09/04/2014 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today with me, Philippa Thomas. Athlete and

murder suspect Oscar Pistorius comes under the fiercest questioning yet

about the death of his girlfriend. In the court today, the prosecution

played video of Pistorius firing bullets into a watermelon - before

showing a graphic photograph of Reeva Steenkamp's head. As I picked

Reeva up, my fingers touched her head, I don't have to look at a

picture, I know what her head looked like.

Are the pings now conclusive? More evidence pointing to the crash site

of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Also coming up - Oil blockades,

strikes and militias - we look at Libya's chances of holding together

as regional rivalries continue to threaten stability.

And welcome to Spanish speaking California - we look at a new

Hispanic majority in the state - could the rest of America follow the

trend? Hello and welcome. It's been another

gripping, distressing day at the Oscar Pistorius trial in South

Africa. The athlete faced the toughest questioning yet about his

version of events, on the night he shot dead his girlfriend Reeva

Steenkamp. There were gasps in court as a graphic photo of the victim

lying on the bathroom floor was shown, and the chief prosecutor told

Pistorius it was time 'he had a look at it'. The South African athlete,

who denies murder, insists he shot her by mistake. Our correspondent

Milton Nkosi has been following today's events in Pretoria. Over to

you. Yes, we only from Pretoria tonight. We witnessed in the

building behind me this seems you were describing when the

prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, lead into Oscar Pistorius, he was relentless

and ruthless. He asked him to take responsibility for shooting and

killing Reeva Steenkamp. For two days he has been a fragile

figure in court. Today the prosecution decided it was time to

remind people that the real victim is. As usual, no images of Oscar

Pistorius giving evidence but here is the prosecutor now, launching

into a prosecution. You are repeating it three times, what was

your mistake? The mistake was I took a life. You shot and killed her.

Will you take responsibility for that? I do. Say it then, say it, say

you shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp. I did milady. That was just the

start. Amateur footage of the stories with friends at a firing

range. It exploded, and I write? You know the same happened to the head

of Eva Steenkamp? To reinforce the point, a photo of her head wind came

up in court. The story is's relatives were distraught. The

mother of Reeva Steenkamp simply bowed her head. -- Oscar

Pistorius's relatives. As I picked Reeva up, my fingers touched her

head, I do not have two at a picture, I was there. His lawyer

objected. I think it is and called for, I see no basis for that. The

athlete broke down, sobbing. The focus then moved to the toilet door,

the when he shot through four times. He told the court he had done so

accidentally. I did not intend to shoot anyone. If I could think

before I had a moment to comprehend what was happening, I believed that

someone was coming out of the toilet. This goes to the heart of

the case, if Oscar Pistorius is forced to admit he fired

deliberately, the prosecution can prove it is murder.

In that report you would have seen that there was a graphic picture

which we have banned because there was a gasp in court when a picture

of fatally wounded Reeva Steenkamp was shown on the screens in court.

That is what the prosecutor is trying to drive home here, he is

trying to make Oscar Pistorius be the accused, rather than the

victim, which we saw in the last few days. Remember, this was just day

one of the cross examination. If there was no jury, it could be

argued that the prosecution's toughness might have errant Oscar

Pistorius sympathy but this is not a jury trial? Yes, indeed. Said that

figure does not have a jury system. It is a judge and two assessors

listening to the case. We are listening to the prosecution taking

Oscar Pistorius out of the comfort zone where he was led by the

defence. It is bringing him smack into the centre of the story as the

culprit. They are trying to prove he shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp with

intent. The nickname for the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, is a pit

bull and he lived up to that reputation. Thank you very much.

A sixteen year old student has carried out a mass stabbing in the

United States. Police say nineteen students and one staff member were

injured in the attack today at a high school near Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania. Rajini Vaidyanathan has the latest.

The morning of ten at Franklin Regional high School. Shortly after

seven o'clock, a student armed with two names went on a stabbing spree.

I want him to school and saw kids running. I was told to get out. I

looked out the window and I saw a kid holding his stomach and running.

I watched into the parking lot and there was this kid lying down

holding his side and there was a teacher on top screaming for help

stop it took police have to narrow to contain the attacker as he roams

classrooms. Parents rushed to the scene. Panic, your stomach just

drops. You don't know what is going on and what is happening. Every day

she walks out, I worry about something like that for her and

other kids. I was so glad to you she was low-key, but I gather some other

kids were not so lucky. Most of the victims ranged between 14 and 17.

