15/11/2012 BBC World News

An escalating crisis in Gaza - the first Israeli deaths are announced

as a Palestinian rocket hits a block of flats in southern Israel.

It comes as the military head of Hamas is buried. He was killed in

an Israeli air strike along with 10 others on Wednesday.

An Israeli minister warns that if the rocket don't stop, no Hamas

leader will be immune from targeting.

Welcome to BBC World News. Also in the programme: The eurozone's

economy is back in recession. The official numbers confirm the

economic slump has worsened. Chinese New Leader Xi Jinping has

promised he will fight for a better There has been more violence in

Gaza and in Israel after the killing of the Hamas leader in an

Israeli air strike on Wednesday. Hundreds of people turned out in

Gaza City for the funeral of Achmad Al jamboree. -- Ahmed al-Jabari.

Three Israelis are said to have been killed by rocket fire from the

Gaza Strip. Israel's transport minister has warned that if the

rocket fire from Gaza doesn't stop, Israel will target the Hamas leader

Ismail Haniyeh. A spokesperson from What has it been like in Gaza City

itself? I am joined now by Our Correspondent in Gaza City. You

experienced the air strikes yesterday, and the continuing

troubles. Tell us what it has been like. I live in Gaza City, and last

night nobody could sleep. I could hardly sleep for two hours. It was

continuous bombing and shelling from all types of military

equipment, especially from planes, F-16s, Apak ches, everything.

are those who are attending the funeral of Ahmed al-Jabari today.

But generally, what are people doing? Are they keeping as far out

of sight and out of harm as possible? I would imagine so. I

don't know to what extent this round of escalation, to what extent

it is going to go. From statements by the Israeli officials, they will

be looking for more targets, and more Hamas officials to assassinate.

Is that what you and your friends and family are expecting, that this

will get worse before it gets better? I guess that that is what

we are all used to as Palestinians, especially here in Gaza, but all

around Palestine, we grow up like this, we grew up knowing that

things don't change here, they just going to different phases. It calms

down a bit and then it goes back to escalation and confrontation.

Unfortunately I do expect that it will get worse. I hope not. But we

are very, very worried. Can I just ask you one other question. The

Israeli authorities are making the point that they are trying to

target those responsible for launching attacks in to southern

Israel. Can you give us any clear idea as to how targeted it feels

that these air strikes are, or random? How does it feel, as

someone living in Gaza? Gaza has a high density of population. Houses

and neighbourhoods, it is so crowded. Whenever there is even a

little bomb, it affects people all round. There is possibly some

targeting, but not every time. Most of the time, across the border at

least, they sometimes go on with guns and shooting. This is what we

witness normally in our daily routine. So to some extent it is

targeted, but no, Gaza is highly populated most of the time, and you

get many, many innocent civilians who are simply walking by or live

in the same house or the same building. It is not straightforward.

I understand what you are saying. I'm sorry to cut too short there.

We are getting some funny sounds coming from the system, but thank

you for your personal feelings as to what it is like in Gaza at the

moment. There are personal feelings on the

other side of the border as well, and authorities in southern Israel

say three Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rocket fire from the

Gaza Strip. A short while ago, the BBC's Ben Brown in Malachy in

southern Israel spoke to someone from the idea of Southern Command.

I can't say anything about the missile intercepting system, but I

can say other things regarding civilians and what is happening all

around us. How shocked are you that so many people have died in this

particular rocket attack on this apartment block? We are very

shocked. We have here three dead people and a few wounded people.

One of them is a child. We have a few post trauma victims, and it is

a very sad attack, very sad. just tell us. When you hear that a

rocket is coming in. The sirens go, we took to the shelters. What is

the advice to people in towns like this who are vulnerable to rocket

attacks? First of all, they have about 30 seconds to do something.

We advise them to go to the safest place they have where they are in

right now. If they are at home and have a protective room, that is the

best thing. If they don't, they should go to the stairway, because

that is more protective than the balcony that you see over here. The

civilians know quite well because we every day give the guidelines of

what to do and how to behave, because the Daily guidelines tell

them if they go to school, they go to work, we tried to put them in

the most safe place and not take them out where they shouldn't be on

a day like this one, we try not to disturb the routine of life of

people. My wife and kids are in the house near the protective room

right now. They are not going anywhere. People are clearly

terrified here. You can't blame them. But Palestinians are

terrified inside Gaza when they see your war planes coming in carrying

out air strikes and killing people. We know that the Hamas leader was

killed yesterday, but there were children killed as well. I can't

tell you anything about what is going on in Gaza, because that is

not my field of doing. There is suffering on both sides, clearly.

