13/11/2013 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today. They struggle to help the victims of

Typhoon Haiyan. Trying to keep the calm - the army's drafted in as the

Philippine government admits it s been overwhelmed by the scale of the

typhoon. And we follow one woman's struggle to find out whether her

family has arrived. People have family members they have not heard

from. The only thing they can do is come out looking for them in these

remote areas. And because such a large area of the Philippines was

affected, getting aid out to all of those far-flung places is very slow.

Toronto's mayor admits buying illegal drugs but is still refusing

to step down as the leader of Canada's biggest city.

And Oprah Winfrey talks to the BBC about Barack Obama and claims he's

disrespected not because he's president but because he's black.

Three panels, one record-breaking price. Find out just how much this

Francis Bacon masterpiece fetched at auction.

Hello and welcome. The Philippine government has said it's confronting

its greatest logistical challenge ever and has admitted it is

overwhelmed. Aid supplies are beginning to reach some of those

affected, but it's not easy because Typhoon Haiyan affected a vast area,

cutting off roads, electricity supplies and communications. In some

places, there's been no sign of any help coming. Alastair Leithead has

been trying to reach isolated communities. He took a boat from a

remote part of Cebu to the western coast of Leyte Island, and met two

sisters heading off on a rescue mission.

Far out on the horizon, an island struck by the eye of the typhoon.

The lifeline is a passenger ferry. When the aid eventually comes, this

is how it will reach the people And it is how this woman hopes she will

find her family. She, her sister and her daughter are on a rescue mission

in the hope that their family made it through the storm. They brought a

car with food and water but don t know what to expect on the road

ahead. We come here to rescue my family because they don't have food

any more. I heard from the social networks, Facebook, there is no more

food in this city. That is why we are trying to find our family. I

don't know if they are alive or not. We don't have any connection. We

followed them on the road north It is now a familiar sight. House after

house destroyed. Trees ripped up and pushed aside. Electricity cables

down, hanging in the road. The same landscape for mile after mile. The

reason that communications have been so bad of course is because mobile

phone masts have come down. Roads have been blocked until quite

recently. If people have family members they have not heard from,

the only thing they can do is look for them in these remote areas and

because such a huge part of the Philippines was affected, getting

aid to all of these far-flung bases is proving slow. -- far flung

places. Afternoon turned to night. The road worsened as we got near to

the family home. They did not know what to expect, seeing all of the

damage. But then... A family reunited. Everyone is fine. Their

homes were destroyed, there is little food or sign of aid but they

survived. I am very happy that they are alive. The whole area is alive.

That is the most important thing to me and for my family and my

neighbourhood. One family's story among millions amid the trail of

chaos the storm left behind. There are growing signs that the

survivors of last Friday's typhoon disaster are becoming more desperate

- and troops have been deployed in greater numbers than ever before.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes has sent this report.

At Tacloban Hospital, this 13-year-old girl has just been

brought in. Badly injured and deeply traumatised. For six days, she was

trapped in the ruins of her home. The bodies of her whole family lying

around her. The only thing she has been able to tell nurse 's is her

name. Rebecca. The doctor immediately set to work cleaning her

badly infected wins but he only has the most basic supplies. We have no

equipment. We don't have medicines. We lack medicine. We need your help.

Outside, others are not waiting for help. They are helping themselves.

At first glance, it is hard to tell what is going on here, until you

realise this is a petrol station. This is diesel in this type

underground and they have ingeniously started filling up the

bottles. What do you need this for? Your car or your motorcycle?

Motorcycle? And he ran out of fuel? OK. -- have you run out of fuel

This is well ordered listing. It is the only way for people to get fuel.

-- well ordered looting. These are strange days in Tacloban. At noon

the streets emptied and soldiers appeared. Yesterday's disaster zone

briefly took on the appearance of a war zone. Some people told me the

city was about to be attacked by Communist rebels. It is not clear

what is going on here. The Army have moved in to reassert control, now

they say they have a gunman pinned down. We never did find out, but the

Army does appear to be here in force now. Back at the hospital, it is

little consolation. They are short of everything. These people are

waiting for operations they cannot have that. This baby has a high

fever and diarrhoea. But even the drinking water she so obviously

needs has to be carefully rationed. In time, the cat's physical wounds

will heal. -- Rebecca's physical wounds. For many people here, there

will forever or be life before and after the typhoon. -- forevermore.

With me is Jerry Velasquez from the United Nations Office for Disaster

Risk Reduction. He's also from the Philippines. Thank you for joining

us. Let's look at the potential death toll. The official figure is

about 2200. Do you think it will be many more? The officials have said

it is around 10,000, the president has said it is 2500. We will have to

wait for the official figures. We have not managed to get to the

outlying areas. We will have to wait for the final figures. It is a

carrot of tragedy. You are an official at the United Nations

dealing with this kind of thing How does this disaster right in terms of

severity in your unit? For the Philippines, it is probably the

strongest typhoon that has struck the country. There has been a

category five typhoon that has struck in 2006... Compared to other

disasters, we think of the 2004 Zenani, where does this right? We

could rank it severely. But of course the number of deaths would be

very different. What do you think needs to be done? The Philippine

government said it is overrun. It is focusing on getting help to people.