Some are being treated for serious injuries, many others sustained

Scouts that lack cuts and bruises as they scrambled to escape. They all

have knife winds, awards are to the lower abdomen will stop this in to

have a pattern, mostly to the right abdomen. A 16-year-old student was

taken away by police. They are looking into reports about as

threatening phone call from the suspect to classmates the night

before. But for now their motive is unclear.

The team searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has picked up

further signals consistent with a plane's flight recorder. The

Australian navy ship Ocean Shield has recorded two more transmissions

from the same area of the Indian Ocean as those heard over the

weekend. Search co-ordinators say they're now optimistic that the

remains of the aircraft - which disappeared a month ago - will be

found. Peter Roberts is Senior Research Fellow in Maritime Studies

at RUSI - The Royal United Services Institute. He's in our Southampton

studio. Welcome to world news today. How confident are you that this

means the site has been found? I think we can be certain we have

found the area where the black box is. Whether this means that is the

crash site, I think that is unlikely. There may be did police.

We have almost certainly find the black box recorder or at least

localised it. We're still talking about hundreds of square miles. You

presume that the black box will be inside the main body of the wreckage

or somewhere else? That is a distinct possibility. We will not

see a whole fusilade or pull wings being recovered. During any impact

events and as it moved through the ocean, it will be broken up by the

large seas and this will be disbursed over a large easier,

perhaps hundreds of miles. The important thing is the signal from

the black box. We have an admission finally from the search team that

this is the black box recorder signal itself and that is important.

Either not possibilities it could be animal life, like dolphins emitting

those sounds? -- are they are not. The reason this frequency is picked

is because it is not similar to any other marine mammals or frequencies

at which they transmit. The only similarity is with dolphins as you

say but that is a fixed term nature of the signal which discounts that.

The closest thing to it is that it could have been an inadvertent

signal from one of the ships around it. Having heard that Ocean Shield

and other ships have turned off all nonessential equipment, they have

now discounted that. We will probably see a further statement

coming to see that this is without doubt the black box. Thank you very

much for joining us. In eastern Ukraine, pro-Russia

activists continue to occupy government buildings in the cities

of Donetsk and Luhansk, despite the decision of Ukrainian authorities

earlier this week to launch what they call an anti-terrorist

operation against armed separatists. Today, Ukraine's Interior Minister,

Arsen Avakov, told journalists in Kiev that the crisis in eastern

Ukraine will be resolved within 48 hours - either through negotiations

or by force. The BBC's Steve Rosenberg has just filed this report

with the separatists in Donetsk. This is the so-called provisional

government of the People's Republic of Donetsk. They have been holding a

question and answer session for journalists and said they intend to

press ahead with their referendum on regional sovereignty. They maintain

three countries are ready to recognise this independent country,

they refused to say which ones. They are holding a dialogue with the

authorities here. Earlier today, the governor of this region topped about

this meeting. He said he had met representatives of the pro-Russian

activists and topped but how to resolve the stand-off peacefully.

Meanwhile, President Putin has warned Ukraine it might have to pay

those imports of Russian gas in advance. The Russian president said

his state-owned supplier, Gazprom, had the right to demand prepayment

if Ukraine doesn't clear its arrears - which he says amount to $2.2

billion. Let's look at both these issues with the BBC's David Stern

who's in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. First - this 48 hour ultimatum from

Kiev to the separatists - what does it mean? It is not quite clear. They

have said they could resort to force, but this could be a read or

special operations. It is not certain. It does raise some concerns

because any use of force could escalate the situation. The

authorities have said they will try to resolve this peacefully and they

are entering talks. Prior to this they said they would do this without

bloodshed. In another city where the government building was occupied, be

cleared it without a shot being fired and the detained 70

activists. Tensions are rising there, as you heard. Guards are

barricaded in the state security building and apparently they are

well armed. So even if they use force, will it be successful, given

that they are barricaded in these buildings? Another issue which could

affect everyone in you clean, if Russia does the price of gas are

cuts of? Indeed. Everyone looks towards Russia for a number of

reasons, there are concerns or accusations that the Russians are

building up troops on the border. But Russia has a number of tools to

bring pressure on you clean. -- only you clean. One of them is the gas

cards. -- on Ukraine. Its industry is heavily dependent on gas saw any

decrease in supply will affect the economy adverseley. Thank you very

much. Now a look at some of the days other

news. A bomb has ripped through a bustling

market in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, killing at least twenty

