As leader of the world’s more than one billion Roman Catholics, it is fair to say that Pope Benedict XVI has a rather large fan base. Even in these celebrity soaked days there are few pop stars in this world who can command same loyalty from their followers or bring in the sheer crowds that a pontiff can.

Which might help explain why one of the world’s largest record labels is bringing out an album by Pope Benedict just in time for Christmas.

Geffen Records, better known for launching the careers of Guns N Roses, Nirvana, Elton John and Snoop Dogg, has snapped up the rights to Alma Mater, the Pope’s first album on which the 82-year-old sings and eulogises in no less than five languages.

The Vatican began recording the album earlier this year with three composers – an Italian Catholic, a Moroccan Muslim and a British film composer who happily describes himself as “undeclared”.

The album is a remarkable initiative for a Pope who is not particularly well known for his artistic flair. Unlike his predecessor John-Paul II, who was a budding actor before he joined the Church and remained a prolific poet during his days in the Vatican, Benedict earned the respect of his peers thanks to his fiercely cerebral and academic mind. But those involved in the project say the Pope is a remarkably good singer with a profound musical nous.

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Just got back from spending the day at the BBC's new Persian TV satellite channel, which transmits out of an office on the sixth floor of Broadcasting House - the Beeb's old headquarters. There will be a longer report in tomorrow's paper. 

But chatting to the journalists there it made me realise just how much Iran's "Twitter Revolution" has been hyped up by western media. 

Whilst websites like Twitter, You Tube and Farsi have undoubtedly played an important part in getting news out to the wider world and co-ordinating some of the protestors, their long term effects are always going to be somewhat limited not least because it is only really tech-savvy and young, urbanite Iranians who know how to use such sites to their advantage.

With the general exception of Facebook, the conversations that take place on these website also largely take place in English, not Farsi, shutting out a large section of Iranians. 

The BBC's new Persian language satellite channel, however, will likely have a much more profound long term effect on Iranian society.

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Brought to you by Pete Candeland, the bloke behind the Gorillaz animation....

It's not exactly a tactic that Anne Widdecombe might approve of, but this picture is currently making waves across the Irish Sea for an up and coming politician.

Locals in Newbridge Town, County Kildare have had a bit of spice thrown into the local election race when this picture of Fine Gael candidate Emma Kiernan out on a friend's 30th birthday surfaced on Facebook.

According to the Leinster Leader Ms Kiernan said: "I'm actually surprised that anyone was interested in that photograph". She also said she thought it was "not a great snap".

The electorate, I bet, beg to differ. Either way I can't imagine this photo will do her any harm, and thanks to the internet, Ms Kiernan is now known well beyond the limits of County Kildare.

A friend of mine posted this on his Twitter and I just had to share it. The world is a wonderful place.

Is anyone else slightly perplexed by Chris Broad's suggestion today that the Pakistani police failed him and the Sri Lankan cricket team?

Mr Broad arrived back in Manchester today after his terrifying ordeal in Lahore and immediately conducted a press conference in which he accused the police of failing to protect their convoy.

"We were promised high level security and in our hour of need that security vanished and they left us to be sitting ducks."

He added: "After the incident when you watch the TV picture you can clearly see the white van we were in, next to the ambulances in the middle of the roundabout, with terrorists shooting into our van and past our van and not a sign of a policeman anywhere."

Now no-one can blame Mr Broad for being upset at the horrendous trauma that he and his colleagues had to go through in Lahore yesterday.

But to blame the policemen seems a little unfair, given that six of them laid down their lives protecting that convoy. 

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John Solecki, an American UN official, was kidnapped by unknown gunmen on February 2 while on his way to work in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Solecki is the head of the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, one Pakistan's poorest and most lawless regions.

Maybe we are becoming frighteningly accustomed to these sorts of kidnappings but the last time a high profile westerner was taken hostage in Pakistan, that of the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl in 2002, it made headlines around the world. Pearl had been snatched by Al Qa'ida affiliates and was later found beheaded.

Yet Solecki's plight remains largely forgotten, not least because the terrible events in Lahore yesterday have rather overshadowed the news agenda.

On Sunday evening a shadowy and previously unknown group calling itself the Baluchistan Liberation United Front (BLUF) handed a letter into a local news agency saying they would kill Solecki in four days unless the Pakistani government releases more than 1,100 Baluchi prisoners.

It is not the first threat that BLUF have issued regarding Solecki but it is worrying because time is fast running out.
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Tremendous and highly amusing bit of backpeddling from the BNP over their Polish Spitfire ad.

This week the BNP unveiled a new poster to front its upcoming campaign for the European elections.

