Three days later, she was in Mexico City, where she lived for the next five months. It was an eye-opening experience. Yuridia was 18 and had never been away from her family. Up to that point, her only job had been baby-sitting. "It was a strange experience," she recalls. "I missed my family. I missed my friends. I missed Mesa. It was really hard and sometimes (during filming) you think maybe it was a mistake." Yuridia's homesickness became a major plot point during the show. She particularly missed her younger brother, Danny, who suffered from muscular dystrophy. And she was involved in an on-screen flirtation with a fellow contestant, Edgar Guerrero. However, the big selling point was Yuridia's singing. She possesses a strong, belting voice that soars on material with a melodramatic edge - perfect for singing florid Spanish-language pop.

CD 101.9 drops jazz

D-For and the list could on and on. I buy this music and listen at home or on CD in my car because I couldn't get it on your radio station. If you could take a poll, I think you would find that I am not alone. Until the program directors start being aggressive in finding new music and and be willing to give the listeners a chance to hear the music, I have the feeling that the fate of smooth jazz on radio is doomed. You lost some your audience to satellite radio because of this. People are actually paying to hear new and varied music. You think they would have stayed if they could have got the same music for free? How many people have attend the Liberty Jazz Festival? That should give you a clue that the fans/listeners are there. You just have to give them a better reason than Al Green and Sade to listen.

If it caters only for cars, the new Forth bridge is a road to nowhere

How it is resolved may tell us more about the environmental will of Britain than any project outside Heathrow's third runway.

To replace the cables or add new ones would cost around a hundred times the bridge's original price of £17m. According to Transport Scotland, the work would take between five and seven years, during which time the bridge would be partly closed for 48 weeks and perhaps shut completely for 50 weekends. According to John Swinney, Scotland's finance secretary, an unrepaired bridge would need to close to heavy vehicles in 2013 and to all vehicles by 2019. The Scottish government's solution, announced last month, is a new bridge that, if construction begins in 2011, could be finished in 2017. "Doing nothing is not an option," Swinney said - the cliche of our times.