Iraq crisis: Iraqi minority says massacre of civilians not over yet
A leading Yazidi politician said yesterday that he was preparing to make a last stand in his home village in northern Iraq, as members of the religious minority warned that another massacre of...
View ArticleIsrael-Gaza conflict: ‘Israel must stop punishing Gaza’s people,’ pleads UN...
The United Nations' top humanitarian official in the Middle East yesterday issued an impassioned appeal for a new deal for Gaza to end the "collective punishment" of its 1.8 million inhabitants imposed...
View ArticleIsrael-Gaza conflict: 'Stop collective punishment of Gaza's people,' pleads...
The United Nations' top humanitarian official in the Middle East yesterday issued an impassioned appeal for a new deal for Gaza to end the "collective punishment" of its 1.8 million inhabitants imposed...
View ArticleReally, it's as if Leveson never happened
One morning last week, I woke to the solemn tones of the right-wing commentator Anne Atkins on Radio 4, offering her reflections on the suicide of the actor Robin Williams. Atkins opened with an...
View ArticleThe new death etiquette: short, shared, shallow
It's a mark of the long reach of technology's grappling hook that the death of the actor and comedian Robin Williams – to be followed only a few hours later by the passing of Lauren Bacall – should...
View ArticleIraq crisis: Fighting resumes at Mosul dam a day after Barack Obama claims...
Fighting has reportedly resumed at the strategic Mosul dam in northern Iraq just a day after Barack Obama claimed victory reclaiming it from Islamist militants. The President said US air strikes had...
View ArticleIsrael-Gaza conflict: Peace shattered by rocket fire and air strikes hours...
A temporary truce between Israel and Hamas has collapsed once again after rockets were reportedly fired from the Gaza Strip hours before the latest ceasefire was due to end. Israeli forces resumed...
View ArticleIraqi and Kurdish forces retake Mosul dam, they say, in victory over Isis
Assisted by two days of US air strikes, Iraqi and Kurdish forces wrested back control of the country’s largest dam from Islamic militants on Monday, a military spokesman in Baghdad said as fighting was...
View ArticleFour members of far-right Jewish Lehava group arrested during protest against...
Four far-right Jewish protesters were arrested in Israel on Sunday as they and several hundred other demonstrators picketed a wedding between an Arab Muslim man and a Jewish-born woman who converted to...
View ArticleIraq crisis: British troops will not set foot on Iraqi soil, David Cameron...
No British troops will be sent to fight in Iraq, David Cameron promised today – despite his earlier ringing warning that the spread of Sunni extremism in the war torn country poses a direct threat to...
View ArticleDubai deports world’s most pierced man over 'black magic' fears
The world’s most pierced man, who has more than 453 piercings on his body and face, has been deported from Dubai over what he claims are fears from airport staff he could be practising "black magic"....
View ArticleJapanese man Haruna Yukawa is ‘captured and beaten in Syria by UK jihadists’
A Japanese man has apparently been captured and beaten by Islamist militants in Syria who have posted videos of the incident on the internet. Japanese diplomats are trying to verify the reports. The...
View ArticleIraq crisis: Islamic State's message to America - 'We will drown you all in...
Islamic militants losing ground in Iraq under fire from the US military have threatened to launch terrorist attacks on American soil in revenge. A video posted online by the Islamic State (Isis) warned...
View ArticleIraq crisis: Mosul dam breach 'could have been catastrophic' says Obama
Barack Obama has insisted that the US has made a “major step forward” after American air strikes assisted Kurdish and Iraqi forces in driving back the Islamic State from one of Iraq’s key dams. The US...
View ArticleIsrael-Gaza crisis: Ceasefire extended amid warnings 'circle of violence'...
A 24-hour extension to the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza has been agreed in last minute talks in Cairo, Israeli and Palestinian officials have confirmed. But the chief Palestinian delegate to truce...
View ArticleWhat a rising demand for the sperm of IDF soldiers and a "fun" questionnaire...
The public debate in this country about the Gaza crisis has some familiar features. The public at large deems Israel's actions as war crimes, while the government and mainstream media justify Israel’s...
