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Iran begins an investigation into a passenger plane crash which killed at least 77 people, Iranian media report.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri has become a hero to many in Pakistan The bodyguard accused of shooting Pakistani governor Salman Taseer has confessed in court to the killing.
Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri told the Anti-Terrorism Court in Rawalpindi that he had acted alone in the attack.
He was whisked into court a day earlier than scheduled to prevent supporters showing up, correspondents say.
It comes a day after a huge protest in Karachi against proposed amendments – backed by the slain Punjab governor – to the strict blasphemy law.
After his arrest following last Tuesday’s assassination in Islamabad, Qadri said he had been angered by Mr Taseer’s backing for reforms to the law.
There has been speculation that other guards in the governor’s security detail agreed with Qadri to turn a blind eye to the attack.
Police have been investigating how he was able to empty two magazines of a sub-machine gun at the governor without being challenged by colleagues.
In Monday morning’s court appearance, which was a day earlier than scheduled, Qadri said in a written statement he had acted alone.
At his first court appearance in Islamabad last week, he was showered with rose petals by sympathisers, including a number of lawyers.
Protesters at a huge rally in Karachi on Sunday held placards supporting Qadri The blasphemy law returned to the spotlight in November when a Pakistani Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad. She denies the charge.
Governor Taseer had angered hardline clerics by visiting the mother of five in jail, and by supporting proposed reforms to the legislation.
A private member’s bill which seeks to remove the law’s mandatory death sentence and lessen the likelihood of miscarriages of justice has provoked a wave of conservative fury.
In a news conference on Sunday evening, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani reiterated the government did not plan to amend the law.
But Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti said the blasphemy law should be amended to avoid its misuse.
Earlier that day 50,000 protesters marched in the southern city of Karachi against the proposed reforms.
The rally was attended by all major Muslim groups and sects in the city, including moderates and conservatives.
Many of the demonstrators held banners in support of Qadri.
Although no-one convicted under the blasphemy law has ever been executed, more than 30 accused have been killed by lynch mobs.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The US is to hold a minute’s silence for six people killed in a shooting in Arizona which left a congresswoman seriously wounded.
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A 25-year-old is charged with dangerous driving after a pedestrian was hit by a car, which was being chased by the police in Edinburgh.
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The mix-up happened between April 2009 and March 2010 A body had to be dug up and reburied after Harrogate Hospital released the wrong body to a funeral director, a BBC investigation has found.
The mix-up was revealed in a Freedom of Information request about serious untoward incidents at hospitals between January 2009 and October 2010.
It was one of 51 incidents recorded by North Yorkshire’s hospital trusts.
A spokesman for Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust refused to comment on the incident.
The mistake happened between April 2009 and March last year.
When it was realised, an application had to be made to the Ministry of Justice for an exhumation licence to dig up the body and rebury it.
The BBC investigation, which focused on the county’s three hospital trusts, also found other incidents including failure to respond appropriately to child protection issues and incorrect equipment being used during surgery.
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Liverpool name former Chelsea and West Ham assistant Steve Clarke as their first-team coach, the first appointment of new boss Kenny Dalglish’s reign.
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England fly-half Charlie Hodgson is to join Saracens at the end of the season after 11 years with Sale.
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Can’t sing, won’t sing? As the BBC researches the musical abilities of the nation, are those convinced they are tone deaf really irredeemably non-musical?
Can’t carry a tune in a basket?
Despite the term, most tone deaf people can hear music perfectly well – they just can’t sing.
And many aren’t tone deaf at all – they simply lack confidence and practice, particularly if their tunelessness was criticised as a child.
“A very small proportion of the population are truly tone deaf,” says Dr Daniel Mullensiefen of Goldsmiths College, co-creator of the BBC’s new musicality test, which explores whether enthusiasm for music – rather than formal training alone – helps confer ability.
Takes 25 minutes on a computer with soundCovers listening habits and your emotional response to musicTests include tapping out beats, memorising tunes and sorting clips by genreTest yourself with How Musical Are You? More tests from BBC Lab UK
“Traditionally, musicality was defined as something that you got from practising for hours in a darkened room. But we want to show it’s a much broader and wider concept.”
So it could be measured by how often – and attentively – you listen to music, how avidly you talk about it, and whether you can tap out a beat.
There’s no singing involved in the BBC test, but it does include tapping beats and sorting clips by genre. So those who claim to be tone deaf may score higher than expected, and feel encouraged to have a crack at making music.
And the easiest instrument to try is the human voice.
Most people can learn to sing better, says Andrea Brown of Morley College, a south London adult education centre which for 15 years has run Can’t Sing Choirs and vocal courses for the tuneless.
“Less than 2% of the students I’ve trained have been profoundly tone deaf. Everyone has their own unique voice,” says Brown diplomatically.
Relentlessly off-key but game for karaoke “Some are really quite off-piste at first, and need extra help one-on-one. Most tend to be shy about their voice, and we try to coax more sound out of them. Doing singing lessons is like going to the gym – you’ve got to exercise the right muscles.”
So little time has she with claims of tunelessness that one course is called Tone Deaf? No Way. Other colleges and music teachers around the UK offer similarly titled classes and choirs – all of which provide safety in numbers for those lacking in vocal confidence.
Beginners are taught how to change the pitch of the notes they sing, the same way their voices go up and down when talking.
“There were occasional noises from the bath, but I hadn’t sung for at least 50 years,” says Ian Gorman, who joined a Morley College Can’t Sing Choir several years ago.
“I had a hard time hitting notes and remembering songs. There were some people in the choir with truly awful voices, and others who were average.
