A new Michael Jackson song, the first track to emerge since the star’s death, has been given its public premiere.

Few details of the track, called This Is It, were released beforehand.

It features backing vocals by Jackson’s brothers, but it is not known whether they were recorded before or after the star’s death in June.

The song has been released on the singer’s website and to radio stations. It will be the only original song on a double CD due to be released soon.

At the time of its airing there was also no information about when the song was written and recorded, and who else worked on it.

Jackson’s record label and estate declined requests for details.

It was aired on his website, michaeljackson.com, at 0400GMT on Monday and sent to radio stations and other media outlets.

Fans will be able to buy it as part of an album of the same name on 26 October.

It is likely to be the first of many new songs to see the light of day as his family and estate sift through music he left behind.

The star was working with artists like Akon and will.i.am before his death in June.

Jackson died two weeks before he was due to return to the stage

It had been widely expected that the song would be made available to buy from digital retailers such as iTunes from Monday.

Merchandising

Jackson’s official website described it as a “brand new single”, which would be “released” on 12 October.

But a spokesperson said the term “released” referred to its distribution to radio stations and other media outlets.

The song takes its name from the ill-fated series of comeback shows that were to have taken place at London’s O2 arena.

It will also feature in the closing credits of a film, also called This Is It, which has been made using footage of rehearsals for the O2 concerts, due to be released in cinemas on 28 October.

The BBC’s Peter Bowes in Los Angeles says it was widely known that Michael Jackson had huge debts and those debts have not gone away.

But, he says, what he is hearing is the money that will be made from this single, from the movie and lots more merchandising that will take place will easily pay for all those debts and there will eventually be money left over that will go to Michael Jackson’s mother and his three children.

Mexico has closed a state-run energy distribution firm with about 40,000 employees and 25 million customers, blaming the scale of its losses.

Federal police seized the offices of Luz y Fuerza del Centro. Spending at the company was increasingly outpacing sales, according to the government.

The firm faced an “unsustainable financial situation”, President Felipe Calderon said.

Mexico is trying to cut public spending to offset falling oil revenues.

The Federal Electricity Commission, a state-run utility that provides electricity across the rest of the country, is to provide services to Luz y Fuerza’s customers.

Pension drain

The firm’s costs between 2003 and 2008 were 433bn pesos (£20.6bn; $32.5bn) while its sales were 236bn pesos, the government said.

Mr Caldron said the utility company could not continue to be funded without increasing electricity rates or taxes.

“That would be unfair particularly when our country is going through tough economic times,” he said.

However, he denied union claims that the government was going to privatise the company.

The government said Luz y Fuerza lost 32.5% of the energy that it generated or bought to distribute to its customers. It added that about half of the firm’s staff costs went toward pensions for 20,000 retired workers.

A crowd of about 10,000 people gathered in Mexico City to protest about the government’s intervention.

Pakistani soldiers patrol outside the main gate of army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Sunday.

At least 41 people were killed and dozens wounded in a blast Monday at a security forces checkpoint in northwest Pakistan, authorities said.

Pakistani soldiers patrol outside the main gate of army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Sunday.

About 45 people were injured in the explosion in the Shangla district in the volatile Swat Valley, said Syed Altaf Hussein, a senior government official in the area.

The explosion targeted a military vehicle, officials said.

The blast is the latest in a string of attacks in the country.

On Saturday, militants attacked the army headquarters in Rawalpindi, killing 11 military personnel and three civilians, according to the Pakistani military’s press office. Nine militants died in the attack.

A total of 39 hostages were freed Sunday morning after being held by five militants at the army headquarters.

Military officials said they have tightened security around army headquarters.

The attacks will not deter Pakistan from launching an offensive in South Waziristan, the Interior Ministry said. South Waziristan is one of seven districts in Pakistan’s tribal region along the Afghan border. Intelligence analysts consider it a haven for Islamic militants who have launched attacks in Pakistan and targeted U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

A date for the offensive in the area has not been announced.

The Shangla district east of Mingora is one of the areas where the military conducted search-and-destroy operations earlier this year. Troops targeted terrorist hideouts and reported the arrest of one militant leader and the death of another.

Mingora is the largest city in the Swat Valley, where the Pakistani military is battling Taliban militants for control.

U.N. representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide is under fire by critics who say he did not address election fraud.

The top United Nations official in Afghanistan on Sunday defended himself against allegations that he has been wary to publicly address problems in the country’s recent presidential election.

U.N. representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide is under fire by critics who say he did not address election fraud.

Clarifying his position at a news conference in Kabul on Sunday, Kai Eide admitted that the August 20 vote was marred by “widespread fraud.”

Eide, the special representative of the secretary-general for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), called the allegations against him “personal attacks against me and my integrity” by his recently fired deputy, Peter Galbraith.

“Some of these allegations are based on private conversations whilst he was a guest in my home for two months,” the Norwegian diplomat said, referring to Galbraith. “My view is that private discussions around the dinner table remain just that: private.”

Eide defended his decisions to open as many polling stations as possible, despite security concerns; denied allegations that he refused to share information with the Afghan electoral officials; and rebuked allegations that he “accepted that the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission) dropped its safeguards in order to bring President (Hamid) Karzai above 50 percent.”

“This is simply untrue,” he said. Eide stressed that his main focus is moving forward Afghanistan’s election process.

His comments come a week after Galbraith wrote a scathing op-ed in The Washington Post, accusing the United Nations of trying to cover up the real reason he was fired. Galbraith blamed Eide for “denying or playing down the fraud” in the election because “he was concerned that even discussing the fraud might inflame tensions in the country.”