two people and injuring more than eighty. The bomb is said to have

been hidden in a fruit box. It's the deadliest attack in Islamabad in six

years. Eighteen people have been killed in

a series of car bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. More than

seventy were injured in the blasts, which appear to have targeted mainly

Shi-ite neighbourhoods. Italy says it has rescued

four-thousand African migrants from boats trying to reach Europe in the

past forty-eight hours. Rescues included a group of more than a

thousand people spotted off Sicily as their boats ran into trouble. The

Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said the situation was

getting worse as people-traffickers appear to be stepping up their

trade. Security experts are urging computer

users to change their passwords after what has been described as a

catastrophic flaw was discovered in vital security software. The bug,

nicknamed Heartbleed, was in OpenSSL - software used by hundreds of

thousands of websites to ensure secure communication.

India's marathon election goes on. In the Northeast, hundreds of

thousands of people stood in line for hours today to vote in the

second phase of the country's national elections. North-east India

is a region affected by insurgencies and Sanjoy Majumder explains voters

there often feel remote from the capital, Delhi.

We are very close to the Burmese border, the border of Myanmar, from

where I am. Nagaland shares a border with Myanmar. You still see a lot of

soldiers about. This is a part of the country which hosted the longest

running insurgency in India. An insurgency which has been calmed for

some time because of the cease-fire which was signed in the 1990s. But

the underground militants still have a lot of influence. A lot of people

I spoke to basically said, you know, there is still a lot of areas that

they control. So, this is an area where India has put in a lot of

control over the years. And there is a general sense of unease. There's

also one other thing. There is a market not very far from where I am

called the Hong Kong market. Everything you see there is from

China. From toys, electronic goods, clothes. That is the other big worry

here that India has. That its giant Asian neighbour... This neighbour is

increasing its presence here in Nagaland and in this entire region.

And perhaps its own influence is a bit tenuous.

And voting in India concludes on the 12th of May with counting starting

on the 16th. Two Libyan oil terminals have

reopened this week after rebels agreed to partially lift their oil

blockade in a deal reached with the government. The Justice Minister

said that the eastern terminals of Zueitina and Hariga are now in

government hands. Two more ports are due to reopen in the next few weeks.

Traders are watching the negotiations closely, keen to know

when Libyan oil is going to re-enter the market, as these port closures

have caused major disruption. In the past eight months, oil exports have

dropped by 80% as a result of the blockade by militiamen, who are

seeking greater regional autonomy. The country's current output stands

at around 150,000 barrels per day. And here's a crucial figure. The two

re-opened ports could increase Libya's crude oil exports

dramatically by about 200,000 barrels per day.

And that stand-off over oil demonstrates for us both Libya's

potential, and the forces which could tear it apart. I'm joined now

by Fadeel Lameen, the Chairman of the National Dialogue Preparatory

Committee for Libya, a group which has a mandate from the government,

but describes itself as independent. Does everyone want to join your

conversation? Absolutely. We have seen that we have taken over 25

cities, and towns, and we're heading to other towns. Everybody is excited

by this opportunity to put together the second Libyan state where

everybody has the opportunity to create a sense of unity, and a sense

of understanding that is needed for the country to move forward. Is it

hard to learn to have dialogue with open conversation has been repressed

for decades? Absolutely. That is why we have been talking, and nobody has

been listening to each other. We have reached a point right now where

we have finally decided that just shouting and trying to impose their

point of view will not work. They have to come to the table, talk to

each other, reach a consensus on how they will live together and build a

future together. When we look at Libya, there are so many provinces.

You have that traditional tension between Tripoli and Benghazi. Did

you have quite a challenge? We do, but we have been there. We started

in the east of the country. We went to a place which is a tough town.