View ArticleIsrael-Gaza conflict: Eight Palestinians killed in air strikes
Israeli air strikes killed at least eight Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and also hit a mosque in Beit Hanoun on Monday. Meanwhile, militants and kept up rocket fire on Israel, as Egypt pressed on with...
View ArticleThe British state has a dishonourable tradition of complicity with extremists
Theresa May threatens jihadists with Asbos; Boris Johnson demands presumption of guilt on those who travel to Syria and Iraq; David Davis and George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, want...
View ArticleQatar and the reason US hostage Peter Theo Curtis has been released
So once again, the Fairy Godmother of the Middle East steps on to the stage. Qatar, the nation which supposedly paid £40m to free 13 nuns from Syrian captivity five months ago – if true, the most...
View ArticleScott Rogers: US TV host and British dance teacher shot dead by son-in-law
Scott Rogers, a US TV host and former Suffolk dance teacher has been shot dead by his son-in-law at his home in Louisiana, police have said. Mathew Hodgkinson, 36, who is thought to be his son-in-law...
View ArticleUS embassy stormed by Libyan militia — who find the place empty
A Libyan militia claims to have taken over the US embassy in Tripoli — but found the building empty, after officials had already been evacuated, and had apparently only taken over a residential annex...
View ArticleBaby dies after allegedly being left in car by parent who went to work
A 16-month-old child has died after it was forgotten by one of its parents and left in a car for several hours, a Swiss prosecutor has said. Local authorities claim the child had been left for a...
View ArticleTwo killed in Ecclerigg after fireworks shed blaze
The bodies of a man and a woman have been found after an explosion in a shed containing fireworks in Ecclerigg. It is thought the two casualties may be firework technicians who had been booked to stage...
View ArticleSeized Isis laptop reveals WMD plans
A laptop owned by an Isis militant appears to show the group’s plans to develop and use chemical weapons including the bubonic plague. The computer, shown to Foreign Policy reporters, was found to...
View ArticleIsis isn’t the first group to use the butcher’s knife as an instrument of...
Chopping off someone’s head or sawing it off or slicing it off is about gore. Blood. Pain. Grotesquerie. Death by the blade is about shame, suffering in an animal slaughterhouse. It’s the most...
View ArticleJackie Chan's son Jaycee arrested in Beijing on drugs charges
Jaycee Chan, the son of martial arts movie legend Jackie Chan, has been arrested in Beijing on drugs charges. Chinese police confirmed that they found more than 3.5ounces of marijuana at the home of...
View ArticleSyria conflict: President Assad finally turns on Isis as government steps up...
As the US military strikes Isis in Iraq, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have significantly stepped up their own campaign against militant strongholds in Syria, carrying out dozens of air strikes...
View ArticleIsraeli-Gaza conflict: Holocaust survivors accuse Israel of ‘genocide’
Dozens of Holocaust survivors, together with hundreds of Jewish people around the world, have accused Israel of “genocide” for the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the conflict...
View ArticleThe world must 'wake up' to the scale of the crisis in northern Iraq, warns ...
The international community must "wake up" to the "vast scale" of the humanitarian crisis in northern Iraq, a British aid worker has warned. Ravi Singh, founder of the Sikh humanitarian charity Khalsa...
View ArticleJackie Chan's son Jaycee Chan arrested in Beijing on drugs charges
Jaycee Chan, the son of martial arts movie legend Jackie Chan, has been arrested in Beijing on drugs charges. Chinese police confirmed that they found more than 3.5ounces of marijuana at the home of...
View ArticleThe Gaza rift: ‘The sense is the Americans are disgusted with Netanyahu’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has denied reports of a crisis in US-Israeli relations over the Gaza war, after the state department confirmed a new policy of placing weapons...
View ArticleMinisters appoint security envoy to Kurdistan in fight against Isis
Downing Street today appointed a new security envoy to the Kurdistan region of Iraq in a bid to strengthen efforts to combat the advance of Isis. Lieutenant General Sir Simon Mayall, a senior defence...
View ArticleThe Netherlands plan a nationwide consultation on the controversial Black...
The Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands has announced that he will be organising a consultation on the role that Black Petes should play during the festive opening of the Sinterklaas season this...
