03/04/2014 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today with me, Zeinab Badawi.

It's being described as a "devastating milestone" - the UN

registers the one millionth Syrian refugee in Lebanon.

We have a special report on the harsh conditions many endure in

Lebanon and the pressures it creates in a country that has itself endured

political and sectarian strife for decades.

TRANSLATION: The number one million is too big for refugees in Lebanon.

Refugees inside Syria are moving from one area to the other. When

fleeing to Lebanon, they are finding it very hard here.

Ukraine's interim government blames the ousted President, Viktor

Yanukovych, for ordering riot police to fire on protestors in February.

More than 100 people died during the demonstrations in Kiev.

The Ukrainian authorities started an investigation. He is accused of mass

murder and we will bring him to justice.

Also coming up: Four weeks on and the search for the missing Malaysian

airliner goes on. We ask who's co-ordinating the massive

international search mission and what is it costing.

And a treasure from the silent movie golden age - how this lost film with

a once famous British star has been found gathering dust in the

Netherlands. Hello and welcome. It is a grim

milestone and still the numbers are increasing as Syria's four-year

conflict shows no sign of ending. The United Nations has registered

more than one million Syrian refugees in neighbouring Lebanon,

half of them are children. Altogether, the UN says a total of

2.5 million Syrians are registered as refugees abroad. But the actual

number who fled is unknown. It is widely thought to be much higher

because many are too frightened to register. Joining us now from Beirut

is the BBC's Paul Wood. Paul, behind these grim statistics, every single

number, there is a sad story behind it? Yes, that's right. We should

also remember the Lebanese Foreign Minister has said that the refugee

crisis here threatens Lebanon's continuing existence as a country.

That very alarming language reflects the dimensions of this crisis. It is

a country of 4.5 million people. There are one million registered

refugees. One in four people in Lebanon is a refugee. The official

figures don't reflect the unregistered refugees here. It could

be as many as one in three people. As you were saying, those staggering

numbers reflect many individual human tragedies.

Beirut's notorious Shatila refugee camp was built for Palestinians.

Now, Syrians squeeze in here, too. Refugees hosted by refugees. Here,

two families are forced to live. Ten people to a single room.

TRANSLATION: Life is hard here. I used to find myself wishing I would

die. It would have been easier. Many of the people living here are

invisible. They are not registered for aid. That means getting papers

and they fear the long reach of the Syrian authorities.

TRANSLATION: I can't pay the rent. Nobody helps me. I'm exhausted.

If I had any money, I would live anywhere but here.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians now measure their time as refugees not

in months, but in years. With the war grinding on, they have little

hope of going home. Like the Palestinians who built this place,

the Syrians in Lebanon are becoming a permanent refugee population.

Today, the UN registered the one millionth Syrian refugee in Lebanon.

It means an unwanted celebrity for this 18-year-old from Homs. 2,500

more Syrians arrive every day. TRANSLATION: We have this message:

Help Lebanon carry the burden of these refugees before Lebanon

becomes a burden to you. That is a warning about stability in

this country. Troops have been deployed in the north because of

sectarian fighting. The refugee crisis makes it more likely that

Syria's war will become Lebanon's, too.

The refugees are continuing to come across the Syrian-Lebanese border

because of a government offensive. It might successfully seal that

border. There is a great deal of war wariness on both sides of the

border. I was struck by the many refugees saying that life as a

refugee was so miserable, they would consider going back even while the

bullets and bombs were still falling in Syria.

STUDIO: As you said in your report, Lebanon is no stranger to hosting

refugees. It's had the Palestinians in the past. What do you think the

general population are making of these Syrians in their midst? What

things are they saying? We heard what thele official response has

been. I think the tensions are at breaking point. Even when the Sunni

community, which initially welcomed the refugees, people are complaining

about rents going up, wages going down, about the sheer number of

people here. Of course, the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Lebanon

are reflected over the border in Syria. That's why it is such a great

risk that the war will eventually travel here to Lebanon, either

because different armed groups are using Lebanon as a rear operating

base, or because there are so many people here that the same sectarian

tensions that you see in Syria are now being manifested on the streets

in Tripoli as well. It is a very, very dangerous moment for Lebanon.

