31/03/2014 BBC World News

visit Crimea as reports come in that troops are withdrawing from

Ukraine's borders. The Australian prime minister says

there will be no time limit on the search for the missing Malaysians

airlines plane. And an Israeli court convicted

former prime minister echoed all night of bribery.

A danger to our food supplies? A UN panel on climate change says rising

temperatures pose an ever greater threat.

Hello and welcome. Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is in

Crimea at the head of an economic delegation of Russian vice

ministers. His visit comes as the defence ministry says the build-up

of Russian troops on the Ukraine borders has begun to ease. Mr

Medvedev is the most senior Russian politician to travel to the Black

Sea region since Moscow seized it from Ukraine. The visit follows

talks yesterday between John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov. Daniel Sandford

is in Moscow. I asked what Mr Medvedev has been saying. He

announced that Crimea will become a special economic zone within Russia

to attract investment and also that a ministry for Crimea will be setup

to develop the region, clearly sign that Russia believes this is an

unchangeable position, that Crimea is now part of the Russian

Federation and they are prepared to invest time and money into the

peninsular as part of trying to bring it into the Russian Federation

as a whole. That, of course, directly against what the Ukrainian

government in Kiev says, which is that they still believe Crimea is

part of Ukraine. What about news on troop movements on the Ukraine

border? This was a very hot topic last night in the meeting between

John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, and the Russian Foreign

Minister Sergei Lavrov. According to the American version of that

meeting, a lot of time was spent with the Americans are saying to the

Russians that they needed to reduce those troop numbers on the border

with Ukraine because they were causing fear and intimidation in

Ukraine. Well, a Ukrainian spokesman for the defence ministry is

suggesting that they've seen what looks like the Russians trying to

reduce the numbers on the border in the last few days. They can't be

sure - it could still be a changeover of troops with one group

leaving and another group arriving - but what they seem to feel they're

seeing is a reduction in those numbers and that will be welcomed

not just in Ukraine but all across the world as people wanting to see

this situation de-escalates. So is the fact that Mr Medvedev has gone

there today a very strong signal, coming on the back of those talks,

and saying that they will make Crimea is special economic zone with

tax breaks? How will that be received in the region itself? I

think it is clearly going to go on causing a great deal of alarm in

those countries that border Russia, like Ukraine, obviously, but also

Poland and the Baltic republics who feel that they are seeing what could

be the beginning of a new era of Russian expansionism and it is

making them very nervous. I think in western Europe and the United

States, it might be accepted with a degree of realism. I think it was

very obvious over the last fortnight that this was a step which Russia

believed was the final step, not a negotiating position, and I think

people understand that from Russia's point of view, Crimea is

going to be part of the Russian Federation. That doesn't mean the

rest of the world is going to accept that but in terms of dealing with

real politics, people understand that, at least in the medium term,

Russia is going to be a blistering Crimea.

In the UK, fresh inquests are due to begin in two victims of the

Hillsborough football stadium disaster. 96 Liverpool fans died

when the terraces became overcrowded during an FA Cup semifinal match in

1989. Angus Crawford is in Warrington in northern England.

Angus, it's coming up to the 25th anniversary of this disaster. For

people who don't know what happened, why is this happening this week?

Well, this was quite simply the worst sporting disaster in British

history. At the very time of the disaster itself, the families of the

dead felt very strongly that they didn't get all the answers. In

fact, they felt quite strongly that some of the key information about

what happened to their loved ones was simply not brought out into the

public domain. There have been a series of enquiries, public

enquiries, inquests, enquiries into the specific circumstances around

the deaths, court cases around this. And then finally in 2012, the

original inquest, which returned a verdict of accidental death on all

of the dead, was overturned because new information had Breen brought to

light. That is why now, at this stage, almost 25 years after the

disaster, we now begin today in this purpose-built courtroom new inquests

into all of the deaths that day. What is key is that this is not a

criminal court case. This is not about apportioning blame. This is

about finding out exactly how, when and where those people died and if

there were omissions or negligent acts, those will be brought out. But

nobody will be found to blame. Nobody is facing criminal charges in

this particular court case. Thanks very much indeed.

