25/04/2012 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today with me, Kirsty Lang. Media tycoon

Rupert Murdoch denies ever using his power to influence policy. He

says he's never asked for or received favours from any British

Prime Minister, it was the politicians who sought him out.

have want to put it to bed once and for all, that that is a complete

myth. Bad news for Britain - we're

officially back in recession with a fall in construction blamed for the

lack of growth. Norwegian mass murderer Anders

Breivik tells a court in Norway he Also coming up in the programme: Is

this man responsible for the many deaths in Sierra Leone. Everything

that happened was his doing. Celebrity names are bankrolling the

planned to mind an asteroid for precious metals.

-- mind macro. Yesterday we had his son, now we

had rip it at -- Rupert Murdoch are giving evidence. He was pretty

bullish and denied that he used his babies to put pressure on

successive British governments. He said it was natural for politicians

to seek the support of newspaper Editors but he had never asked a

British Prime Minister for anything. In the long running at Leveson

Inquiry depress standards, this was the keenly awaited witness so far.

The chairman and chief executive of News Corporation. I swear by

Almighty God that the evidence I shall give a chubby the truth, the

whole truth and nothing but the truth. Mr Murdoch, known for his

strong views, appeared reticent about his decades as a powerful

newspaper proprietor. I, in 10 years of power, never asked Mr

Blair for anything, nor did I receive any favours. This afternoon,

when he was asked about his wish to support the Conservatives, he said

there were many key media matters he had not discussed with the new

Government but the inquiry's QC pressed the point about his

influence. There was always a political freeze on with your

acquisitions. It was predictable. welcome that question because I

want to put it to bed once and for all, that that is a complete myth.

What is the myth? That I used the influence of the Sun or supposed

political power to get favourable treatment. Meanwhile, the man who

was the go-between has gone. Adam Smith described as the point of

contact between the minister and the Murdoch family, bidding for

control of the UK satellite broadcaster, BSkyB. Material

released when James Murdoch gave evidence yesterday had included

damning texts and e-mails indicating a Government bias

towards News Corporation. Facing the House of Commons, Jeremy Hunt

paid tribute to his special adviser but insisted he had acted with

scrupulous fairness in his quasar a judicial role. Transcripts of

conversations and text that we might special adviser, Adam Smith,

added News Corporation representative have been alleged to

indicate there was a back channel through which News Corporation were

able to influence my decisions. This is category not the case.

Mr Hunt needed any reminder that he remains under pressure, he had to

endure this taunt. Doesn't it prove the theory that when posh boys are

in trouble, they sack the servants. Words which echoed the theme

sundered by the lead up the opposition minutes before at a

highly charged session of Prime Minister's Questions. Her well his

Culture Secretary remains in place, while he refuses to come clean on

his and the chances meetings with Rupert Murdoch, the shadow of

sleaze will Hanover this Government. When his ego and to realise that it

is time to stop putting his cronies between the interests of the

country? He called for a judicial inquiry and that is what I have set

up. Whether it is the proper regulation of the press, cleaning

our financial system, dealing with our debts, I don't duck my

responsibilities. What a pity he can't live up to his. It is ironic

that the political leaders have spent years trying to get close to

Rupert Murdoch and his newspaper titles. Now that closeness is

proving a major political problem. There will be more at the inquiry

from Mr Murdoch on Thursday. I am joined by Michael White from

the Guardian newspaper. What did you make of Mr Murdoch's statement

that he never sought any favours from the Prime Minister? I was at

the High Court in London all day. Within pie throwing distance of Mr

Murdoch and I have never spent that much time in his company. He was

fascinating. He was very mellow. He was 81, very sharp. I felt most of

the time he was like a person that had been summoned by the local

chieftains to resolve a minor dispute. I did remember their names,

I vaguely remember the lunch or the Chequers dinner with the Mrs

Thatcher. It is full of stuff like that. Some of it was quite funny.