View ArticleIraq crisis: PM calls off aid air drops as ‘desperate’ situation is made safe
Britain has suspended humanitarian aid air drops to refugees trapped on a mountainside in Northern Iraq after concluding that the situation was now “better than we had feared”. On Wednesday, David...
View ArticleIraq crisis: Nouri al-Maliki caves in to pressure and steps down as prime...
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has agreed to step down after he was disowned by the United States, Iran and the UN Security Council, amid his Government’s failure to halt the advance of the...
View ArticleThe Gaza rift: ‘The sense is that Americans are disgusted with Netanyahu’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has denied reports of a crisis in US-Israeli relations over the Gaza war, after the state department confirmed a new policy of placing weapons...
View ArticleGaza rift: ‘The sense is that Americans are disgusted with Netanyahu’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has denied reports of a crisis in US-Israeli relations over the Gaza war, after the state department confirmed a new policy of placing weapons...
View ArticleIraq crisis: Britain prepared to arm Kurdish fighters
The UK is prepared to send military equipment to Kurdish fighters battling the forces of Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq, a Government source has said. David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and...
View ArticleSyria crisis: British rapper turned Isis fighter posts image of himself...
A successful British rapper who left his west London home to join Isis in Syria is reported to have posted a photograph of himself holding a severed head on Twitter. Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 23,...
View ArticleIsrael-Gaza conflict: Only peace can prevent ‘disease explosion’ in Gaza,...
Gaza is at “massive risk” of a “communicable disease explosion” among its 1.8 million population unless there is an early durable peace and huge investment in the devastated electricity and water...
View ArticleIt's time for the international criminal court to rule on the conduct of the...
This article was jointly written with Mark McDonald, deputy head of Mansfield Chambers and founder of Labour Friends of Palestine. As of today, over 1,900 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli...
View ArticleIraq crisis: Sunni and Shia tribal and clerical leaders agree to back new...
Both Sunni and Shia tribal and clerical leaders have given their conditional backing to Iraq’s new Prime Minister, in a move that could end political deadlock and ultimately contain an offensive by...
View ArticleHaider Al-Abadi: From fixing the BBC’s lifts to running Iraq
The man tasked with unifying Iraq to save it from a takeover by Islamic extremists used to be in charge of repairing lifts at the BBC, it has emerged. Haider Al-Abadi’s past as a lift engineer was...
View ArticleIsrael-Gaza conflict: Hamas meets extremists to discuss ceasefire
Hamas negotiators met with the Islamic militant group’s leadership in Qatar on Friday to discuss a proposal for a long-term truce with Israel, with an official saying the group was inclined to accept...
View ArticleFerguson riots: Ku Klux Klan raises 'reward' for officer who shot unarmed...
The South Carolina-based faction of the Ku Klux Klan's Missouri chapter is allegedly raising money as a reward for the white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in...
View ArticleIraq crisis: Britain sends spy plane and fresh aid packages as Isis massacres...
Eighty Yazidi men have been killed and a number of women and children kidnapped in an attack by Islamic State (Isis) militants in northern Iraq. Survivors of the assault told officials that the...
View ArticleIraq crisis: Britain sends spy plane and aid packages as Isis massacres 80...
Eighty Yazidi men have been killed and a number of women and children kidnapped in an attack by Islamic State (Isis) militants in northern Iraq. Survivors of the assault told officials that the...
View ArticleIsrael-Gaza conflict: Hamas leadership considers ceasefire offer
Hamas negotiators met with the Islamic militant group’s leadership in Qatar on Friday to discuss a proposal for a long-term truce with Israel, with an official saying the group was inclined to accept...
View ArticleIraq crisis: US launches fresh drone strikes
Fresh airstrikes have been launched by US drones against Isis forces close to a village where there were reports that dozens of civilians had been massacred. An estimated 80 people from the Yazidi...
View ArticleTouching Robin Williams tribute released by residents in Syria as a call for...
The people of Kafranbel, Syria, have released a poignant tribute to the late actor Robin Williams, in a bid to draw international attention to the bloodshed within the crisis-hit country. Kafranbel is...
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