20/01/2014 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today with me Zeinab Badawi. A question mark looms

over whether the peace talks on Syria due to start this week will go

ahead. With no let-up in the fighting on

the ground - the Opposition say they will withdraw their participation

unless the UN withdraws its invitation to Iran to attend the

talks. The deadline is now. A wake up call 800 million

kilometres from Earth - we look at an extraordinary European space

mission to rendezvous with a moving comet.

Also coming up - escalating violence in Ukraine as opposition leaders

urge more people out onto the streets saying the President's ban

of demonstrations is a threat to the entire country.

And half a century of celebrity watching - we talk to the

photographer Terry O'Neill as a new exhibition showcases his portraits

of the stars. Hello and welcome. Urgent and

intensive discussions are going on now to try to put talks on ending

the Syrian conflict back on track. They were due to start on Wednesday

after the main Syrian umbrella opposition group agreed belatedly to

attend the talks. Then the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon

invited Iran to join the talks and the Syrian opposition suspended

their participation. Iran is a major ally of Damascus. It's not clear how

this diplomatic drama will be resolved. In a moment we'll be

asking the main opposition spokesman what it will take to get them back

to the negotiating table. First our Diplomatic Correspondent James

Robbins. Almost three years of increasingly

brutal conflict in Syria has ripped the country to shreds. The Western

powers are desperate for peace tock. The UN leaned President Assad for

most of the war crimes and said half of the population is dependent on

humanitarian aid. Translation macro terrorism is rife

everywhere. On the political side it is possible

for dialogue. But now the question is will the

peace process in Geneva happen at all? The idea is that President

Assad will have representatives at the talks.

But the opposition is deeply divided. Only the Western backed

Syrian National Coalition is invited, not those regarded as

extremists. Then there are the big international supporters of the

opposing sides. Saudi Arabia is nominally Anne Western ally, but it

supplies weapons to groups the West finds an acceptable. Iran supports

the Assad regime. But no arguments over Iran's part in

any peace effort have put the process in doubt. The UN invited

Iran on the basis it accepted future power-sharing. Ban Ki-Moon has been

warned by the United States to withdraw.

The foreign secretary is in the American camp but worries the peace

process would collapse. We have no problem in principle with Iran

attending, but it has to be on the same basis as all of us.

On Saturday some Syrian opposition leaders voted to join the peace

talks. Iran wants to keep President Assad.

So the chaos in Syria is reflected in political chaos around the peace

tock. As the agony for the Syrian Apple intensifies every day. --

Assyrian population. Let us stay with Iran. The United

States and the European Union has announced they are suspending some

trade restrictions on Iran. Earlier the United Nations nuclear agency

confirmed that Tehran had started curbing uranium enrichment. . The

agency said that Tehran had stopped enriching uranium above five per

cent, well below what would be needed to produce nuclear weapons.

Iran is expecting to resume trade in petrochemicals and precious metals

and retrive billions of dollars of oil revenue frozen overseas.

We were hoping to go to a spokesperson from the Syrian

opposition. We will go to heaven in a moment.

-- we shall go to that spokesperson in a moment.

A leading opposition figure in Ukraine, Vitali Klitschko, has

called on Ukrainians to come to the capital Kiev to join protestors in

what he describes as the battle for the future of the country. Mr

Klitschko made his call after the worst night of violence since

political unrest began nine weeks ago. President Yanukovych has

promised talks with opposition leaders to try to resolve the

crisis. Our correspondent Daniel Sandford sent this report from Kiev.

This morning police were using plastic bullet is. The fighting is

the worst the country has seen in decades and has led to dozens of

injuries. The most serious clashes were in the night. Protesters made

missiles from cobblestones. A few months ago these were demonstrations

in favour of joining the European Union, now they have boiled over

into anger directed at the government and the Russian

presidents. There are only a few hundred truly

violent protesters, but they have earned a dozen police vehicles

overnight. -- they have earned. After two months of protests it was

new laws passed last week that restrict demonstrations that

produced this explosion of anger stop.

It is not a peaceful demonstration any more. The government is

because. Something had to happen. This is the

response to the new law. The president has set up a Coalition

to deal with the crisis. The violent protesters, who seemed to be

supporters of mostly far right groups, have lost patience with the

main parties. Today our wake-up call of sorts

sided 800 million kilometres away in space. It happened on a probe that

has had all systems shut down for two used to save energy. It was

launched in 2004. Its mission was to land on a moving, it later this

year. Did Rosetta managed to wake up? This was the moment everybody at

the European space agency had been waiting for. The computer screen

told the scientists that Rosetta is responding.