He was often quite funny. Did it seem as if he was not taking it

entirely seriously? Possibly so. He was pretending to. At lunchtime, he

said he was overheard to say let's get this stuff over whiff. We don't

want to come back tomorrow. -- Bothel Withe. He said he is the

controlling shareholder added is perfectly normal if you want to buy

in the shares that you don't earn. He doesn't always think of the word

monopoly and let it influence. The council, the QC, had a list of

people who said it is all very well at you saying you don't have the

influence, never asking for deals, it is more subtle than that. He

listed a whole load of people. Tony Blair, Harry Evans, Paul Keating,

ex-prime minister of Australia. Murdoch is the kind of guy you can

do a deal with without ever having to say you have done a deal. He

said Keating was a loud mouth. Don't take your word from him.

there any interesting insights into recent British history? I am

referring to the conversation he had with Gordon Brown when he was

Prime Minister. You would get confused in my business at my age.

Don't we know all this? It was alleged that Brown had e-mailed him

on the eve of his speech in 2009 before the election. He said they

had a conversation and were talking more quietly than you and I are

talking now. He was pretty cross. He said I will declare war on you.

Brown has denied this but Murdoch is a pretty good winners and when

he was asked about the baby, revealing that Fraser Brown had

cystic fibrosis. He said it was all very well but Rebekah Brooks said

how she had sensitively treated the incident and she was grateful. A

polished performance. Now the other news. The head of

Israel's Armed Forces has disagreed with his Prime Minister saying he

does not think Iran will develop nuclear weapons. In direct

contracts to a tougher statements by Binyamin Netanyahu, he said the

rage in -- Iranian leadership was made up of irrational people who

were not want to go the extra mile. US TV networks are saying that Newt

Gingrich will end his Republican bid. He said he would suspend his

campaign next week and thinks he -- Mitt Romney will win.

Soldiers kidnapped by an Al-Qaeda linked group in Yemen have made a

video plea for help. This video appears to show one of 85 captured

soldiers saying they are in danger of being beheaded.

The son of the sacked Chinese... Has said of excessive spending be

on the family needs. His mother is involved in the alleged murder of

an English businessman. Kim Britton, we have the economic

news. -- here in Britain. We are back in recession since the crash

of 2008. A double dip has happened. David Cameron did little to hide

his disappointment but said he would be sticking to the austerity

plan. The cogs in the economic machine

grind on that they could be going faster. GDP grows -- is the term

for everything the economy produces. If it falls for six months, you get

It is hard for the economy to move forward when shoppers are careful

with their cash, squeezed by rapid rises in the cost of living.

Everything is going up and wages are not. I have been on a freeze

for four years and I'm struggling. The Asda boss knows customers have

tightened their belts and doesn't expect it to change. A they are

becoming more savvy in terms of how they are shopping. When they are

filling up their car with fuel, they put round values in. That is

how much money they have got to spend on fuel. Who is to blame? The

Prime Minister and Labour my leader gave their views. Typical of this

arrogant Prime Minister who tries to blame everyone else. The reality

it is this is a recession made by him and the Chancellor in Downing

Street. This is a tough and difficult situation that the

economy is in the but the one thing we mustn't do, is to abandon public

spending and deficit-reduction plans because the solution to a

debt crisis cannot be more debt. The breakdown of the figures shows

there was a 0.1% increase for service industries including retail

but manufacturing output fell by 0.1%. Construction saw a big drop

of 3% over the three-month period. To work out whether the apart --

economy is growing, officials have to gather data from a range of

different industries including construction. There has been

criticism of the way they measure activity in this sector, with some

claiming the figures are too volatile and don't reflect what is

going on. The Bank of England says the construction numbers are

perplexing. What does the man in charge of economic policy say? You

launched growth strategy a year ago and now there is no growth. I have

never disguised the fact that Britain faces a difficult economic

situation. We have this debt crisis and they were built up over many

years. If I had some magic wand i it would waive it and the British

economy would spurting to growth. He ignored our warnings and a call

for a plan for jobs and growth and families and businesses are paying

the price. Many commentators thought the UK would avoid a slip

back into recession but it has happened. They will now have to

work out the implications. Hugh joins me now. When we hear the

words, double dip, we assume it is going to be as bad as last time. Is

it? Definitely not. There was a sharp drop in output for the UK. We

are talking about a small percentage point. The underlying

picture is a basically flat because you have a dispute over

construction and get revisions. Bumping along, that doesn't help in

the process of job creation and it is not much consolation to anyone

out there looking for a job if they are struggling with the economy as

it is. I don't think it will be lurching back to what it was years

ago. Why is Britain can -- in comparison to the rest of Europe

and America? American growth has been strong and that plays into the

old US elections situation. President Obama is happy about that.

