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A sixteen-year-old boy has been arrested by FBI agents for plotting to hijack a plane as part of a bizarre suicide bid.

FBI spokesman George Bolds said the teenager was removed from Southwest Airlines Flight 284 by authorities at Nashville International Airport and found with "suspicious" items.

Bolds said the youngster had handcuffs, rope and duct tape in his bag and was believed to be travelling alone. The juvenile's name has not been released.

"His plan had a low probability of success," Bolds said.

Bolds dismissed earlier broadcast reports that the teen was planning to crash the plane into a "Hannah Montana" concert in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The boy is believed to be suicidal, Bolds said.

SKY.com - Hero pilot John Coward has told Sky News he feared the Heathrow crash-landing would end in catastrophe.

The BA plane lost power two miles from landing, leaving the senior first officer just seconds to bring the aircraft down.
As the plane narrowly cleared the perimeter fence and landed short of the runway, the 41-year-old said "it wasn't just one thud but a series of thuds".

All 136 passengers miraculously survived with just a few suffering minor injuries. But Mr Coward thought it would be much worse.

The BA officer was speaking from his mother's home in France where he is recovering from his ordeal.

He said he tried everything he could to keep the plane in a straight line.

The BA officer said when the jet stopped there was "an eery silence". He then heard the cabin crew evacuating passengers and there was panic.

He went on to say when everyone was grouped together in a safe place he just sat by himself because "he had done his job".

Mr Coward said the engines had completely lost power. He said he was trained to restart them in mid-air but not during landing.

An initial report into Thursday's crash suggests the two engines failed to respond to demands for more thrust as it approached the world's busiest airport.

The senior first officer was praised yesterday by his captain Peter Burkill who handed over the controls to his co-pilot before landing.

It is standard practice for the co-pilot and captain to share roles throughout the flight.

Mr Coward said he is not nervous about flying again but desperately wants to know what exactly happened.

He added that his nine-year-old daughter keeps saying how proud she is of him.

Kevin Keegan is to make a shock return to Newcastle United as manager with fellow Tyneside hero Alan Shearer at his side, Sky has revealed.

Keegan, 56, played at St James' Park in the 1980s and managed them for five years in the 1990s.

He succeeds Sam Allardyce, who left the club last week.

Sky News' sports correspondent Ian Dovaston said: "This is sensational news for Newcastle fans.

"There will be a deep inhalation of breath among football folk that Keegan has been lured from the golf courses of Spain and back into the highly pressurised world of Premier League football.

"There will be euphoria in Newcastle. The fans love him and know he is passionate about the club. When he first became manager in 1992 he turned around a club which was in a terrible state.

"He is the perfect man to come back now and try to restore passion in the club," Dovaston added.

Keegan was a hugely popular figure during his first spell as Magpies boss from 1992-1997 but was ranked as an outside candidate to replace Allardyce, who departed after an unsuccessful short stint in charge.

Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp was said to have been approached last week, but ruled himself out, preferring to stay in the south.

Gerard Houllier and Didier Deschamps were strongly linked with the position but the club then announced Keegan as the club's new manager on their website.

Keegan took Newcastle back to the top flight in 1993 and came close to winning the league title in the 1995-96 season when they famously led Manchester United by 12 points before finishing as runners up.

He went on to manage Fulham, England and Manchester City but has been out of the game since leaving City in 2005 after a largely unsuccessful spell.

The Attorney General has decided not to step in to stop a BBC dicussion on whether the Diana inquest is a waste of time.

Coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker referred the planned Newsnight debate to Baroness Scotland after lawyers in the case warned it could prejudice proceedings.

The matter was first raised in court by Mohamed al Fayed's barrister Michael Mansfield QC, who was invited on the debate, to be chaired by Jeremy Paxman.

He told the coroner that the programme could risk prejudicing the inquest.

The coroner immediately instructed his staff to contact the BBC, urging it to "tread carefully".