The Malaysia authorities have announced that a new joint

coordination centre has been set up in Perth to oversee the search for

the missing passenger plane. The announcement came hours after the

Australian prime minister Tony Abbott said there was no time limit

for the search. Here's what the transport minister had to say. The

military is of Malaysia, Australia, the United States, New Zealand,

China, Japan and Korea are all working hand in glove to find the

missing plane. I should also like to point out that Indonesia has given

clearance for 94 sorties for aircrafts from nine different

countries to fly in their airspace as part of the search. As the Prime

Minister Abbott said, it is heartening to see so many different

countries working together for a humanitarian cause, to resolve this

extraordinary mystery and to bring closure for the families on those

involved. This morning, the Prime Minister spoke with Australian Prime

Minister Tony Abbott. Prime Minister Abbott gave a full update on the

search and operations headed out of Perth. Our prime minister has

decided to travel to Perth on Wednesday for a working visit to the

air force base to see the operations first-hand. With me is our news

correspondent who has been following all these developments. Just to make

it absolutely clear, have they actually found anything that is

linked to the plane in the waters near Perth? No, they haven't. Simple

as that. The search has been going on for three weeks but the Southern

Indian Ocean is fast and very desolate. There was also a lot of

nondescript junk floating around and many of the items that have been

found our old bits of fishing gear. Objects have been cited in the water

and been recovered and found to have nothing to do with MH370. But we

shouldn't be all that surprised - it is a vast area. Let's have a look at

the map that we've got on the search area that was released by the

Australians. They've explained the exact size today, haven't they?

Yes, we had a figure of 250,000 square kilometres for today's

searches. You can see the various different parts of the southern

Indian Ocean that have been searched over the past three weeks, which has

been based on information that has been processed relating to the speed

of the aircraft, where it appeared according to a satellite which was

detecting pains of information -- Pings of information from the

aircraft. So the search has a vault into different parts of the ocean.

You can see the sheer scale of that and all of this is happening around

1000 miles away from Perth. It's a phenomenal logistical exercise.

There has been so much speculation on the pilots' personal backgrounds

and how and why a communications system would be closed down. What do

we actually know now? We had two good pilots. There is nothing to

suggest there was anything wrong with them. One of them was

relatively inexperienced flying that aircraft but the other was very

qualified. We know that after about 40 minutes of flight, the co-pilot

handed over to Malaysia on air traffic control as he was leaving

Malaysia and airspace. He said "good night" , a fairly normal piece of

banter. It was due to be taken up by Vietnamese air traffic control. That

never happened. At around that time, the main radar transponder, which

identifies the aircraft to air traffic control, was switched off.

The transponder which sends outbursts of information about the

mechanical health of the aircraft to ground stations via satellite was

also turned off. The Malaysia authorities remain convinced they

were turned off deliberately but they don't know why and there are

any numbers of scenarios that could lead to that. It could be that there

was a problem on board and the pilots were pulling circuit breakers

to try to isolate the problem. But in that case, why didn't they put

out a Mayday call? One of the pilots could have decided to take control

of the aircraft for his own purposes. This is speculation. We

don't know. If the pilot did decide to take the aircraft under his own

control, why then is speculation. We don't know. If the pilot did decide

to take the aircraft under his own control, why then fly for seven

hours into the southern Indian Ocean? This is all unknown. We can

read in all the newspapers about the different conspiracy theories but

until the flight data recorder is actually found, it will remain

speculation. And only seven days, potentially, in which to find it.

Yes, it has a location detector beacon which will start to run at 30

days after the accident. Thank you. Now, climate change is

being felt across all continents and oceans, affecting food, security,

deletions and the spread of disease. That's according to the

intergovernmental panel on climate change which has leased its most

brands of report today. 56 authors contributed to it and it has been

signed off by representatives of more than 100 countries. Speaking at

the presentation of the report in Japan, the chairman of the panel

said the risks were high and the time for action is now. There is a

reason for the world not really neglecting the findings of this

report because they are profound and let me repeat once again, we have

said very categorically in this report, the implications for human

security. We have reason to believe that if the world doesn't do

anything about mitigating the omissions of greenhouse gases and

the extent of climate change continues to increase, then the very

social stability of human systems would be extinct. Matt McGrath is at

the conference that is under way. I asked him what governments have now

agreed to do about these findings. Getting governmental agreement on

something like climate is very difficult and it has proved almost

intractable over the last 15 years. But the scientists meeting here over

the last couple of days hope that this report will be the springboard

to a new global agreement that is hoped to be signed by the end of

next year, that would limit carbon emissions. To put in place the kind

of adaptation methods they talk about. They spent seven years

looking at this particular impact on climate change around the world.

