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>> welcome to newsday on the bbc. headlines this hour, it does al qaeda have a foothold in syria? we will have a special report from inside the country. the drama surrounding the chinese dissident continues. his brother says he has now escape a closely guarded village. police in new york arrest a man over the disappearance of this 6-year-old boy more than three decades ago. and a giant step forward as the world's biggest radio telescope is said to be unveiled. it is 9:00 a.m. in singapore and 2:00 a.m. in london, broadcasting to viewers on pbs in america and around the world. this is "newsday."

>> hello and welcome. a rebel group in syria has told the bbc that al qaeda is inside the country. a commander from the free syrian army says opposition forces have been offered money and other support from islamic militants but have turned it down. syria restricts access to journalists, but our cameraman has been back inside the country to try to assess the claims of islamists in syria as a revolution. >> syrian rebels. this looks like a bloody fight just to survive. the ultimate goal is to overthrow president assad. the americans support that. so does al qaeda. ironically, they are on the same side in syria. western governments worry that if they intervene in this, will

the wrong people benefit? the front emerged with an internet video earlier this year. they say they are g. hottest back from other wars to fight in syria -- jihadists, back from other wars to fight in syria. >> the numbers have grown. the hard element of the opposition, the armed, the combat experienced people who, from either libya or iraq not only are in the conflict, but they are pushing out other opposition. >> the regime blames bombing on islamist. the muslim front denies they did this. some syrians did go to iraq to fight. did they come back with al- qaeda's ideology?

he fought in iraq. he says he was defending his tribe and his family in both countries. despite appearances, he does not like al qaeda. he fears them, and he says he does not believe they are behind the recent bombings. >> this line is told over and over by the regime, he says. i wish they would come up with something new. many fighters are deeply pious, but there is a moderate tradition of islam here is that contrasts with the al qaeda's ideology. the daily suicide attacks and the headings so familiar from iraq have not yet come to syria. following this kind of

destruction, sometimes there is an offer of help from al qaeda. we learned that there was a direct approach from an emissary of al qaeda to a muslim cleric in this country. the people here turned them away. >> more than a year into the revolution, people are getting desperate. they warned that if the west fails to come to their aid, al qaeda will step in. at a free army command post they say that they are fighting for democracy, not sure real law. but the senior officer had -- sharia law. but the senior officer had this warning. >> i tell the un, the syrian people cannot take it anymore. our children killed, our women raped, our houses destroyed. if no one helps us, we will turn to the devil himself.

>> if al qaeda is here, the numbers are small. we did not meet their supporters or see their influence in many months of traveling with rebel fighters. that could change the longer this goes on. jihadists thrive on chaos. they could find plenty of that here. bbc news, syria. >> a united states senate committee has cut aid to pakistan by $33 million a year in response to the jailing of a pakastani doctor who helped the cia track down osama bin ladin. he was sentenced to at least 32 years in prison for treason. secretary of state hillary clinton said his jailing was unjust and unwarranted. a meeting between iran and world powers has ended without agreement. the five members of the u.n. security council and germany

have been trying to persuade iran to suspend its nuclear ambitions. in another round of talks will be held in moscow next month. polling stations have been closed in egypt after the first free presidential election there. if there is no clear winner, the leading candidates will have a runoff next month. the head of the vatican bank, ettore gotti tedeschi, has been sacked. the roman catholic church had a vote of no-confidence because he is under investigation for alleged money-laundering. there have been more are developments with chen guangcheng and his family. price that is right. the brother of the chinese blind activist who is in the center of a diplomatic standoff between china and the u.s. has escaped

from his village. chen guangcheng has always said that his relatives still living in china could face reprisals from authorities. the president of china eight, a human-rights organization that was instrumental in bringing chen guangcheng to the u.s. i asked him what efforts were being made to help his family. >> we are rallying international support. we are pressuring the chinese government not to take the kind of revenge now that chen guangcheng is freed. we also will be supporting those who are taking on these cases, especially in the legal community. right now, in the next few days, i think chen guangcheng will speak up for his brother.

