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NEWS STREAM

Oscar Pistorius Begins Testimony; A Look At The Technology Used In Searching For HM370

Aired April 7, 2014 - 8:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MONITA RAJPAL, HOST: Hello, I'm Monita Rajpal in Hong Kong. Welcome to News Stream where news and technology meet.

Oscar Pistorius takes the stand in Pretoria, South Africa. He is testifying in his own defense as his late girlfriend's mother looks on.

Plus, it has been called the most promising lead so far in the search for flight 370, but is it the missing plane?

And a massive display of democracy, India begins its biggest election in history.

We are following two major stories for you this hour. Searchers say it is the most promising lead yet in efforts to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The plane went missing almost a month ago.

But first to South Africa where "Bladerunner" Oscar Pistorius is taking the stand in his own defense. Court is due to resume at any moment now. More than a month into the trial, the court has now heard from the accused himself. The athlete began his testimony with a direct message for victim Reeva Steenkamp's family. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSCAR PISTORIUS, PARALYMPIC ATHLETE: I can't imagine the pain and the sorrow and the emptiness that I've caused you and your family. I was simply trying to protect Reeva.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJPAL: We will, of course, continue to monitor the courtroom in Pretoria and take you back there when testimony resumes. But we want to get more on that testimony from Oscar Pistorius. CNN legal analyst Kelly Phelps joins us now live from Pretoria.

There was emotional testimony there from Oscar Pistorius at the very beginning of his appearance in court today. And then of course then the lawyers went on to talk about his entire story, his life story.

What do you believe has been the strategy for that?

KELLY PHELPS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, hearing about his life story and his background is incredibly important for establishing a foundation for the defense that he will eventually walk us through in his testimony for the night in question when he did, in fact, kill Reeva Steenkamp.

If he is asking the judge to believe that he had a certain state of mind, a certain state of belief on the night in question, he needs to lay some foundation to make that a plausible claim. And essentially by telling his life story, he's explaining to the court what infused his world view, what makes him tick, how he interacts with the world because of his disability for example. And all of that will eventually go to the credibility and the believability of his version of what he believed was happening on that night in question.

RAJPAL: Sorry, I have to interrupt there. We are going to take you back inside the courtroom now where the court is back in session. Let's take a listen.

(OSCAR PISTORIUS TRIAL)

RAJPAL: The Oscar Pistorius murder trial there in Pretoria has now been adjourned for the day at the request of his defense lawyer, Barry Roux, who has suggested that his client, Oscar Pistorius, is exhausted, especially with all that has been going on and has been displaying signs of exhaustion.

In fact, when he asked Mr. Pistorius just a few minutes ago about whether he was tired, he said he had slept last night. He said, a lot of things are going through my mind and the weight of this is overbearing.

Throughout this afternoon sessions of Oscar Pistorius's testimony, we heard his defense lawyer ask him a range of questions from his use of alcohol and drugs to which he says he does drink when he's with family and friends, but not -- he says not during -- not during the time when he's training, which through January to September.

When it came to the question about drugs, he said the last time he did drugs was when he was 15 when he smoked marijuana. That was after his mother had passed away.

He also talked about exposure to crime. And when his defense lawyer asked him about what kind of exposure he had had to crime, Mr. Pistorius said that living in South Africa everyone is exposed to crime. He's had house break-ins at his father's house, and even at his mother's house when he was living there.

He's had -- had hijackings, his family members have had hijackings, carjackings as well. He said in 2005, his own home was broken into when he was away. And also he has been followed home late at night and his car -- he said he's even been shot at while he was driving on the highway.

He talked about a lot of other things, including moving to a new development and crime that was exposed there, also moving to Johannesburg after that to be near Reeva Steenkamp.

He was also asked about religion and faith, and he actually said -- and this was interesting -- that faith was important to him, but he said meeting Reeva Steenkamp, she was a strong Christian and who would pray for him at night.

So quite a variety of questions that Oscar Pistorius was asked on his day on the witness stand on -- giving his testimony at his own murder trial there.

He is accused of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. And the testimony continues tomorrow. Of course we will continue to carry that when it does happen again tomorrow.

For now, let's take a short break, we'll be right back here on News Stream.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJPAL: Welcome back to News Stream everyone. Hello, I'm Monita Rajpal.

Let's turn our attention right now to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370. There has been some detection of more audio signals in the Indian Ocean. The Australian ship Ocean Shield picked up two separate signals in the search area west of Australia.