They have doubled the amount of scientific literature and they say

impact that are happening right now, impact that will be happening

in the next 20-30 years, on our food supplies, on human health, on a

whole range of things, not just natural existence. This is, I

suppose, the starkest call yet for action, showing that there is real

science behind the multitude of affects. But getting action and

commitment is an absolutely mammoth task. What has been the political

response? Politicians generally seem to be very much in favour of

everything the IPC says because they've sent government

representatives here and they've been meeting with the scientists and

negotiating every single word of this very dense 30 page document, so

governments are already signed up to its provisions. The problem is

paying the bill. You could look at this document and say it is one of

the biggest bills in history because it scopes out into the future the

impact on small and developing countries who are having a tough

time with climate change, and they're going to have to spend a lot

of money to adapt to that. And the natural solution is that that money

should come from richer countries and that has been a real difficulty

in the whole negotiation process. So the hope is, from the scientists,

that this new report will help clarify that situation and the hope

is that the politicians who have signed up to this document here will

now go on and build a framework for the future that will cut emissions

on the one hand but also provide the adaptation to help smaller countries

and poorer countries on the other. The former Israel prime minister

echoed Olmert has been convicted of bribery over his ties to a real

estate deal. -- echoed Olmert. The scandal over and apartment deal

forced him to stand down as premier in 2008. He was convicted in 2012.

That was on one count of breach of trust. He was cleared of fraud.

Quentin Sommerville gave me more details. The former pro-minister has

been found guilty of bribery. That's a first. It's never happened in

Israel before. This trial has captivated the entire country. The

verdict run to 700 pages and it has taken many years to get us here. It

took over one hour and 45 minutes to be read out and has been broadcast

live on TV. Mr Allnutt has been found guilty of taking bribes to

allow the construction of this massive property developer that you

can see over my shoulder. It started off as a fairly modest development

but because of the huge bribes that were paid, something in the region

of a quarter of $1 million, it expanded and expanded, and is

regarded as one of the worst eyesores in Djourou slump. It has

brought down Mr Olmert's career as prime minister and looks like it is

killed off any chances of a political resurrection. Politically,

how does this affect the landscape there? It's enormous, it's harder to

think of the bigger trial. The Israeli media are describing it as

what may be the trial of the century. This was a man who was

pivotal in peace negotiations with the Palestinians when he was Prime

Minister. He failed to realise those ambitions, but he did harbour

ambitions of a return to politics. It's very difficult to see how that

can be achieved now with this conviction hanging over him. We are

still waiting for sentencing, that will come in the next few months,

when we will hear just exactly what kind of punishment Ehud Olmert will

face, and the other 12 people standing trial alongside him. We

have a look at the UK immigrants whose these conditions force them to

work in conditions that some say amount to modern-day slavery.

Security forces in Rio have staged a massive operation to occupy one of

its largest shanty towns. It's part of a campaign to clean up the city

ahead of the football World Cup. Over 1000 officers entered the

favela in the early hours of Sunday and thousands more are expected to

arrive within the coming days. Sunaina Gulati reports. Armoured

vehicles entered the area at dawn and real's elite policed marched

behind. The favelas at home to over 120,000 people. The authorities say

the whole area was occupied within 15 minutes. The operation is

considered a strategic move ahead of the football World Cup. These

favelas are right next to the highway. The lead from real's

International airport into the city. The complex has long been dominated

by three different com -- in all organisations. It became a hub for

gangs after a government initiative pushed them out from other

communities. Over 1000 troops are to arrive in the coming days to secure

the favelas until after the World Cup. In other news... 21 people are

now confirmed to have died in the deadly mudslide that buried the

mountainside community of Oso, Washington State. About 30 people

remain missing. Crews have completed a makeshift road that will link one

side of the debris field to the other which they say will

significantly help the recovery operation. The World Health

Organisation has confirmed two cases of the Ebola virus in the west

African state of Liberia, close to the border with Guinea and Sierra

Leone. The outbreak of the deadly fever was first identified in the

south of Guinea where more than 70 people have died. Senegal has closed

its border crossings to try and prevent the disease spreading. North

and South Korea have exchanged fire over their maritime border. The

Southern authorities have been quoted as saying the incident

started when shells fired by the North during an exercise fell in

Seoul's territorial waters. The headlines. The Russian Prime

Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, is in Crimea on the highest level visit to

the peninsula since its annexation by Russia. Meanwhile, there are

reports that Russian troops are withdrawing from Ukraine's borders.

The Australian Prime Minister says there will be no time limit on the

search for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane. Turkey's Prime

Minister has claimed victory. The most votes counted, his party had

won more than 45% of the vote, well ahead of its nearest opposition. The

polls closed and the country's Prime Minister, leaving for the capital,

Ankara, decided to take the early signs as a personal victory.

