Home ยป Blogs
By Al Jazeera Staff in Middle East on June 1st, 2010
The Mavi Marmara nearing Ashdod Monday night. (Photo: AFP)

We'll once again be keeping tabs on the latest reaction to Israel's deadly attack on a flotilla of activists carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Yesterday's live coverage is here.

The death toll has been revised down to 10, according to the Israeli army, which also says seven Israeli soldiers were wounded in the attack. Those numbers have been impossible to confirm independently, because the Israeli army has restricted access to the ships, which have been towed to Ashdod port. (All times are GMT, except where noted.)

If you have comments.

By Al Jazeera Staff in Europe on May 5th, 2010
Photo by AFP

Britain has held what appears to be the tightest election race in a generation.

The Conservative party took the lead but failed to gain a clear parliamentary majority, leaving the UK with a hung parliament. Eyes are now on the Liberal Democrats, as the two main parties attempt to woo them into forming an alliance.

You can follow the the latest news from Al Jazeera's UK election team right here.  

1636 GMT It's not just Nick Clegg that David Cameron is going to have to convince of the merits of a coalition. As this story from the Financial Times shows, he faces a battle persuading his own party.

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on February 24th, 2010
photo from Getty Images

It's another dreary London day, but that's hardly why I am pissed off.  Expecting my usual doses of caffeine and adrenaline, I was terribly short-changed this morning, coffee notwithstanding.

The Guardian that usually can inspire, incite, or bring a smile to your grey days in the city, was tabloid-silly, narcissist, and void of interesting 'news stories'.

The coverage is predominantly centered on the editors' own narrow preoccupations, not their readers. For interesting stories one has to skip to the Society or Sports section. (A very interesting story about the British Premier League clubs owing 56 per cent of Europe's debt..!!)

Dreadful issue

By Omar Chatriwala in Americas on January 13th, 2010
Photo by Carel Pedre via Twitter

At 21:53GMT on Tuesday, the Caribbean nation of Haiti was hit by its strongest earthquake in more than 200 years, causing what is being described as "a catastrophe of major proportions".

Heavy casualties are feared after numerous buildings were levelled by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

This blog post, previously named "Haiti Earthquake: Latest updates", followed events in the immediate aftermath of quake.

Update | Latest blog posts:

By Teymoor Nabili in Middle East on December 13th, 2009
Photo from EPA

Is the Green Movement dead in Iran? Certainly the Government there would like you to believe so, as would Abbas Barzegar, writing in The Guardian.

The government's multilayered crackdown on the summer events has withered the green movement down to a dispersed core of intellectual and political elites with no clear agenda or ability to mobilise

By Barnaby Phillips in Europe on December 1st, 2009
Photo from EPA

The Dubai debt default  may create a larger crisis of confidence in heavily indebted economies. That's certainly the fear in European countries like Ireland and Latvia, but perhaps above all, here in Greece.

The Greek stock market tumbled last week, as investors took fright. Public finances are a mess; the government has just announced that the budget deficit is projected to be 12.7 per cent of GDP, which is more than double the previous estimate, and four times more than the theoretical limit set by the European Union. 

The Guardian today asks if Greece is the new Iceland. 

By Teymoor Nabili in Business on November 10th, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

The Guardian reports:

[A] senior [International Energy Agency] official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.


Washington's motive, apparently, is to prevent panic in the markets when traders realise the world has much less oil than we've been told.

The accusation may appear dramatic, but the Guardian's piece is not actually saying anything that wasn't already in the public domain.

Warnings about declining supply and the theory of Peak Oil, have been around for decades, and the IEA's estimates have long been regarded with scepticism.

By Teymoor Nabili in Business on November 8th, 2009
Photo by Reuters

Now that some of the most respected institutions in corporate banking have been implicated in - and some destroyed by - dubious ethical and financial practices, it should come as no surprise that the same foul odour of corruption is now being detected lingering in the corridors of smaller companies on Wall Street.

Thus, the emergence of the biggest case of insider dealing ever uncovered, now spreading to implicate more and more people.

The Guardian's Will Hutton likens it to a poisonous melange of the worst characters in popular fiction, engaged in

a seedy world of secret tips, kickbacks and disposable, pre-paid mobile phones.

The Los Angeles Times writes of

By Teymoor Nabili in Middle East on November 6th, 2009

The supposedly explosive revelations that Iran has another nuclear facility have turned out to be a damp squib, and perhaps not quite so deserving of the immediate action some were calling for.

"We found nothing to worry about," says the IAEA's Mohamed el Baradei.  

Despite Israel's loud claims that the Qom facility was undeniably for weapons purposes, the IAEA has concluded that it was just a hole in the mountain.

"The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things."

Many had greeted the initial revelations with some scepticsm anyway, but just as the Qom story fades,  fresh allegations have replaced it.

By Teymoor Nabili in Business on September 2nd, 2009

It seems that half the financial world is telling us to get ready for the "green shoots" to flower into an economic recovery, while the other half is warning us of a double dip (n.b. these proportions may vary wildly depending on recent economic data/today's market performance/the latest weather report).

Meanwhile, the film-making community is still trying to make sense of what went wrong in the first place.  

From next month, look out for Capitalism: A Love Story  - biting, big picture satire from Michael Moore. (Or, as The Guardian describes it, "the chubby defender of the US working class is lighting the touchpaper on a new Molotov cocktail to be hurled, this time at America's ruling class.")

Syndicate content