the chinese government leaders made a commitment to chen guangcheng. the u.s. administration leaders reached a deal that allowed him to come to the u.s., at the same time to investigate those abusers, again, local authorities. so now the same group of abusers are continuing to a bruiabuse tr power in this regard the role of law by persecuting chen familyeng's other members. i think it is totally unacceptable and the international community should immediately call for the release of his nephew. >> mr. chen himself has spoken to the media in new york. he said those people who have

hurt his family must face justice in china. >> the harm that has been done to me and my family over these years, no matter how senior the official involved, they must be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted, no matter how many people are involved. as long as they violate the chinese law, they must take responsibility for it. now, we are demanding that they keep the promise. >> there is increasing concern that greeceamage fr and other of europe's struggling economies are doing to the eurozone. protests continue. in spain, they're angry over the government's austerity measures and its high unemployment and faltering economic figures. the un has released a report on human rights, warning

governments that they will be held accountable for human rights abuses. secretary of state hillary clinton has praised them for demanding better human rights but says there is still a long way to go. the world's richest nations will attend a conference on development and the environment in brazil next month. ban ki-moon says it is important that leaders sees what he calls a once in a generation opportunity. there must be an effort to build a clean and more sustainable world as populations increase. 15 years ago in china, millions of people died from famine. is an area that is rarely discussed, but a new documentary hopes to get people talking about it. our correspondent has been listening to their story. >> the time of famine is etched

into the memory of this villager. he remembers a relative who twice dole a few years of corn and was twice tied to a post as punishment. he said he finally threw a rope across of being in his house and hanged himself. villagers said it was like that back then. researchers are travelling across china. they are collecting the stories of people who survived the great famine. tens of millions died. it was man-made starvation. it was the result of a disastrous political campaign by chairman mao. this is one of those collecting memories. she interviewed people in her village about what happened 50 years ago. >> i did not know much about the famine, but when i was young, older people would sometimes talk about these bitter times.

they had to eat wild vegetables and other things that humans do not usually eat. >> there is little public discussion about the famine or what caused it. the man in charge of the project says that needs to change. >> if we do not know the past we will have no future. if we do not want history to repeat itself, we need to remember and work out why bad things happened and what lessons we can learn from them. >> the stories from the famine are being shown in this district in beijing. it is sometimes the only way to examine sensitive subjects here. the rulers of china do not want to -- the communist party of china does not want to talk about the great famine because its party was in power when it happened.

they are afraid it will encourage people to discuss how the party is ruling today, and that is something they do not want to happen. this documentary records the recollections of those who lived through it. >> you are watching you stay on the bbc, live from singapore and london. still to come, ukrainian politicians fallout over the years of the russian language. now let's take a quick look at the stories making headlines around the world. the international herald tribune says britain's recession in the first quarter of this year was worse than first thought. the story says there is now pressure on david cameron to move his focus from austerity to growth. ratings agency moody's has maintained the country's top

rating of aaa. the agency did warning could all change if the new government fails to implement measures to reduce debt. it remains a bleak picture for the rest of the eurozone. news from the financial times that some of europe's biggest fund managers will be dumping their european assets because of fears that greece will exit the eurozone. in the daily telegraph, a town said to have been saved by the pied piper may well need its hero once more. a legion of rodents has returned and is causing havoc. >> this is newsday on the bbc. our headlines this hour, rebels in syria have said that al qaeda is active in their country. they say they have been offered money, weapons and other support from the islamic militants but have turned it

down. chinese dissident chen guangcheng leaves china. his brother says he has now escaped his heavily guarded village. french elections could -- fresh elections could be forced in nepal. a court rejected a plea from the assembly to extend its term from sunday so it could agree to terms. joining me now is a professor at the institute of southeast asian studies here in singapore. we know that all of this has been in the work for several years. why did it take the government so long to come up with a constitution? >> it has to do mostly with the power sharing arrangement and the basic issues of the constitution. there is a core restructuring of the state. they do not want to compromise in terms of their own political power. that is why it has taken so long.

>> if they fail to agree on a constitution by this sunday, what happens next? will there be a power vacuum or will parliament continue regardless? >> there will be a fierce legitimacy crisis because the constitution will come to an end. the same assembly may continue as a parliament, but parliament cannot adopt a constitution. therefore, i have a feeling that the political forces are under tremendous pressure to make some sort of a compromise. do not forget that nepal has made compromises of sorts. it is possible the constitution could be partially adopted as an incomplete document. some of the provisions would be decided later by the parliament or by the assembly that they are going to complete. therefore, one cannot say what

the form would be, but i still hold out the possibility of a very last-minute compromise. >> all of this uncertainty has it had -- has had an impact on the call itself, on the economy. people still live in dignity paul itself -- on nichol itself, on the economy. people still live on about a dollar a day. >> they are asking them to finish the job. the supreme court has instructed twice that you can have no more extensions. but the real problem is that the major forces want to nurse their constituencies. the maoist have come up based on marginalized grassroots support and they do not want to lose it. they want to have provisions in

