welcome to bbc news, my name is mike embley. our top stories... as new zealand becomes the first country to suspend political and miliatry ties with myanmar, fresh reports of water cannon use on protestors in the capital. a change in policy on yemen — as the us calls for an end to the war, we get rare access to see the damage inflicted in six years of conflict. the world health organization insists the astrazeneca vaccine is still a vital tool in the global fight against coronavirus, despite concerns in south africa about its efficacy. and the english photographer who kept finding his innocent images labelled "sexually overt" by facebook.

hello and welcome to our viewers on pbs in america and around the world. new zealand has become the first country to suspend political and military ties with myanmar following last week's coup against the elected leadership. the news comes as a fourth day of protest appears to be getting under way, with police once again using water cannons on the protesters. these are pictures we have just received of demonstrators marching through the capital. on monday, the commander—in—chief of the military also spoke out for the first him on television, trying to justify leading the coup as protesters again took to the streets in largely peaceful demonstrations. the bbc�*s nyein chan aye reports from yangon. chanting this sending a message to the generals. for a third day, anger has brought tens of thousands of people out onto the streets.

worried about the future of the country, the people here say that their freedom has once again been taken away. this generation did not think they would have to do the same resistance against the military rule. young people hoped they would grow up in a very different myanmar, open to the world and its possibilities. but now they find themselves battling to restore democracy and end military rule, just like the generation before them. but that fight won't be easy. their leader, aung san suu kyi, is still under house arrest. and today, the general who put her there spoke for the first time since taking power.

justifying the coup, he said civilian leaders had failed to hold a proper election last november. across the city, red shirts hang outside homes in support of the protest movement. inside one apartment, this family say they have been protesting against military rule for three generations. for them, history has a way of repeating itself. 44—year—old thet thet aung spent four years in prison for protesting. translation: i feel really bitter about this coup. - "so it happens again," i said in my heart. i can't sleep thinking that our new generation will suffer this again. some here arejoining protests for the first time. this student, who can't show his face for safety reasons, spent most of his adult life

in this young democracy. so the thing i don't like about the military takeover is everything. i feel like we have no freedom. i feel like we have lost our freedom at home. as the protests build, the military is already starting to tighten the grip on the country. despite mass demonstrations in many cities for days, there is still no sign that the military will back down. nyein aye, bbc news, yangon. earlier, i spoke to aung kyaw moe in the city of yangon. he founded the center for social integrity, which promotes social and economic cohesion in myanmar. he expects another day of mass rallies across the country, even after the military imposed curfews and gathering restrictions in some areas. it is not really granted that there would be no violence and history suggests that military crackdown has killed

many and injured many in the past when this kind of protest, peaceful protest has occurred in myanmar and around the world. and of course myanmar�*s military has a different history compared to the other one. however, i think the current military has messed up with the wrong generations here and many young people are going on the street with all the possible means they have, with all the capacity that they have within themselves to collectively put down the military, and we expect the response from the military could be heavy, but however, i think the resistance from the people is also very high. what do you make of the promises of fresh elections? do you believe them? i think it's really difficult. again, to go back to my previous point, it's really difficult to trust those who have been lying to us for generations and generations. so i think it is, once again, a different game they want

to play and as a citizen of myanmar, i do not have trust in that. how effective a tactic for the military is cutting off the internet? it's a big problem, isn't it, for the country as a whole because banking relies so much on the internet? i think they tried that in the past few days for 2h hours and also, as you mentioned, the driving force of the economic development in the country is internet and information flow in real time and the banking system will not work if the internet is shut, so their willingness, or their ability to show to the nation that they are making better progress than the previous government will not be there so therefore, i think in the cost of access to information to the public, they were enabling the internet and i think it's still on, but we don't know until when it is going to be on.

i know you are a rohingya. i wondered how the rohingya people, in general, are reacting to all this, but also myanmar has not been kind to the rohingya as a people. do you feel, really, that you owe the country anything? i think we have been, for some decades now, we have been politically excluded and we have always been part of myanmar from the very earliest stage of myanmar, from every parliament that existed in myanmar, every cabinet that existed in myanmar, and for the sake of discrimination and atrocities that took place and bearing a different identity, we were always excluded. however, i think we always believe that we are part of myanmar and myanmar came to us, we did not go to myanmar and we will do anything within the capacity that we have as individuals or a community to ensure this nation is a better place for everyone and we will be, once again, trying to put all the efforts that we have to be politically active and politically mobilised.

