day iraq. before the fishermen‘s discovery in gaza, only a handful of these coins had been found. just 12 are officially recorded. they were all documented and their valuable history was preserved. we've been told that there were dozens of alexander decadrachms in the gaza hoard but now they've vanished. just months later, this coin went up for sale at an auction house based in london, roma numismatics. it sold for £100,000.

then there was this one. this one. and this one. there have been a total of 19 coins put up for auction at eight international auction houses since spring 2017. no verifiable information about where they came from was provided in any auction catalogues. the fishermen found their coins off the coast of an area called blakhiyah. today, it appears an unremarkable stretch of coastline but in alexander the great‘s time, this was the most important trading point in the south—eastern mediterranean known as anthedon.

fadel alatol is an archaeologist in gaza. before the blockade, he was part of an international team which excavated the blakhiyah site. in 2017, fishermen came to fadel with bags of coins and asked him if he knew what they were. inside the bags were hundreds of coins, some still heavily encrusted with salt and sand from the sea. amongst them were extremely valuable alexander decadrachm coins. fadel was the first to identify the coins as 2,300—year—old

alexander the great decadrachms. 0nce fadel realised their value, he realised it would be fadel photographed this coin, which is obviously a decadrachm.

you can see it because there is a scale and you can see that the coin is more than 3cm wide. professor thomas bauzou is a coin expert, otherwise known as a numismatist. he's one of the people fadel sent his photographs to. he has been keeping track of all the alexancer decadrachms circulating around the world. this one, no origin. this one, no origin — this one, no origin. they are just auctioned without any origin. this one from the inventory of a north american dealer. how interesting. what is the interest for a numismatist of such an origin? this one...

the descriptions given by the auction houses give little away, and professor bauzou has not been able to match any of the auction's coins with the photos taken by fadel. the alleged origins, private canadian, private north american, private european collection are meaningless to me. how can you verify such an origin? this is not an origin. you might as well print "from a private martian collection". it's not illegal or uncommon to sell coins with no published ownership history, known as provenance in the industry, but it is very unusual or extremely rare ——for extremely rare coins to be sold without it. auction houses say that they can only share information that they have been given consent to publish. the united states, united kingdom and most european countries have strict laws which make it illegal to sell exceptionally rare antiquities if they are known or even suspected to be newly found and undocumented.

but the coins could have come from never before documented collections held since before relevant laws came into force. they can then be bought and sold without breaching the current laws. the sale of the £100,000 coin, or rumours of a new hoard being found, may have encouraged collectors to bring their illegal coins to the market. hayem al batar works for the ministry of tourism and antiquities in gaza. we asked her what she knew about the gaza hoard.

by law, the fishermen‘s big finds should have been handed into the ministry and officially documented as a priceless part of gaza's heritage. instead, the fishermen sold their coins on to traders illegally.

the fishermen say they have no choice but to sell what they find. the fishermen have tried to piece together what happened to their coins after they sold them

to local dealers. the seizure of coins by the israeli authorities at the erez border caught the attention of professor bauzou. i made a comparison of the two coins. this is the picture taken by fadel in march ‘17 and this is the picture published on the israeli news site injuly'17 and you can see it's obviously the very same coin, all the details are identical. he finally found a match, linking a coin in fadel‘s pictures with this one stopped at the border. he suspects other coins were successfully smuggled out and sold on. the israeli authorities told the bbc

they cannot comment on the coins seized because there is an ongoing investigation. auction houses are expected to carry out due diligence to establish a coin‘s provenance, but they are also able to rely on the word of a trusted consignor, the person who bought the coins to the auction house for sale. we asked roma and the seven other auction houses for information about the 19 alexander decadrachms put up for sale since the gaza hoard was found in spring 2017. none were able to provide us with the name of the consignor, but our investigation has identified the source of 6 out of the 19 alexander decadrachms put up for sale since 2017. on these instagram and facebook accounts that belong to a famous palestinian coin—collecting family are pictures of coins,

including alexander decadrachms, that have turned up in recent auctions. five of the alexander decadrachms since spring —— sold since spring 2017 via classical numismatic group, numismatik naumann, nomos ag and heritage are linked here to the tariq hani collection. the family provided the bbc with this document which lists that these five coins and a further one recently sold had been in their collection since the 1960s before current laws governing the buying and selling of antiquities came into force, making them legal to trade now. and what about the other 13? where might these coins come from, including the £100,000 coin sold from a private canadian collection? this man is richard beale, the director of roma numismatics. they've sold 11 alexander

decadrachms since spring 2017, including the £100,000 coin. mr beale declined to be interviewed on camera and when we met him he couldn't tell us anything more than was published in one of their auction catalogues. butjust upstairs, roma numismatics had another alexander decadrachm on display ahead of another auction. in order to see and film that coin, we posed as a buyer and went back. they certainly are very chunky things, aren't they? a few of those in your pocket... this coin later sold for £46,000. during this visit we learned that the coin‘s consignor was a canadian gentleman and when we were given one of roma's auction catalogues and we spotted a name we've heard before — salem alshdaifat.