TRANSLATION: This is the wedding day of the new Togo. This is the victory

Day of the new Turkey. 77 million united together as brothers.

Earlier, at a polling station in Istanbul, rated Tayyip Erdogan's

supporters are desperate to get a look at him. We are saying we are

with him, we think he's doing his job very well. But there are so many

problems, they're been protests? It's not a problem. It's not easy to

make everybody happy in politics. Erdogan isn't on the ballot. But, as

you can see, this election is all about him anyway. The results of

this boat may determine his own political future. The opposition

Republican People's party campaigning here in Istanbul has

tried to stop the Prime Minister. Its candidate fought back to win the

city from Mr Erdogan's party. He is not in love with Istanbul, he is in

love with North Korea, he told the BBC. At the opposition

headquarters, supporters watched the early results come in. They did not

look like they were preparing to celebrate. The governing Socialists

in France have suffered a heavy defeat in the second round of local

elections. They retained control of Paris but many other cities fell to

the centre-right UMP Party. The BBC's Paris correspondent Hugh

Schofield reports. The French voted and the message they send to the

Socialist government was a cruel one. Town after town tumbled to the

opposition in what fell little short of a round. One consolation to the

Socialists, they held on to Paris. Ann hidalgo be the capital's first

woman mayor. But even hear the news was mixed, with the city suburbs

swinging, like the country, to the centre-right UMP. And it was the

UMP's night. They easily outscored the left, taking control of 150 150

towns and cities. TRANSLATION: Today what met --

matters is how President Hollande will take this message and how we

will finally be able to change those politics, which are completely

disastrous for the country. By the back row and for the far right

National front it was also a good night. They took 12 towns, including

one in the Paris region, the biggest ever haul in their history. For the

government, the Prime Minister conceded that voters had delivered a

painful blow. TRANSLATION: This vote, as much at a

local level as at a national one, is a defeat for the government. The

record levels of abstentions is marked by the disaffection of a

significant number of those who had once trusted us. But his political

future is itself now very much on the line. There is every expectation

that President Hollande will react to the defeat by announcing a change

of government, and the Prime Minister may be forced to go. It has

been the first electoral test to the Socialists since they came to power,

and they failed it. According Pakistan has charged the former

president with high treason. Mr Musharraf has been charged with

unlawfully imposing emergency rule and violating the constitution in

2007. He has pleaded not guilty and claims the charges against him are

politically motivated. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

Campaigners in the UK say the Government is "licensing modern

slavery" with its visa rules for domestic workers. Since April 2012

they have been tied to one employer after arriving in the UK, meaning

they cannot move jobs. Divya Talwar reports. The City of London, among

the world's richest capitals. In each year, thousands of wealthy

foreigners come to live here, bringing with them their domestic

staff. But behind the closed doors of some of the rich and powerful

there are hidden stories of abuse, control and exploitation faced by

many foreign domestic workers who come to Britain in the homes of the

wealthy. Stories like this one. A single mother from the Philippines

who came to the UK with her Arab employers. She says she was treated

like a slave. They treat me not well. They are always shouting and

screaming at me and saying I'm stupid, do this, do that. I don't

have any breaks, just to look after the children, they are going out,

they never let me go out. My employer told me, if you are going

to go out the police will catch you. She eventually run away, but she's

now become an illegal migrant and has gone into hiding. Let's try that

one. Her experience is shared by many women in this group. It is made

up of an run by migrant domestic workers, and each Sunday they meet

here to learn English. Many in the room have managed to escape abuse.

You hear stories of very disturbing treatment, including people being

physically locked in, allowed very little food and sometimes having

endured even physical abuse, but definitely psyched -- will to

abuse, being regularly shouted at and screamed out, sleep deprivation,

working all hours and woken up all hours, maybe even sleeping in the

kitchen or the lounge. Having no private time or time off at all.

Charities fear the situation has become worse for domestic workers

since immigration rules have changed two years ago, banning them from

changing their employer want in the UK. It has been compared to the

system operating in some Arab countries, like Saudi Arabia and

Qatar, where migrant workers are tied to a sponsor. But the British

government says it will help domestic workers who face abuse to

return home. For some, going back just isn't an option. I don't want

to leave because I need money, I need to support my children. I am a

single mother. They are only depending on me. Justice for

domestic workers! The UK Government is introducing a modern slavery law,

but campaigners fear it will do little for domestic workers unless

they are able to escape abuse and seek help. That is it from me for

now. Have a good day wherever you are.