Should that be the focus or do you have to think of the medium term

reconstruction, building as well? Definitely, in these kind of

disasters, saving lives is a priority. That has to happen. But at

the same time because we are already thinking of the medium term needs, I

think it is already necessary to think and prepare for the

medium-term needs including recovery and reconstruction. So you mean even

the temporary shelters that are provided for people, that has got to

be planned straightaway? Your unit, the disaster risk reduction unit at

the United Nations, a relatively new one that was set up after the

tsunami, is there a framework to can kind of say there is a universal one

size fits all approach to dealing with this kind of disaster? After

the 2000 forced an army, -- 200 tsunami, we set priorities for all

countries. That framework is coming to an end in 2015. Like the 200

tsunami, this typhoon is going to change the way we look at this

global framework. Do the most vulnerable, the poorest, suffer the

most? Of course. The poorest and most honourable feed into each

other. Most of the people affected are the poorest people. And also

those that suffer are the ones that simply because the houses are made

of wood. Because of their poverty. So there is directly a link between

the two. Jerry Velasquez, thank you very much for giving us your

perspective. Rob Ford is Toronto's mayor - and

he's just admitting buying illegal drugs. That's on top of earlier

admissions of smoking crack cocaine and getting, in his word, "hammered

on alcohol" too often. He's been speaking at a council debate on a

motion to ask him to take a leave of absence. That is when he made the

dramatic confession. Have you purchased illegal drugs in the last

two years? Yes, I have. Following this is our correspondent David

Willis, who's in Washington for us now. Rob Ford admitted that but he

still seems to be admitting the Nile. He does. This was Toronto City

Council debating this motion calling for Rob Ford either to step aside

for take a leave of absence from the position he has. He has consistently

refused to do that but there came this bombshell admission when asked

whether he had purchased illegal drugs over the course of the last

two years, it seemed to take Rob Ford and eternity to reply yes, I

have, and that is something new because he had previously admitted

taking crack cocaine but this is the first time he has actually admitted

to purchasing illegal and illicit substances. The Toronto City Council

does not have the authority to remove Mr Ford from office, this is

purely symbolic what is happening today, but it is probably going to,

that admission is going to add to the calls for him to resign, with

opinion polls showing more than 75% of Toronto's residents now want him

to go. David, remind us how he found himself in this predicament. There

was a video. There was. A video was leaked to the media, then the police

and last week they said they had obtained what appeared to be a copy

of the same video, this was allegedly a video tape of Rob Ford

taking crack cocaine. At the moment the Toronto police have said that

they are looking to interview Mr Ford but there are no plans at

present to charge him. And I said, the Toronto city cancelled the date

is purely symbolic, Mr Ford has to be convicted of a crime before he

can be forced out of office. -- as I said. David Willis on the continuing

trials of Mayor Rob Ford in Toronto. The death toll of innocent civilians

in the Syrian conflict is tragic. In one of the latest incidents, four

children and their bus driver were buried after two mortars struck the

Old City of Damascus. The shells hit a school and a school bus in a

mainly Christian area on Monday It confirms the growing frequency of

attacks in what had been the relatively safe centre of Damascus.

Our Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet reports

from the Syrian capital. You may find some of the images disturbing.

A mother's grief fills the largest mortgage in Damascus. -- largest

mortgage. Her son drove the school bus and he'd eyed on the spot when

the mortar landed. -- morgue. I don't recognise him, she cries, his

face is gone. He has no eyes. And in this morgue, four children including

eight-year-old Vanessa. Her uncle has come for her body. TRANSLATION:

She was a poor angel. She was in fourth grade. She loved school and

cried when she could not go. Grief is not private here any more.

Not with both sides accusing the other of taking the lives of the

most innocent. Another uncle says his last goodbye. Stand up, stand

up, my nephew, this is for you, Syria. They bring out the white

coffin is one by one. And estimates her last trip to her Armenian

church. -- Vanessa makes her last trip. This is one of many faiths who

gather in the old city to celebrate her life. This boy mourns his

friend, supported by his mother who is devastated like so many here

What did they do to deserve this? Dirty people. Please tell America.

Please tell Britain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, they are bad people. A

community comes together again to mourn but as grief continues, so

does anger on both sides of this conflict. Both sides blame one

another. As this war drags on, it becomes more difficult to bring

Syrians together again. Vanessa s coffin lies next to that of this

six-year-old child. There is some comfort in these rituals but in the

city, nowhere feels safe. Deaths of the innocent there in

Syria. Two of Europe's best-known far right politicians have been

meeting in Holland to discuss forging ties. Geert Wilders, who

leads the Dutch Freedom Party, and Marine Le Pen, head of the French

National Front, have launched what they called a "historic alliance"

for the elections. Mr Wilders said they had agreed on the need to

repatriate from Brussels the power to control their countries' borders

and economies. With me is Joshua Chaffin, the Deputy World News

Editor with The Financial Times newspaper. Until very recently he

was the paper's EU correspondent based in Brussels.

