323 items found
Jon Snow
Few of us thought we’d live to see the day when a Labour party conference would rise as one to their feet in a standing ovation for Peter Mandelson. But today they did. Of course, we have seen it before – when Michael Heseltine did the same for the improbable electoral prospects of John Major.
Jon Snow
For what it is worth, and it is worth very little, I think the Aussies are going to win the Lords test today. They will get the remaining 200 runs with one wicket to spare, and I say this after watching them for the two hours before bad light stopped play last night and watching most…
Jon Snow
A New York judge has sentenced Bernie Madoff to 150 years – a verdict that will bring joy to many but relief to very few. He is likely to take the innermost secrets of his Ponzi scheme, in which he defrauded $65bn out of his investors, to the grave. So how many more will follow…
Today’s attack on a police training school in Lahore could be part of a worrying trend. This was not suicide bombing, but a commando-style raid, as per the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team which left seven dead in the same city earlier this month, and the attacks on the hotels in Mumbai, India last…
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…
I’ve just interviewed Sri Lanka’s top spin bowler, Muttiah Muralitharan, about a story that’s doing the rounds. Conspiracy? Collusion with terrorists? He says it’s just a load of spin. Was the attack on the Sri Lanka test team and the umpires an inside job? Quite an allegation – but that’s what’s been suggested. The Pakistan captain,…
Jon Snow
I return from my “hostile environment” course with the word exsanguate ringing in my ears. It’s not a word I knew. But you cannot deal with battlefield scenarios without coming across the appalling prospect of an arterial bleed. Pumping red, the stuff exsanguates from the body, and the only response, if it is in the…
I’ve just had a very insightful chat with Ahmed Rashid, doyen of the Lahore journalism set, the best-selling Taliban-Qaida watcher and described by Christopher Hitchens as “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter”. His latest book, Descent into Chaos, documents Pakistan’s apocalyptic downward spiral. So what did he make of what went on in the upmarket Gulberg…