Day Four Of Oscar Pistorius Testimony
ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Abu Dhabi, this is Connect the World with Becky Anderson.</s>BECKY ANDERSON, HOST: A very warm welcome. Personal messages take center stage in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial. This hour, the Olympic athlete defends himself against accusations that Reeva Steenkamp was afraid of him. Also ahead, a new twist in the search for flight 370. What Malaysian officials knew a month ago, but have only just revealed. And just in, these new satellite images from NATO purporting to show the Russian army buildup on the Ukrainian border. We take you to the front line and show you what we found. It is a very windy evening just after 7:00 in Abu Dhabi. Welcome. South African track star Oscar Pistorius returned to the stand today to defend his version of events the night he shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp. The prosecution doubted Pistorius story and meticulously questioned him about every detail leading up to the shooting. Now earlier the man who questioned him focused on Pistorius's relationship with Steenkamp and his history with firearms. He said he never treated her badly and that the shooting was not intentional.</s>OSCAR PISTORIUS, PARALYMPIAN: I didn't intend to shoot. I was pointed -- my firearm was pointed at the door, because there's where I believed that somebody was. When I heard a noise, I didn't have time to think and I fired my weapon. It was an accident.</s>ANDERSON: Well, CNN legal analyst Kelly Phelps has been watching the trial since the beginning, joining us now live from Pretoria. So what did you make of what happened in court today?</s>KELLY PHELPS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think it was a day of, again, two very different parts for the prosecution. In the morning, they came out with a lot of (inaudible). They started with this character evidence, got under his skin and then managed to jump between all the different charges, essentially overwhelming him a bit, before really then grilling him on the murder charge. But by the afternoon, Pistorius had really regained his composure, the most composed he's been throughout the trial. And then the prosecution found it a lot harder to pursue their strategy of trying to build up a track record of inconsistency. He really stuck to his version of events.</s>ANDERSON: This, of course, is a trial without jury, that is the South African way. How do you read how the judge is reacting to this case at this stage if at all?</s>PHELPS: Well, I think you can read how the judge reacts to moments of the case. That's very unlikely to -- that's very unlikely to mean that we can tell how she'll decide the case eventually, because we expect that with any judge in this country that she will diligently apply her mind to all of the evidence presented. But certainly today you got a sense of a bit of irritation from her, actually, when she felt that Nel was being a bit unfair in his questioning. And she did actually step in on two occasions, one before his defense team actually even objected. And essentially told him to tone it down.</s>ANDERSON: You're live in Pretoria with us this evening later on Connect the World, thank you. We'll talk more about the Pistorius murder trial, including just how Steenkamp's family is dealing with what is this agonizing testimony about her death. Her mother speaks about the trial and what she thinks of Oscar Pistorius's testimony, that is later in the show. Well, search crews hunting for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 believe they are closing in on the plane's location. A patrol aircraft has picked up another underwater signal in the Indian Ocean. Search officials say it is quite possible that the sound came from the plane's black boxes. Will Ripley is live in Perth with more details on today's discovery. Getting closer? That certainly seems to be the sense that we're getting. What have you heard?</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORREPSONDENT: Getting closer absolutely, Becky. But, you know, keep in mind here we are about to enter day 35 of this search here in Perth and still we don't have a single shred of physical evidence, not a piece of debris. We don't have any photographs of this plane, but the confidence that the search teams have is based on the increasing number of these pings that are being detected, now as you mentioned, a fifth ping. And this one not detected from that Australian ship that's towing behind the U.S. Navy's listening device, this ping coming from a sonar buoy deployed by an Australian plane the P3. They flew over the search area and they manually dropped these buoys, they blanket the area. And these buoys have an underwater listening device that goes down at least 300 meters. And one of the buoys, we're told, detected a possible frequency that they think could be coming from a data recorder. So at this very moment that data is being analyzed. And we expect if there is news to report that this is believed to be from a black box, we could learn that as early as tomorrow morning. But again no physical evidence, but another promising lead as we listen for evidence from the plane.</s>ANDERSON: And 23:06 today, of course there. Unlikely that we'll get more information tonight now, but as Will rightly points out, hopes for tomorrow. Will, we also learned today of some information that we believe the Malaysian authorities may have had for somewhat 30, 31 days. About what happened just after this plane went rogue? What can you tell us?</s>RIPLEY: Yeah, our investigative team in Kuala Lumpur has been actively working this angle since we've been on the ground there. And this new information is coming from a senior Malaysian government official and also a second source who is closely working on this case. And what they're telling us is that they believe when flight 370 dropped off military radar, because it dropped off of the radar, they believe it had to go down between 5,000 and 4,000 feet -- this is coming from those two sources. The same sources are also telling us that in the hours after the disappearance, that the Malaysian government actually sent out search planes to look for the aircraft. So, while this gives us some more answers, it still raises a lot of questions about what exactly the government of Malaysia knew and when they knew it and how they acted on it.</s>ANDERSON: Will Ripley reporting from Perth, Australia for you on the latest on that search. Well, the trial of three al Jazeera journalists has been adjourned for yet another 12 days after what was a brief session in a Cairo court room. Correspondent Peter Greste and producers Mohammed Fahmy and Bahar Mohammed were detained three months ago, remember. They are accused of spreading false information and aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt calls a terrorist organization. Now they insist that they are innocent. In Cairo, Reza Saya is outside the court room. Reza, what happened there today?</s>REZA SAYAH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Becky, today this trial continued to plod along at a very slow pace, seemingly not making much progress. For five sessions of this trial now, we've been waiting to see if state prosecutors can present any kind of evidence to link these defendants to any kind of crime or terrorist activity. And we simply haven't seen any evidence. Instead, we've seen a number of baffling and bizarre developments. They create the impression that state prosecutors are either not prepared for this case or are simply not taking this matter very seriously. Today, for example, prosecutors, after weeks and weeks of delay, finally presented video that they claimed showed that the journalists doctored video to broadcast false news. Every one in the court room was eager to see what this video was. However, the video turned out to be old reports from Peter Greste, the al Jazeera journalist on Somalia. There was a press conference from Kenya after the mall shooting last year. The video even included images of horses in Egypt. Obviously this video had nothing to do with this case, and the judge acknowledged this. The prosecution claimed they had more video, more video evidence, but they also claimed that they didn't have the proper equipment to show it today. So you get an idea of how this proceeding is moving along and how frustrating it has to be for the family members, many of whom were in court today. At another point in the hearing, a student who is being tried with the al Jazeera journalists, who is on a hunger strike, fainted and had to be carried out. This is a student who has claimed for months now that he has nothing to do with al Jazeera. Even so he's being tried along with these three defendants. 103 days, that's how long these three men have been in custody. For much of that time without charge. The judge today, Becky, adjourned this hearing until April 22. That means another 12 days in custody. But the most critical outcome of today, still no evidence presented by the prosecution that links these journalists to any kind of crime or terrorist activity.</s>ANDERSON: Reza Sayah at seven minutes past the hour there in Egypt on the story for you. Tonight, it's nine minutes -- sorry -- past the hour of 7:00 here in Abu Dhabi. We are here with the show, of course, our new home. Still to come tonight, millions turn out to vote in a crucial phase of India's marathon elections. We'll have a live report from New Delhi up next. And is Russia really gearing up to invade eastern Ukraine. We examine the evidence along the border. The show live from Abu Dhabi, stay with us.