Our vast lump of rock and ice. Blasts of vapour sting from its

surface. This animation shows the hostile world that a spacecraft will

try to land on. Throughout human history the glowing tales of comets

have proved both frightening and enchanting. They have remained far

beyond reach and till now this is an audacious budget. We are doing

something we have never done before. We have taken snapshots from

hundreds of kilometres away. Rosetta is going to get up close to the

comets. It was nearly ten years ago that the Rosetta spacecraft was

launched. You need patience to be a space scientist because only now is

the mission approaching it key phase.

This mission will try something daring. It is powered by solar

animals. Each one is 14 metres long. -- solar panels. Rosetta's journey

has seen it race away from Earth and looped past marriage using the

gravity to speed up a series of orbits -- looped past the planet

Mars. It has taken Rosetta towards Jupiter. It is now circling back in.

It is gaining on the comets. If all goes well it will close in for the

first ever attempt to touch down on one of these bizarre objects.

First Rosetta will will orbits the comets. Then it will release a small

craft. Comets are older than the planet so we may learn they brought

as water and the building blocks for life.

Comets act as a time travel capsule. They contain all the earliest water

and organic material that was the. By analysing game we can understand

where our water on Earth came from. How from a swirl of rocks they

eventually got the planets and their life. This mission to the comet may

help answer these questions. Let us talk more about this.

The European space agency have said that this was a unique mission. It

was technologically and philosophically unique. Why are they

saying that? Because it'll tell us so much about

the solar system in which we live and how it formed. Comets hold clues

about what went on 4.5 billion years ago. The chemical signatures that

were around when the planets formed at in the comets. It is difficult to

tell what went on back then because the Earth recycles all its rocks.

You have to go to comets to find evidence for what happened all that

time ago. This simple message that they received means that the

spacecraft is alive and ready to chase down the comet in the next few

months. It will arrive there in the middle of summer. It will take

pictures. It will assess the comets. It will decide where to land.

That'll happen in November. It must have been quite an

experience, the atmosphere must have been quite extraordinary. It has

already delivered some fascinating science.

It has been in space for ten years. In order to get towards the comet

that has had to loop around the planets a few times to pick up the

gravitational energy that needed to get out of the orbit of Jupiter. It

has passed two large asteroids. We have got some fantastic pictures

from those. There is interesting science there as well. This mission

has already delivered but the main focus is yet to come.

Thank you. Now a look at some of the day's

other news. The Central African Republic has a

new interim president. The parliament has voted to choose

Catherine Samba-Panza as the country's new leader. She was mayor

of the capital, Bangui. She'll have the task of trying to restore peace

to a country ravaged by religious conflict. She replaces Michel

Djotodia, the leader of the Seleka rebels who seized power in March.

Police in Pakistan say at least 14 people have been killed by a suicide

bomber in the city of Rawalpindi. The Taliban says it carried out the

blast, which hit a crowded market near the Army's national

headquarters. Eight soldiers are among the dead. The attack comes a

day after another Taliban bombing killed at least 20 soldiers in the

Northwest. A trial involving the French

footballers Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema has begun in Paris with the

two facing up to three years in prison on allegations they slept

with an underage prostitute. The escort in question, Zahia Dehar,

who's now 21, has said she had lied to the players at the time, telling

them that she was 18. Ribery says he didn't know she was a prostitute or

a minor. Benzema denies the allegations.

After years of dizzying growth, China's economy is finally showing

signs of stabilising. Official data suggests that the growth rate of

around 7.7% in 2013 was the same as in 2012. And economists expect 2014

to see the slowest pace of growth since 1990.

One of the great orchestral conductors of recent decades, the

Italian Claudio Abbado has dry. He was 80. Abbado had performed in many

countries across the world. His career also took him to prestigious

venues like La Scala in Milan and the Vienna State Opera. Claudio

Abbado, who'd been ill for several years, had also made hundreds of

recordings from the classical repertoire to 20th century music.

David Hannah looks at his life. Claudio Abbado was the ultimate

musician's musician, revered by the world's great orchestras and opera

houses. In his career, he was musical director at the Berlin

Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna

Philharmonic. He also founded his own all-star Orchestra. Claudio

Abbado made his debut in 1960 in his hometown of Milan. When he returned

where last year he was given a 15 minute standing ovation. His

strength was matched by his mastering of his classical

repertoire and support for music of the 20th century. It is an

extraordinary range of music and it is special because he tried to talk

about his musical quality. Orchestral musicians often talk

about the fact he said very little and rehearsal. It was all in the

performance. A person who was very supportive of musicians. Claudio

Abbado is survived by his second wife and four children and leaves

behind the legacy of hundreds of recorded works.

