21/03/2014 BBC World News

This is BBC world News. The top story: The search for the missing

Malaysian airliner is over for the day. Nothing of significance has yet

been found. The Ukraine crisis is ratcheting up as the Russian

parliament votes unanimously to allow the annexation of Crimea. This

is live from Moscow, with Vladimir Putin is expected to finish that

deal. It comes as the European Union and the Ukrainian interim government

signed an agreement on closer ties. In signing this treaty, we will show

to the entire world that we are together, that Ukraine shares

European values, and we can be successful together. Teenaged

Caliban gun men shoot down nine people, including women and

children, at a luxury hotel in Afghanistan. Turkey's president

challenges the block on twitter by treating himself. -- tweeting.

Within the past hour, Australia has called off its search for possible

debrief. Three military aeroplanes had been combing a room at location

in the Indian Ocean. They are following what has been described as

the best lead yet in the hunt for the Malaysia Airlines jet which

vanished. This was the day breathe at sparked the search. One is

described as -- debris. Being 25 metres long. They seem to be a wash

with water. It is possible they have shrunk already. This is the area

they have been looking at, the North and South areas. Flying at low level

in close formation down through the Indian Ocean. They have been

carrying out visual checks. But they are very far from base and they have

only been able to spend two hours searching for having to return back

to Perth. Another long day of looking across

the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean. The crew of this surveillance

aircraft searching for signs of wreckage. This is a sophisticated

aircraft but crew members spend long hours doing it the old-fashioned

way. Conditions are much better than on Thursday. Still no sign of MH

370. For two days, these ghostly images have dominated the

international effort. Nobody knows what they are. They may already have

drifted or sunk. But with dozens of countries clutching at straws, there

seems so little else to go on. Even though this is smaller than we

started with, it is a big area when you're looking out of the window and

trying to see something. We may have to do this a few times to be

confident about the coverage of that search area. This plane returned to

base empty-handed. Exhausting work for the crew but nobody is giving up

yet. I have a lot of hope. If the conditions remain as they are we

will hopefully find something soon. I need to debrief my crew now. Good

day. The daily briefing brought little news. The Malaysian

authorities have been criticised for their handling of the

investigation. The man in charge admits he cannot provide the answers

families crave. It is very difficult because the one question they really

want to know is the answer we do not have, which is, where are their

loved ones and where is the aeroplane? It is now almost two

weeks since the plane disappeared with 239 people on board. Two weeks

of looking and theorising, the hunt goes on, but nobody knows if we are

even looking in the right place. Our correspondent is at the search

headquarters in Western Australia. We are watching the planes come and

go from this base. Not in large numbers. Only a small number of

aircraft can cover the distance. They are the ones that have the

equipment that can spot it. Mostly it has been the aircraft developed

many years ago that still have sophisticated sensing equipment. We

have seen them come back here, the Australians have had three of those

aircraft out there. The crew look pretty tired when they come back,

the last up to ten hours. They have a long-range jet with a different

kind of surveillance equipment. The Americans have sent out their most

sophisticated plane, it is an up-to-date version. They cannot do

much more than that. The journey is so long out of this area, and each

time they go and scan the water, if they don't find it then they mark

that off and move onto another. We are the match gradually expand. --

the map. They are covering the currents in the hope that they find

whatever it was that those satellite pictures have in them. Australian

officials are stressing that you must be cautious, and they do

believe it is enough information to suggest the plane ended up somewhere

down here, those pictures could be from it. They still think there is a

good chance they will find something because the visibility has improved.

Is there not a possibility of sending aircraft carriers to that

region so the planes can search for longer? We keep hearing about the

limitations of the search because of fuel. It is only certain aircraft

that are good for that, the kind of aircraft they are using here do not

take off from aircraft carriers. There are very large planes. There

are the ones with the best chance of finding the debris. They are

challenged by the sheer remoteness of where they think the plane went

down. There is very few aircraft suited to this task. The New Zealand

government have got one, the Australians have got three. The

American one has been serviced because of the number of flights it

has been making. They have very limited resources.

Several developments this morning in the fast-moving crisis in Crimea.

The Russian Houses of Parliament have now ratified the agreement

annexing Crimea. It has been signed into law by Vladimir Putin. These

are the pictures we had in. Signing this bill on the access and -- on

the movement. We saw a speech setting out Russia's historic claim

on Crimea and Sevastopol and saying they would put the legal process

through to bring Crimea back into the motherland. That was what

Vladimir Putin said a couple of days ago. Let me go now to Moscow because

we have a guest, the BBC's correspondent in Moscow. What has

happened this morning? This is just the signing off of the deal that was

set in train a couple of weeks ago. Yes, and everybody speaks about

sanctions in Moscow now. The Foreign Minister said it is really difficult

and wrong about sanctions, he said there should be a dialogue instead

of sanctions, and Russia is waiting for a dialogue with the United

States. However, these sanctions have already threatened a couple of

Russian banks, one of them was in the sanctions list yesterday, from

the United States. This bank and one more bank, led by brothers who were

on the list, they were blocked by MasterCard and Visa. Now there are

lots of who cannot use their cards, and it is already one of the steps.

