Day Three Of Pistorius Testimony; Search Crews Hear More Pings In Search For MH370 Black Boxes
BECKY ANDERSON, HOST: We are following a tragic story out of the United States. Today, a mass stabbing at a school in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Now this happened early local time on Wednesday. We are also, of course, other big stories around the world including the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 and the unrest in Ukraine. More on those shortly. First, we want to cross over to our sister network CNN USA for the very latest on that school attack.</s>ANDERSON: We're breaking away from our CNN U.S. domestic coverage now. You're watching Connect the World live from Abu Dhabi with me Becky Anderson, welcome back. Now, search teams in the Indian Ocean are more optimistic than ever that they are close to finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. This is one of our top stories. We will get back to that story out of the States, of course this hour. Another set of signals was picked up during Tuesday's search here. As you can see from this map, they were located about 27 kilometers from the ones heard over the weekend. Now search officials do seem confident that the sounds are coming from the black boxes. All they are waiting for now is to find visual evidence of the plane. How likely is that? Well, Will Ripley is live in Perth with the very latest. And, Will, it is I guess at this point what sounds like a very simple question, but I'm sure a lot more complicated for those in the operation, search and rescue -- search operation here. Just, you know, how likely is it they're going to find evidence of this plane any time soon?</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, that's the big question. Because, you know, we keep in mind, you know, we have this promising lead where the Ocean Shield is right now, but every day we're now up to, you know, more than a dozen planes consistently taking off, flying out over the search area scanning for any possible sign of physical evidence of flight 370. This debris field that many experts believe must exist somewhere and yet we just haven't found it. So we have absolutely no physical, tangible evidence of this plane. But what we do have now are four pings that the experts say likely came from flight data recorders, two pings detected on Tuesday, as you mention, two others detected on Saturday. So with the lack of physical evidence, the language that we're hearing now from the search chief is the strongest so far. In fact, at the press conference today I asked him if he thought when he joined this search if he thought that he would be announcing that these potential pings have been located. Here's his answer.</s>ANGUS HOUSTON, CHIEF COORDINATOR, JOINT AGENCY COORDINATION CENTRE: What we're picking up is a great lead, OK. We've got to visually acquire before we can say this is the final resting place. So there's still a way to go. But if you had asked me, let's say when I arrived last Sunday night, I would have been probably more pessimistic than I am now. I'm now optimistic that we will find the aircraft -- or what is left of the aircraft in the not too distant future.</s>RIPLEY: The bottom line here, Becky, crews are confident, but they're also cautious. They don't want to say anything that could create more pain for the families of the 239 people on flight 370. But one thing that Angus Houston did say that I thought was so telling is he talked about the preparations that are underway right now here in Perth to accommodate any of the family members who may choose to fly here. He said when they come to visit, we will be ready. He used when, not if, Becky.</s>ANDERSON: Fascinating. 23:13 local time with you getting towards midnight there, 13 minutes past 7:00 here in Abu Dhabi. Will, thank you for that. A dramatic third day of testimony in the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius. Just hours ago, the prosecution took its turn grilling the Olympic athlete known as the "Blade Runner" and demanding Pistorius acknowledge that he killed Reeva Steenkamp. Watch this exchange between prosecutor Gerrie Nel and Pistorius who is off camera, of course.</s>OSCAR PISTORIUS, PARALYMPIAN: I made a mistake, my lady.</s>GERRIE NEL, PROSECUTOR: You're repeating it three times. What was your mistake?</s>PISTORIUS: My mistake was that I took Reeva's life, my lady.</s>NEL: You killed her. You shot and killed her. Won't you take responsibility for that?</s>PISTORIUS: Yes, I do, my lady.</s>ANDERSON: A court room also saw Pistorius break down once again as he was shown gruesome photos of Steenkamp. Her dead, bloodied and smashed -- her head sorry bloodied and smashed by gunfire.</s>NEL: ...famous. I know you don't want to, because you don't want to take responsibility. But it's time that you look at it. Take responsibility for what you done, Mr. Pistorius.</s>PISTORIUS: My lady, I've taken responsibility by me waiting -- not wanting to live my life, but waiting for my time on this stand to tell my story for the respect of Reeva and for myself. I've taken responsibility, but I will not look at a picture where I'm tormented by what I saw and felt that night. As I picked Reeva up, my fingers touched her head. I remember. I don't have to look at a picture. I was there.</s>ANDERSON: What you're looking at is pictures of Reeva Steenkamp's head there and the family. For more, let's bring in CNN legal analyst Kelly Phelps. She joins us from outside the court in Pretoria. I mean, just showing our viewers some of what is going on in court, it's pretty disturbing stuff. One can only imagine what people in court are feeling. Where do you think this case is at this point?</s>KELLY PHELPS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, today was a day of two different stories essentially for the prosecution. Pistorius had a strong start to the day, finishing his testimony in chief. And he and his team managed quite successfully to undermine some of the core parts of the state's case, particularly the viability of their claim that it was Reeva Steenkamp who had been heard screaming. They put on record the evidence of neighbors who were much closer to Pistorius's house than the neighbors who testified from the state, none of whom say they heard a woman screaming, one of whom heard a man crying and also about whether or not he was on his prosthetics. But then we started with cross-examination. And we had always expected Gerrie Nel to come out incredibly. But I have to say I think it was somewhat of a misstep to show those photographs. He got the judges back up against the wall. It was really undermining the dignity of the victim herself and certainly her immediate family members who were sitting in court. And he could have pursued that aggressive strategy without broadcasting those photographs for the world to see.</s>ANDERSON: All right. We're going to leave it there. We thank you very much for that. That's the legal analysis of what is an ongoing case reaching, though, as you can see it's conclusion. Later in the hour, we're going to get a psychological view of the testimony of Oscar Pistorius. Keep up to date with the coverage on CNN on the website, of course, CNN.com. We're live blogging events in Pretoria as the case is ongoing. It's clearly finished for the day at this stage. And we got news reaction from the courtroom for you online. I want to update on our developing story out of the United States this hour. At least 20 people are injured when a teenager went on a stabbing rampage at a high school in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. 11 seriously injured victims taken to four hospitals in the area. This was earlier on Wednesday U.S. time. Some are undergoing surgery, we understand at this point. Authorities say a male teenager, he's a suspect, is in custody. The motive for the attack is unclear. We'll keep you up to date on that story as more comes into CNN Center. Still to come here on the show, the EU and U.S. may have hit Russia with sanctions because of the crisis in Ukraine, but coming up in about 10 minutes time, we're going to get a look at one country that has not been so quick to take such a hard line with Moscow. That coming up. And for you this evening, Ukraine remains a country on the edge, but we'll find out why the interim government in Kiev is predicting an imminent end to unrest in the east.