Now if the signals are pinpointed, an underwater vessel is to search for any debris.

They were located in the north of the search area, and that's about 500 kilometers from where a Chinese ship also detected audio signals. But it could take days before officials are able to confirm if the signals came from the plane's voice recorders.

Now Erin McLaughlin joins us now. We do not have Erin McLaughlin, but we'd love to take you more to on some of the other stories that we are following today. And of course the other story that we were following just earlier on, which was the dramatic day of testimony in South Africa. Oscar Pistorius has finally taken the stand at his own defense.

And we've updated you on the new leads in the search for flight 370 that we were just talking about.

But now let's turn to our other top story and that's in India where polls have closed in the northeast states of Assan (ph) and Tripora (ph).

The voting marks the start of the country's marathon style five week long general election that will decide a new parliament and new prime minister. It also happens to be the largest election the world has ever seen. 15,000 candidates from 500 political parties are vying for seats in India's lower house of parliament.

And the voting pool exceeds to combined populations of the U.S. and Western Europe.

Let's get you more now on the Oscar Pistorius murder trial and the testimony that we heard there of the Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

CNN legal analyst Kelly Pehlps joins us now live from Pretoria. And Kelly, so we have quite an extensive testimony there that we heard from Oscar Pistorius. Quite a range of questions he was asked, everything from alcohol and drug abuse to religion.

Give us an idea of what kind of a picture his defense lawyer Barry Roux is trying to paint here.

PHELPS: Well, essentially they are trying to provide a counterbalance to the picture that the state was trying to paint in their version of events. So we know at this point that the state have put a lot of effort into painting Pistorius as an angry speed freak, trigger happy, gun obsessed short-tempered person. And they're now providing the counterbalance to that and showing that actually he was very committed to charitable work. He was not an excessive drinker, but he's a much more nuanced person that the version that the state were putting forward. And it is very important to go into a lot of that detail, not just to provide the counterbalance, but importantly to try and give the judge an idea of the eyes through which he sees the world and how he engages the world, which will then lend to the credibility of whether or not the judge should believe his version of events, of what he was actually thinking on the night in question.

RAJPAL: Because at the end of the day, it's not a question of whether or not he murdered Reeva Steenkamp, it's about whether or not it was intentional, right?

PHELPS: Well, it's absolutely a question of whether or not he murdered Reeva Steenkamp. It's not a question of whether he killed Reeva Steenkamp, but murder in South African law must be an intentional killing. He has always maintained that it was a tragic accident -- an accidental killing, not an intentional killing. And the state, on the other hand, have always alleged that he intended to kill her, he knew it was her he was shooting at and he wanted to kill her.

And he now needs to provide some platform for the court to go off in order to determine whether they believe his version of events over the state's version of events. And of course he was the only other person, other than Reeva Steenkamp, who was there on the night in question. So his testimony is pivotal in that regard.

RAJPAL: And it's also important to point out, Kelly, that this is not a court where a jury is listening to all the testimony, it's instead a judge and that's why Mr. Pistorius was referring to her as My Lady in his testimony.

PHELPS: Absolutely. I mean, that's a crucial feature of South African criminal law. We abandoned a jury system in 1969. It is led by a judge and two assessors who can decide on questions of facts. And for that reason, a lot of the theatrics and the emotional parts of testimony that would be potentially more pivotal in a jury trial, really are less persuasive in a judge-led trial.

The judge and the assessors are schooled and trained and spend their careers separating fact from emotion and determining what facts are pertinent to decide the questions of law, as opposed to just determining it on bare instinctual or emotional response to testimony.

RAJPAL: All right, Kelly, thank you very much. Kelly Phelps there, CNN legal analyst there live for us from outside the courthouse in Pretoria.

And we'll be right back. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJPAL: Officials say they have the most promising lead yet in the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. A U.S. pinger locator connected to an Australian vessel has detected two separate audio signals in the southern Indian Ocean. Officials say they are consistent with sounds emitted by a plane's flight data and voice cockpit recorders traditionally known as black boxes.

The vessel, the Ocean Shield will continue to search the area.

If the location of the audio signals is narrowed down, an underwater vehicle will be sent into the ocean's depths to try to find the missing plane.

Well, Erin McLaughlin has more now on the search efforts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A month into the search for Flight 370, Malaysian officials announce what they describe as the most promising lead yet.

HUSSEIN: The towed pinger locator on the HMAS Ocean Shield has detected signals consistent with those emitted by aircraft black boxes.

