The coup leaders have declared a state of emergency

England have

Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev has been overthrown after a coup by Communist hardliners. Mr Gorbachev is reported to be under house arrest at his holiday home in the Crimea.

News of the coup was broken in an announcement on state radio earlier on Monday.

It said Mr Gorbachev was "unable to perform his presidential duty for health reasons".

Soviet television has since been broadcasting regular condemnations of Mr Gorbachev's policies.

The new leaders, headed by former vice-resident Gennady Yanayev have declared a state of emergency.

In a televised broadcast, the eight coup plotters, who include the heads of the army, the KGB and the police, said they were saving the country from a "national catastrophe".

Tanks are now patrolling the streets of Moscow but in spite of their presence thousands of people have come out to demonstrate against the takeover.

They included the president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.

Mr Yeltsin climbed on to a tank outside the Russian parliament building to confront the troops and appeal to the army not to turn against the people.

He said the coup was a "new reign of terror" and called for civil resistance.

Despite a ban on demonstrations, several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the Kremlin calling for the reinstatement of the legal government.

Nearby troops made no move to break up the demonstration but the army is reported to have warned hospitals to be ready for "casualties".

US President George Bush has called the coup a "disturbing development" and cut short his holiday to return to the White House.

Gary Powers in the dock at Moscow Halls of Columns

Powers had pleaded guilty to spying for the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after his plane was shot down on 1 May at an altitude of about 68,000 ft (20,760 m), south of Sverdlovsk, 850 miles (1,368 km) east of Moscow.

The charge sheet said the route taken by Powers "left no doubt that it was a deliberate intrusion into the air space of the Soviet Union with hostile purposes".

Powers told the court the U-2 was designed and built for high-altitude flights. He had been told it could fly beyond the reach of anti-aircraft fire.

He described the moment the plane was hit: "I felt a hollow-sounding explosion. It was behind and there was a kind of orange flash."

In the wreckage of the U-2 were found films of Soviet airfields and other important military and industrial targets. A tape recording was found of the signals of certain Soviet radar stations.

Powers was asked why he made the 1 May flight. He said he assumed he was looking for rocket launching sites.

The court heard Powers was equipped with emergency gear, including money and gold, and there was a mechanism on the plane for destroying it to avoid capture. He also carried a poisoned pin to enable him to commit suicide in case of torture.

Powers told the court he was offered a well-paid job with the CIA after leaving the US Air Force.

He was told his work would involve flying along the borders of the Soviet Union with the purpose of picking up any radio or radar information.

Powers was asked if he now regretted making his last flight. He replied, "yes, very much".

He also apologised for the damage to US/Soviet relations. His plane was shot down on the eve of a superpower summit in Paris, which was subsequently called off. A visit by President Dwight Eisenhower to the Soviet Union was also cancelled.

In his final speech to the court, prosecutor Roman Rudenko outspokenly attacked the United States as inspirers and organisers of what he called "monstrous crimes" against peace.

He said the US had demonstrated "the real intention of making use of the provocative incursion of the U-2 plane into the Soviet air space as a pretext for wrecking a summit meeting, plunging the world again into the state of cold war, aggravating the tensions in international relations and putting a brake on the Great Powers' talks on disarmament".

Powers' wife Barbara and parents have been in court since the trial began three days ago. They are hoping to appeal against the sentence. 

catastrophe: a sudden,unexpected and terrible event that causes great suffering, misfortune, or ruin （大灾难；大祸）

intrusion: the act of intruding（侵入；闯入）

prosecutor :the person who prosecutes another person（检举人）