130 items found
Jon Snow
He was, according to my informant, in a car being driven by one Rev Al Miller – en route to the US Embassy in Kingston. Yes, the appropriately named Dudus Coke has been caught at a road block in Jamaica. Most had written him off suspecting he had fled to Latin America from whence –…
Jon Snow
There really must be another way. According to The Economist, 5 per cent of the world’s population abuses drugs. Yet the UN conference in Vienna has offered no new routes to combating this world-trashing menace. The Economist, for the second time in 20 years, calls for wholesale legalisation. In a recession the mere tax take…
Jon Snow
My visit to the literary festival in Cartegena found three of us in rare coalition meeting kids in the poorer barrios of the town.
Jon Snow
So MPs are finally beginning to dig around in what flowed from the banking system meltdown in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers collapse. Of intimate British interest is the Isle of Man’s involvement with the Icelandic bank Kaupthing. The Isle of Man used to be in the news for TT motor cycle racing. These…
Jon Snow
Once in a while the gods deal you an unexpected hand. I am attempting the apparently Latin-American impossible: Colombia to London inside 24 hrs. The signs are not good. An hour and a half to go to take-off, and no-one is at check-in either side of the desk. Then I see why. The previous flight…
Jon Snow
A great cloud of dust, a whoosh of excitable policemen, and a motorcade comes to a gravel-scattering halt outside my hotel here in Cartagena, in Colombia. The most awaited guest is arrived. Salman Rushdie ain’t pleased. The one condition on which he had come here was: no security, no motorcades. He was fuming as he…
Jon Snow
I am in the south looking north, in Latin America, in Colombia. The disconnect is acute. The biggest event of the day? The appearance of the Mexican and Colombian presidents at Davos. No, don’t think Davos rocks here in the Andean foothills, on the rolling desert along the coast. But Latino presidents on the world…
Jon Snow
It’s hot, humid and yet a sea breeze blows down the narrow streets to flutter the table cloths of the pavement cafes. Cartagena is on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Yellow, pink, white, blue houses compete for a ringside seat in this packed town. It’s a natural enough place to have a book festival. There…
Jon Snow
It’s rare for me these days to visit a completely new country. I’m beginning to run out of mainstream options. I think I’ve visited around 104, though I have never been to China (other than Hong Kong) or Brazil. Today I’m next door, in Colombia – a country twice the size of France with a…
Jon Snow
The death of towering literary figure like John Updike poses a problem for a jobbing hack like me. I’m no literary critic, but suddenly something happens that actually affects your inner being. It’s not quite the same as a bank bailout or even an Obama initiative on Islam. This is someone whose work helped to…