18/04/2014 BBC News at Six

The captain of the ferry which sank in South Korea with hundreds of

children on board is taken into custody. Prosecutors say Lee

Joon-seok abandoned ship with his passengers trapped below deck.

Rescue teams have retrieved more bodies from the ferry, as hopes fade

of finding any more survivors. A British teenager killed in Syria

was fighting for a rebel group with links to Al-Qaeda.

A seven-year-old boy is found on fire in the street in Aberdeen. He's

being treated for severe burns. The Duchess of Cambridge meets

children at a hospice on the royal tour of Australia.

And the going was good -- a break in tradition as racing takes place on

Good Friday for the first time. Good evening.

Hopes are fading of finding any survivors on the passenger ferry

which sank off South Korea with hundreds of children on board. Today

the captain was taken into custody. Prosecutors say he's suspected of

leaving the bridge and abandoning ship with most of the passengers

still trapped below deck. Rescue teams have recovered more bodies

from the ferry but found no signs of life. Our correspondent Lucy

Williamson has been following developments from the island of

Jindo. Her report contains some distressing images.

Botes here bring news, they build hope, and they can end it. For the

anxious families, it is an agonising wait. This time, it was three

bodies, one, a boy who boarded the ferry on Tuesday for a school trip.

Today, he came ashore again, still wearing the sweat pants and branded

watch he left home in. Almost 300 others are still waiting to be

found. Two buoys mark where the ship went down. Everything else has sunk.

But weather conditions are improving and divers found -- have now managed

to get inside. It is risky work, even for the Navy, but there is no

shortage of civilian volunteers. TRANSLATION: This rescue is based on

the assumption that people are still alive. All of us believe there must

still be survivors. That is why we came. Hope is a powerful belief

here. In Jindal's gymnasium, officials are preparing families for

the worst. DNA tests are now being offered to anyone who wants one, but

not everyone is ready. And now news of another death, the student's

school vice and support found dead on amount in nearby, along with a

suicide note, according to a local news agency. -- the vice president.

Like everyone here, he knew these children, not just one or two, but

all of them. They were his pupils and on this trip he was in charge.

Mr Kim's nephew was one of his pupils. He is still missing.

TRANSLATION: He must have felt really guilty for losing the

students like that but how can we compare him to the captain who

abandoned his ship, leaving the children? Captain Lee was rescued

early. Television showed him mingling with passengers while the

ferry sank. He is now facing arrest. For three days, families have waited

to find out what happened to their loved ones. Some of them now have an

answer, but many more are still clinging to the hope that their

relative will be found alive. And Lucy Williamson joins us from

Jindo. What now in terms of the investigation and finding out

exactly what has happened? Well, it is very early days here and nothing

has been confirmed. But we are seeing a picture emerging of a

possible sequence of events. Prosecutors have said the captain

may not have been in the steering room at the time the accident

happened, and that a junior crew member may have been in charge. That

is interesting, because the ship may also have been off the official

government course. By how much, we don't know. But there are other

reports that the ferry made have -- may have made a sharp turn and cargo

may have shifted inside it, which would be a dangerous situation for a

boat of that kind. Nothing confirmed but plenty for prosecutors to get

their teeth into. An 18-year-old from Brighton has

been killed fighting alongside anti-government rebels in Syria.

Abdullah Deghayes died earlier this month fighting for the Al-Nusra

Front, which has links to Al-Qaeda. Frank Gardner has more.

Amidst the rubble of the Syrian conflict, another victim among the

thousands already killed. A teenager from Brighton, Abdullah Deghayes,

just 18, the nephew of a former Montana Mo Bay prisoner, killed

weeks after arriving in the country. -- former grand Hannah Mo

Bay prisoner. In January, he ran away from home. The family thought

he had gone to Libya but he had gone to Syria to join his two brothers

fighting the Assad regime. His father says he was with this rebel

militia. Described -- proscribed by the UN for its Al-Qaeda league --

links to one of the most effective groups fighting the government.