The matter was then passed to the Attorney General, who said no action would be taken.

"Concerns were expressed to us about this evening's programme," said a spokesman for Baroness Scotland's office.

"We have communicated those concerns to the BBC and are satisfied they are in a position to comply with their legal responsibilities."

The BBC vowed to go ahead with the discussion.

A spokeswoman for the corporation said: "As with all our programmes, the production team will ensure that the debate stays within legal boundaries."

BAGHDAD - After weathering nearly five years of war, Baghdad residents thought they'd pretty much seen it all. But Friday morning, as muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer, the people here awoke to something certifiably new.

For the first time in memory, snow fell across Baghdad.

Although the white flakes quickly dissolved into gray puddles, they brought an emotion rarely expressed in this desert capital snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings — delight.

"For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad," said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

"When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early '40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad," Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. "But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination."

Morning temperatures uncharacteristically hovered around freezing, and the Baghdad airport was closed because of poor visibility. Snow is common in the mountainous Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, but residents of the capital and surrounding areas could remember just hail.

"I asked my mother, who is 80, whether she'd ever seen snow in Iraq before, and her answer was no," said Fawzi Karim, a 40-year-old father of five who runs a small restaurant in Hawr Rajab, a village six miles southeast of Baghdad.

"This is so unusual, and I don't know whether or not it's a lesson from God," Karim said.

Some said they'd seen snow only in movies.

Talib Haider, a 19-year-old college student, said "a friend of mine called me at 8 a.m. to wake me up and tell me that the sky is raining snow."

"I rushed quickly to the balcony to see a very beautiful scene," he said. "I tried to film it with my cell phone camera. This scene has really brought me joy. I called my other friends and the morning turned to be a very happy one in my life."

An Iraqi who works for The Associated Press said he woke his wife and children shortly after 7 a.m. to "have a look at this strange thing." He then called his brother and sister and found them awake, also watching the "cotton-like snow drops covering the trees."

For a couple of hours anyway, a city where mortar shells routinely zoom across to the Green Zone became united as one big White Zone. As of late afternoon, there were no reports of violence. The snow showed no favoritism as it fell faintly on neighborhoods Shiite and Sunni alike, and (with apologies to James Joyce) upon all the living and the dead.

From: Yahoo!

Sky.com - Firefighters appear to have contained a fire which has ripped through the top floor of a world famous London hospital leaving patients and staff desperately trying to flee the flames.

It is believed some patients, who were undergoing surgery, had to remain in operating theatres and others who were gravely ill had their rooms filled with smoke.

All of the patients and staff have now been taken to safety.

The roof of the Royal Marsden hospital was engulfed in flames with smoke visible for miles around.

Police have closed off all roads leading to the hospital building.

Some patients were laid on mattresses in an ambulance area on a nearby street, with nursing staff in attendance.

Other patients were led to safety, wrapped in blankets, and in wheelchairs.

Dr Toni Burke, who works at the Royal Marsden, told Sky News: "We have been getting all the patients out as fast as we can. Fortunately many had been allowed home for Christmas," she said.

"It's chaos here and we don't know what we'll find when we go back in after the fire's been put out."

London Fire Brigade liaison officer Guy Foster comfirmed that all patients and staff had been evacuated from the building.

The patients were being sent to the nearby Royal Brompton and Chelsea and Westminster hospitals.

Mr Foster said an investigation into the cause of the fire would be launched as soon as it was safe to do so.

Dr Peter Blake, who works at the hospital, said the fire was likely to cause substantial damage.

He said: "Unfortunately the fire is on the wrong side of the building as far as the wind is concerned.

"The roof is falling in, and there are bits falling off on to the outside."

The emergency services were called to the hospital at 1.20pm. At least 25 fire engines and 125 firefighters were battling the flames.

The Royal Marsden was the first hospital in the world dedicated to the study and treatment of cancer.

