No plans to reschedule X Factor

ITV says it has no plans to reschedule this year's X Factor, despite reports that Simon Cowell is trying to move the show from its autumn slot.
An ITV spokesman said the announcement that Cowell was launching a US version of the show was "no surprise".


"We are absolutely planning for the X Factor to return this autumn and next," ITV said in a statement.

Cowell said he would be involved in both shows, sparking speculation that the UK series may be moved.

New challenge

Earlier this week, Cowell, 50, announced he was leaving Fox TV's American Idol as a judge to launch a US version of the X Factor on the same network.

The music mogul, who owns the rights to the X Factor format, said he would be a a judge on the new show.

ITV said the star would continue with "both his on-screen and production role" on the UK version of the X Factor.

On Monday, Peter Rice, chairman of entertainment for Fox, said the US X Factor would also be screened in the autumn.

It is not clear how Cowell will be able to participate in both.

The ITV spokesman said, "we've got plans", but refused to expand further.

Cowell said he was offered a lot of money to stay with American Idol.

"But that wasn't the reason behind it. I wanted to do something different. I wanted a new challenge," he said.

It has been reported that Cowell stands to make more money with the X Factor than if he had stayed on American Idol.

Earthquake devastation emerges in Haiti

The extent of the devastation from a huge quake in Haiti is slowly emerging, with a number of UN peacekeepers among thousands of people feared dead.

Jordan, Brazil and China have all reported deaths, and France says it fears the Tunisian head of the UN mission in Haiti has been killed.

The 7.0-magnitude quake, Haiti's worst in two centuries, struck south of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Tuesday.

The Red Cross says up to three million people have been affected.
Describing the earthquake as a "catastrophe", Haiti's envoy to the US said the cost of the damage could run into billions of dollars.

A number of nations, including the US, UK and Venezuela, are gearing up to send aid.

The quake, which struck about 15km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince, was quickly followed by two aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude.

The first tremor had hit at 1653 local time (2153 GMT) on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said. Phone lines to the country failed shortly afterwards.

China has already indicated in reports in state media that eight of its peacekeepers are dead, with another 10 unaccounted for.
The AFP news agency quoted the Jordanian army as saying three of its peacekeepers had been killed and 21 wounded.

The Brazilian army said four of its peacekeepers had been killed and a large number were missing.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the UN HQ had collapsed "and it would appear that all those who were in the building, including my friend [UN mission head] Hedi Annabi... and all those who were with him and around him are dead".

A French official also told AFP that about 200 people were missing in the collapsed Hotel Montana, which is popular with tourists.

There were also some reports of looting overnight.

Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity, told Reuters the capital had been in total darkness overnight.

"You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go."

People were "trying to dig victims out with flashlights", he said. "Hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement."

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and has suffered a number of recent disasters, including four hurricanes and storms in 2008 that killed hundreds.

Thoughts and prayers

With communications destroyed by the earthquake, it is not yet possible to confirm the extent of the destruction, although there were reports on Wednesday of many bodies piled in the streets.
People in the capital were lifting sheets on bodies to try to identify loved ones.

Haiti's ambassador to the US, Raymond Joseph, said there was "no way of estimating" the casualties.

"I'm quite sure we're going to face a disaster of major proportion," he told ABC.

Mr Joseph said the presidential palace, the tax office, the ministry of commerce and the foreign ministry had all been damaged.

Haitian President Rene Preval and his wife both reportedly survived the quake.
US President Barack Obama said his "thoughts and prayers" were with the people of Haiti and that he expected "an aggressive, coordinated [aid] effort by the US government".
Venezuela says it will send a 50-strong "humanitarian assistance team".

The Red Cross is dispatching a relief team from Geneva and the UN's World Food Programme is flying in two planes with emergency food aid.

The Inter-American Development Bank said it was immediately approving a $200,000 grant for emergency aid.

The UK said it was mobilising help and was "ready to provide whatever humanitarian assistance may be required".

Canada, Australia, France and a number of Latin American nations have also said they are mobilising their aid response.

Pope Benedict XVI has called for a generous response to the "tragic situation" in Haiti.

Shouting and screaming

In the minutes after the quake, Henry Bahn, a visiting official from the US Department of Agriculture, said he had seen houses which had tumbled into a ravine.
"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Mr Bahn, who described the sky as "just grey with dust".

He said he had been walking to his hotel room when the ground began to shake.

"I just held on and bounced across the wall," he said. "I just heard a tremendous amount of noise and shouting and screaming in the distance."

Tweets from troylivesay spoke of the worst damage being in the Carrefour district, where "many two and three storey buildings did not make it".

In the immediate aftermath of the quake, a tsunami watch was put out for Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas, but this was later lifted.

Fresh snow falling across UK brings more disruption

Fresh snow has hit many parts of the UK, causing more problems for transport amid further limits on road gritting.

Met Office warnings of heavy snow are in place for north-west England, the West Midlands and southern England.