They have to stop their austerity programme in the US and that is

another matter altogether. The eurozone is forecast on a European

Commission to go into recession and there was negative output at the

end of last year. The UK it is by no means alone and a witness in the

eurozone hits the UK because of the trading links. The UK does have

that argument to make. The Government says it is not the only

one that many critics will say it is the scale of the budget cuts

No sign of any change from veered Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is

very much sticking to the idea that he has to cut debt or borrowing.

You have to hope that growth will pick up. Thank you.

The Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik has told his trial in Oslo

that a psychiatric report that declared in insane was full of lies.

It is now up to the court to decide whether he is criminally insane.

Anders Breivik, who admits killing 77 people last July, insists he is

of sound mind. Anders Breivik came to court aiming to discredit the

psychiatrist who had declared him insane. He has accused them of

lying. The court also heard Anders Breivik makes statements that may

have strengthened the psychiatrist's conclusion. He

talked about people who should be killed in Norway. He said 98 or 99%

of the population, innocent civilians, but a small elite,

working for a multi- cultural goals are legitimate targets. He went on

to say, after the Second World War, 15 leading Nazi sympathisers and

others were sent to psychiatric hospitals for ideological reasons.

This is Norway's dirty secret. Experts are listening to this today

believe it reveals more about Anders Breivik's own state of mind.

What he said today is the closest I have ever heard from him that he

might have paranoid delusions about the way he interprets the reality

around him. To it seems he may have a history of psychiatric problems.

In the 1980s, he and his family lived here in Oslo. When he was

just four years old, they are reported to have spent weeks in

this special centre of Psychiatry for children. If ultimately the

court house here does decide that he is insane, but would mean he

would spend time in a secure or psychiatric ward. For many

Norwegians, but would not be right. They want to see him punished in

prison, not treated for an illness. The inquest into the death of a

British intelligence officer found dead inside a padlocked sports bike

has heard from a former landlady. In a written statement, she told

the inquest she had once and Gareth Williams tied to his own bed.

Gareth Williams, the intelligence officer whose body was found in a

bike. He was described as a very private person. He spent ten years

living in this house while working at GCHQ. His former landlady

describes hearing him cry for help at 1:30am one morning. She and her

husband found him alone in his underwear, embarrassed with his

wrists tied to the bed. My husband said what are you doing. He said he

just wanted to see if he could get free. On 23rd August, 2010, police

found his body in the bath tub of his London flat, near his new

workplace at MI6. He was curled up in the bag in a foetal position,

with the keys underneath them. The bike was locked on the outside,

with police believing someone else was involved. Today, the inquest

heard from a police officer in charge of liaising with the

intelligence agencies. He said his inquiries had found no evidence

that Gareth Williams's death was linked to his work. This afternoon,

former colleagues gave their evidence. His line manager said in

hindsight, he would have done more to try and establish why Gareth

Williams missed one week of meetings and appointments before

police were finally contacted. They give their evidence behind a screen

to protect their identity. Lawyers from his family also question why

spies have not signed witness statements and whether commute --

computer material had been secured before police took possession. More

evidence from former colleagues is expected to take place tomorrow.

The war which ripped apart the West African state of Sierra Leone in

the 1990s was one of the most brutal conflicts of modern time

tens of thousands of civilians were raped, murdered and mutilated.

Giles foods were stolen a small boys were forced to become soldiers.

Tomorrow, an international court in the Hague will deliver its verdict

on a man many believe was responsible for that mayhem,

Charles Taylor, the former president of neighbouring Liberia.

A decade of war and the juice Sierra Leone to a poverty it has

not escaped. In the heart of Freetown, children scavenge in a

rubbish dump for bits of plastic they might sell for pennies. This

patch of land is still known here as the amputee camp. The camp

itself is long gone. In the 1990s, it was home to attempted settlement

of men women and children who had their limbs severed by machete or

axe. This was the signature atrocity of the rebel army, known

as the Revolutionary United Front. The stamped on my foot. I was cut

with an axe. They chop it off. Not in one blow. About five or six

times. He says he had heard Charles Taylor on the radio threatening to

make Sierra Leone the taste the bitterness of war. This is my stone

conviction, that everything that happened here was Charles Taylor's

doing. Charles Taylor was President of Liberia. He has been on trial in

the Hague for the last four years, accused of arming, funding and

directing the RUF. The indictment charges him with terrorising

civilians, unlawful killings, sexual violence, abductions and the

use of child soldiers. At Yonibana, the memory of war is a roar. Rebels

swept through here in a frenzy of burning and looting. There is no

economy here to speak of. 11 and a mix of palm oil by a process

unchanged for hundreds of years. It is essentially Arran age technology.

