Brad Friedel saved a penalty and Roque Santa Cruz scored his eighth goal in five games as Blackburn came from behind to beat Derby at Pride Park. Paul Jewell said before the game that Derby would need a further 30 points from their remaining 19 games to survive in the Premier League, but fans will not be feeling optimistic after seeing their side blow a significant opportunity to beat a team that had won just one league game since October.

Despite having played the better football Blackburn appeared to be on the ropes when, ten minutes after Matthew Oakley had given Derby the lead, Ryan Nelsen mistimed his challenge on Kenny Miller inside the area. Steven Howard was the man charged with securing Derby their first two-goal advantage of the season, but his penalty was desperately lacking in conviction and easily saved by Friedel low and barely a foot to his right.

Within a minute Blackburn were level. Claude Davis misjudged the flight of a cross from the right, allowing Benni McCarthy the space and time to bring the ball down and place a shot across the face of Lewis Price’s goal, which the goalkeeper did exceptionally well to palm away at full-stretch. Sadly for Derby he could only push the ball as far as Roque Santa Cruz at the far post, where the striker jabbed home with ease.

Just three minutes later David Bentley gave Blackburn the lead, running on to McCarthy’s lay-off 30 yards out and fizzing in a low first-time drive that swerved away from Price’s outstretched fingertips before nestling in the bottom corner of Derby’s net.

Perhaps Blackburn are simply getting used to conceding first - this was the tenth consecutive game in which they have done so - but even so, the manner of their going behind must have felt frustrating. Derby were yet to register a shot on goal when Matthew Oakley spun smartly away from Ryan Nelsen in the area after 27 minutes, creating room for Tyrone Mears’s ball to reach Giles Barnes inside the area before collecting the winger’s first-time pass and nutmegging Brad Friedel.

Derby almost found an equaliser before half-time, Brad Friedel only just parrying Matthew Oakley’s low drive round the upright as he crouched awkwardly at his near post. The second-half, however, proved less fruitful - and there were few scares for Blackburn once Friedel had pushed away Benny Feilhaber’s 20-yard effort four minutes in.

Instead Blackburn came close to extending their advantage on more than one occasion - Morten Gamst Pedersen cutting in to the flank but seeing his shot blocked by Davis when he probably should have played in McCarthy. Pedersen came close again after an hour with a free-kick from 25 yards that curled just wide.

Price did well to tip over a header from Santa Cruz with a quarter of an hour remaining, and moments later Bentley let fly from the edge of the box, only to see the ball thud against Price’s left-hand post. Jewell sent on Jon Macken for Miller for the final ten minutes in a bid to galvanise Derby, but they remained unable to fashion any serious chances, and Blackburn closed the game out without any great trouble

Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son Bilawal will take her place as the leader of Pakistan’s biggest opposition party, a close relative said today.

Bilawal Zardari, a history student at Christ Church College, Oxford, will be named chairman of the Pakistan Peoples party (PPP). But it would be largely a symbolic role and he would continue his studies, according to the relative who was taking part in an emergency meeting of the party in the Bhuttos’ home town of Naudero in Sindh province southern.

Keeping a member of the Bhutto dynasty as a figurehead at the top of the party would help maintain its unity, senior officials argued. But the day-to-day running of the party would be left in the hands of senior party officials and the slain leader’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

Bilawal Zardari is due to read his mother’s will today, and the party leadership must also decide whether to take part in elections that are due to go ahead on January 8.

Many in the PPP argued that there should be no delay, in part because the party would benefit from a sympathy vote in the wake of Bhutto’s assassination on Thursday. But officials of President Pervez Musharraf’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), have hinted the election could be put off for a few months.

PRIME Minister John Howard’s hand-picked climate change envoy says APEC is unlikely to deliver big breakthroughs on global warming.

And he says the United States will not accept emissions trading until there is a new president.

Former Macquarie Bank deputy chairman Mark Johnson says APEC economies were “not at a level yet where there is a common aspiration” about how to reduce the risks of global warming.

“There will certainly be no targets (agreed in September). There’s not that degree of commonality,” Mr Johnson said in an interview in Canberra on Tuesday.

He said national environmental reforms now being considered by the US Congress were unlikely to yield change “until the next president”.

“I think it will take a long time to get to emissions trading in the United States,” he said.

But Mr Johnson said next month’s meeting of APEC leaders in Sydney could deliver business some much-needed priorities in areas such as improving energy efficiency and support for new emissions reduction technology.

Mr Johnson met Mr Howard privately in Canberra late yesterday to outline business priorities for the APEC meeting.

Achieving progress on climate change and energy security is number one on the business wish list.

Mr Johnson was appointed by Mr Howard in June in a special outreach role to encourage regional economies to come up with a co-operative approach to climate change.

He is also chairman of APEC’s high-powered business advisory council. In a new report to APEC leaders handed to Mr Howard yesterday, the business delegation calls for September to deliver transparent rules and incentives to deal with the challenges of global warming and energy security, and a bolder approach to free trade and investment liberalisation.

The wish list also flags business support for significant changes to allow the free movements of labour across APEC members.

Business is preparing a push to allow skilled labour and guest workers from countries such as Mexico and the Philippines freer movement into developed economies within APEC, to tackle looming changes in the labour market, including the retirement of the baby boomers.

Mr Howard has previously played up the importance of the APEC meeting for breakthroughs on climate change, but the focus of key international players, particularly the US, has shifted to a United Nations gathering in December, and a separate meeting of polluters being spearheaded by US President George Bush.

Mr Johnson said business did not expect APEC to “change its nature”, but corporations in the member economies were looking for action from their political leaders across a range of fronts.

He said business would view the September gathering as a success if issues such as climate change were “elevated as a discussion item” and if economies could deliver principles on issues such as transparency of rules and regulations, and government incentives.

Trade is also a significant agenda item. Yesterday’s brief to Mr Howard calls for APEC leaders to consider a free trade area for the Asia-Pacific region.