It looks like that, but when I look at it, I see for over a decade now

thousands of rockets. This last day, we had a couple of hundred rockets

in one day over civilians. These are not military targets. They are

not terrorists. They are civilians. The rockets have standard

explosives, they start from far away. We have 1 million civilians,

children, women, men, under attack. That is what we have to deal with

right now. The Israeli defence force there. We are going to move

on for a moment, because Aaron Heslehurst is here with some bad

news for the whole of Europe. eurozone couldn't defy gravity much

longer, and the 12 trillion dollar global economy is back in recession.

It was confirmed today. We started seeing all the economic numbers

coming out of reach of the individual 17 member states. If we

break it down further, we saw the likes of Germany and France still

both grew, 0.12 %. Germany's growth is OK, but compared to the last

year, a mighty fall off the cliff. And one of the worrying factors

have all of this, we talk about the core being hit, and this is

probably the last good number we can expect from Germany, certainly

for the time being. We know that orders out of Germany have been

falling for a year, the business climate in Germany has sunk into a

cave, so a big worry. Let's listen to someone I spoke to earlier who

gave us his take on the numbers. The only positive spotted take away

from this is that the decline was and larger. One major concern is

that if you look at the core economies, Germany, France and so

on, all the signs are that the output in the fourth quarter of

this year is going to be even softer. We are more likely to see

that the recession continues across the euro area at least until the

end of this year, and it won't just be about Spain and Italy, it is now

spreading to the core. The other big business story of the day: BP

says it is in advanced discussions with US agencies about selling

criminal and other claims from the Gulf of Mexico spill two years ago.

The explosion and fire aboard Deepwater Horizon which killed 11

workers and set off a spell that polluted large areas of the coastal

United States. The settlement is expected to dwarf the largest

previous corporate criminal penalty in the US, backing 2009 $1.2

billion was paid. Tom Bergin is from Reuters, and is the author of

Spills & Spin: The Inside Story of BP. Before we talk about the nuts

and bolts of any settlement, take us back to that day, 20th April,

2010, an explosion that killed 11 people. It reeked an environmental

catastrophe in big part of that area, didn't it? Good morning. The

fatal explosion killed 11 men. Then we saw, depending on whose version

of events you looked to, either for 0.9 million barrels of oil or

considerably less than that, spilling onto the ocean floor --

4.9 million. Tens of thousands of people were involved in the clean-

up, an enormous effort. The company struggled to cap the leak. It is

probably the biggest disaster in the oil industry in terms of

environmental impact. It dwarfed the Exxon Valdez spill, for example.

Possibly the biggest environmental disaster in the United States, and

that will be a very big chunk of money they will have to cough up.

What are you expecting? We are hearing reports of up to $40

billion. The overarching legal cases that are outstanding have a

somewhat open-ended potential liability on them. Today's news

relates to one of those, possibly not the biggest one. The company

under what is called the Clean Water Act faces fines of

potentially in excess of $20 billion, and that is just the

spilling the oil. It also faces what a record natural resource

damages, the cost of a mediating the damage they have done, and

again, who can say how much it costs to fix the Gulf of Mexico?

That could certainly run into billions. And then we are talking

today about the criminal element of this, and the Department of Justice

said backing 2010 that it was looking at potential criminal

charges against the company in relation to the spell. They haven't

fully articulated what charges they are looking at. So we don't

necessarily know what exactly will be settled. My colleagues at

Reuters in the US are hearing that a statement could come as early as

today on this. But you have a number of elements, and the figures

in this are potentially enormous and potentially open-ended. In your

point of view, you have been following this from day one. How

has BP handled itself since the spell? You can imagine they won't

get much new business in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has struggled, it

must be said, to articulate a new strategy to its investors, and the

share price tells its own story, really, of an investor base which

doesn't really understand what the company is trying to do at the

moment. The company has tried to reinvented through a number of

deals, and one of those is that major deal in Russia that they

announced backing 2011, and that fell apart. The company did a big

deal in India that hasn't worked out so well. So in terms of BP

regaining its competitive advantage, it has struggled on that, and it

has also struggled to convince investors that the work that the

new chief-executive was doing on rebuilding the company and

improving safety, that that was something that people had to be

patient and wait for that to happen. So it is probably fair to say that

there has not been a rapid rebound in BP and its share price that was

predicted. Tom, we appreciate your Are you a vampire fan? You know

what, yeah. Well, they are on BBC World News. Coming up in just a

moment: Twilight hysteria hits London as hundreds camped out to

see the stars of the vampire film saga.