indeed, this is a good opportunity for us to ensure we are included in the larger protests and our people are doing that, our people are on the streets with the larger burmese public to be protesting against the military coup. let's get some of the day's other news. a court in hong kong has denied bail to the media tycoonjimmy lai in a landmark case. he's been charged with colluding with foreign forces under the controverisal security law imposed by beijing. he is the highest profile figure arrested under the law since it came into force last june. israel's prime minister has pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. benjamin netanyahu was making his second appearance in court since his trial began in may last year. it is alleged he accepted

improper gifts and sought to trade favours with media moguls in exchange for positive coverage. mr netanyahu has called the charges "fabricated and ludicrous". in a tit—for—tat move, germany, poland and sweden have expelled russian diplomats in response to russia's removal of their respective representatives over the weekend. all three countries, and the eu, deny claims that they participated in demonstrations supporting russia's jailed opposition leader, alexei navalny. presidentjoe biden has called for an end to the war in yemen, which has killed around 100,000 people according to one un estimate. it's been six years since a saudi—led coalition intervened in the country's civil war, to restore an internationally—recognised government. but houthi rebels, backed by iran, are fighting to regain control. the bbc�*s international correspondent orla guerin has had rare access to yemen. a warning, you may find some parts of her report distressing. aden, a city cradled

by mountains in a country overshadowed by war. it's the seat of power of yemen's internationally—recognised government, which is propped up by saudi support. but when ministers flew in from exile in riyadh, this was the welcome. the first of three missiles slamming in. screaming the woman screaming in fear is a localjournalist, alia fouad. i saw fire.

and i saw so many people running on the ground, kids, women injured, killed. for a moment, ithought about my family. yemen's foreign minister, ahmed bin mubarak, saw the full horror from the plane, along with the rest of the newly—formed unity government. i was very optimistic. i hoped to return to the country, start, you know, the process. as the foreign minister, it was top of my agenda to start preparing for the peace process and, you know, dealing with all of these other challenges. we never thought that we're going to have such an attack. but in just 60 seconds, 21 people were killed, including aid workers and airport officials. the government blames iranian—backed houthi rebels who control most of yemen. they deny it.

the news was broken on this tv channel by their reporter at the scene. adeeb al—janani was killed on the spot, on one more dark day for yemen, leaving behind five young children. "he died, died, died," says his mother, who had begged him not to go. she was having so many plans... and in another home in aden, another room full of absence. she used to have one

lovely smile. yasmine was one of the 18 people killed at the airport. she was yemen's deputy minister for public works. do you have any thoughts, any words, for the people who would carry out an action like this? yeah, i have... it's not only our family that lost a really beloved person. it's around... i don't know, each and every house definitely have someone they lost. i'm sure whoeverjust did this thing, i am sure also that he has lost someone in his family. so i'm just saying, let's talk. can the conflict be stopped? it's deeply embedded here and it's playing out against a backdrop of regional rivalries. the new us president, joe biden, is pushing for peace. he may need to be ready

for the long haul. orla guerin, bbc news, aden. do stay with us on bbc news. there is much more to come, including this. can this spacecraft make it to orbiting mars? six months after bluster, the united arab emirates probe reaches its riskiest point in its red planet rendezvous. —— six months after blasting off.

welcome back. very good to have us has bbc news. one headline is our egg... at theirfresh of news. one headline is our egg... at their fresh of water cannons being used on protesters, it is the fourth of protesters, it is the fourth of

protest getting under way we're getting pictures coming in, just trying to verify where coming from. the world health organization says it's too early to write off the astrazeneca vaccine, and that it still has an important role to play in the fight to control the coronavirus. that's after a disappointing day when a study in south africa found that the vaccine was not proving to be as effective as researchers had hoped against a new variant sweeping the country. astrazeneca hopes it will have an adapted vaccine ready by the autumn. the next phase of the pandemic could become a game of catch up between the variants and the vaccines. our science editor david shukman has more. around the world, there is now a race between the virus and the vaccines, between the threat of new variants and efforts to stay ahead of them, and the outcome matters to us all. while a first wave of countries, including the uk, should see the majority of their populations vaccinated this year, others won't reach that stage till next year, and many will have to wait for the year after, or even longer. this is a global virus,

