209 items found
Jon Snow
Look, let’s start with a confession. Beyond being a lifelong supporter of Bright & Hove Albion (I can no longer name a single member of the team), I know very little about football. So imagine my joy when, upon entering the office this morning, I discovered that that raft of great players who were in…
Jon Snow
US president Barack Obama heads for the Middle East and Europe this week. Having inaugurated his “opening” to the Muslim world during his inspired stop in Turkey on his first foreign foray, he heads for Egypt to make his keynote speech setting out his Middle East ambitions. The Turkey trip remains a touchstone of his…
Jon Snow
Gordon Brown talks of radical constitutional change. So does David Cameron. So does Nick Clegg. But is it going to happen? It was the 19th century radical John Bright who conjured the phrase “Mother of Parliaments”. It’s a cosy, reassuring concept and has often been distorted to suggest Westminster is the “Mother of Parliaments”.
WASHINGTON DC, USA – There are lots of questions that lots of people would like to ask former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But right now the only “known known” is that he is not answering any. Unlike his old mate, the former vice president Dick Cheney, who is far more visible and far more vocal…
Jon Snow
I am very struck by the huge response to both Snowblog and Channel 4 News this week – high-quality contributions and a number of very personal comparisons with what is happening in regard to disclosure of MPs‘ arrangements. Stan, as you return to work today after nine months without a job, I wish you well.
In my youth in Stroke City (as Londonderry/Derry became known by those who resisted being drawn into the sectarian maelstrom), the local brigade of the Provisional IRA was wreaking havoc, killing policemen and soldiers, blowing up businesses. I remember when no one talked of anything but the bombs. Visits to the walled city centre were…
Gordon Brown has announced a mini-surge of British troops in Afghanistan to help police the August presidential election there. He’s also promised a big increase in aid to Pakistan, with half of the money going to the Afghan frontier region, which Mr Brown has branded “the crucible of global terrorism”. His 15-page strategy document (UK…
Immigration minister Phil Woolas told Channel 4 News that relaxing the rules for Gurkhas further would mean up to 100,000 people coming to live in the UK. Is he right?
Jon Snow
Amazing scenes from Anfield, the home of Liverpool FC today, on the 20th anniversary of the disaster at Hillsborough. A total of 96 people died as the match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest was getting under in Sheffield way back in April 1989.
Jon Snow
A former CIA contact of mine with specialist knowledge on the Middle East, and good connections, suggests there could be moves inside the embryonic Netanyahu government to reopen the question of bombing Iran. Such rumours – and I will restate we are just talking about the reopening of a question – have to be taken…
If you’re the sort of person who lies awake at night worrying that the Taliban might get their hands on nuclear weapons, probably best you avoid watching Dispatches on this channel tonight. News correspondents all too often end up reporting the incremental ratcheting up of a problem. It’s startling to be confronted with the big…
Cuckoo clocks, cowbells and inviolable banking secrecy… that’s Switzerland. Except it’s changing. A story that’s crept off the financial pages into the headlines says that the Swiss bank UBS may be forced to reveal to the US authorities the names of up to 52,000 US citizens who allegedly have been evading taxes by putting their…
Jon Snow
We thought the collision of two satellites in outer space last week unlikely enough. Now we have the absurd spectacle of two submarines, one British, one French, so completely in their “Secret Squirreledness” that they’ve actually collided with each other. So secret, indeed, was the collision that we’ve only heard about it nearly two weeks…
Jon Snow
At first, the third place at the table on my train back from Coventry was taken up by a young Chinese woman. I asked her if she was a student. Very much not. She told me she had an economics PhD obtained from Leicester University and taught at Aston University. She came from Inner Mongolia.…