“But in my view, the fraud was a fact that the United Nations had to acknowledge or risk losing its credibility with the many Afghans who did not support President Hamid Karzai,” Galbraith wrote.

Galbraith reportedly angered Karzai by calling for a complete recount after widespread allegations of election fraud and was abruptly recalled as Eide’s deputy on September 30.

In his October 4 op-ed, Galbraith said the disagreement was not about “how” UNAMA would respond to electoral fraud, but “whether” it would respond.

The final results from the August 20 presidential election have yet to be certified because of an ongoing partial recount of suspected ballots. Karzai said Sunday that “the delay in the announcement of the elections results has negatively affected the country’s security and economy.”

Karzai called for the immediate release of election results “so the people of Afghanistan know their future and come out of uncertainty caused by the Western media and some elements in Western countries.”

“The Afghans need to know whether they can determine their destiny or, despite elections, it is still foreigners who decide about it,” Karzai said

A Chinese court has sentenced six people to death for murder and other crimes during ethnic riots in Xinjiang region in July, state media have said.

Nearly 200 people were killed during the riots between ethnic Uighurs and members of China’s dominant Han group.

A seventh person received a life sentence, the official Xinhua news agency said.

These are the first convictions relating to the riots - the worst ethnic clashes in China for decades.

The six sentenced to death at the Intermediate People’s Court in Urumqi - Xinjiang’s capital - were reported to be Abdukerim Abduwayit, Gheni Yusup, Abdulla Mettohti, Adil Rozi, Nureli Wuxiu’er, and Alim Metyusup.

As well as murder, state media reported that they were convicted of other crimes ranging from arson, leading mobs and causing “economic loss”.

Rising tensions

Tayirejan Abulimit was given the lesser punishment of life imprisonment because he admitted to charges of murder and robbery and helped the police capture Alim Metyusup.

The government says most of those killed in the riots were Han Chinese, but the exile activist group the World Uighur Congress (WUC) claims many Uighurs were also killed.

Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the WUC, said the trial had been a sham.

“The whole process lacked transparency and was unfair. They were not given any kind of legal aid,” he told Reuters news agency.

“Uighurs have no protection under the law.”

A protest by Uighurs in Urumqi erupted into violence on 5 July, leaving at least 197 people killed and another 1,700 injured.

Shops were smashed and vehicles set alight and passers-by set upon by rioters.

‘Heavy police presence’

Hundreds of people were detained after the violence and, according to Xinhua, 21 people have been charged.

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville says 14 people are still waiting to be tried.

“It is a very long way from Beijing but it is one of the most heavily policed parts of the country,” our correspondent says.

“The security forces are really keeping the peace between these two ethnic populations in that part of China.”

Further ethnic unrest in Xinjiang was provoked in August by a wave of attacks with hypodermic syringes that many Han blamed on Uighurs.

Growing tensions

The initial protest in July was over an earlier fight in a toy factory in Guangdong province - on the other side of China - that left two Uighurs dead and 14 others seriously injured.

On Saturday a court in Guangdong sentenced Xiao Jianhua to death and Xu Qiqi to a life sentence for their roles in the factory brawl.

The riots broke out in the western region of Xinjiang in July

Nine others were jailed for sentences of between five to eight years for the violence at the Xuri Toy Factory.

Tensions between the mainly-Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang and Han have been growing in recent years. Millions of Han have moved to the region in recent decades.

Many Uighurs want more autonomy and rights for their culture and religion - Islam - than is allowed by China’s strict centrist rule.

According to a government white paper on Xinjiang, released last month, the July riots were caused by Uighur separatists promoting an independent “East Turkestan”.

It also noted that during the violence 331 shops and 1,325 motor vehicles were destroyed or burned with many public facilities also attacked.

Stephen Gately was on the Spanish island with his partner Andrew.

A post-mortem examination will be carried out this week on the body of singer Stephen Gately, who died Saturday while vacationing on the Spanish island of Majorca.

Stephen Gately was on the Spanish island with his partner Andrew.

Gately, a member of the Irish band Boyzone, was on the island with his partner, Andrew Cowles, the band’s Web site said.

Relatives of the 33-year-old singer and actor insisted his death was a “tragic accident” and that no foul play was involved, Britain’s Press Association reported Monday.

Spanish police said there were “no signs of suspicious circumstances” after Gately was found dead at his home in the resort of Port Andratx on Saturday afternoon, PA added.

Monday is a Spanish public holiday, so the examination of Gately is expected to take place Tuesday.

In a statement on the Boyzone Web site, Gately’s fellow bandmates, Ronan Keating, Keith Duffy, Mikey Graham and Shane Lynch said: “We are completely devastated by the loss of our friend and brother, Stephen. We have shared such wonderful times together over the years and were all looking forward to sharing many more.

“Stephen was a beautiful person in both body and spirit. He lit up our lives and those of the many friends he had all over the world. Our love and sympathy go out to Andrew and Stephen’s family. We love you and will miss you forever, ‘Steo’.”

The four were reported to have flown out to the Mediterranean island following the news.

Boyzone made history in the United Kingdom with 16 consecutive Top Five hits, according to Ticketmaster’s Web site.

It’s one of Ireland’s best-selling bands, with six No. 1 singles in the United Kingdom, and four No. 1 albums, Ticketmaster said.

The group, which separated in 2000 to pursue solo projects, reunited in 2008.

Its greatest hits album — “Back Again … No Matter What” — was released last year.

Gately joined the band in 1993 after answering an audition ad. “A lot of people didn’t think we would make it out of Ireland back then,” he said previously on the group’s Web site.

“We were overwhelmed when Boyzone began to take off, it was incredible.”