“Andrea [Brown] got us doing exercises like yawning before singing, counting up and down scales, and bending forward with a picking-up movement to help reach the high notes.
“Singing badly in a group is great fun. It’s football crowd syndrome – not a single person hits the right notes, but it sounds good. It kick-started me, and now I sing in choirs doing Beethoven and Handel.”
“A lot of the exercises we do with absolute beginners are speaking, not singing. The larynx is moveable and they can pitch their voices. We teach them to co-ordinate what they hear with the sound they make.”
There are also rhythm games, breathing and posture exercises.
And for those harbouring hurtful memories of trying to sing a note played on the school piano by an increasingly irate teacher, a word of comfort – it’s harder to match a piano note than a tone sung by another voice.
“It can help to have a male and a female singing tutor, so the men and women in the class can hear voices with broadly similar tones to their own,” says Brown.
The California-based composer, William A Mathieu, has run tone deaf singing courses for years. He estimates one in 20 people consider themselves tone deaf, usually after being labelled as such in childhood.
He explains why in an audio book on his tone deaf choirs.
“If, in your early student life, you were slightly slower to perceive pitch relationship, it wasn’t long before you were given by your peers, or an insensitive teacher, the identity of ‘the one who can’t sing’.”
The first day is spent sharing stories of hurtful words and shattered confidence. Next, he gets participants to make fluctuating and non-fluctuating sounds, imitating a siren for the first and a dial tone for the latter.
Then Mathieu moves on to note matching. Instead of asking non-singers to match a note sung by a tutor or played on a piano, he asks them to sing a tone, and the tutor then matches it. Hey presto, for the first time, they are singing in tune with someone else.
“An entire class of 10 tone-deafers singing one pitch is a triumph and the excitement is hard to contain,” he says.
Within eight to 10 sessions, simple part-singing can be tried. “Choir fever sets in and catches hold.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Panorama examines whether modern life is too sexy for children
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An Iranian passenger plane with more than 100 people on board has crashed, Iranian media have reported.
The semi-official Fars news agency said of the 105 passengers and crew on board, at least 50 had survived.
The IranAir plane was flying from the capital Tehran when it came down near the north-western city of Orumiyeh – which was its final destination.
Reports said the plane had come down in bad weather, and snow was hampering rescue efforts.
The plane crashed near Orumiyeh, 700km (430 miles) north-west of Tehran, at around 1945 local time (1615 GMT), an official in West Azerbaijan province said, quoted on Iranian state television’s website.
The official said the plane had taken off an hour later than scheduled, and came down because of bad weather conditions.
The head of Iran’s emergency services, Gholam Reza Masoumi, said he had received no reports of deaths so far.
“The problem at the moment for rescue work is the heavy snow, which is around 70cm (27 inches) deep around the crash site,” Mr Masoumi said, quoted by Fars news agency.
There have been a number of accidents involving Iranian planes over the last few years.
The last major crash was in July 2009, when a plane caught fire mid-air and crashed in northern Iran, killing 168 people.
In 2003 an Iranian troop carrier crashed in the southeast, killing all 276 soldiers and crew on board.
Iran’s civil fleet is made up of planes in poor condition due to their old age and lack of maintenance.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
China sees its trade surplus fall – despite a double digit rise in exports – as domestic demand drives a rapid rise in imports.
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Administrators will meet later to discuss interest in taking over Diamond Coaches, which collapsed affecting hundreds of holidaymakers.
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Drivers are being urged to take care on roads across Scotland as icy weather continues to make conditions difficult.
Tayside Police said some routes were treacherous following overnight snowfall.
Areas around Perth and Kinross have been particularly badly hit.
Police in Grampian and Dumfries and Galloway are also warning of widespread ice. Northern Constabulary said there was a significant risk of black ice on untreated roads.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Mr Gates has voiced concerns over Beijing’s latest high-tech weaponry US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has aired concerns about China’s rapidly developing military capabilities, as he flew into China on a four-day trip.
Mr Gates is to meet President Hu Jintao and other top officials, at a time of strained military relations.
The visit comes days after websites published pictures apparently showing a working prototype of a Chinese stealth aircraft, invisible to radar.
China has not officially commented on the photos.
But they have once again put the spotlight on China’s military modernisation, after the US said China was still years away from deploying a stealth aircraft.
Photos of a possible working prototype of a Chinese-made stealth aircraft were recently leaked The US has the world’s only operational stealth fighter, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.
“[The Chinese] clearly have potential to put some of our capabilities at risk,” Mr Gates said ahead of his arrival in Beijing. “We have to pay attention to them, we have to respond appropriately with our own programmes.”
The US has been watching closely as China increases its military capacity – in particular, its development of a so-called “carrier killer” missile, a land-based system which could sink an aircraft carrier from up to 1,800 miles (2,900km) away.
US battle groups – including aircraft carriers – are stationed in the South China Sea.
And in August, the Pentagon reported that China had been expanding its nuclear arsenal and submarine force, as well as upgrading its land-based missiles.
Japan last month defined China as its main military concern, citing Beijing’s increased assertiveness in the East and South China Seas.
Beijing insists its military modernisation poses a threat to no one.
China’s official military budget quadrupled between 1999 and 2009 as the country’s economy grew.
Last year, China announced a smaller-than-usual 7.5% increase to $76.3bn.
The US defence budget is still the biggest in the world at around $700bn, but China’s is the second largest and the rate of increase may well go up this year.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Fifty-five players are sold on the second and final day of the auction for the world’s richest cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
