hello. this is bbc world news. these are our top stories. two bodies from the crashed airasia plane have been recovered as the search is called off for the day. the company's ceo says the recovery mission is still in early stages. >> they're narrowing the search. they're they're feeling more comfortable. there's no confirmation. no sonar. some visual identification but nothing confirmed. a ship carried 700 migrants is docked after being safely rescued by the italian coast

guard. navalny and dozens of protestors are arrested following a rally in moscow. if you're watching in new zealand or countries already into 2015, happy new year. the first bodies from the airasia plane disaster have been brought back to land. the operation to recover more victims and wreckage is called off for the day. earlier it was being hampered by bad weather. the plane took off on sunday. 162 people were on board and all are feared dead. while the recovery operation is due to resume first light thursday it will continue between the island here and 100

kilometers southwest in indonesia. seven bodies are retrieved from the water. two have been flown back to surabaya where the plane took off. officials are trying to identify them. airasia is saying clear priority now is help the victim's relatives. jane can give us more details. at surabaya air base the indonesia military simply bares two coffins of those that died in the disaster. identified by numbers, the task now is to give them names. the bodies are take ton a hospital in the city from which the ill fated flight 8501 took off. police are collecting dna samples and photos from relatives to speed up the identification process. this morning there was a sense of urgency as another body was recover ed from the java sea and brought a shore by helicopter.

the head of indonesia's search and rescue agency says so far seven of the 162 people who were on board have been recovered. >> translator: the airplane lodge has not been found yet. today so far we have recovered seven bodies which include four male and three female bodies. >> the operation is continuing but rough seas and high winds have prevented divers from searching the crash zone. singapore is sending two underwater beacon detectors to help find the plane's black boxes. wreckage from the airasia plane was first spotted yesterday. there are reports that one of the bodies found nearby was in a life jacket. one pilot has suggested that could mean the plane stalled and then came down. the head of the airline wouldn't speculate on the cause. >> they're narrowing the search. they're feeling more comfortable

that they are beginning to know where it is. there's no confirmation. no sonar, nothing. >> for the relatives of those on board, the hope of some miracle has now gone. their crushing grief is so raw there's little that can be done to comfort them. they must wait for answers to their questions, how and why it happened. bbc news. >> well a little earlier i spoke to jeffrey thomas editor of airline ratings.com. he's been discussing with me what search teams need to find in order to establish what happened to this plane. >> absolutely critical to this is black boxes, dock pit voice recorder digital flight data recorder. with the cockpit voice recorder we'll get the last two hours of conversation, entire flight. the digital flight data recorder records approximately 80 to 90

parameters. that will be the heartbeat of that airplane. it will tell us every single thing we need to know about what happened to this flight. >> one would assume when a plane comes down in the sea it breaks up. anything we can learn from the state of the wreckage? >> possibly yes. if the tail -- and when i'm talking about the tail i'm talking vertical stabilizer if that is intact with the airplane, that tells us the plane basically stayed together all the way. if if it's separated, it is not with the main body of the lodge and wings, then that tells us that it may of broken off or likely broken off in flight which may tell us a little more about the conditions that existed when the plane first got

into strife. if the plane had blundered into -- pilots i should say had blundered into the severe thunderstorm, it's possible that could tear the tail of that airplane offer. it's happened before. that will give us clues, early clues, as to what might have happened. really it's the black boxes. >> jeffrey, we have reports of one of the bodies recovered was wearing a life jacket. that wasn't confirmed. does that seem plausible to you? >> it doesn't seem plausible. unfortunately we're getting conflicting information. initially today the indonesians said they had detected the aircraft by sonar. now later on this afternoon they seem to be pulling back a little bit from that and saying we may have located it. we're also getting reports as you suggest about a passenger with a life jacket on. i don't believe there was the time to put a life jacket on.

if there was time to put the life jacket on there was also time for the pilots to radio a distress call. some of these reports just don't seem to be credible. they're coming from a variety of different sources, so we are treating them with a lot of skepticism until we see something really con street photograph graphically from the scene. >> thanks jeffrey thomas for. that as i was mentions ss smentions at the beginning of the program, bad weather is hampering the rescue efforts. >> storms continue to rage. there's not much difference in the next few days. let's look at the area we're talking about, of course the java sea here. the plane went down somewhere around there. looking that the zone of southeast asia, tropical asia

you can see there's a lot of cloud cover, very poor conditions. it's not one area of stormy weather by any means. we have individual cells we're talking about. one north of singapore one towards the java sea itself. in between thunderstorms where the air sinks down rather than go up in them we have periods of quieter weather. this is the computer telling us how much rainfall precipitation is in this portion of the world. it's where the winds collide really. something keeping bad weather across this portion of tropical asia is the tropical storm just towards the north here which will be traversing south china sea. it's shunting air winds from the north and colliding with the winds from the south. this happens normally any way. we get winds from the north and south colliding. because this is enhanced weather system here it's giving that extra push. as a result the air has got to go somewhere. it's not going into the sea.