MCLAUGHLIN: Today, Australian authorities say those signals are consistent with transmissions from the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

ANGUS HOUSTON, CHIEF COORDINATOR, JOINT AGENCY COORDINATION CENTER: The audible signal sounds to me just look an emergency locator beacon.

MCLAUGHLIN: The Ocean Shield picked up two distinct pinger returns here in the northern part of the search area. These signals detected more than 370 miles away from the area, where a Chinese ship picked two audio signals on Saturday.

Britain's HMS Echo has been moved there to investigate. They do not believe it's related to the Ocean Shield find.

HOUSTON: I would say it's unlikely, that they're the same event, but in deep water, funny things happen with acoustic signals.

MCLAUGHLIN: Officials stress they need to find wreckage before they can confirm any of these pings are related to the missing plane.

HOUSTON: We haven't found the aircraft yet. We need further confirmation.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJPAL: Erin McLaughlin reporting there.

Now in the coverage of this missing plane, you may have heard mention of a toad pinger locator and hydrophone. Stephanie Elam shows us the technology that makes this underwater search possible.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The idea of searching the ocean floor is a huge undertaking. So we want to show you the difference between a couple of technologies that are likely being used in the Indian Ocean. I want to introduce you to James Coleman. He's the Senior Hydrographer with Teledyne Reson. And he's going to show us first what a hydrophone does.

JAMES COLEMAN, SENIOR HYDROGRAPHER, TELEDYNE RESON: Exactly. So this is -- this is a hydrophone. A hydrophone is really a simplified underwater microphone. This is the type of device -- so you're going to put it together in tails that they throw behind the vessel, we dip it over the side.

They're going to use this (ph) to listen for that pinger locator, just an underwater microphone.

ELAM: And this is just another example of it. How wide -- how far can it hear?

COLEMAN: About five miles based on the frequency that we're looking for in that pinger.

ELAM: OK, that sounds like a lot of mileage, but it actually isn't underwater.

So let's just say, though, if you do get closer and you are over the field of debris or you're looking for it after you get closer, you would go to sonar.

COLEMAN: Yes. And you're going to use a sonar to map out what's on the sea floor, map out that field of debris.

And this is an example of a sonar. The sonar is going to emit sound itself, instead of the hydrophone, which is just listening to that pinger, this is going to emit sound and as that sound comes back off the sea floor and it receives it, it's going to interpret it and build up a 3D map of what's on the sea floor.

ELAM: All right, so let's go take a look at what some of that data looks like, starting off by taking a look at what's coming in from the hydrophone, because that is basically what it's hearing visually, right?

COLEMAN: Right. And you could just put a headset on and you could listen to the hydrophone and listen for that once per second click, or you could look at if visually.

And this is a spectrum of what's the frequencies are on the ocean. It's just ocean noise. If that pinger were here, we'd see a spike right at that pinger frequency, right at between s30 to 40 kilohertz.

ELAM: All right, and so that's one thing that's helping us.

The other technology is the sonar and what the sonar is picking up.

COLEMAN: Right. And as I said, the sonar is emitting sound in order to build up a map of what's on sea floor. So we're getting back an image of all the different debris that are on the sea floor as that sound comes up we have a 3D point cloud as well as an image and we can use that to build slowly a map of what's on the sea floor.

ELAM: And how long does this take going through and searching like this?

COLEMAN: It's very time consuming, particularly because you have to get these sensors down deep near the ocean floor, which in a full ocean depth at 5,000, 4,000 meters of water is very difficult.

ELAM: And that's part of the reason why it's taking so long as they're searching through the super deep waters of the southern Indian Ocean.

COLEMAN: Yes, exactly.

ELAM: So this is just a little bit of a visual of what they're likely doing in those waters trying to see if there's any debris down there. This technology that we are looking at here in the Santa Barbara Harbor.

I'm Stephanie Elam.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJPAL: The murder trial of Oscar Pistorius adjourned early this Monday after South African athlete began testifying in his own defense. Pistorius is accused of having murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home in Pretoria on Valentine's Day last year. He doesn't deny killing Steenkamp, but says he mistook her for an intruder.

On the stand, he addressed the victim's family directly and apologized.

Pistorius says he now takes anti-depressants and sleep aides. His lawyer asked for the early adjournment, saying Pistorius was exhausted.

That is News Stream for this Monday, but the news continues here at CNN. I'm Monita Rajpal. World Business Today is next.

END