it's a global pandemic. until we are all protected, then it could be that a variant in another country mutates, so that the current vaccines are no longer effective, and that will come back, so even those people who are vaccinated, they are still going to be at risk with these future variants. the virus is changing all the time, and when it infects human cells, it takes over and gets them to make millions of copies, but they will not all be the same. each batch may have some random genetic mistakes, mutations that are usually unimportant, but a few might prove dangerous. so the first task is to track these changes, and that is done by studying the genetic code of the virus. since december 2019, when it was first confirmed in wuhan, scientists have monitored what effectively is a family tree, with hundreds of different branches. each of these lines represents one of many different variants that has emerged over the course of the past year. it is only by doing this genetic research that we can

spot the variants that are worrying, in the uk, brazil and south africa. half a million british coronavirus samples have gone through genetic screening so far. these machines are among those that have done most of the analysis. but few countries can work on this almost industrial scale, so there is a lot we don't know about how the virus is changing worldwide. there are thousands, millions of cases globally. there are undoubtedly other variants of covid that are spreading quickly that we are just blind to, and any one of those additional strains around the world could confer an advantage for the virus, allow it to re—infect people, even though they have been vaccinated, and that is what we want to protect against. one answer is to have a global screening operation. in west africa five years ago, mobile labs studied the ebola virus. something far larger is needed now, and alongside that,

the faster the vaccines can be rolled out and adapted, as new variants emerge, the safer we will all be. david shukman, bbc news. lawyers for donald trump filed a more detailed brief on the eve on the former president's impeachment trial. they called the case against him an act of "political theatre" by democrats. mr trump is accused by democrats, and a handful of republicans, of inciting the attack on the capitol on january 6th. senate majority leader chuck schumer announced that he had agreed a structure for the process with the republicans and hoped it would lead to truth and accountability. following the despicable attack onjanuary 6th, there must, there must be truth and accountability if we are going to move forward, heal and bring our country together once again. sweeping something as momentous as this under the rug brings no healing whatsoever. let's be clear about that.

much more to come on that in the next few days. the united arab emirates' historic first mission to mars will soon be arriving at the red planet. the hope probe launched from japan lastjuly and will study the planet's weather and climate but one of the most dangerous parts of its journey has to take place successfully first. our global science correspondent rebecca morelle has more. a first for the united arab emirates. this was the moment last summer when it sent its spacecraft to mars. now it's almost reached its destination, but the probe, called hope, has a critical manoeuvre ahead — getting into orbit. it needs to approach mars at just the right speed and angle. if anything goes wrong, the entire mission will be lost. we don't really want to hit the planet, nor do we want to pass by the planet. we need to be very precise in how the operation happens. the hope mission will

see more of mars than we've ever seen before. its spacecraft has an elliptical orbit, swinging in closer and then much further away. at its closest, its flight matches the rotation of mars, so it hovers over some key features like olympus mons, the biggest volcano in the solar system. at its furthest point, the planet spins beneath it, giving it a much wider view. this means it will see almost all of the planet from both close up and from far away. the spacecraft will study the atmosphere to solve a big mystery of how mars transformed from a planet with water, like earth, to the dry, dusty world it is today. until now, the uae has only sent satellites into earth orbit. arriving at the red planet will be a huge leap. to know that there is a spacecraft that has gone from this region further than any man—made object has ever gone, that is hurtling

towards a small pink dot that you also see in the sky, i can't describe the feeling or the thought process, but i never thought that this was possible. the spacecraft has one shot to get into orbit. if it succeeds, history will be made, firmly establishing the united arab emirates as a new space power. rebecca morelle, bbc news. now, at first glance that looks like a pretty innocuous picture, but according to facebook that was considered to be a "sexually overt" image. this happened repeatedly to an english photographer. paul hawkins reports. meet photographer mike from winchester. he was trying to sell his photos on facebook, but the social media platform had other ideas when he tried to upload his pictures. suddenly i found, after a while, that it was sending just crazy inappropriate sort

of bans for some of the adverts or some of the images i was trying to sell. what was their problem with the picture of the bullock? facebook didn't like it because they believed it was an overtly sexual photograph and facebook bans any image that has an overtly sexual position portrayed in the image, but actually, its two cows about 30 feet away. to be fair to them, mike, it isn't wearing any clothes. that is true, it is a naked cow. it is au naturelle, as it were. it was a similar story for this building, considered overtly sexual. so too the england cricket team. because they were huddling, again the overtly sexual content policy was breached by ben stokes and others. this sign was banned for apparently promoting alcohol sales, while this picture from france was rejected for promoting ticket sales. at one point, mike even had his facebook account suspended, but after intervention

