Yesterdays News

Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik died doing what they both lived to do - digging for the truth.

A veteran war correspondent, Marie Colvin wanted to highlight the harrowing atrocities she was witnessing on a daily basis, hoping that she could deliver the truth to our comfortable lounge rooms - where our large flat screen TV is housed - so that we should not feel so comfortable in the face of the desperate plight of innocent Syrian civilians being indiscriminately slaughtered. A wake up call to us all. Unfortunately, the lady with her trade mark black pirate's eyepatch was killed in Syria along with Ochlik, a young and talented French photo journalist last week.

It has been reported that the journalist's living quarters were targeted by the Assad regime forces who despised any foreign media reporting to the west on the violence that was erupting in the towns and cities. It has been reported that Colvin, a New York native who worked for London's The Sunday Times, died trying to get her shoes so that she could escape the massive shelling attack.

Colvin, 56, was the only British journalist inside the Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr and although aid workers have been trying for days to repatriate her body back to the States, the situation is so dangerously grim that it appears Colvin's body may have to be buried inside Syria.

Capt. Francesco Schettino, the Italian Captain who abandoned his post when his ship needed him most, is being vilified by the press and the passengers he left to fend for themselves. Schettino, who is now living with the fallout from his decision that terrifying evening to save himself before his holidaying flock, recounted his version of events before prosecutors and a judge at a preliminary hearing Tuesday. The judge deferred an immediate decision as to whether he should stay jailed, as requested by prosecutors, with charges being amassed as grievous as manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship. The captain could face up to 12 years in prison on the abandoning ship charge alone.

Still in the wake of passengers recounting their ordeal with no directions given by crew members on how to evacuate a sinking ship, everyone was left to their own devices - 'every man for himself.' With stories still emerging of heroism amidst the total confusion, it is hard to imagine a ship carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew to have come out of this horrendous nightmare with so few fatalities.

Damning audio tape from the night in question has come forward from the Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco highlighting Capt. Francesco Schettino's  hesitation to act on demands that he must go back to the Costa Concordia cruise liner to oversee his ship's evacuation. Excuses were heard from the disgraced Capt.  that he could oversee any evacuation from the safety net of his life boat. He resisted De Falco's repeated orders to return to the flagging vessel to give much needed support and help to those still left unaided, plus assess the damage in order to give the Coast Guard a clear picture of what was happening and how many stranded people they were dealing with.

Syria saw more armed clashes erupting over the weekend, killing at least 15 civilians and six government troops, activists say.

Isolated and faced with a possible civil war, Syria appears to be bending toward allowing Arab League observers in as a step toward ending the conflict.

The Al-Arabiya TV channel says it has information from the Qatari prime minister that Syrian President Bashar Assad will sign an observer deal but gives no further details.

Last month Syria agreed to an Arab League plan but baulked at its implementation.

The foreign minister of Oman, speaking to reporters ahead of a Gulf Co-operation Council meeting in Saudi Arabia, also said on Sunday he is "optimistic" that Syria will sign the protocol within 24 hours "and save the Arab world from foreign intervention".

The UK has been there before and nothing is going to change the simple fact there is no money left in the pot to give Public Servants.

There has been a summer of discontent and now the country is embarking on the winter of greater discontent with close to 2 million British public sector workers going out on strike. This will be marked as the largest walkout in many decades.

The Unions - rather. their bosses - object to government plans to make their members pay more and work longer to earn their pensions. It has been a repeat of the 1926 strike action where 2 million public sector workers left their desks over the same issue - pensions. Affecting schools, hospitals, airports, ports and government offices where as many as 1,000 co-ordinated demonstrations will be out on British streets.

Airports have endured major disruptions at border controls as immigration staff join the protest.

BAA warned it could take arriving passengers up to 12 hours to clear immigration, which will have a knock-on effect on arriving and departing flights.

To avoid the disruption, some airlines cancelled flights into the UK Wednesday.

Emirates has cancelled EK029 from Dubai to London Heathrow and EK030 from London Heathrow to Dubai. Other carriers, including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Cathay Pacific, have been advising passengers due to land in the UK today to re-book for alternative dates to avoid the risk of lengthy queues at immigration.

The 24-hour strike disrupted courts, job centres, driving tests and council services, such as libraries, community centres and refuse collections. Highways Agency staff will be on strike, as will many Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).

Three out of four schools in England were affected by striking teachers with the Department for Education saying it believed that more than half of England's 21,700 state schools (58%) closed, with a further 13% partially open. About 13% operated as normal, while the rest (16%) are unknown.

While the Chancellor urged that more talks should take place, he pointed out that countrywide strikes would achieve nothing but weaken the economy even further and would end up costing jobs.

The Chancellor George Osborne gave a no-nonsense speach yesterday in the House of Commons reiterating his gloomy forecasts for the future, where everyone had to tighten their belts. "It will be tough, but necessary." He said, "Much of Europe now appears to be heading into a recession caused by a chronic lack of confidence in the ability of countries to deal with their debts. We will do whatever it takes to protect Britain from this debt storm, while doing all we can to build the foundations of future growth."

With the British embassy closing it's doors in Tehran and evacuating all it's staff following the outrageous attack on the embassy building on Tuesday, which saw massive crowds of Iranians burning British flags, breaking through the front gates to the embassy and storming the offices, ransacking them as they went.

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague in a follow up has ordered the immediate closure of the Iranian embassy in London with a deadline of 48 hours for all Iranian diplomats and staff to leave the country. He made it quite clear, that the violent and destructive protests in Iran could not have taken place without some degree of consent from Iranian authorities. He did not go as far as to say they were entirely instigated by them.

The violent incident was a mass protest over sanctions imposed by Britain on the Tehran government over it's continued nuclear programme.

A ban on British financial institutions dealing with Iran and its central bank last week, Britain has called for further measures and a diplomatic source said London would now support a ban on oil imports from the Islamic Republic.

Hague said Iranian ambassadors across the European Union had been summoned to receive strong protests over the incident. But Britain stopped short of severing ties with Iran completely.

Addressing the Commons, Mr Hague said Tehran should be “ashamed” of the events that took place yesterday.

The attacks come two days after the Iranian parliament approved a Bill reducing diplomatic relations with Britain following London’s support of recently-upgraded US sanctions on Tehran.

The Bill - which marks a new low point in diplomatic tensions between London and Tehran - requires Iran and Britain to withdraw their ambassadors from each other’s country and reduce representation to the level of charge d’affaires.

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said: "The United States condemns this attack in the strongest possible terms. It is an affront not only to the British people but also the international community," Clinton said at a news conference in South Korea.

Protesters included members of the paramilitary basij brigades, under the control of Iran's Revolutionary Guards which outlined that this co-ordinated attack could not have happened without top Iranian brass signing off on it.

The scenes of violence and destruction were all reminiscent of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy, prompting William Hague to accuse Iran of breaching the Vienna convention.