Category: News

Happy 45th Birthday Alan Johnston, wherever you’re being held.

I’m still struggling with my free Chinese Phrasebook that came with this morning’s Times (if you bought it in a WH Smith), but in the meantime here are two excellent pieces from today’s Guardian. First up is a G2 cover story on the Gillian McKeith. Now I’ve never seen an episode of You Are What…

In a 21st century socially networked world, what’s the first thing that any budding journalist should do when they hear about someone being arrested for a crime? Yes – it’s check out whether they have a Myspace page. And I guess you could go on to find out whether they’ve got any photos on Flickr…

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.