Paul Wood, thank you. A report by Ukraine's government

into the violence in February which left 76 people dead lays the blame

on riot police and special services officers. The report adds that the

Russian security services the FSB were also implicated. And in an

interview with the BBC, Ukraine's interim Prime Minister, Arseny

Yatsenyuk, has gone one step further. He said it's "crystal

clear" that the former President, Viktor Yanukovych, was ultimately

responsible for the killing of anti-government protesters. From

Kiev, David Stern reports. It was the culmination of one of the

most violent periods in Ukraine's recent history. On February 20th,

after three months of protests, riot police and anti-government activists

clashed in Kiev's centre. On both sides, there were casualties. But

the protesters suffered worst of all. On that single bloody day, more

than 50 of them died. Now, Ukraine's new leaders have presented their

first findings into what caused the carnage. They said they had hard

evidence proving elements of the riot police targeted the protesters

with the intention to kill. But they failed to show any documents. What's

more, they said, Russia's Security Services provided arms and helped

plan and carry out the shootings. Ukraine's leaders accused Yanukovych

of giving the command. Former President Yanukovych will be

prosecuted. The Ukrainian authorities started an

investigation. He is accused of mass murder. And we will bring him to

justice. However, Mr Yanukovych fled Ukraine after the events and is now

in Russia. Tensions between Moscow and Kiev continue to rise. On

Thursday, the Kremlin said it was withdrawing some troops from the two

countries' border. For now, the rest would remain.

TRANSLATION: One battalion that participated in training on the

Russian border has returned to its permanent location. Other

sub-divisions will return to their permanent location when their

operations are complete. The February events in Kiev have

left lingering wounds. More than a month after the shootings, mourners

still come to Kiev's central Independence Square to lay flowers

and candles. They ask - how could this happen? It remains to be seen

if Ukraine's officials can provide satisfying answers.

Some news just coming in: Russia says it has detained 25 Ukrainians

which it suspects of planning terrorist attacks in the central and

southern part of the country. Russian reports said those detained

were members of ultra-nationalist movements. The press service of the

Ukrainian State Security Service dismissed the report as "nonsense".

Now a look at some of the days other news: Turkey's

government says it is restoring access to Twitter, a day after a

high court ruling against the ban. A statement from Turkey's

Communications Ministry Thursday said it was in the process of

restoring access to the website. Access to YouTube however, remains

blocked. President Obama says he's

heartbroken over the shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, one of the US

military's biggest army bases. Four people died, including the gunman.

The base commander says there is no indication of any terrorist

involvement. The gunman was an Iraq War veteran being treated for mental

illness. Ambulance services in Britain say

there's been a significant rise in emergency calls from people with

breathing problems, as large parts of the country continue to be

affected by air pollution. The hazy cloud has been caused by a mix of

Saharan dust and emissions from here and the continent.

The Kremlin has confirmed that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin,

and his wife, Lyudmila, have officially divorced. In June last

year the couple made this appearance on state television to announce the

end by mutual consent of their 30-year marriage. Lyudmila Putina

and the couple's two adult daughters have since kept a low public

profile. Cases of HIV and AIDS-related

illnesses are the rise again in Uganda, despite successful

prevention and awareness campaigns costing billions of dollars. In a

deeply conservative society, there's a huge stigma attached to being HIV

positive, it can make it difficult for instance to get a job. So it's

little wonder that some people try to buy a fake certificate stating

HIV negative results. A BBC Africa investigation has found that such

certificates can change hands for as little as twenty dollars. Catherine

Byaruhanga worked with Matthew Stein to get this exclusive report from

Kampala. Uganda is a young country growing in

confidence. But some demons like HIV are proving hard to shake. As you

drive around Kampala, there are billboards everywhere urging people

to get tested. Despite the long-term campaigns, HIV-positive people still

face a lot of stigma. This woman has had the virus since she was raped.

She's chosen to be open about it. When they hear my story, they tend

to point fingers. You went looking for AIDS. They don't know. They

don't understand what somebody goes through. For quite some time now, I

haven't been working because everywhere I go to look for a job,

the first thing they ask me is my status. We have discovered that some

HIV-positive Ugandans are going as far as breaking the law to hide

their status. We sent one of our team undercover to several clinics

in Kampala, pretending to be an HIV-positive job seeker. I need your

help. I know I am positive. I have to present a negative test at my

workplace. You want me to write there what? Positive or... Negative.