Despite being bitterly opposed to the current EU, the BNP desperately wants to get an MEP elected this summer because it will unlock a shedload of funding and earn the far-right party a veneer of respectability.

The poster showed a nostalgic, sepia toned picture of a Spitfire - the small but nippy fighter that helped turn the tide against the German Luftwaffe during WW2 - above the headline "Battle for Britain".

The BNP's manifesto for the European elections favours banning Eastern European migrant workers and in recent local elections the party has campaigned from a strong anti-immigrant platform.

Yet a closer inspection of the poster reveals that the Spitfire was in fact flown by Polish pilots during Battle of Britain.

RAF historians have pointed out that the "RF" in front of the RAF roundel meant this particular Spitfire belonged to 303 Squadron - the astonishingly brave regiment of Polish fighter pilots who were rescued from France and battled the Nazis over the skies of England.

Polish fighter pilots were renowned for their bravery, suffering some of the heaviest casualties, but also shooting down scores of German planes. Poles accounted for just 5% of the 2,927 pilots involved in the Battle of Britain but were responsible for 12% of all the Luftwaffe's losses. 30 were killed in action.

An article on the BNP's own website - "BNP Loves Europe, Hates the EU" - claims that party chariman Nick Griffin(pictured above in a tux) knew all along that the plane was flown by Polish pilots.

"We have deliberately used a Spitfire from the RAF No. 303 Polish Fighter Squardon as our backdrop in the 'Battle of Britain' road show for the European elections," he said.

But John Hemming, MP for Yardley, Birmingham, ridiculed this claim. "The BNP often get confused and this happens because they haven't done thier research," he said. "This is just another example of them getting it wrong."

The Christian Bale spoofs just get better and better. Now Family Guy have got in on the act.



On a similar theme, what's the betting this becomes a 2009 clubland classic? (Caution to those with sensitive ears, there are no bleeps on this version):

Interesting news out of the Antarctic today. Sea Shepherd, the radical conservation group that heads to the Southern Ocean every year to try and stop Japan's whaling activities there, claims they are now being hunted by a Japanese security vessel.

Sea Shepherd's ship, The Steve Irwin, turned back towards Tasmania last night after a week of increasingly violent clashes which culminated in two ships colliding in the icy waters of the Antarctic (see here for footage).

Paul Watson (pictured), the group's controversial captain, claims they are now being hunted by the Taiyo Maru No 38, a swift and manoeuvrable 49m boat that has accompanied the Japanese fleet. Watson believes the boat contains a consignment of security personnel who are ready to board The Steve Irwin and confiscate any video footage that their activists and a separate film crew from the Discovery Channel have been gathering throughout the winter.

The claim can't be independently verified. The Institute for Cetacean Research, the quasi governmental organisation that controls Japan's controversial whale hunt, today said it does not comment on the movement of its ships, which certianly isn't an outright denial. I also phoned the Japanese Embassy who checked with Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and they have come back with a simple "no comment."

Watson, however, is adamant. I spoke to him over the sat phone earlier today and he said his contacts in Fiji had informed him that the Taiyo Maru No. 38 left there a few weeks ago and had taken on extra security personnel before heading back towards the Antarctic. Before Christmas the ship had been used to transport three Japanese sailors who had been injured in a search for a crewmate who had been tragically swept over board and lost at sea. They tried docking in New Zealand before heading to Fiji.

The area where The Steve Irwin is currently sailing is international waters but because of its remoteness there is little, if any, policing of those waters. That has obviously allowed Sea Shepherd to attack Japanese ships with impunity but it also leaves the conservation group vulnerable. On previous occasions the Japanese seemed content with trying to outrun Sea Shepherd but this year they appear to have gone on the offensive much more, using harpoon vessels to target Sea Shepherd as they try to stop the whalers. They have also employed higher powered water canons and LRAD - long range acoustic devices.

The footage on board the Steve Irwin meanwhile is a PR goldmine for the conservation group so it's no wonder they want to hold on to it.

Last year they signed up with Discovery who sent a team to monitor their anti-whaling hunt. It was turned into a 13-part documentary called Whale Wars and that has given Sea Shepherd and the anti-whaling movement unparalleled publicity. Japan meanwhile has been furious that Discovery have teamed up with a group that they regard as being nothing but eco-terrorists and are deeply worried about the damage that the series does to Japan's reputation.

I'm told that The Steve Irwin will take about ten days to reach Tasmania and friendly Australian Territorial Waters. If indeed there is a Japanese boat on their tail this year's anti-whaling hunt may be far from over. The hunter, it seems, has become the hunted.

Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research has released this incredible footage of Sea Shepherd ramming one of their vessels.

