BBC trust head calls for radical overhaul

THE head of the BBC's governing body says the broadcaster needs a radical overhaul following the resignation of its chief executive in the wake of a scandal over a botched report on child sex-abuse allegations.

Chris Patten vowed on Sunday to restore confidence and trust in the BBC, which is reeling from the resignation of George Entwistle and the scandals prompting his ouster.

Entwistle resigned on Saturday night amid a storm of controversy after a news program wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal.

The blunder had deepened a crisis sparked by revelations the broadcaster decided not to air similar allegations against one of its own stars, DJ and presenter Jimmy Savile who died last year aged 84 and may have abused as many as 300 victims over a 40-year period.

Patten told the BBC on Sunday he will not resign, saying he must ensure the publicly-funded broadcaster "has a grip" and gets back on track.

"My job is to make sure that ... we restore confidence and trust in the BBC," he said, and called for a "thorough, radical structural overhaul".

The scandal comes at a sensitive time for Britain's media establishment, struggling to recover from an ongoing phone-hacking scandal which brought down the nation's best-selling Sunday newspaper, led to the arrests of dozens of journalists and prompted a judge-led inquiry into journalistic ethics and the ties between politics and the news media.

Kevin Marsh, a former senior editor of the BBC, said the resignation does little to re-establish public trust in the BBC, which is funded mainly by a tax on UK households that have televisions.

"The BBC asks the British public to pay its bills every year, and the only way it can do that is if the British public trusts the way it is spending its money," he said.

Entwistle took over as head of the BBC two months ago from Mark Thompson, who will become chief executive of The New York Times Co. this month.

The broadcaster was emerging from a difficult period marked by budget cuts, job losses and mounting calls to justify its 3.5 billion pound ($A5.40 billion) budget.

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Order implicated in abuse scandal

A PSYCHOLOGIST who met dozens of child abuse victims claims three quarters of the Brothers from the St John of God order were suspected to be involved in the scandal.

Michelle Mulvihill has also told Fairfax that Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell helped in negotiations for a loan for the order that was later used to pay victims.

The Sydney-based psychologist was employed by the order for nine years, from 1998, to sit in on meetings between victims and representatives from the order. She left the job because of fears suspected pedophiles had too much power in the order.

Fairfax also reported that according to Dr Mulvihill, the order hid documents and did not properly supervise suspected pedophile Brothers.

She said of the 40 to 50 Brothers in the order at the time she was there, around 75 per cent had been subject to allegations.

Dr Mulvihill said the order included Brothers who had carried out "the worst examples of child abuse I have ever heard of", Fairfax reported.

There have been calls for a royal commission into sexual abuse by religious groups.

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell has already announced a special commission to investigate allegations of child sex abuse by Catholic Church clergy in the Hunter region.

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EgyptAir stewardesses begin wearing hijab

EGYPTAIR stewardesses who campaigned to wear the Muslim headscarf have begun donning the hijab for the first time since the national carrier was founded in 1932, a company official says.

The first flight attendants dressed in the hijab, which mainstream clerics say is mandatory, worked on flights to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia on Saturday.

Under president Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in an uprising in early 2011, the hijab was taboo for women in some state institutions such as public television and the national carrier.

But after the election of the Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in June, women in television and EgyptAir campaigned for permission to wear the hijab, like most Muslim women in Egypt.

The company had agreed to allow the stewardesses to wear the hijab after a strike by cabin crew in September that also demanded better pay.

An EgyptAir official said a foreign company has been contracted to design a cap and headscarf for the estimated 250 stewardesses who want to wear the hijab, out of 900 women working for EgyptAir.

In September, an anchorwoman was the first woman to appear on state television wearing the scarf, which traditionally covers the hair and neck. Some more liberal women wear the hijab to cover only their hair.

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French gunman's brother blames parents

THE radicalisation of the French gunman who killed seven people on an eight-day shooting spree this year began at home, his brother recounts in a new book and documentary, according to media reports.

Mohamed Merah killed three Jewish children, a rabbi and three paratroopers in and around the southern city of Toulouse in March before dying in a standoff with police.

Merah claimed links to al-Qaeda and said he had received training at an Islamist paramilitary camp in Pakistan.

One of his brothers, Abdelkader, also faces preliminary charges in the case and is in police custody.

The attacks raised painful questions about whether France was failing to integrate the children of Muslim immigrants, like the Merahs, who are of Algerian origin.

Many blamed the poverty of the neighbourhoods many immigrants and their children live in for driving them to radical Islam.

But a new book by another of Merah brother, Abdelghani, says his parents, particularly his mother, are responsible for Mohamed's radicalisation.

According to excerpts published in Le Figaro and other newspapers, Abdelghani made a silent vow on the day of Mohamed's funeral to tell the world how they were raised on anti-Semitism.

"I will explain how my parents raised you in an atmosphere of racism and hate before the Salafis could douse you in religious extremism," he writes in My brother, that terrorist, due out this week. Salafis are ultraconservative Muslims.

