Paraic O'Brien is a Foreign Affairs Correspondent for Channel 4 News.
Paraic's investigations include the multi-award winning "Bruce Lee, King of Romania's Sewers", a searing film about the subterranean life of Bucharest's drug addicts. His expose of how the global online game Habbo Hotel was putting children at risk, resulted in a mass exodus of investors. His investigation into the death of Alois Dvorzac in a British detention centre exposed serious flaws in the immigration system.
He was the first TV reporter on the ground in Brixton and Croydon as the riots broke out in 2011. He also once had a minor altercation with Russell Brand.
Before joining Channel 4 News he worked at the BBC as an investigations reporter for BBC London News and Newsnight on occasion. Prior to that he was a community worker in Ireland and south London.
We have been looking at another concern raised by former Oxfam head of safeguarding, Helen Evans – the safety of children volunteering in charity shops across the country’s high streets. She told us she had repeatedly flagged concerns to Oxfam and to outside authorities about allegations of child abuse in the charity’s shops.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has met Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi and called on her to help the Rohingya refugees. Mr Johnson said Burmese authorities should fully investigate the violence against the Rohingya minority and create the ‘right conditions’ for them to return to their homes in Rakhine state. More than 620, 000 Rohingya…
At the time he was caught by a crowd of onlookers Darren Osborne shouted “I want to kill all Muslims – I did my bit” – yet he had denied murder and attempted murder in court. Today it took the jury just an hour to find him guilty. Osborne killed 51-year-old Makram Ali and injured…
The man accused of driving a van through Muslim worshippers outside a London mosque has denied he was behind the wheel. Darren Osborne denies injuring nine people and killing a 51-year-old man in Finsbury Park last June. But he told the court that he and two others had originally planned to target Labour leader Jeremy…
A loyalist “supergrass” who admitted the murders of five people has had his jail term slashed to six-and-a-half years for helping the police. Gary Heggarty was originally given a 35-year sentence for his crimes but turned state witness in 2009 and provided information on 55 murders in Northern Ireland, although the information only led to…
An apology, of sorts, from Donald Trump, and that doesn’t happen often. In a television interview with Piers Morgan, the President said he would apologise for retweeting a series of videos by a British far-right group, insisting he “knew nothing” about them. Mr Trump was speaking from the Swiss resort of Davos, where he’s been…
Such was the public rage over the men-only fundraiser where guests mixed with paid female hostesses that one of the organisers stepped down from his role on a government apprenticeship board. Some of the charities who benefited said they’d be sending back the money raised. And now the Presidents Club, which ran the event, is…
Scotland Yard says officers are now investigating another allegation of historical sexual assault, thought to involve the black cab rapist John Worboys. It’s emerged that Worboys was moved to London’s Belmarsh Prison over the weekend, prompting outrage from lawyers, who said it was “extremely distressing” for his victims.
In the United States, the government is lurching towards a financial shutdown unless a last-minute deal can be reached. The chaos on Capitol Hill is perhaps a fitting metaphor for Donald Trump’s first year in office – a year which has seen controversy after controversy, some broken promises but other ones delivered. His approval rating…
“The Wall is The Wall” and Mexico will pay for it. Remember the line? Donald Trump repeated it this morning, pushing back against his chief of staff John Kelly, who’d suggested the President’s position has ‘evolved’. Mixed messages aside, that wall, cuts to legal immigration and ‘extreme vetting’ of those arriving, are changing lives across…
President Trump’s former chief of staff Steve Bannon has been ordered by special counsel Robert Mueller to testify before a grand jury, according to the New York Times, as part of the investigation into whether there was any collusion between the Trump election team and Russia. It would be the first time someone from Mr Trump’s inner…
“Hate-filled, vile and racist” – that’s how President Trump’s comments on immigration have been described by a leading Democratic Senator who heard him refer to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as “shitholes”. It’s not just Democrats either. House Speaker Paul Ryan described the remarks as “very unfortunate, unhelpful.” From President Trump himself, there has…
If you believe the headlines that followed the publication of the White House exposé Fire and Fury last week then Donald Trump is incompetent with the attention span of a toddler. But what do the people who voted for him make of his first year in office? We’ve been to a Trump heartland in West…
Bipartisan, flexible and willing to compromise: Donald Trump? Really? He now seems happy to negotiate the thorny issue of immigration with Democrats and Republicans alike. It’s a far cry from his hardline election pledge. So after the very public break-up with the man behind that hardline direction, Steve Bannon, is President Trump moving towards the…
President Trump’s former right-hand man has backed away from damning remarks in a new book which sharply criticised the President and his oldest son. But Steve Bannon’s lengthy mea culpa hasn’t stopped Trump allies calling him “vindictive” and “out of touch with reality”.