In the past few days there have been a number of confrontations between the Japanese fleet and the radical conservation group after a relatively quiet start to the annual whale hunt in the Antarctic.

Sea Shepherd has not had much luck so far this year when it comes to finding the Japanese fleet. They spent most of December and January searching in vain and had to head back to Australia to refuel at the end of last month. But in the past four days they have caught up with the fleet and have begun harranguing them.

Japan, of course, is furious, calling Sea Shepherd activists "terrorists" and saying that their ram runs are "unforgivable". They certainly look dangerous from the video above, but Sea Shepherd believes it is upholding international conservation law which the anti-whaling countries are simply unwilling to do.

The conservation group claims it was trying to stop the transfer of two dead whales onto the Yushin Maru No 3. Earlier in the day the Japanese fleet had managed to harpoon and kill a minke whale. According to Sea Shepherd the whale took approximately 25 minutes to die and was eventually finished off with seven shots from a high powered rifle.

For more info on Sea Shepherd, who they are and why they go to the Antarctic every year to face off with the Japanese here's a background piece I wrote a while back.

I also recently interviewed one of the British members on board their ship, Steve Roest, who was injured earlier this week. According to Sea Shepherd (and because this is all taking place in the Antarctic I can't verify this) Steve hit his head and required stitches when the Japanese used a sound weapon to target the activists.

Expect more action over the next few days.

The wildcat strikes breaking out across the country today in support of the energy workers in Lincoln will likely rumble on now for days to come.

It's difficult not to feel anything other than sympathy for the Lindsey Oil Refinery workers after Total gave a £200m contract to an Italian firm which appears to only be interested in hiring Italian and Portuguese workers. Although it's worth remembering that Total insists there will be no direct redundancies and says it has already employed 1,000 locals on this particular contract. 

But in the current economic climate it's no surprise that the image of foreign workers carrying on with their employment as British workers set up picket lines is enflaming tensions. A deliberately controversial picture on the front of the Express on Wednesday showing one of the Italian workers giving their photographer the finger certainly didn't help matters.

What concerns me, however, is just how much fun the BNP are having over this. All day their website and Facebook groups have been alive with chatter and postings praising these strikes, which are being described as some sort of mass anti-Europe action among ordinary British workers. They will use these strikes to gather as many new supporters and as much favourable PR as possible. 

Just been speaking to the Disaster Emergency Committee, the umbrella group of charities behind the Gaza appeal that the Beeb and Sky have refused to broadcast.

The two minute appeal will go live this evening, first on ITV1 before the 6.30pm news and then on Channel 4 News and Five News.

Normally the DEC doesn't accept donations until after they've broadcast their appeal but members of the public have been able to donate since Thursday. Thanks to the whole controversy over whether the Beeb and Sky should broadcast the donations have been flooding in even before the appeal is broadcast. 

I've been told the DEC have already raised £600,000 through online donations. Comparatively it's not a huge amount of money if you bear in mind that the Congo and Burma appeals (both of which the BBC were happy to air) raised £9.7m and £18m.

But it's a good start, and I doubt it would have happened had the Beeb not caused the current stink that it has. 

Reports out of Rome today suggest that Pope Benedict is about to lift the excommunication of four ultra-traditionalist rebel bishops, one of whom believes that the gas chambers were a myth and that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled explosions.

Bishop Richard Williamson, a former English Anglican, is one of four bishops from the Society of St Pius X who was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church more than 20 years ago. He regularly speaks in favour of 9/11 conspiracy theories, endorses the forgery known as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and denies the existence of gas chambers during the Holocaust.

Here's a link to a recent interview he did with Swedish television in which he said: "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler." Asked by the reporter to confirm whether he believed gas chambers were used in the Holocaust he said: "I believe there were no gas chambers."

Here's also a Catholic Herald piece from last year over his endorsement of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a forged pamphlet about global Jewish domination popular with Neo-Nazis.

Benedict may be wanting to heal the two decades old rift caused between the Vatican and SSPX - a dissenting traditionalist wing created by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in protest at the reforms of the Second Vatican Council - but in pardoning someone like Bishop Williamson he sends out a startling message to the Jewish community that outright Holocaust deniers are fine by the Catholic Church.

As reported in today's paper, Israelis on Friday night caught a brief glimpse of the sheer horror unleashed on Gaza's civilians over the past 22 days during the IDF's operations in the Strip against Hamas militants.

Dr Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish is a respected gynaecologist at Israel's Shiba Hospital near Tel Aviv. A Palestinian who speaks fluent Hebrew, he spent much of the past three weeks talking to Israeli television stations from his home in Beit Lahiya.