Today, his father says he is a martyr and was inspired by watching

social media. A lot of people are seeing what is happening with babies

and children being bombed by chemical weapons. Their conviction

is to help the oppressed. Big boys, big machines. Online videos like

this are proving irresistible for hundreds of young British men who

spend many hours a day on the internet. They see videos of their

friends in Syria and decide it is their Juki to join them, but it is

dangerous. At least 20 Britons have died there. Today, the Foreign

Secretary told me this latest death underlines why the government does

not want anyone to go to Syria. Do not travel to Syria, for whatever

motive, whatever you think you are going to achieve, however strongly

you feel about it. Do not travel to Syria, it is dangerous in the

extreme. For many, the British government's message lacks the

appeal of online videos like this. The government is probably not

winning the war of minds, a leading researcher says the reality on the

ground is often very different. For a young man who gets up and goes

from Birmingham, Crawley or Manchester, the idea that you are

going to defend people against the brutality of the regime does not

play out in reality. You are fighting other rebels. Today, the

conflict raged on, a huge car bomb killing at least 14 people. This war

has no end in sight, and the appeal to young Britons to join it is

likely to only grow stronger. A seven-year-old boy from Aberdeen

is being treated for serious burns after being found on fire in the

street. Police say petrol was involved in the incident. Our

reporter Steven Duff is at the scene. Horrible events on this

Aberdeen housing at -- estate. Lots of children out enjoying the school

holidays. Eyewitnesses described seeing a seven-year-old boy on fire,

running and screaming. He is in a serious condition in hospital.

Police are trying to find out exactly what happened.

Shortly before 2pm, emergency services were called to reports of a

boy on fire. He was seen by eyewitnesses coming from between

these flats. We came out. We had heard him screaming and he had been

lying on the floor, basically trying to get himself calm, but nothing was

working. He ran up the road screaming and crying. His clothes

were lying on the ground and his shoes on the floor and fire still

there. The seven-year-old is in a serious condition in Aberdeen Royal

Infirmary, police still trying to determine what happened. Enquiries

are at an early stage. We are speaking to witnesses and appealing

for further witnesses to contact us. Police said they were investigating

whether petrol or other fuel was involved. Still a lot of police

activity tonight. Police Scotland say the enquiry is at an early

stage. They are following a positive line of enquiry but not saying if

there is any criminal element to what happened, or whether it was a

tragic accident. A man has been shot dead in west

Belfast. It happened on the Springfield Road close to a

supermarket on an industrial estate. Police are investigating and have

cordoned off the area. Ukraine's government in Kiev has

appeal for national unity and an end to violence. Its leaders have agreed

to meet some of the demands of pro-Russian protesters. Across

eastern Ukraine activists have been defying yesterday's international

agreement to try to ease the crisis. They are continuing their armed

occupation of official welding is in at least nine cities.

Armed pro-Russian fighters this morning in the centre of the

protesters' military stronghold. Under yesterday's agreement, their

fortress town should be returning to normal, but there was no sign of

that today. Despite yesterday's deal in Geneva, these barricades have an

air of permanence about them, and the men guarding them say they will

not be leaving the buildings or giving up their weapons until the

far right protesters in Kiev do the same. Only ten miles away,

government troops still loyal to Kiev were training at their

airfield. But an attempt to reduce the tension over the Easter weekend

means they are not leaving their base. But ominously, at the

headquarters of the anti-government uprising in Donetsk, the chairman of

the self-declared republic told me he did not intend to give up his

buildings until the Kiev government leave Parliament.