The Merahs' mother was at one point held for questioning but has since been released.

Their father left the family for Algeria when the children were young but has since sued the French state for Mohamed's death.

A documentary featuring interviews with Abdelghani and his sister, Souad, treads similar ground.

In an excerpt, Abdelghani remembers how his mother drove home a message of anti-Semitism.

"My mother always said, 'We, the Arabs, we were born to hate Jews.' This speech, I heard it all throughout my childhood," Abdelghani says in the documentary.

Souad, on the other hand, declares how proud she is of her brother, Mohamed.

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NATO soldier dies in Afghan insider attack

A NATO-LED soldier fighting insurgents in Afghanistan has been shot dead by a man in an Afghan army uniform in southern Afghanistan, the latest in a series of "insider" attacks, the alliance says.

"I can confirm that an individual wearing Afghan national army uniform turned his weapon against ISAF members in southern Afghanistan, killing one," an International Security Assistance Force spokesman told AFP.

The incident happened after a "verbal argument" between an Afghan soldier and foreign troops in a joint camp in Nad Ali district of Helmand province on Saturday, said Ahmad Zeerak, the Helmand governor's spokesman.

The Afghan soldier was wounded after the foreign troops returned fire and he has been taken to the hospital, he said.

An Afghan security officer told Deutsche-Presse Agentur the dead soldier was British. An official with the British army in Kabul declined to comment.

Shootings by Afghan forces have taken an increasing toll on NATO troops and have seriously undermined trust between NATO forces and their Afghan allies in the fight against hardline Islamist Taliban insurgents.

In the most recent "insider" attacks, at least two Afghan soldiers attacked NATO-led forces in western Afghanistan on Saturday, injuring a Spanish soldier, officials said.

The injured Afghan soldier and the other assailant were captured by the Afghan National Army and a third man was suspected of involvement, officials said.

The Afghan conflict has seen a surge in insider attacks this year, with more than 50 ISAF troops killed by their colleagues in the Afghan army and police.

There are presently about 100,000 US-led forces fighting alongside Afghan security forces against a Taliban-led insurgency that has been raging in the war-torn country since a US-led invasion toppled the Islamist regime in late 2001.

NATO combat forces are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

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Trial of Libyan ex-PM to begin

THE trial of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi's last prime minister, Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, will open in the Libyan capital on Monday, the public prosecutor's spokesman says.

"Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi will appear tomorrow (Monday) on the occasion of a first case" against him, Taha Baara said, adding that Mahmoudi faces charges of "prejudicial acts against the security of the state".

Mahmoudi fled to neighbouring Tunisia in September last year shortly after rebels seized Tripoli, effectively putting an end to more than four decades of iron-fisted Gaddafi rule.

He was extradited to Libya to face justice on June 24, despite warnings from rights groups that he could face the death penalty.

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Blogger's Iran prison death to be probed

PARLIAMENT has launched a probe into the death in detention of an Iranian blogger and will make its report public, the ISNA news agency reports deputy speaker Mohammad Hassan Abutorabi as saying.

Opposition activists say blogger Sattar Beheshti, 35, was tortured to death in prison for criticising Iran's regime on the internet.

"The national security commission is aware of this case and has begun an investigation," Abutorabi was quoted as saying on Sunday.

"I have asked the head of the commission, Aladin Borujerdi, to inform parliamentarians and the public once the investigation is completed," he said.

According to opposition groups, Beheshti's family was asked on November 7 to collect his body from the Kahrizak detention centre in Tehran, where he had been held since being arrested at the end of October after criticising the government on the internet.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in July 2009 ordered the temporary closure of the Kahrizak detention centre after three inmates died following mistreatment by guards.

Several of its officials were prosecuted.

Beheshti, in the last blog he wrote before his arrest, had said he was being constantly harassed by members of the security services phoning him.

"Yesterday they threatened to tell my mother that she would soon be wearing black if I did not shut up," he wrote in one post.

France and the United States last week called on Iran to investigate the circumstances of Beheshti's death after rights group Amnesty International said he may have died under torture.

Washington said it was "appalled by reports" that the blogger was "tortured and killed" while in prison.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Beheshti was "arrested for a crime no greater than expressing his political opinion online".

A French foreign ministry spokesman said Paris was "profoundly shocked" to have learned of Beheshti's death in custody. "We call on the Iranian authorities to shed as much light as possible on the circumstances of his death," he said.

Outspoken conservative MP Ahmad Tavakoli joined in the criticism on Sunday, Mehr news agency reported.

"Why doesn't the judicial apparatus give explanations? There has been a death and it must be explained," he said, charging that foreign governments were exploiting the case for propaganda purposes against Iran.

Tavakoli also criticised the regime's repression of bloggers, saying they would do better "to fight against corruption rather than making life difficult for bloggers."

Hundreds of opposition figures - politicians, journalists, bloggers, lawyers, rights activities, union figures and media workers - are being held in Iran, according to international human rights groups.

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