Just before he went on air with Channel 10 television a tank shell hit his house killing three of his daughters. The following video of his grief stricken pleadings with the Channel 10 hosts is one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen.

(This video should have English subtitles, if they don't come on automatically hit the triangle button in the bottom right and corner of the video screen and press the "CC" button)

Following on from my previous blog on this, the Sri Lankan Democracy Forum is heading to the High Commission in London on Friday to protest against the killing of Lasantha Wickrematunga.

The SLDF was founded by a Sri Lankan exile living in the UK whose sister was murdered by the LTTE - the Tamil Tigers.

But they're no friends of the Rajapakse regime either - they're brave people who have had to flee their own homes and can see that both the SL government and the Tamil Tigers are as brutal as each other and have equally little regard for the lives of ordinary Sri Lankans who have been cursed by their country's civil war. 

Anyone who is interested in calling on the Rajapakse government - which Wickrematunga accused in an editorial from beyond the grave of being responsible for his murder - should head to the High Commission (W2 3LU) on Friday 16th January between 3-5.30pm. 

Lasantha Wickramatunga, the astonishingly brave editor of Sri Lanka's Sunday Leader newspaper, was gunned down in a hail of bullets last Thursday.

The Sunday Leader has long been critical of Colombo's military action in the predominantly Tamil north and its editor was a notoriously staunch critic of Sri Lanka's government. Sri Lanka's civil war has killed more than 70,000 people over the past 20 years and it is now one of the most dangerous places in the world to operate as a journalist.

Yet it is utterly ignored by Western governments.

Hopefully the piece below "And then they came for me" will be read around the world and will help remind people of sheer tragedy that is Sri Lanka's recent history.

It is Wickramatunga's last editorial, published three days after his death, in which he points the finger of blame firmly at the Sri Lankan government. Wickramatunga knew he was a marked man and this is his final revenge.

Link to: "And then they came for me"

Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis, has written a blog on her Myspace page defending fellow Scientologist and friend John Travolta, saying the controversial religion had nothing to do with the recent death of Travolta's son Jett.  

Since Jett's tragic death from a seizure in a bathroom in the Bahamas the internet has been awash with rumours that Scientology's opposition to the medical treatment of brain-related diagnoses like depression and epilepsy may have contributed to Jett's death. Jett suffered from Kawasaki syndrome, an inflammatory auto-immune disorder that can lead to seizures. 

The results from the autopsy on Jett's body have not been released publicly but Travolta's lawyer Michael Ossi told TMZ that the 16-year-old died after hitting his head on the side of a bathtub in the Bahamas following a seizure. 

Critics of Scientology - particularly the group Anonymous - have seized on the death and blamed the religion for being sceptical of modern medicine - something that Ms Presley in her Myspace blog is an incorrect assumption. 

She writes: "It is not true that Scientologist's [sic] "don't believe in" medical care, medicine or medical Doctors and that may have something to do with this terrible tragedy. Just like anyone else, If one is sick, they go to the doctor, If a medication will make it better they take it. If they don't then they are an idiot and you can't blame their religion."

Anonymous have quickly fired back with a "Letter to Lisa Marie" saying that many ex-members of the Church who suffered from seizures themselves were told by the heirarchy to come off their medication. 

Despite the untimely and perhaps not particularly sensitive mudslinging by Scientology's critics this is essentially a debate about a religion's approach to preventing death - something that Judaism, Catholicism and Jehovah's Witnesses, for instance, have all had and continue to have.

The problem here is that doctrine of Scientology is so shrouded in secrecy it's very difficult to know exactly what the Church believes about these subjects. Perhaps if Scientology became more publicly transparent about exactly what it does believe then there would be less room for speculation?

On Tuesday we published a report about how a 69-year-old Hindu "guru" from Newcastle is launching a High Court battle next month to try and enshrine in law the right to cremate bodies in the open.

In the past 24 hours my email has been inundated with messages from those who either support this legal bid or angrily condemn it.

Rather than repeat all the arguments on this blog the full article can be read here.

But why not post what you think about this issue below? Is Britain ready for outdoor cremations? Should we try to accommodate a ceremony that has been practiced in South Asia for thousands of years and could be done away from the public gaze? Or is this just another step too far?

Let us know what you think...

Sikhs have angrily condemned a website which appears to be run by young male Muslims and boasts about seducing Sikh women during freshers week at university.

The website contains pictures of at least 25 Sikh women which the site's administrators claim to have seduced alongside highly provocative remarks about the women and the Sikh religion.

Timed to coincide with the start of the university year - described in the site as a time when "[Muslim] soldiers go hunting for Sikh slappers" - the website's creators encourage friends and readers to send in pictures of Sikh women they have seduced during freshers week.

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