With The Institute of Cancer Research, it forms the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Europe, seeing more than 40,000 patients from the UK and abroad each year.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani elections will be delayed until Feb. 18 because of violence following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, authorities said Wednesday, ignoring threatened street protests by opposition parties.

The polls — seen as a key step in Pakistan's transition to democracy after years of military rule — had been scheduled for Jan. 8.

The opposition alleged authorities are postponing the polls to help the ruling party, which is allied to President Pervez Musharraf. Many believe Bhutto's party will get a sympathy boost if the vote takes place on time. Bhutto had accused elements in the ruling party of plotting to kill her, a charge it vehemently denies.

Some opposition officials had called for street protests if the elections were delayed.

"We reject this delay outright," said Sen. Babar Awan of Bhutto's party, the most powerful opposition group. "Musharraf fears outright defeat. If this election process is jeopardized, they (our followers) may protest again and there is a chance of riots."

The killing of Bhutto, a former prime minister, triggered three days of nationwide unrest that killed 58 people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. Bhutto's home province of Sindh was especially hard hit and the army was called on the streets.

Election commission head Qazi Mohammed Farooq said the unrest had made it impossible to hold the polls on time.

"For a few days the election process came to a complete halt," he told reporters. As a result, the poll will be held Feb. 18, he said.

Election officials reported that rioters in Bhutto's home province of Sindh burned down 10 election offices, destroying the voter rolls and ballot boxes inside. The violence also halted the printing and distribution of ballots.

Talat Masood, an independent political analyst, said the delay was "mostly about politics."

"The (election) problems are only confined to a few districts. Musharraf naturally thinks if a hostile parliament comes in he has no future."

The party of Nawaz Sharif, the leader of another opposition party, accused Musharraf of wanting a delay to allow anger over Bhutto's death to evaporate. "Right now they are the target of public hatred" said Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for the party.

Sen. Tariq Azim, from the ruling party, said the opposition was "turning a blind eye to realties on the ground" following the assassination, but stressed the ruling party had not asked the election commission for any delay.

Musharraf was due to address the nation later Wednesday.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called for the elections to take place as soon as possible.

"If the elections can go ahead in a safe way next week, then obviously they should," Miliband told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "If they can't, they should only be delayed to another date — we can't have an indefinite postponement."

Since Bhutto's slaying, the government has come under harsh criticism for its security arrangements for her, its claim that an Islamic militant was behind her death and its conclusion that it was the force of the blast and not gunshot wounds that killed her.

The government reiterated Wednesday it was "open" to foreign assistance in investigating the death, but indicated it was unlikely to accept a U.N. committee like the one formed to probe the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, as some of Bhutto's supporters are demanding.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq said the two cases were "totally different."

Pakistani troops, meanwhile, killed up to 25 suspected militants in a remote region close to the Afghan border where al-Qaida and Taliban fighters operate. The fighting followed the abduction of four soldiers, said army spokesman Gen. Waheed Arshad and an intelligence official. Security forces sustained no injuries in the clashes, which frequently break out in the area.

The government has blamed South Waziristan-based militant leader Baitullah Mehsud for Bhutto's murder, but he has denied involvement.

Also Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner met with Musharraf but canceled a planned trip to Bhutto's hometown to pay condolences, a French Embassy official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. He did not say why.

Nisar Khuro, a senior member of Bhutto's party, alleged the government had stopped Kouchner from traveling there, citing security concerns.

"It seems that Pervez Musharraf is stopping foreign dignitaries from coming for condolences," he said. "This is sad."

Later, Kouchner laid a wreath near the spot where she died.

"I pay respect to the memory of a fighter for democracy and freedom," he told reporters. "Her message and her bravery will never be forgotten."

Bhutto was popular with many Western governments because she was a liberal Muslim prepared to speak out against extremism, but critics in Pakistan take a more balanced view, pointing out her two stints as prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s were marred by allegations of corruption and inefficiency.
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Associated Press writer Sadaqat Jan contributed to this report.