That was Claudio Abbado who has dry. Some tones are finding it difficult

to cope with the steady influx of refugees from Syria. One tone has

accepted three times more refugees than Sweden's biggest cities. The

tone's reputation as a haven for Orthodox Christians has made it a

magnet for Syrian refugees but beneath the hospitable ear, the tone

is struggling to accommodate an estimated 1000 Syrians who arrived

in 2013. The Maher would like to remove the right of newcomers to

decide where to live some other towns can share the burden. Poverty,

more children that cannot get a good education because you do not involve

-- arrived here at six years of age. Many refugees live in cramped

conditions. With her three children and husband, this woman fled Aleppo

when the fighting became unbearable. To be a refugee is horrible but

compared with other people who are living in tents and then very bad

conditions and are freezing to death and have no food, we have a very

good year. Now where is the welcome better than in education. At this

school, 90% of pupils are from immigrant backgrounds. Only five

indigenous Swedes remain. These is a mess belief in society today that

foreigners and refugees are going to affect the accounts. That is not the

case, it is the opposite. A school with a mixed population of children

get the best results, all research shows that, so that is why a

segregated society is very profound everyone. The tone is expecting to

receive a further 2000 refugees during the coming year. These

numbers will add to the -- unemployment rate, twice the

national average. To the indignation of right-wingers like this, that

means more generous welfare checks. We are being betrayed by the

government. We cannot afford to have an open door policy because in the

long run, we will take more and more and it will take more resources.

With no end in sight and one-way traffic, the government has promised

extra money to municipalities but will not restrict freedom of

movement. Some other news in brief. A court in

China has convicted a man of poisoning dumplings. The food worker

injected them with insecticide in 2008 in a protest against his

employer. The violinist Vanessa Mae is set to

ski for Thailand and the Winter Olympics next month. She has been

competing using her Thai father's surname.

A talented lady. Another talented person is joining me in the studio.

The work of British photographer Terry O'Neill hangs in national

galleries and private collections worldwide. He is regarded as one of

the most important photographers of the 20th century and has taken

pictures of key figures like Hollywood stars, and political

figures from Churchill to Mandela. His ability to build relationships

with his subjects gave him unrivalled access to even the most

private of stars. Terry O'Neill's work over half a century is now the

subject of a new exhibition at the Little Black gallery in London. Did

you like that introduction? Superb, thank you. Remind us, how would you

define your style? I do not know. I just picked up a camera and

accidentally took a picture of somebody who turned out to be

famous, the English Foreign Secretary. A newspaper reporter saw

me and wanted the pictures and took the film and I was offered a job

when the editor saw it because he liked my work. I have never looked

back. We have Audrey Hepburn relaxing in the pool. You could not

mess with horror, a fabulous woman. I wish I had worked more with her.

She was incredible. Looking at this picture, she is normally... Here she

looks quite casual. You just snapped? She hated water, that was

the funny part, but you would never guess. Another great one, Elizabeth

Taylor in make up. She was just about to announce her engagement to

John Warner, the American equivalent of William Hague. Husband number

four or five. That was in moment in the dressing room but she was a

fantastic woman, the hottest star in the world, but she was really a nice

person. Who else have we got? Frank Sinatra surrounded by his body

guards. Ava Gardner, who I got a chance to talk to, I told him I had

a chance to photograph him. This is my first moment and I wondered what

I had let myself in for. He was such a powerful man and he came to

London, or Frankfurt or Philadelphia, and the tone revolved

around them. -- town. Tell us something about their personalities.

If I do not know a person I find out about them because I think it is

important. Brigitte Bardot. That was the last shot on a roll of 35 and I

was waiting and I thought, shall I take it? I could not wait to develop

it and it turned out to be one of my best ever. It was not posed? I am

good at getting moments and watching. That is what I do. David

Bowie. I just say the names and play, ! -- they come up! I was

taking the pictures for Diamond Dogs. When the flash went up, the

dog would leap up. The final one, Joan Collins. You dirty lot of

glamorous women. She is a fantastic woman. She looks as great today as

she did then. We could even get into Western Churchill and Nelson

Mandela... Watch one out of those was your favourite? To work with,

Frank Sinatra and Audrey Hepburn. It was an honour. And the most

beautiful? Ava Gardner, without doubt.

And that investigation, next steps the weather. From me and the team,

goodbye. Although the week has started on a

note, --. I note, it is set to get into when as the week progresses.

Rain moving slowly. Here is an