Vladimir Putin saying he was going to protect the bank and the United

States has singled out because it was the senior bank for a Russian

officials and is controlled by an associate of Vladimir Putin. If

people cannot use their cards, that will affect people quite badly. Yes,

they are already writing about it on social networks, Vladimir Putin said

he is going to move to another bank. He said they should defend their

banks, and the banks should not be in the centre of this crisis between

countries and the West. Thank you. Stay with us, much more to come. We

have a special report from Chicago, as police tackle the cheap heroin

flooding the streets of America. The Nile is not only the longest

river in the world but also Egypt's's main source of water. But

the agriculture market is suffering because of increased competition for

that water. Up the road, the largest hydroelectric dam is being built to

boost electricity ties. The Nile start to carve its way

through you jet, and this strategic city saw water retained in this huge

reservoir. It acts as a safety net. If the water levels go down further,

because of the Ethiopian band, the rest of the country might suffer.

Shortage of water is already a problem in areas around Egypt's. We

are here in the Delta, the people here are constantly suffering from a

shortage of water, especially in the dry season. This canal carries water

from the Nile to the farmland is all around us however the water levels

are quite low and the fears RFA go further down after the completion,

conditions might get worse. The people say it is a matter of life or

death to them. The constitutional court in Thailand has ruled that

last month's general election is invalid, deepening political

stalemate. The court decided the constitution had been violated in

the early elections, and voting did not take place on the same day

across the country. The latest headlines: The hunt for

the missing Malaysian airliner is over for the day as all the planes

have returned from the southern Indian Ocean. The Australian prime

minister says nothing of significance has been found yet. The

east and West move further apart over the Ukraine crisis as Vladimir

Putin signs the annexation into law. It comes as Ukraine and the European

Union sign a deal on closer cooperation. More on the crisis in

Ukraine as Russia consolidates control over Crimea and sanctions

intensify. It is getting easy to forget the events that took place in

Ukraine a month ago. The new government is asking for justice for

the murder of 80 people killed by gunmen. A month after its darkest

day, and Independence Square is still full of tents and flags, and

flowers, and people. Many of them have camped and cooked here for

months. They have no plans to leave. They won't dare try to kick us out,

this man says. Glory to the Ukraine. Also determined to camp out behind

the barricades for as long as it takes, this group from western

Ukraine. Still now we're not sure that

democracy will work. Until we are sure, until the system changes,

until that time, we will be here. Events have moved with extraordinary

speed over the last few weeks, and attention has shifted away from

Independence Square towards Crimea, and eastern Ukraine. Emotions are

still running pretty high here, and plenty of questions remain

unanswered. One month ago, it was a massacre. More than 80 people were

killed, many by sniper fire, in the last days of the former president's

role. The dead are now known as the heavenly Hundred, their faces are

everywhere. There is frustration nobody has been brought to justice.

The new government is asking for a little more time.

TRANSLATION: We're working in different -- difficult

circumstances. We have given all the video evidence to the

investigators. I can't say much more, we want to be able to punish

the guilty. Early last month, this video was posted on YouTube. It has

been viewed more than 10 million times. It was ordinary, normal

people, the best people of my country. But the young woman who

made the video is still trying to come to terms with what happened

here. Of course, I have this guilt and anger, why didn't we stop them?

Why did we do anything to stop them? It is very hard. We have a harder

situation. The problem was bigger than anyone could imagine. No one

expected Putin to take these steps. The terrible events here have not

been forgotten. But, with Crimea all but gone, and Russia flexing its

muscles, Ukraine's bitter internal battle has been overshadowed by an

external threat. Chancellor Angela Merkel's

government has criticised the Turkish government for blocking

access to the social media platform Twitter. Earlier on Friday, the

Turkish President Abdullah Gul took to the twitter to challenge his own

Prime Minister's ban. Earlier, the EU expressed its own misgivings

about the shut-down. It comes as Twitter users have largely ignored a

court order to block links to websites alleging high level

corruption in Turkey. The BBC's Selin Girit is in

Istanbul. On most people able still to access

Twitter? Yes, they are. But through the back

door if I may put it that way. Are changing their settings, or if they

are accessing by mobile, they are downloading applications in order to

get by and still be able to send messages on these social websites.