from the bbc, he finally got a response from facebook and was back up and running. facebook is a way of reaching millions of people who look at images every day and so, you don't want to be in a position where you can't use something which is so important and so widely read. you do understand that facebook is a huge operation with billions of users and they have to police content and sometimes mistakes are made? yeah, of course. i think it's really important to make sure that the internet and what is available for people to see is safe. there has to be some kind of way of filtering that stuff out if it does not meet policies, that is absolutely understandable. so mike is back up and running for now, while facebook says it is investigating the issue. as for how the england team is deemed overtly sexual, or a bullock for that matter, i will let you or the algorithms do the maths. paul hawkins, bbc news.

just before we leave you, let's take you back alive to myanmar. we can show you these pictures coming from the city of yangon, the largest city. a fourth day as a protest seems to be getting under way across the country with police again using water cannons. we have reports of them using water cannons in several cities, including the capital. protesters marching through the city with banners, some saying free are present. in the past have her, new zealand has become the first country to suspend political and military ties with the country in response to the coup last week. and the military leader has addressed a country for the first time, trying to justify his actions saying that correct...

earlier, i spoke to aung kyaw moe in the city of yangon. he founded the center for social integrity, which promotes social and economic cohesion in myanmar. he expects another day of mass rallies across the country, even after the military imposed curfews and gathering restrictions in some areas. that is it for now. thank you for watching. hello. very cold out there at the moment, with ice around and of course further snow flurries, particularly in eastern areas. the heaviest of those snow flurries as we go through tuesday, covered by a met office amber weather warning across parts of central scotland. travel, power, communication disruption possible, as those snow levels start to mount up. but it's notjust that, it's the extent of the chill this morning. may be as low as around “14, —15 through some parts of central scotland. all starting the day sub—zero. you can see where those snow showers line up through central areas of scotland. there will be others around northern and eastern parts of scotland, and we'll see little snow corridors again across parts of england and wales, just focusing some of those snow showers to give a further covering in some places. either side of it, we will see

just that light flurry most of you saw through tuesday, but a better chance of some sunshine in between. you saw the winds, another windy day across the board. in the thermometers, temperatures barely above freezing — it's going to feel much, much colder than that. and with some of the strongest of the winds to be found down toward south—west england and the channel islands, it's here where the coldest wind chill values will be found, as cold as —10 through —8 through the afternoon. also the chance of some sleet and snow very close to cornwall and the channel islands to end the day. that will gradually pull away as we go through the night and into wednesday. a subtle shift in wind direction means snow showers pushing through southern scotland into northern england in particular, and a few lines further south. another icy night, temperatures could get even colder, —15, —16. now, the big picture to start wednesday has low pressure out in the atlantic trying to get towards us, but high pressure is holding on. and with the isobars opening out a little bit, the good news is it's not going to be quite as windy on wednesday. those winds more north—easterly, so it will be parts of south—east scotland,

north—east england, the focus of showers. a few down east anglia, the south—east too, but more of you dry on wednesday, more of you see the sunshine. it's not going to do much to the temperatures, still struggling to get above freezing in some spots. another widespread, harsh frost, then, to take us into thursday. plenty of sunshine around for many, but increasing cloud into the west. signs of weather fronts trying to push in as the breeze picks up. signs of something milder trying to edge in as well, but do not underestimate the power of cold air across europe. it could hold off that charge of milder air from the west and could stay cold for many of us right the way through into next week. bye for now.

latest headlines. we report the military using water cannon on three cities in myanmar as a fourth day of protest begins. the demonstration is a response to last week's military coup and comes today after the commander—in—chief addressed the nation assisting are insisting it was justified. the nation assisting are insisting it wasjustified. the who has warned against me to conclusions about the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines, despite a study in south africa suggesting the astrazeneca jab is less effective against a variant of the virus currently sweeping the country. who experts say it is still an important tool. lawyers for donald trump have asked lawmakers to dismiss charges against him in his second impeachment trial. they claim it is unconstitutional. he is charged with inciting insurrection. he urged his supporters to march on the capitaljamie cope capital

five people died in the violence that followed. just gone for 30