After a quick negotiation, the lab technician agrees to give her a

negative result for about $20. Will it work? OK. Getting a fake negative

result turned out to be much easier than we thought. We have plenty of

them. We went to 15 clinics across Kampala and 12 were prepared to give

us a bogus negative. One woman who bought a fake result agreed to speak

to us, but asked that we hide her identity. I had to get a fake result

so that I can be accepted in this company, so that I can feed my

child, you know. I went, I know it is illegal, it is not right. But at

least he has saved my life. Experts say this stigma is hurting the

country's fight against the disease because it can result in

HIV-positive people becoming too scared to access treatment. I need

your help, please. We showed our footage to Uganda's Minister of

Health. He admitted the Government wasn't dealing effectively with the

problem. It does not shock me. Nevertheless

it is a challenge for the Government and the country, to pull up its

socks, and squarely face this problem.

Uganda's fight against HIV has been impressive. But unless it tackles

the evened stigma against those who are infected with the virus, it runs

the risk of HIV rates continuing to rise. Leaving a large section of the

population living in the shadows. Four weeks on, and the mystery of

the disappearance of the missing Malaysian airliner is as deep as

ever. Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak has pledged not to give

up in the search for the missing plane. Mr Razak was speaking during

a visit to the airbase in Australia with his Australian counterpart Tony

Abbott. The search for the plane has been massive and multinational,

complex and expensive. We will discuss this in a moment. First,

from Kuala Lumpur, Jonah Fisher reports. Brought together by a

tragedy that still defies explanation, the Prime Ministers of

Malaysia and Australia came to Perth to thank the men and women tasked

with solving this mystery. For the last two weeks aircraft from seven

countries have looked for traces of Flight MH370 and found only rubbish.

Far from giving up, the talk from both leaders was of continuing to

search. I am confident that everything that possibly can be done

to find this aircraft will be done, we cannot be certain of success, but

we can be certain of the professionalism and the effort that

will be brought to the task. The world expects us to do our level

best, and I am very confident that you will indeed show what we can do

together, as a group of nations, that we want to find answers, we

want to provide comfort to the families, and we will not rest until

answers are indeed found. So the search resumed today with

eight planes, nine ships and a British submarine. No-one wants to

put a figure on how much this is all costing but it is not cheap. Take

the main surveillance plane being used, the orrian P3. That cost about

$10,000 an hour, when it is in the air.

Add the ships m the bill is easily several million dollars a day.

With the focus still on finding the plane, it is not clear who will pick

up the tab. Some now see politics as play, and say the presence of so

many Chinese passengers makes it very difficult to stop looking.

I am certain that the search will continue until we find this plane

because the relationship between Australia and China is critical to

the Australians, and the relationship with China is very

important to the United States, very important for the British, and other

countries as well. I believe that no effort will be spared to recover

this plane, where ever it happens to be.

Solving the mystery of Flight MH370 will take month, if not year, and a

vast amount of resources. After three-and-a-half weeks of

looking, there are still precious few leads.

Well, we are joined from California by Antony Roman who has more than 35

years of security and investigation expense, he is licensed commercial

pilot and former flight instructor. First of all, who is co-ordinating

and taking the lead on this massive international search operation,

would you say? Well... PROBLEM WITH SOUND

We are terribly sorry about that, but you can see the line from

California wasn't great, was it. Antony Roman there, experiencing a

few problems trying to speak to him. I think we have lost that line to

him. The era of silent films has been

over for nearly nine decades, and many great works have been destroyed

or simply lost. Well, one lost treasure has recently been found. It

features one of the best known stars of her day, in a film by one of

Britain's finest early film directors. The 90 minute silent

movie, called Love, Life and Laughter, is considered a British

masterpiece. It's by George Pearson and stars Betty Balfour.