it goes up and creates these storms. this general area of bad weather is going to stay pretty much here for the next few days. by the time we get to week it looks as though something might be quieter across this portion of the globe. >> thomas thank you very much indeed. now let's update ourselves on the situation affecting a number of migrants trying to get to europe. the italian red cross says four have been found dead on a cargo ship take tonnenn to italy after being abandoned by the crew in creek waters. the vessel called blue sky am was carrying 900 migrants when spotted drifting near the coast. the italian coast guard took control of the ship wednesday. it's thought it started the journey in turkey with syrian and kurdish migrants on board. in the last few minutes, bbc world service radio was told by the red cross, one of the

migrants gave birth on board the vessel. james reynolds updated me on what's happening to the migrants now. >> reporter: they're in a local school and gymnasium. that's where the police took them when their ship docked in the middle of the night. there was medical help for those on board. we're not sure what kind of conditions they had been in. clearly they were hidden in the cargo ship. you imagine the conditions were not pleasant or comfortable. >> what more do we know about them other than many are from kurdish or syrian backgrounds? >> very little at the moment. we're still trying to piece this together, the story of how they got on board that boat. the extent to which they were hidden and their relationship if any with the crew. one of the puzzling elements of this story is whereabouts of the crew. when the coast guard boarded and took control of the ship it

found according to reports we've got the ship was set on auto pilot and no sign of a crew. >> you report repeatedly on migrants trying to reach the island. is the route these migrants were on one that's often used? >> it's a much less common route. the route that's usually taken from countries like libya and so on is directly north towards the other side of italy towards the island towards sicily as well. this route as far as we understand is less common. to put this in context, in this year, 2014 italy received more than 150,000 migrants from the middle east and africa. that's a large increase on previous years. the international organization for migration says more than 3,000 refugees are known to have died trying to make the journey on stable boats.

>> that was him speaking to me about 90 minutes ago. he's on route to gallipoli and hoping to speak to him in an hour's time on bbc world news. medical sources in yemen say at least 33 people have been killed in a suicide bombing in the southern city of ibb. the attack is thought to be at a cultural center where muslims were gathers. they are part of the group leading an uprising in recent months. the king abdullah of saudi arabia has been put in the hospital. the stock market fell sharply after the news was announced on state television. newly elected president of tunisia has been sworn in at a ceremony. he's 88 and will be the first president with a democratic mandate. in his speech he said the country would have no future

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to anything - everything. with hershey's spreads, the possibilities are delicious. this is bbc world news. our lead stories are that seven bodies have been recovered so far from the airasia crash site. the search operation is being called off for the night. the italian red cross says four are found dead on a cargo ship carrying unhing hundreds of migrants after being abandoned in greek waters. forecasters say unfortunately there's more rain to come.

conditions could deteriorate further by the weekend. one of the worst affected areas is in kuala kerai. jennifer is there with this report. >> for eight days, these streets were cut off from the outside world. this village is built next to a water fall. heavy rain flooded the river. within hours the area was submerged under water. this used to be a muslim prayer hall. the current was so strong it lifted the structure and moved it on top of here, what used to be someone else's kitchen. villages are eager to clean up. the stronger men have to scrape thick mud off the floors. 12 people share this two story home, what they can salvage fits into a tiny room. >> translator: it's very sad. this is the most severe flood i've seen. water came in so fast. we've had floods before, but they hardly ever flooded the house.

this time my family had to run up to the second floor. it still wasn't safe. the water kept rising. rescue boats had to come and take us to the school for shelter. >> not everyone feels the government acted quickly enough. here the prime minister is assessing the damages at main hospital. earlier he was criticized for golfing with the u.s. president when the town was running low on food supplies. there were reports of desperate people stealing. today water has drained but there's no electricity. officials defended the rescue effort and pledged more money to help victims. government aid is getting out, but this is the first time the village has seen food arrive in more than a week. it is not enough. local officials have to make smaller portions to stretch the pie. back at the village, rain starts to fall again. residents are told to prepare for more flooding.