Rail and air travellers face delays and cancellations, with several airports shut, while many roads are closed, including the M48 old Severn Bridge.

Hundreds of schools are closed. Some pupils taking exams had difficult journeys on treacherous roads.

Runways at Gatwick, London City and, Birmingham International airports were closed because of snow, causing delays and cancellations. Southampton and Cardiff have now reopened.

Heathrow Airport reported the cancellation of 84 mostly short-haul or domestic flights, both arrivals and departures.
Much of Yorkshire is experiencing its worst disruption of the winter due to black ice, with many roads impassable. Four gritting lorries slid off North Yorkshire roads.


Similarly, in West Yorkshire, two vehicles hit buildings and a taxi slid down an embankment onto a house roof. Some 187 West Yorkshire schools are shut and the ambulance service is reporting one of its busiest days so far.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service said there had been a four-fold increase in calls during Wednesday morning and was on "a higher alert status".

Facebook fugitive back in custody

A prisoner who updated his Facebook profile while on the run from an open prison in Suffolk has been captured.

Suffolk Police said burglar Craig Lynch, 28, who absconded from Hollesley Bay Prison on 23 September, was arrested in Kent on Tuesday night.

He has been charged with escaping from lawful custody and will appear at Bexleyheath magistrates in London later.

He had a Facebook following of more than 3,400 people across the world.

Google 'may pull out of China after Gmail cyber attack

Internet giant Google has said it may end its operations in China following a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack originating from the country.

The company did not accuse the Chinese government directly, but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.
This could result in closing the site, and its Chinese offices, Google said.

The top executive of its Chinese rival Baidu called the move "hypocritical" and financially motivated.

Google said the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the primary target of the attack, which occurred in December.

The search engine has now said it will hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering had yet been made.

Google launched google.cn in 2006, agreeing to some censorship of the search results, as required by the Chinese government.

It currently holds around a third of the Chinese search market, far behind Baidu with more than 60%.

Email targeted

In a blog post announcing its decision, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said: "A primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists."
The company said its investigation into the attack found two accounts of its online mail service - Gmail - appeared to have been accessed.

However, the attack was limited to accessing account information such as the date the account was created and subject line, rather than e-mail content, it said.

It said it had also discovered that the accounts of dozens of US, China and Europe-based Gmail users, who are "advocates of human rights in China", appeared to have been "routinely accessed by third parties".

It said these accounts had not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but "most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on users' computers".

At least 20 other large companies from a wide range of businesses were similarly targeted, it added.

'Makes me sick'

In a blog, the chief architect of Baidu said Google's decision to quit was for financial reasons, rather than a human rights issue, as Google had failed to dominate the Chinese search market.


"What Google said makes me sick," he said. "If you are to quit for the sake of financial interest, then just say it."
Google's decision to concede to China's demands on censorship in 2006 led to accusations it had betrayed its company motto - "don't be evil" - but Google argued it would be more damaging for civil liberties if it pulled out of China entirely.

technology correspondent Rory Cellan Jones said Google had also seen a significant amount of internal dissent over its decision to operate under censorship.

In 2008, it signed the Global Network Initiative agreement with rivals Microsoft and Yahoo, pledging better protection of online privacy and freedom of speech against government interference.

Those commitments, however, are weighed against the commercial opportunities that China provides as a fast growing market.

Nearly 340 million Chinese people now online, compared with 10 million only a decade ago.

Last year, the search engine market in China was worth an estimated $1bn and analysts previously expected Google to make about $600m from China in 2010.

But unlike most markets, Google comes second in search in China.

It has 31% of the market compared with about 60% controlled by market leader Baidu, which has a close relationship with the Chinese government. Yahoo has less than 10%.

Microsoft has a tiny share of the Chinese market with its new Bing search engine, but in December the technology giant said it was committed to China, calling it "the most important strategic market".

Chile apologises over treatment of indigenous people

Chile's president has apologised to the descendants of a group of indigenous people who were shipped to Europe in the late 19th Century and exhibited.

The remains of five Kawesqar Indians, from the country's southernmost region, were honoured in a ceremony after being flown back to the country.
Taken in 1881, they were displayed as curiosities in European cities.

President Michelle Bachelet said the government had been guilty of "neglect in the face of such abuses".

"As we near the bicentennial of our independence, we have to confront both the brightest points and the darkest moments of our history," she said in Santiago.

She said the mistreatment of the indigenous people was due to racist attitudes towards "our indigenous forefathers, whose human dignity was trampled upon".

The bones were discovered in the Swiss city of Zurich where they had been kept for more than a century.

The five, who died there - some of tuberculosis - were among a group of 11 tribespeople captured by German explorers in 1881.

Six were allowed eventually to return to Chile and one died during the voyage home.

From Santiago, the remains of the five who died in Europe were flown to Punta Arenas, in the far south of Chile.

They will be buried in a traditional indigenous ceremony at a remote island close to Tierra del Fuego.