Vatican City, January 10
Pope Benedict XVI today called on Pakistan to scrap a blasphemy law after the murder of the Governor of Punjab, saying the legislation was a pretext for “acts of injustice and violence”. “I once more encourage the leaders of that country to take the necessary steps to abrogate that law,” he said.

Speaking in his annual address to diplomats days after a senior Pakistani politician who opposed the legislation was assassinated by his own bodyguard, the pope said the Pakistani law was a pretext for violence against religious minorities.

The Pope, who has used many of his addresses in recent weeks to demand religious freedom, renewed his condemnation of attacks on churches that left dozens dead in Egypt, Iraq and Nigeria.

He also called for called for religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, where Christians cannot worship in public, and communist China, which forces Catholics to join an official church. “The particular influence of a given religion in a nation ought never to mean that citizens of another religion can be subject to discrimination in social life or, even worse, that violence against them can be tolerated,” he told the envoys.

The Vatican is particularly worried about Christians in the Middle East, where continuing attacks, combined with severe restrictions, are fuelling a Christian exodus from the region.

In his address to diplomats representing some 170 countries, the Pope said recent attacks in Egypt and Iraq showed the need to urgently adopt effective measures for the protection of religious minorities.

The anti-blasphemy law has been in the spotlight since November when a court sentenced a Christian mother of four to death, in a case that has exposed deep rifts in the troubled Muslim nation of more than 170 million people.

While liberal Pakistanis and rights groups believe the law to be dangerously discriminatory against the country's tiny minority groups, Aasia Bibi's case has become a lightning rod for the country's religious right. 

Islamic hardliners who organised a massive rally in Karachi also issued a pamphlet that named Rehman as a person who “has invoked the religious honour of Pakistan’s Muslims” for calling for changes in the blasphemy law. — PTI 

Nineteen out of 20 persons shot in the head die from their injuries. But Gabrielle Giffords could be among the lucky ones. The doctor treating her said she was in critical condition after a two-hour operation but that he was "very optimistic" about her recovery.

It may be days before she is out of danger. National statistics show that only 5 per cent of people survive after being shot in the head. But Giffords's chances of survival appear better than even. She was responding to simple commands last night, such as holding up two fingers when asked to do so.

That is the first positive sign that will have encouraged her doctors. Patients who are responsive on admission do better in the long term than those who are in a deep coma.

The second positive sign is that the bullet fired by Jared Lee Loughner passed directly through her head and did not become lodged within it. Less tissue damage results when the bullet exits the skull.

But the third, and most important, factor is the trajectory the bullet followed. In 2008, a Chinese food deliveryman, Fengwang Chen, 31, was shot in the head by thugs trying to steal an order from him in New York. The bullet entered his skull behind his ear and lodged in his jaw, missing his brain. He survived.

Paul Vesta, director of neurocritical care at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles, said there were a number of scenarios that could make it possible to survive a gunshot to the brain. He said: "If it's a glancing blow that injures the skull and a small amount of brain and doesn't go directly through the whole brain is one case. People can also survive with parts of the brain missing."

— The Independent

Tehran, January 10
Investigators today found the black box from a passenger jet that broke to pieces on impact while trying an emergency landing in a snowstorm in northwestern Iran, killing at least 77 persons.

The pilots of the Boeing-727, operated by Iran's national airline and carrying 104 passengers and crew, reported a technical failure to the control tower before trying to make the landing last night, state-run TV reported.

The IranAir aircraft broke into several pieces, but Mahmoud Mozaffar, head of the rescue department of Iran's Red Crescent Society, said there was no explosion or fire.

Footage on state TV showed the plane's crumpled fuselage lying in a field, torn apart in several places, under whirling snow in the darkness as rescue workers and local farmers searched for survivors in the hours after the crash.

Iran's Transport Minister Hamid Behbahani said the plane's flight data recorder, known as the black box, has been recovered "and is now being studied by a committee probing the crash." The aircraft was headed from Tehran to Orumiyeh, capital of West Azerbaijan province. — AP