some feel they've already lost everything. bbc news. we go from malaysia to moscow. more than a dozen antigovernment activists are arrested including a member of the russian protest group pussy riot. they were demonstrating against the conviction of leading opposition politician navalny. he received a sentence yesterday for fraud. he maintains innocence for fraud. he was detained when he tried to join the demonstrators in moscow. he's one of putin's leading critics. it's worth pointing out the president had high popularity in in russia. he has spent 15 years either as president or prime minister. the current economic downturn during the international sanctions and lowering of oil prices means mr. putin is under the kind of pressure he hasn't seen too many times in 15 years.

steve rosenburg has more. >> it was new year's eve, 1999. as russians were preparing for dawn of new millennium, here the president was preparing to make a surprise announcement. >> reporter: the man chose to succeed him was his prime minister vladimir putin. he got the presidential office and he was handed the pen and briefcase. 15 years on, president putin is still in charge here. not only that, this year forbes magazine named him the most powerful man in the world.

>> today in russia, not only today and the past several years, one man has been making all decisions calling all shots. if you don't know his name, it's vladimir putin. after many years of being ignored during this period and being told okay you lost the cold war, just shut up, putin managed to bring russia back one way or the other. he has. you cannot discount russia anymore. that's why i think russians are so proud of him. >> he is popular. his approval rating is 85%. many russians believe he's made their country stronger and more prosperous. that prosperity is under threat now. it was putin's decision to an

annex crimea that sparked western sanctions helping to push russia into problems. >> sooner or later because of economic problems, people will start waking up, demanding and asking questions who's responsible for beginning of this? it could happen five months, one year or two two mark. >> if there is a real economic catastrophe, it's going to be blamed on him. it's going to be blamed on putin. he will fall from hero to zero. >> if that happens, how will he react? by changing policies and mending ties with the west or by cracking down on possible social unrest? what he decides, the new year looks critical for putin. bbc news moscow. the school attack left over 140 dead, most children, when it was attacked by taliban militants.

the trauma endured by the children who survived is considerable. there's concerns about how much therapy and counselling will be used to help them when those treatments are shunned in a conservative society. bbc has been look into this. let's speak to our correspondent there. >> he is learning to play with cousins again. the night brings nightmares. he survived the militant attack on his school in peshawar but saw his mother who was a teacher die in it. his father, a surgeon, was busy saving other injured children's lives when his own son was brought in bringing news his wife was dead. he's still too numb to talk his son through his grief. the boy is too terrified to feel loss. he fears the militants will come back. >> translator: i'm afraid. i'm even afraid to leave my home because even now people are

saying -- i don't know if it's a rumor or true, someone was saying 400 terrorists have come to peshawar. >> the surviving children are treated by doctors, but their wounds are more than just skin deep. exposed to a constant stream of media and visitors, the children have not yet come to terms with what happened. experts say the grief counselling sessions are from underresourced hospitals and may not be enough and the consequences are dangerous. >> they will have worse effect on life. it may lead to feeling of aggression, and frustration and aggression. it may be directed to violent behavior in one way or another. >> the city has gone on high security alert. school walls are raised like fortresses. schools remain closed.

a teacher who started teaching children at his home so they won't miss lessons. more than lessons, children need counselling. they are now afraid to go to school. >> element of fear is in children and kids. they are feared to go to school. they identify school with a fearful place for example. they are limited even if they go to school. they are not allowed to open -- they cannot even hold the morning assemblies that used to be. >> students were taking their exams here in a school just a few minutes away from the attacked one when they heard the explosions. they were evacuated. they haven't returned. it's not just the bombs and bullets that define this, they're constantly exposed to death and destruction.

in the tribal society that does not encourage giving time to fears and feelings, just how high the price the country pays may be only clear years from now when a generation of traumatized children become equally traumatized adults. bbc news, peshawar. >> you can get news through bbc.com. for most of us, the new year party is still to come. if you're watching in new stereo zealand, it's already 2015. these are pictures we've got from auckland from not so long ago when the new year came in. 2015 has arrived. the next big one to arrive is sydney in 35 minutes time. it normally puts on a fireworks show that gets lots of attention around the word. you'll see that on bbc world news. i'll mention the stories we're talking about here on bbc television you can follow on our website, bbc.com/news. you'll get in-depth reporting on

airasia crash. when pictures of new year's celebrations come in, you'll find them there too. i'll speak to you in half an hour. bye bye.