Category: News

A terrifying account.

I’m sure you’ll be as relieved as I am that the UK Threat Level has been brought down to SEVERE which means “an attack is highly likely”. Obviously, having come off CRITICAL, when an attack was “imminent” we can rest a little bit – but not too much! In the meantime, airport security restrictions have…

There are some awfully cynical letters in today’s Independent. I’m very cynical myself!

You don’t want to take any liquid onto a plane – it might be explosive. Still – best to get rid of them in a large vat in a crowded airport lounge.

Mediaguardian’s carrying a story talking about how ITV News rolled out a news special to follow events today. They may well have, but at around 7.10am this morning when the BBC was carrying live coverage of John Reid and Douglas Alexander reading a live statement (also carried on Five Live), GMTV was in an ad…

Only the other day, I was attempting to lampoon the new government Threat Level index. At the time we were on Severe, but at 6.00am this morning we went to CRITICAL. This means “an attack is expected imminently”. As the world and his mum now knows, anti-terrorist police and security services have foiled a plot…

This evening two men were charged by police with intercepting phone messages. I’ve no idea at this point what’s actually happened, but as far as I can see there are a few ways that this might have happened: * An unchanged pin used by dialling a phone and entering the number. This won’t work on…

Threat Level. It sounds like a bad action TV series doesn’t it? Well for years now America has had its own Homeland Security Advisory Scheme. Here’s what it looks like: Currently America’s on Elevated – the middle rung if you like. Obviously, we in the UK were really left out by this. It might be…

Who says that even journalists in warzones aren’t competitive? Listen to Stuart Hughes’s piece from late last night describing the BBC’s coverage of the day’s evacuation of British citizens from Beirut.

As you may or may not know, a US TV presenter (journalist?), Katie Couric, is takeover the anchor job on the CBS Evening News in September. This is seen as something of a big thing in the states, since she’s a woman, and they’ve not actually had a solo female network news anchor in the…

Wow. ITN and the Daily Express spent £65,000 on a mobile phone video clip of the police entering an East London house in a raid this morning. To say that the quality is dreadful really doesn’t do it justice. It’s not even as though it reveals anything substantial apart from the fact that a lot…

Tragically, on the day that John Simpson put up a sterling defence for journalists doing real work out in Iraq, and not just being holed up in the Green Zone in Bagdhad, two British journalists working for CBS television have been killed by a roadside bomb. Simpson was responding to complaints from Rageh Omaar, quoted…

This being the end of May, it also marks the end of the so-called Everest season. It’s that brief window when the weather allows climbers to attempt to ascend the world’s highest mountain. But this year an awful lot of climbers have died on the mountain. Every year, the number of parties attempting to summit…