the constitution that accommodate them and makes the democratic structure much more inclusive. in the process, they have made many sacrifices too. on the other hand, the other party, want to retain the upper crust of the social estrada. >> we will leave it there. thank you for joining us. police in new york have arrested a man in connection with the case of a 6-year-old schoolboy who disappeared 32 years ago. etan patz disappeared while walking to a school bus stop in manhattan in 1979. police say the suspect, pedro hernandez, has confessed to the crime. we have more on this breakthrough. >> 33 years to the day on friday that 6-year-old etan patz went missing on his way to school. his parents had let him walk to the bus stop on his own for the very first time that they never saw him again. as you say, after all this time,

so many false leads and so much false hope has come, it seems, a breakthrough. the new york police commissioner gave details at a press conference of this arrest early iran. >> hernandez describe to the detectives how he lured young etan from the bus stop at west broadway and prince street with the promise of a soda. he then led him into the basement of the bodega, joked in there and disposed of the body by putting it in -- choked him there and then disposed of the body by putting it into a plastic bag and placing it in the trash. >> this was a landmark case that change the way people thought about parenting. >> it was. it was 1979 and people living in that area of new york thought nothing of letting their children are around that age, a six-years old, walk the streets on their own. when this happened, it changed

the way they thought about letting their children go out alone. this case was one of several at the time, but the most high profile by far to raise the awareness of the plight of missing children. his face was put on milk cartons, billboards, and advertisements across the country. people at the time or captivated by what might have happened to him. president ronald reagan declared may 25th national missing children's day. many parents campaign to achieve changes in the law regarding missing children. they themselves have never moved from the apartment they lived in at the time of their son's disappearance. tonight, the police commissioner said they have been told about the arrest. >> jonathan blake in washington for us. now, opposition politicians in ukraine are demanding an investigation into why a session of parliament dissented basically into a fist fight.

>> parliamentary procedure it certainly is not. it is not clear what, but something appears to of happened behind the chairman's seat. what ensued is simply chaotic, dozens of rivalling politicians grappling with one another. the debate centered around whether to use the russian language in certain parts of the country. it was always going to be controversial. opposition deputy certainly appears to be in the thick of things. he later needed hospital treatment after apparently being struck over the head. the rumble was split between the president's supporters who backed the bill and opposition who fear it will divide the country. just as the fate of their figurehead was falling from

headlines, this latest episode will bring more bad publicity to ukraine. jonathan joseph, bbc news. >> we are waiting to hear where the world's most powerful radio telescope will be built. could be south africa, australia or new zealand. astronomers hope it will help answer fundamental questions about the origins of the universe. our correspondent has more. >> the telescope was built more than 50 years ago, but it is still one of the most powerful ever built. the idea behind the square kilometre is to connect

thousands of dishes like this across thousands of kilometers and build the telescope that is much more powerful than anything bill today. the level telescope on its own can produce quite blurred images. that is why it is connected to other telescopes, to sharpen up that image. a square kilometer rate is the equivalent of 100 level telescopes. it can produce images that are 1000 times sharper. one of the things that the square kilometre ray will be looking for is the hydrogen gas that existed right after the big bang when the universe was very young. these are the so-called dark ages. the hydrogen gas then came together and formed the first ever stars. one of the great mysteries of

cosmology is the expansion of the universe. it is accelerating. galaxies are flying apart, and nobody knows why. physicists say it has something to do with the starke energy that is driving this acceleration, but no one knows quite how it works. the square kilometre ray well for the first time be able to measure exactly what the galaxies of the universe are doing and try to work out how this mysterious force really works. astronomers have discovered 2000 collapsed cores of exploded stars using telescopes. using the ray, they expect to find tens of thousands of these objects, probably every single pulsar in our galaxy, and possibly some from other galaxies. this could help physicists discovered gravitational reyes, a so-called ripples in the space

time continuum, predicted by albert einstein. this telescope has also been involved in scanning the sky to sit -- for signals from extra terrestrial civilizations. so far, it hasn't found anything, but then again, those signals would have to be very powerful. by contrast, the square kilometer race is much more sensitive, sensitive enough to pick up television broadcasts from planets orbiting nearby stars. this telescope has transformed our understanding of the universe over the past 50 years. the hope is that over the next 50 the square kilometre ray will do the same perio. >> you have been watching "the news to" from the bbc. thank you for watching. -- "newsday put from the bbc.

thank you for watching. >> make sense of international news at bbc.com/news. >> funding was made possible by the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vermont, and honolulu. newman's own foundation. and union bank. >> at union bank, our relationship managers use their expertise in global finance to guide you through the business strategies and opportunities of international commerce. we put our extended global network to work for a wide range of companies. from small businesses to major corporations. what can we do for you? >> "bbc world news" was presented by kcet los angeles.