the fishermen tell us that mr alshdaifat is a contact of someone who buys coins from them. although we haven't been able to link him to the gaza hoard. so, who is salem alshdaifat? mr alshdaifat is not a formal part of roma numismatics‘s business.

but roma's director, richard beale, used to be the co—director of his company, athena numismatics. on his facebook page we find this post: "after a six—month effort and hard work with our partners, roma, we present for the first time ever some very rare greek pieces." in september 2018, roma sold that coin for £110,000. we asked mr alshdaifat if he was involved in the sale of the £100,000 coin or any of the other alexander decadrachms auctioned by roma numismatics since september 2017. he said he was not involved in the sale of any of the alexander decadrachms. he told us:

richard beale, the director of roma numismatics, told the bbc: he added that the consignors... we asked mr beale where and when the coins were originally found and he said he was not aware and that this was not unusual in the industry. none of the experts or historians we consulted were able to match the photos of the coins found by the fishermen with the alexander decadrachms put up for sale in auction houses around the world. the way the current laws

and regulations around the coin industry work make it really hard to trace the history of coins and so understand what they tell us about the ancient world. despite calls for new regulations to be introduced, auction houses and consignors are under no obligation to reveal the provenance of the coins they sell. in fact, data protection laws can prevent them from sharing this information. our investigation has uncovered where only some of the recently auctioned coins came from. we may never know where the gaza hoard ended up. what we do know is that gaza has lost a part of its history.

today, on top of this site, is a part of the vast al—shati refugee camp. what lay beneath has been forgotten by most.

in the summer of 2019, the ministry of antiquities in gaza was closed down due to lack of funding. the seven other auction houses had this to say about the alexander decadrachms they put up for sale. classical numismatics group, or cng, changed ownership in november 2018. the new owner told the bbc: hess divo said: nomos ag told the bbc they received the coin after it failed to sell at hess divo. they said they had...

numismatik naumann said: heritage auctions told the bbc: ira and larry goldberg and schulman bv have not responded to the bbc‘s request for comment.

hello. there are some windows of dry weather in our forecast for the next ten days but some of those widows of dry weather will close pretty quickly. the window of dry weather from saturday evening will not last into sunday because of this cloud. it will bring outbreaks of rain north eastwards to the day, pushing northwards into scotland with some uncertainty as to how far north it will get. some snow or mixed in on the higher ground. there will be sunshine and rain. there will be rain on the chart —— channel islands. it will be colder the further north you go. through sunday night, you will push that band of rain northwards. it will turn quite

breezy and windy across the western side of scotland as temperatures tonight range from three to nine celsius. we go into monday and this is our weather maker, this low pressure, you can see a lot of isobars are squashing together. there will be a swathes of strong winds, blustery through many parts of the uk, with rain and snow moving across scotland. the north midlands, across scotland. the north midlands, a lot of clouds to the size of that, ido a lot of clouds to the size of that, i do what soggy stories across the channel islands. as we go through monday night we will see windy weather. gust of 75 to 80 mph and in western scotland there will be strong winds following through the central belt. in the early parts of tuesday, these winds will blow down into north—east england. there may be travel disruption with this area of low pressure trying to move away but the high pressure is squashing

in behind drawing strong winds. as the high pressure comes on, a lot of the high pressure comes on, a lot of the showers will become wintry and there will be some spells of sunshine as they dry up. there will be temperatures between seven and 8 degrees. high pressure is building in on wednesday, it would allow things to turn a bit chilly if it sticks with us for a period of time, but it looks as if it is going to decline to the south quite quickly. that will allow mild to comment. this is wednesday, high pressure is still with us with spells of sunshine after a chilly start. workload is starting to gather in the north—west but was a moving to the north—west but was a moving to the south—west. not particularly chilly, certainly not for the time of year. we see cloud going into northern ireland on thursday. high pressure will hold further south, we

will see some sunshine, but it is mild on bounds. as we head through next weekend, our area of high pressure continues to decline, allowing frontal systems to put in from the atlantic and some of these could be very active indeed thanks toa could be very active indeed thanks to a strong jet stream. he winds in the atmosphere will strengthen which will be potential to stormy weather in some places, particularly in the first part of the following week. there will be a window of dry weather but through next week and it will get wetter and, potentially, after that it will be stormy. some dry weather but not all the time through the week ahead.

this is bbc news, i'm martine croxall. the headlines at ten. the university of york says risk of infection is low, after it revealed one of its students is one of two people in the uk to test positive for coronavirus. i want to reassure students and the wider community and staff that we are working closely with the lead agency public health england, and other agencies to manage this situation. public health england says 203 people have now been tested — with no additional positive cases. the uk enacts its most profound strategic change in a generation, leaving the european union, after nearly half a century. the acquittal of president trump becomes all but certain,