Surprisingly, it lay gathering dust for more than 80 years and was

discovered in a small cinema in the Netherlands. Well, with me here in

the studio is Jason Solomons, chairman of the London film critics

choice. First of all, tell us about the circumstances of this find It is

an extraordinary story, one of those, it is one of those cinema

stories you count make it up, you couldn't put it in a movie. There

was a rusting canister of film that was found in a derelict building in

a town in the Netherlands, it used to be a cinema, it was only a cinema

for three years, owned by a family. And someone was going to destroy it,

the council were going to make it into a public building and someone

found all this tin canned stuff, celluloid at the bottom of the

cellar, which is very dangerous, because it is flammable. They had

the sense to investigate What they thought, they were looking for local

films of the Nazi occupation of that era, of the Second World War, they

sent it to the Dutch cinema institute, who recognised this sort

of lost film and, for a British film by George ball for. They sent it to

us here. By George Pearson and starring Betty Balfour. You are

getting mixed up. She was like the marry Pickford of the day A hugely

popular star, I have seen her in an Alfred Hitchcock film, she had the

impact of a Jennifer Aniston, he was delightful. We can see from some of

the footage, he played a Corus girl who lives in a garage who falls in

love with a young artister they run ay from the streets of London. What

strikes you about this film and much about 20s cinema that is lost, is

the modernity and how similar their lives were today, everybody thinks

it is confined to sepia tones and another era, but it is as modern as

now, and film-making is still kind of, in thrall to this method of

film-making and this way of talking. That is why it is important to find

them. The film was on the list, the BFI drew up a list of lost

treasures. It looks very jolly Films like this, the Hitchcocks, the Ring,

they were full of joy and laughter. George Pearson made many films with

Betty Balfour, because he was infatuated with her I think

directors that the time tended to be infatuated with their stars, stars

had a huge sway. That doesn't go on any more! Many have a muse. Many

directors work with their women as long as they can, David Lean used to

do it all the times. In terms. It is history and these things are

terribly important to the kind of continuance of culture of cinema.

Not a lot of this stuff survives and what is extraordinary is the

condition it is in. It is beautiful. The tone is wonderful. It is going

to be released. And more and more of these things are. The Artist won the

Oscar. That was the silent movie Everyone said it is dead and theer

ra died, but more and more event movies like this, they restored the

Hitchcock films and they put great shows on, they showed them with

great scores and give them a jazz score that is modern. Artisted like

it innen sawny, suddenly the film lives again, it is not from 1925 it

is from 2014 again. The silent movie died out in the late 20s. When they

invented sound in 1929 no-one was interested in it any more. It became

a duff print style of acting, they used to do, the acting was broader

and wider and stars who were big stars in the silent era when they

opened their mouths they found they couldn't speak very well. That was

the joke. They had squeaky voice, bad accents or couldn't project

properly. So it finished off. Valentino you never heard him speak

but he was a God. So I don't know what Betty Balfour sounded like. She

probably sounded like that (in a Cockney accent: It has it fans It

will be wonderful when we have the premier and the sound and the

lights. Britain's Queen Elizabeth and her

husband the Duke of Edinburgh had tea with the Pope in a private

meeting this afternoon. It's the Queen's first trip abroad for three

years. A day trip to Rome, the Queen's

first journey outside the United Kingdom for two-and-a-half years,

for lunch with Italy's President, who is said to be a great admirer of

hers. And then across Rome to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis. With a

slight bow of the head, the supreme Pontiff and vicar of Christ greeted

the Defender of the Faith. Who apologised for being a little late.

It was a deliberately informal meeting, they exchanged gifts, from

her to him, hamper of food from the royal estates, including something

described as grandad's chutney. A familiar royal grandad was on hand

to check it out. Plus venison and beer. From him to her at the back,

an orb with the cross of St Edward the confessor, a gift for Prince

George. He will be thrilled with it said the Queen, when he is a little

older. They sat down to talk, to reflect on

relations between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, might there

have been one discordant note? The Pope is from Buenos Aires and the

Argentine Government has been hoping he will push the claim to the

Falkland islands. We will never know whether he did mention the fall lack

lands. It seeps unconceivable he would. It isn't about substance,

what matters is symbolism. And the symbolism was clear, of two leaders

at ease with each other and two churches in much greater harmony.

Now some breaking news we are getting in. The Colombian novelist

Gabrielle Garcia has been taken to hospital in Mexico City. The

87-year-old laureate is Spanish language's most popular writer. His

Novembers include love in the time of cholera. He has drawn comparisons

with Mark Twain and Charles Dicks on. That is it from me and the team,

Hello, many parts of the UK have been suffering with poor air quality

over past few day, some good news, by tomorrow things will feel fresher

and there will be less pollution, so an improving story, that is down the

fact we have this weather front that has pushed northwards. It is

bringing rain