TRANSLATION: The agreement says that all illegally occupied buildings

should be vacated by all sides in the conflict. One of the sides is

the Kiev protesters and those people they brought to power. If they will

leave that building, we will, too. In the embattled parliament, the

Prime Minister was making concessions, promising

constitutional change, the right to use the Russian language and an

amnesty. TRANSLATION: If those who have

illegally stolen weapons and seized buildings lay down their arms and

leave the buildings, we think they should be given amnesty. But the big

problem is that these protesters, who detest the new Kiev government

and favour closer ties with Moscow, didn't really have a representative

at the Geneva talks, so it is easy for them to come up with their own

interpretation of the agreement. And it is not clear that Russia is

prepared to intervene. Let's pick up on that last point, as

Daniel joins us. Where does this leave the options for Kiev and the

wider international community? It leaves the Kiev government tied up

in the kind of knots that Russian diplomacy specialises in. What

seemed a fairly straightforward agreement in which everybody

occupying buildings and walking around with guns went home in return

for an amnesty and constitutional reform and language rights, has

already started to show the weaknesses involved in it. Who is

going to persuade the gun men that everybody who thought Moscow was

speaking for in Geneva to go home? How many more concessions will the

Kiev government have to make? They cannot really give up the parliament

building in Kiev, which is what the protesters are starting to demand.

This evening, Russia was starting to stir the pot further, saying the

government had misunderstood the agreement and that anti-Moscow

protesters in Kiev should also be going home. That is something which

the government and its increasingly angry and frustrated support base

will find difficult to deliver on. The Duchess of Cambridge has thanked

Australia for the warm welcome she's received during the royal tour of

the country. Visiting a children's hospice in Sydney, she praised the

care being provided for children who have life-changing conditions. Our

royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell reports.

The beach is where Australians tend to head on public holidays and it

was on Manly Beach near Sydney that Catherine was to be found this

afternoon, with William, watching young people training to be

lifeguards. Her shoes were not ideal for the beach, but it seems going

barefoot is not an option if you are a duchess. Not that her shoes seemed

to handicap her too much. The mood was at its most relaxed, but anyone

hoping that after sailing in Auckland and cricket in Christchurch

that the couple would join in, were to be disappointed. The beach, the

CE, trainee lifeguards, the couple have had an unmistakably Australian

Good Friday. However, there was serious work, too. They visited one

of only two hospices for children in Australia. Away from the cameras

they are said to have been deeply moved by the stories they heard.

From Catherine, a speech expressing gratitude for their reception in

Australia. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone

who has welcomed me and George so incredibly warmly on our first

visit. To be here as a family has been very special and we will always

remember it with fond and happy memories. There will be memories for

them from this visit. That can't be doubted. And some unforgettable

moments for the many whom they are meeting.

History has been made today with horse racing taking place on a Good

Friday in Britain for the first time. There were two race meetings,

including a big money day at Lingfield in Surrey. Organisers

there believe breaking tradition is essential for racing's future. Joe

Wilson reports. This is horse racing looking for an

audience, and at Lingfield, they came, a sell-out crowd, almost 9000.

Bringing them in was the Good Friday plan. To us, it is a leisure day. On

Good Friday, people want to do something. Everyone has a choice

where they go and what they do, whether it is theme parks, horse

racing or going to the shops. Lingfield racecourse is over 100

years old. Lingfield's Parish Church has stood since the early 15th

century. Over that time, society may have altered immeasurably, but for

some, Good Friday is still about Christian worship. Opinions on horse

racing on Good Friday differ but we hope that the people who come to the

racing at the course today will take the opportunity to visit our

beautiful church. They will be very warmly welcomed. In the past,

jockeys have been reluctant to compete on Good Friday because it is

a rare day off, there are only three days in the entire year without a

horse racing fixture. But Lingfield has laid out the red carpet, and

there is ?1 million of prize-money here today. This meeting was the

finale of a championship run on all-weather tracks over the winter.

Six races, all sponsored by betting companies. The money, naturally,

matters. When they put ?1 million prize money into the day, lots of

trainers and jockeys were happy to race. I am delighted to see a big

crowd for the day. If tradition has a price, horse racing on Good Friday

makes sense for the industry. Sometimes, only the marching band

stand still. Before we leave, a reminder of the

main news: The captain of the passenger ferry

which sank off the South Korean coast with hundreds of children on

board has been taken into custody. Prosecutors say he is suspected of

abandoning ship. There's more throughout the evening

on the BBC News Channel. I'll be back with the late news at 10pm.

Now, the news where you are. Goodbye.