When Islamic State seized Mosul in summer 2014, the Iraqi city’s Syriac Orthodox Christians were given an ultimatum: convert to the jihadists’ extreme Salafist Islam, pay the jizya religious tax, or die. Two years on, those who fled are still not safe. Sarmad Ozan, a 25-year-old engineering graduate who was deacon of his church in […]
Read moreChilcot’s forgotten witnesses – Britain’s Iraqi diaspora (VIDEO)
The 2003 Iraq invasion and occupation left at least 500,000 dead, scattered refugees to the wind and threw the region into chaos. Yet as Sir John Chilcot delivers his long-delayed Iraq Inquiry report, the silence of Iraqis themselves is deafening. “If the United Nations said themselves Iraq can’t import enriched baby powder milk, ambulances and […]
Read moreEXCLUSIVE: Trident whistleblower William McNeilly breaks silence ahead of London demo (VIDEO)
MPs will soon vote on whether to renew Britain’s aging Trident nuclear weapons system. Ahead of Saturday’s anti-nukes protest in London, Royal Navy submariner-turned-whistleblower William McNeilly broke his silence and spoke exclusively to RT. In May 2015, McNeilly, 26, leaked a report exposing 30 safety and security failures documented over his three-month tour on board […]
Read more‘Treated like animals’: Children brutalized in Calais ‘Jungle’ (VIDEO)
RT UK journalist Rob Edwards, who was attacked by a knife-wielding gang while reporting from the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp, says refugee children resort to violence because European governments have dehumanized them. The so-called ‘Jungle’ camp, near the French port town of Calais, is home to around 5,000 migrants and refugees, many fleeing war, poverty and […]
Read moreCost of essentials in UK up 28% from pre-crash levels
Low-income families are significantly worse off today than they were in 2008, a new report has revealed. The cost of basic necessities has soared by around 28 percent. First published at RT.com/uk The independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) found that the cost of a minimum standard of living has risen sharply since the start of the financial […]
Read moreInterview with explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes
George Eliot once opined that adventure is not something outside man, but within. If so, the well of intrepidity within Sir Ranulph Fiennes – surely the world’s greatest living explorer – must be as bottomless as the pit of perdition. This summer brings a chance to find out. For the rover has returned to talk […]
Read moreThe News Agents on Resonance104.4fm, Episode 17
Lara Pawson discusses her new book ‘In the Name of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre (IB Tauris May 2014). On 27th May 1977, a small demonstration against the MPLA, the ruling party of Angola – led to the slaughter of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people. These dreadful reprisals are little talked of […]
Read moreNHS funding increase needed as financial crisis looms
Read the original on Left Foot Forward > The NHS inevitably faces a ruinous financial crisis by 2015/16 unless it receives a significant financial injection, according to a new report from The King’s Fund. With more than a quarter of trusts already in deficit, the report, entitled The NHS productivity challenge: experience from the front line, warns that […]
Read more1.4 million now on zero hours contracts
Read the original here on Left Foot Forward > Shocking new figures from the Office for National Statistics show that British employers are using about 1.4 million ‘zero-hours’ contracts, far exceeding last years’s estimates of between 250,000 and 1 million. This follows Ed Miliband’s recent pledge to end “exploitative” use of zero hours contracts, characterised […]
Read moreThe News Agents on Resonance104.4fm, Episode 16
Sudan and South Sudan James Copnall is author of A Poisonous Thorn in our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan’s Bitter and Incomplete Divorce. He was the BBC correspondent for Sudan and S. Sudan from 2009-12 and previously BBC correspondent for Ivory Coast and Morocco. Featured interview with Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque and extracts from her film ‘The Longest Kiss’ […]
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