I know you have been writing about this story. Tell us, far right,

stronger united, do you think? I think so. There is an immediate

payoff to this kind of cooperation, if nothing else just in the

publicity these two can generate bike appearing together. I think

there is a more subtle effect which is that you have politicians in

parties that have often been portrayed as on the lunatic fringe,

to the extent that they appear together, it is a way to send a

message to voters at home that actually there are like-minded folks

across Europe and in fact they are very much part of the mainstream,

Marine Le Pen has been reaching out to US Eurosceptic politicians, also

Sweden, Austria, you name it. Her father was a and has been severely

criticised for his anti-Semitic views. This will not go down well

with voters, the fact that she is his air. Yes. That is the obstacle

for her to overcome. There are already quite clear signs that some

of the Eurosceptic groups don't want to mix with her. Nigel Farage told

me a few months ago that he admired her efforts to detoxify the party

but he simply thought the heritage of anti-Semitism was too much and

that he would be keeping his distance. It is hard to know how

well these parties will actually cohere and the history, the track

record of other Nationalist parties trying to do so in Europe is not

very good. There are lots of parties that are Eurosceptic or political

groupings that are but they are not necessarily far right, they are not

anti-immigrant and are xenophobic. Do you think they are going to

influence the debate somehow in the campaigns and the run-up to those

elections of the European Parliament in May next year? They already had a

pretty profound impact. The immediate prize is cleared things a

bigger block in the European Parliament. That depends on how well

they do. More than that, the success they have, any of these parties in

European elections, it reverberates nationally and domestically. If the

mainstream parties see that success, and they are just the policies and

take a tougher line against Europe, so we have seen that in the

Netherlands, even as recently as today. They put out government

statement is basically saying that they want to ensure that certain

powers are not transferred to Brussels, they want to limit the

power of the commission, all of these things are sort of stealing

messages from the Eurosceptics and try to adopt them. How far are they

exploiting people's concerns about economic hardship? Very much. These

are mostly populist parties and I think a few are a populist party,

the EU and the eurozone crisis is sort of the perfect storm, it is

seen as a guest bed, elite project -- it is seen as a perfect storm.

The root of the anger goes back further than the crisis. Do you

think they will get 30% at the European Parliament? Eleanor that is

what people are predicting. We will see. She is the most powerful black

woman in the world. There the American broadcaster and actress

Oprah Winfrey has accused Barack Obama's detractors of not just

disrespecting him but also his office because of the colour of his

skin. The media mogul is here in the UK to promote a new film, the

butler, in which she plays the wife of a White House butler played by

Forest Whitaker. She's been talking to our Arts Editor Will Gompertz.

Are you political? No, sir. Forest Whitaker becomes the butler to seven

presidents. His wife Gloria is played by Oprah Winfrey. Everything

you have is because of the butler. The talk-show host told me she

realised taking on a roll was a risk. My greatest hope was, I don't

want to embarrass myself. I was already going through all of the

criticism from the network and I could just hear, in my mind, people

saying, she should have kept her day job. That was so long ago. So, I was

worried about, to an extent, not being able to measure up to the

moment. Oprah Winfrey has been a prominent supporter of Barack Obama.

She thinks that both he and office of president has been treated with

contempt because of the colour of his skin. There is a level of

disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some

cases and maybe even many cases because he is African American.

There is no question about that It is the kind of thing that nobody

ever says but everyone is thinking it. Film is set against the

political backdrop of the American civil rights movement, from

segregation to the rise of the Black Panther grip. Is it a story you

think is important to be told today? I think that important does not even

begin to define it. It is essential. It is essential that the world

understands what the history and the legacy of slavery and the subsequent

civil rights movement and the desire, well and really right to be

free has meant to African American people.

We saw a wonderful movie that reminded us of you. She has made

Williams as a media mogul, but she said that acting brings her pleasure

that she has not got from anything else.

It is a work by one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century

and his subject is another of the art world's greats. Well now a

painting by the British-based artist Francis Bacon has become the most

expensive work ever to be sold at auction. The painting, Three Studies

of Lucian Freud, was bought for more than $142 million at Christie's in

New York. The BBC's Richard Lister reports A reminder of our main news:

its estimate was $14 million, but it ended up more than ten times that.

It was hundred and 42 million dollars. The triptychs are

incredibly rare. For us to see 142 million a something quite

extraordinary. It may be many years before that figure is broken. Three

Studies of Lucian Freud? was we brought together in the 1980s. Part

of its value is this -- is that it is a study of one iconic artist by

another. Francis Bacon is one of the most important British artists of

the last century. He really took on Cubism and moved it into the future

20th century. He should the face moving, the feet moving and the

hands fidgeting. In each panel he sees that -- you can see that

movement. There were more records set last night. It made more than

any other auction in history, making over $700 million. The artist

reckoned this was one of his favourite works and it now be some

time before it's like a scene again. Well, that's all from the programme.

Next the weather. But for now, from me, and the rest of the team,

goodbye. After the cold start this morning,

it didn't feel too