I'm Carl Azuz, we're glad to have you watching.

The troubled country is located between Bangladesh and Thailand.

We say troubled because it's in the middle of a military coup—a takeover—and that military announced yesterday it had removed and replaced Myanmar's civilian leader and 24 members of her government.

The Burmese military has taken over before in 1962.

It ruled the country for decades after that, and when it didn't like the results of an election in 1990, it put an elected party leader under house arrest.

To complicate matters further, the nation's government has fought conflicts with ethnic groups who want their independence from Myanmar.

A militant group linked to the nation's Rohingya Muslims attacked government forces in 2016 and 2017, and the military responded by cracking down on Rohingyas, causing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

So the instability in Myanmar deepens.

It is a textbook example of a military coup.

Troops showing up before dawn at the homes of elected lawmakers in Myanmar, arresting them in the dark.

An announcement read out on the military-owned TV channel, declaring that this man, Military Chief Min Aung Hlaing, is assuming control of the government.

The state of emergency is in effect nationwide and the duration of the state of emergency is set to one year.

Now detained and held incommunicado, the country's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, along with the president and a growing number of other top government officials from her National League for Democracy party.

We've also heard that, you know, activists, some student leaders... um... politicians from around the country—not just in Naypyidaw and Yangon—they've been taken.

And, you know, there's just no way to verify where they are or what they're doing.

For many in Myanmar, the military's shocking power play is a traumatic reminder of what up until 2015 had been more than a half century of military dictatorship where any public dissent was brutally crushed.

It's devastating because now people are wondering, "Are we gonna live under another five to seven decades of this shadow over us?"

During military rule, Suu Kyi became an international symbol of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement, winning a Nobel Peace Prize while under house arrest in Yangon for some 15 years.

That changed in 2015 when the military finally allowed the country's first modern democratic elections.

The people who have decided that they must be involved in the political process of this country.

People celebrated in the streets after Suu Kyi and her party won by a landslide.

She entered an uneasy power sharing agreement with the military.

But excitement over Myanmar's transition to civilian rule faded in 2017 amid disturbing scenes of hundreds of thousands of members of the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority fleeing across the border to Bangladesh to escape a brutal military crackdown.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was their ethnic cleansing in Rakhine state.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner defended the military, rejecting accusations of genocide.

On November 8, 2020, the people of Myanmar went back to the ballot box in another national election.

Despite the threat of COVID-19, they voted in huge numbers, expanding Suu Kyi's mandate and all but crushing military-backed candidates at the polls.

Without providing evidence, the military claimed electoral fraud and has now used these claims to justify its overthrow of the government.

The Burmese military has proven themselves very capable of slaughtering its own people.

So we have, uh, extremely, you know, troubling situation from here on because the pretense of civility in politics, pretense of democratization is finished.

A country with a long, violent history now headed into a new period of deep uncertainty.

10-Second Trivia!

What is the only animal species in the genus Rhincodon?

Whale shark, meerkat, grey parrot, or lemur?

Answer here is the biggest fish in the sea, the whale shark, which can weigh more than 40,000 pounds.

Despite that and the fact that they're as big as school busses, whale sharks are a pretty good choice If you're gonna be swimming with sharks.

They're found around the world in warm waters.

They've been an endangered species since 2016.

Two of the biggest threats they face are habitat loss and fishing, including times they've been caught by accident.

But there are people working to protect and study this enormous fish.

[Whale sharks are the world's biggest fish, but they are not dangerous to humans.]

[These gentle giants feed on tiny organisms in the ocean.]

I love jumping in with whale sharks, but it can be intimidating.

They're the biggest fish in the sea.

They're as big as a bus, and to have such a huge creature come at you out of the deep blue, it sort of does take your breath away.

[Brad Norman is a marine conservationist based in Western Australia.]

[He has been coming to Ningaloo for over 25 years to study this endangered species.]

I've swum with whale sharks on thousands of occasions, but I still get a buzz every time I go out.

[Whale sharks are endangered due to human activity.]

[Populations are estimated to have dropped more than 50% in the past 75 years.]

Rottnest Island has a long history in my life; we used to come here on our school holidays.

And it was here that I got to swim and snorkel in this beautiful environment, and that really encouraged me to wanna go down the path of being a marine biologist.

[Norman helped found a photo-identification program for whale sharks.]

[Over 10,000 people from more than 50 countries have uploaded images of whale sharks, helping to map their locations worldwide.]

Well, we're starting to find out areas of critical importance to whale sharks—where they're traveling to for important aspects of their life.

Whale sharks are covered in a beautiful pattern of lines and spots, but how do we compare one pattern of spots against another?

So, we adapted an algorithm that NASA scientists use in the Hubble Space Telescope to map stars in the night sky.

We map the pattern of spots on the skin of a whale shark and then, like fingerprint recognition, scan that photo against the thousands of other photos, and if it's a match, it's the same shark.

The Wildbook for Whale Sharks is an online database that, um, encourages members of the public to be citizen scientists.

If they get to see a whale shark and they swim with one, to take a photo of the area, the special ID area, which is behind the gills.

Take a photo of that area, send it in to The Wildbook.

Well, as we find more about these animals, it's gonna help us work out systems and ways to protect them in the long-term.

[Norman says this type of crowdsourced data is vital to whale shark conservation.]

Over the last few years, the, um, the numbers of sightings that are coming in is increasing all the time.

It's so important to have members of the public assisting with our project.

By taking a photograph and helping us with our research, we can all work together to save the species.

As forecasters predicted, several inches of snow have fallen on Washington D.C. this week, and it ain't just people who've noticed and taken advantage.

The Smithsonian released this video of two pandas at play at the National Zoo.

Doesn't look like they need a sled, and it doesn't matter that these two animals are in their early twenties—they're a couple of cubs in the snow.

Well, there snow thing [there's nothing] wrong with taking a day to chill.

They have below zero reasons not to fancy a flurry of frolicking fun.

And that's iceactly [exactly] the kind of ice to see [ecstasy] to give us all a little bamboost [bamboo + boost]—we're glad they didn't flake out.

Hey, we hear it's also snowy in Elkins, West Virginia.

Shout out to Elkins Mountain School.

We hope you're having fun and staying warm.

I'm Carl Iceuz [Azuz] for CNN.