let's to to orla guerin outside the court in upper egypt. what is happening at the court, orla?>> the latest information we have is the case has been adjourned. it's taking place in extremely unusual circumstances behind the security presence that you may be able to see across the street. behind those barriers the court has been in session the past few hours. the judge has been proceeding. any of the defense lawyers and most of the defenses. now there are about 680 accused in this case. but as was the situation with yesterday's mass trial, most of them are not present p. most are tried in absentia. only 62 are in court. that number does not include a key figure of the trial. now, he was not brought for security reasons. the defense lawyers are not up the road in the court because they have imposed a boycott. all the lawyers are staging a protest about the conduct of yesterday's trial in which those mass death sentences were handed down at extraordinary speed. it was only the second day of their trial. so the lawyers have stayed out of today's proceedings. the judge has gone ahea

orla, this is an extraordinary series of cases. what is the outlook and prospect for this case? >> reporter: well, i should say, nik, we are outside courthouse. that is the location of yesterday's very controversial hearing. the same judge and the same courthouse is once again today hearing another mass trial against suspected members of the band muslim brotherhood. yesterday we had almost 530 men being sentenced to hang on only the second day of their trial. the first hearing of that case was only last saturday. that lasted merely an hour. of course that verdict was widely condemned by human rights activists in egypt and abroad. and concern was suppressed in london and washington. today we have a separate case, although related it's connected to violence that took place last august after security forces killed several hundred islamist protesters in cairo. most of the defendants are being tried. they are not in court. of the 680 so in this case only 62 are present inside the court. there is another key missing element today. and that is the defense lawyers. they are boycotting t

. >> orla, thank you. maryam is here with the business. the chinese president to europe. everyone thinking trade, i suppose. >> they are hoping and thinking. the president has arrived in europe to start his long-awaited diplomatic tour of the region. he's currently in the netherlands. he will visit belgium, france and germany in hope of signing a series of trade details. and airbus jets will be placed by the chinese government. >>> as sanctions ratchet up in russia, how worried should businesses trading there be? in recent years, russia has been seen as an increasingly exciting place to trade. the impact could hurt european businesses far more than russian ones. banks will have to comply with u.s. sanctions. we'll have more throughout the day here on "bbc world news". in london, the market down 21 points. the dax and cac are all down. why? disappointing manufacturing figures from china. that's relayed worries about 2014 being a year where demand may start falling from the world's second biggest economy. we had better than expected french economic figures and german ones.

orla guerin says they are questioning the validity and fairness of the trial. >> the lawyers involved in this case as you say, say they have been denied justice. it was described as a black mark against the egyptian judiciary. we have had reaction from the muslim brotherhood, the verdict of a kangaroo court. as several legal experts are tell us they believe this case will be subject to a retrial. now, it was the killing of one police officer. it has resulted in death sentences handed down to 529 defendants at breathtaking speed. the verdict was announced at what was the second session of the trial. it began saturday. that opening hearing was cut short by the presiding judge. he was apparently unhappy at what was lawyers discussing politics in court. those representing the victims are the defendants in this case and say they have been denied due process. we expect there will be an appeal in this case. >> only 100 of them are in custody at the moment, aren't they? >> we believe 150 are in custody according to media reports. the rest either on bail or on the run. the death sentence has b

missionaries like diego de landa triek withaya toeret the hrogl was tirst ttry orla tm with the spani ahabet. (vid stuart) it was a fundamental sunderstanding of what maring icause the maya never used an alphabet. landa only knew alphabets-- that's all that he could really imagine writing could be. and so he wrote down an a, b, c but he was writing down signs that made no sense as an alphabet. the glyphs were associated with maya rigion directly. he saw thelyphs as a reflection of that idolatry that had to be destroyed. and so he's very famous, for gathering together these... these manuscripts and having a bonfire-- destroying them all. (narrator) only three or four codices survived-- manuscripts made from the bark of fig trees. cracking the maya code has been a long and painstaking process. scholars gradually have identified sentence structures and realized that the mayan language was far more sophisticated than any other mesoamerican language. it's a complex system based on more than 500 hieroglyphs. it has sentences. it has verbs. it has adjectives. just like any other language. an

one theory, it came from the greek phrase orla kola, all good.h sounds like and means okay. president woodrow wilson reportedly thought it was the correct spelling of the order and would okay documents with okay. finally, the most famous okay origin story was reinforced in the 2012 academy award winning movie "silver linings play book." >> you know the term okay comes from? >> no, no i don't. >> well, mark van buren the president of the united states is from kinderhook new york he was part of the men's club called old kinderhook, if you were cool you were in the club, they say that guy is ok. >> really? >> not really. so not okay. the real story of okay is, hilarious. an abbreviation craze was sweeping boston. charles green, editor of "the post" came up from abbreviation, okay, which he meant was "all correct" if you didn't know how to spell "all correct." okay, it was funny in 1839. now while president van buren wasn't the origin of okay the man known as old kinderhook did have a hand. >> you had to feel bad because okay was kind of martin van b