They are at last rebuilding of the water supply. When it is finished,

it will bring Yonibana back to where it was in the 1970s. A

measure of how the war retarded progress here. But change is coming

at last and it is the Chinese, ever hungry for natural resources, who

will bring it. Chinese money is about to put a rubber plantation

here, and fast pineapple groves and rice fields. Back in Freetown,

there is more evidence of Chinese lead changed. We ran into a camera

shy technician, supervising a road- building project. It is changing

lives here. We're so happy to welcome them. They are training as.

And so glad to work with them. They are good people. One to be trained

you as? Be trained to me. The wheels of economic activity are

working again. There are vast untapped resources here. The red

dust indicates a high concentrations of iron ore. The

London mining company had just reactivated this mine. It has been

dormant and derelict since the 1960s. This land is astonishingly

rich in mineral wealth and used properly it has the potential to

transform this country's fortunes and with it, the lives of the

millions of people who live here. This has been a curse, as well as a

blessing, because this is what brought war to Sierra Leone in the

first place and this is what paid for the war to go on for so long.

It was the diamond mines, not Arran or at that it is alleged brought

Charles Taylor into that the country. The court's verdict will

be eagerly awaited. For the people, it is a milestone on the journey

back from the horrors they lived through.

It sounds like a script from a sci- fi film, a group of billionaire

entrepreneurs are planning to hunt for gold and other precious metals

in space. Film director and explorer James Cameron, as well as

Google's Chief Executive Larry Page urges two of the big names behind

the plan. There are millions of them scattered across the solar

system. Many of these asteroids pass close to earth. They are rich

in gold, platinum and aluminium. They also contain water, which

could be split into hydrogen and oxygen to produce rocket fuel. At a

news conference, a group of entrepreneurs in the US, launched a

company to mind that these asteroids. It is a plan that is

backed by James Cameron as well as the head of Google, Larry Page.

Today I am very proud, along with my colleagues here to be announcing

planetary resources. The vision of planetary resources is to make the

resources of space available to humanity, both in space and here on

earth. The plan is to send a robotic probes to collect and bring

back samples to earth. Similar missions already under way by

government space agencies have cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

Many scientists are sceptical that the company, which needs to raise

finance for its idea, can deliver. Mining on an asteroid may seem a

little far-fetched, but there is one factor that might make this

seemingly science-fiction idea into reality. That is, nearly all the

world's supply of important elements used by the electronics

industry comes from just one place, China. The US in particular feels

uncomfortable but China controls such as strategically important

resource. Asteroid mining will be expensive, but with the earth's

resources dwindling, backers of the plan say they have to try.

If they fail, they can make it into a movie.

Rupert Murdoch has told a British inquiry into media ethics that he

has never asked a prime Minister for anything. Mr Murdoch said he

wanted to end what he called the method that he had used the power

of one of his British newspapers to gain favourable treatment.

The that is all from us today. Next Hello there. We have had a wet and

windy Wednesday as we look to tomorrow's forecast, still low

pressure sitting across the country, so it does stay very unsettled for

many of us. We will have some heavy showers and more persistent rain.

It is due to this low. It is moving its way northwards and we have a

weather front sitting across parts of eastern Scotland and northern

England as we start their stay morning. Here, cloudy skies with

some persistent rain and further south by the afternoon, we have

some showers developing. Yet again, these are likely to be frequent,

heavy with some thunderstorms mixed in. When you get the showers,

temperatures will dip away, but if you are in between the downpours

and you get some sunshine, we could see temperatures of around 12 to 13

degrees. Still some gusty winds around, so a blustery feeling in

the afternoon. Temperatures in Plymouth, around 11 degrees. A

mixture of sunshine and showers across parts of Wales, with some of

the heavier showers across the northern half of the country, there

could be the risk of some localised flooding. For Northern Ireland, to

the South East corner, it is cloudy and damp, but a little bit drier

further north and west. The north- west of Scotland will stay mainly

dry and bright. It is still quite windy here, taking the edge of the