And we went to Benghazi. And we moved through the South and West. We

all found that Libyans want one country, and the entirety of the

Libyan soil is in their minds. They want justice and reconciliation, and

they want security, but they want to do it together. Do they need help

from the international community or do they have to do this for

themselves? The conversation, they have to do themselves. But they need

the help from the international community because they cannot do it

alone. Whatever agreement they reach will have to be supported and

appreciated, and guaranteed by the international community. They have

to feel the international community is behind them and will not let the

Libyan people down. As we said, oil is both the promise for Libya. You

are so rich. But it is a curse because different factions want

control. That is true. That is what we will talk. How to split this

well. It will not be a regional issue because it is a national

treasure and National resort is that has to be distributed to build the

prosperity of the Libyan people, no matter where they are. It is not a

geographical issue. Otherwise, it becomes too localised and nobody

except the one who has the oil fleet in their own backyard can benefit

from the work. Very good to have you with us, thank you.

Now a story about the changing face of America. In March, Hispanics were

projected to become the largest ethnic group in California,

overtaking whites for the first time in the state's history. That's a

demographic turnaround that's only happened in one other US state - New

Mexico. And where California leads, America often follows, as Alistair

Leithead reports from Los Angeles. Behind-the-scenes of America's most

popular local TV station. And it is in Spanish. KMEX Channel 34 is in

Los Angeles, where the Hispanic population is already bigger than

any other ethnic group. The whole of California is now passing that

landmark. This is the first step of many... In what will definitely be a

century that will be... Significantly altered by Hispanic

opinion, Hispanic public opinion, and Hispanic... Political

involvement. But it goes beyond the Spanish language. And the biggest

media market out there is Latino. Most are young and speak English.

Brand-new stations like El Rey know their target audience. The face of

the network... Will resemble the face of the country. This is the

people's network. It isn't the first time Hispanics have outnumbered

non-Hispanic whites. Less than 200 years ago, Outer, or Upper

California, as it was known back then, was part of Mexico. This is

one of the remaining Spanish missions. Built by the colonisers to

bring Christianity to the Native Americans. After Mexican

independence in 1821, these became privately owned ranchos to try to

attract Mexican settlers. But after just 25 years the United States

invaded. And won a war which went on to create California as its 31st

state. Then came the gold rush, and the proportion of Hispanics here

dropped dramatically. Today, you are as likely to see McDonald's as you

are a Mexican fast food joint in LA. The two cultures have quite

obviously been growing together for years. It is the new normal. The

eyes of the world are on California. This morning, the children that went

to schools in Los Angeles, over 72% of the children are now... Latino

origin children. They are the future cops. They are the nurses. They are

the doctors. They are the lawyers. They are the soldiers. They are...

Your future citizens. And don't the politicians know it? Hi, I'm Tim

Donnelly. I'm running for governor. This Tea Party Republican wants

illegal immigrants deported. But also wants the Latino vote. That

makes it awkward. California isn't keeping up with its changing face.

Latinos lag behind in political representation and education.

Something their news channel is trying to change.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's son Prince George hosted his first

ever official function on Wednesday when he joined a group of New

Zealand toddlers for a royal play date. Our royal correspondent was

there. He was not afraid to assert himself but then that is perfectly

normal for an eight-month-old boy. He is crawling and people watching

said there were moments when he seemed to be not far short of

walking. For George, it was something new, a brief but at times

boisterous start to what will potentially be the a lifetime of

being the centre of attention. He had been brought by his mother to a

specially arranged playgroup at Government House. Ten babies of

roughly the same age as him. At first he seemed a little bashful,

more interested in his mother's hair than his new playmates. But then a

girl caught his eye. Not an entirely successful encounter - she retired

in tears. George tried again with another child. He spotted a toy he

wanted so he reached out and grabbed it. Once again, Mum had to come to

the rescue. He was his own little man. He went

into the middle of the circle of toys. He hunted out the biggest toy.

He propped himself up and owned the place, basically.

George at eight months, starting to learn about the world around him,

though still oblivious to what his own future holds. For now, he seemed

happiest playing with his rattle. Now he has completed his sort of

semi-first public engagement, he can relax. He will not be seen again in

public until he leaves New Zealand with his mother and father in about

a week's time. A good start and many more to come.

Thank you for being with us here. Goodbye.

Good evening. It turned out to be a pretty decent day from many parts of

the British Isles, with temperatures in excess of 16 in