They have tried poisoning them, gassing them, even offering free

mobile phones for their capture. But rats are still causing a major

problem for residents in the South African township of Alexandra. So

the Johannesburg City Council in charge of the area has decided to

take the ecological approach and introduced owls. It is an option

that has not gone down well with the more superstitious occupants of

one of the country's boldest townships. My name is Robson. I am

from a company which has been working with these owls for a year.

We are trying to educate the students and their parents around

the community, to let them know about the owls. They are just like

a normal bird. It is just active at night. People are superstitious,

but it does not work like that. We are trying to bring in the else to

eradicate the rats in this community. They must go in, one by

one. We take care of the owls, because owls are wise. Tell us more

about these cages? It was rolled back -- rolled out as far back as

much. We have already issued about 200 of these pages two communities

in Alexandra. It is tied to the whole project. It is a natural way

to use the owls to catch the rats. We use the cages to track the rads

inside. There are lots of rats in this community, so we are using

owls to try to reduce the number of rodents. We need to have bait. With

the owls flying at night in Alexandra, it will never be the

same again. You are watching BBC World News.

The headlines: the crisis in Gaza gets worse. Three Israelis are

killed by Palestinian rocket fire. At least three Hamas fighters have

also been killed in the last few hours.

New figures show that the Eurozone's economy is back in

recession for the first time in three years.

China's new leader Xi Jinping has said his government will fight for

a better life for the people. The new leadership has been unveiled in

Beijing, with Mr Xi succeeding President Hu Jintao as head of the

ruling Communist Party. He told a press conference that the party had

to tackle corruption and be more in touch with the Chinese.

After a mysterious secretive process, China has chosen its new

leaders. Seven men in Communist sartorial splendour, and foremost

among them, the new party general secretary, as expected, Xi Jinping.

In front of the invited journalists, he lost no time in warning of the

challenges ahead. TRANSLATION: The problems among

hour party leaders warned us of corruption, taking bribes, being

out of touch with the people, formalities and bureaucracy, which

must be addressed. Little is known about Xi Jinping's preferred

solutions to those challenges. Those who have met him describe a

relaxed, informal man, seemingly different from his predecessors.

But he is also known to have close ties to China's hardline military

chiefs. Chinese people have had no say in choosing their leaders. The

party has done that for them. Few people will expect many changes in

direction. But outside observers will be trying to read the runes

about the men now in charge about the world's second biggest economy.

They include the second most senior ranked leader, a former farm

labourer. The number six in the line-up is already an architect of

economic reform and perhaps offers the hope of some more. But then

there is number three and number five, both said to be conservative

hardliners. Xi Jinping's wife is a singer who is at least as famous as

he is. It is something else that marks him out as different. But

only by a matter of degree. Conformity and caution are keys to

the long, hard climb up Communist Party politics, and all of these

men are likely to have those in abundance.

Some Other stories now. The US military has revoked access for two

women after the scandal that led to Friday's resignation of the CIA

boss General David Petraeus. Secure teachers has been suspended for his

ex-mistress, army reservist Paula Broadwell, and Jill Kelley's pass

and the foreign air force base where she organised social events

has also been frozen. An earthquake has struck the south

west of Mexico. The quake measured six on the Richter scale. It had

about 30 kilometres east of the town of Altmirano. No reports of

casualties or significant damage yet.

The health ministry in Uganda says a new outbreak of the ebola virus

has killed at least two people near the capital, Kampala.

Now, such is the devotion of Twilight film fans but some of them

camped out in central London for four days in temperatures as low as

four Celsius, to get a glimpse of the stars of the movie. Robert

Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were among those who came to the

premiere of the fifth and final film in the Twilight series. It is

the film series that has made stars of its young cast and gained loyal

fans across the globe. Thousands filled London's Leicester

Square for the premiere of Breaking Dawn: Part 2. Many camped overnight

just for the chance to see the cast. Especially Robert Pattinson, an

actor whose life has been transformed by the films' success.

Sum up what the last few years of Twilight have been like for you?

has been unbelievable. I feel like I have gone into a parallel

dimension. I have no idea what happened. But it has been fun.

Based on a series of best-selling books, the five movie stress the

love story between Edward, vampire, and teenage Bella. This final

instalment in this series sees them fighting to defend their young

daughter from the threat posed by a vicious vampire sector. This

Vampire series has so far made more than �1.5 billion at the worldwide

box-office, and with so much potential cash to be made, now that

Twilight is over, the film studios will be eagerly looking for the

next teen fiction sensation that they can sink their teeth into.

Back to reality now, as we draw to the end of the programme. This is

the picture overlooking Gaza City right now. It looks quiet, but

there has been smoke billow a ping up out through the city during the

day. And in the process, a funeral has also been taking place. The