The ban came into force yesterday at midnight. And people started using

Twitter, are you able to send messages? And, gradually, the band

took over all the other platforms. But millions of people are within

three hours of the ban, 2.5 million messages were posted in Turkish from

Turkey. So, the ban actually did not work in that sense. Many people took

to Twitter finding other ways. Including the president, Abdullah

Gul. Even the president, he posted six stages one after the other

today. Apparently showing his disapproval -- six tweets. And he

said that he hoped that this would be over soon. Not only the

president, although he is the highest figure to have posted on

Twitter. There have been figures like the Deputy Prime Minister,

influential mayors. So, this is becoming a saga. One after the

other, something is happening. People do not seem able to take

their eyes from Twitter in case they miss anything. The Prime Minister

has been facing these corruption allegations. Is he afraid of news

spreading on that or something deeper. The Arab Spring was fuelled

by social media. There is speculation that there would be

further leaks on the social website Twitter and on YouTube or similar

websites, about further corruption allegations, or allegations which

would harm the reputation of the Prime Minister. But this is only

speculation and we can't comment on what might happen. If something like

that happens, we can probably safely say that maybe this was the cause of

the ban on Twitter. Nine people, including four

foreigners, have been killed in an attack on a luxury hotel in Kabul.

The attack was carried out by four teenagers, who posed as diners,

before opening fire. In the last hour, we've heard a journalist for

the AFP News Agency, and his wife and two children were among those

killed. The BBC's David Loyn reports from Kabul.

It is ironic that Sardar Ahmad, a distinguished journalist working for

the AFP news agency, a very well-known figure in deed in the

journalistic community, and a number of my colleagues had been paying

respects to his family, visiting the hospital. A real sense of shock.

Such an irony, with his family on new years eve last night,

celebrating. They happened to be the people sitting closest to the door

when these four young men came in, aren't we understand now with small

pistols, which is one reason why they had to go close to people to

kill them. These pistols were smuggled into the hotel, in

overlarge shoes they were wearing, or strapped to their ankles, in blue

fabric, which concealed them from the hotel security. Last night, with

lots of guests, functions going on, many international diplomats and

observers, staying in that hotel ahead of the election in a couple of

weeks. So, although there was very tight security for this hotel

because it is the number-1 Taliban target, they have hit it before,

these attackers appeared to got through.

We are getting details of an extraordinary story from France.

Four children have apparently been found in a locked flat that they

appear not to have left since birth. Let us go over to our correspondent

in Paris. As you say, it seems there was a

family originally from India, living in the northern Paris suburbs, a

very poor neighbourhood. Three boys, and a baby girl. The authorities

became aware of their existence for the first time when the baby girl

was born a couple of months ago. They were suspicious because the

mother did not seem particularly interested in the baby. They felt

there was probably a story there. So, they sent social services to the

apartment where they found this terrible scene of three boys, aged

two, five and six, living in apparently appalling circumstances.

It looked like they had never left the flat, on the seventh floor of a

high-rise. The boys could barely speak. The two elder boys could

barely speak, could barely walk. They were undernourished. It seems

they had never left the flat in all their lives. So, it is one of these

terrible stories, linked no doubt to social deprivation, the fact the

parents were from India with presumably little grasp of French.

And now the social services and authorities and the children's

ombudsman are trying to find out why this happened, and how they passed

through the net of social services. Where rather children and parents

now? The parents have been charged and

are in jail, waiting to face trial, for deprivation of care to

relatives, that is a French charge in French law. The children, the two

older with foster parents, the younger, the baby girl, is in

another kind of home. That is presumably where they will now be

brought up. We will have to wait and see whether the charges stick

against the parents. Difficult to imagine how you keep a

young family locked up, it sounds horrific. We can see this is a built

up area, lots of families in and around. Have any neighbours been

questioned? I am sure they will have been. This all happened several

weeks ago, it has come out now because newspapers have got hold of

it. The children's ombudsman has gone public and is looking into this

affair to find out how it could have happened. There are two aspects.

These social services side. The elder children were born in France

and so should have had followed up care under the French system.

Children who are born in a hospital need to be checked up at least once

or twice in the first couple of years of their lives. That doesn't

seem to have happened. Why didn't that happen? And the other question,

why the neighbours, why in the social setting, there was no alert

given. If this couple were they be extremely secretive and reclusive,

never went out, and had no contact with neighbours, and if they kept

the children locked up, maybe there were no immediate neighbours in a

block of flats where many were empty, which is quite possible. I do

not know the precise circumstances, but that can be the case in these

blocks of flats. Then you can build up a picture of complete isolation

for this family, being Indian, may be totally lost in the world of

modern Paris. A reminder of our top story. Within

the last half-hour, Australia has called off its search for the day

for possible debris from the missing an Asian airlines plane.

Three military planes and a long-range civilian aircraft had

been searching a remote area of the Southern Indian Ocean. They have

been flying in close formation at low levels to carry out visual

checks but, so far, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister has said they

have found nothing of significance.