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23rd August 2023
By: Brian Whitaker
More information is gradually emerging about the mysterious private jet impounded at Lusaka airport in Zambia after a flight from Cairo, and enough is now known to suggest a possible explanation of what was going on. It appears that the Egyptians on board the jet had flown to Lusaka to buy gold… Read more
21st August 2023
By: Brian Whitaker
Last week Zambian drug enforcement officers searched and impounded a private jet after it landed at Lusaka airport on a flight from Cairo. It turned out there were no drugs on board but what the investigators found instead was startling: $5.7 million in cash and 127kg of what appeared to be gold… Read more
1st October 2022
By: Brian Whitaker
A British woman who became a prominent defender of Syria’s Assad regime resurfaced this week as an “international observer” for Russia’s sham referendums in Ukraine. Vanessa Beeley – described by Russian broacaster RT as “an independent investigative journalist” – told a news conference the voting… Read more
24th September 2022
By: Brian Whitaker
A British academic whose Twitter account is tagged as "Iran state-affiliated media" was the main author of a report on Islamophobia published this week with funding from the EU's Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme. The academic in question – former professor David Miller – is a director… Read more
17th September 2022
By: Brian Whitaker
A man has been sentenced to death in Libya after converting from Islam to Christianity, according to local news reports.  Details are scarce, but Dhiaa al-Din Ahmed Miftah Balao – described as an information technology graduate – appears to have previously been a devoted Muslim and is said to have… Read more
25th August 2022
By: Brian Whitaker
The Egyptian authorities have got themselves in a tangle over photography. They want the country to be seen as an attractive tourist destination and if photographers would just focus on nice things, like feluccas sailing on the Nile and sunsets over the pyramids, all would be well. The problem,… Read more
8th August 2022
By: Brian Whitaker
Shortly before Christmas in 2012 a mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in the United States left 20 children and six teachers dead. Eight months later an incendiary bomb hit a school in Syria's Aleppo province, killing at least 10 students on the spot. Six other victims died later and… Read more
1st August 2022
Thirteen people charged in connection with the world's worst crane disaster have gone on trial in Saudi Arabia for a third time, after previously being acquitted twice. The latest retrial in the seven-year-old case follows a decision by the kingdom's Supreme Court to quash the earlier verdicts.… Read more
23rd July 2022
By: Brian Whitaker
A few years ago Egypt's Supreme Council for Media Regulation decreed that gay people must not appear in print or audio or visual media "except in recognition and acknowledgment of their misconduct". In other words, if they are to be seen or heard at all, gay people should always be presented in a… Read more
22nd July 2022
Following Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher advocated using banned chemical weapons against Iraqi forces, declassified documents show. Despite the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting their use, Thatcher repeatedly pressed the US to be ready to… Read more