Press release me, let me go

“Mass shooting slays most of Royal family’. No, it didn’t happen here but remember the extraordinary day when a Crown Prince shot dead most of Nepal’s Royals , including his father King Birendra, before turning the gun on himself? It...

Is it NIger (stress on the beginning)? Or is it NigER (long stress on the end)? A whole country and I’m not sure how to pronounce it. And neither, I’ve noticed, do British news-readers when (rarely) they have a news report from there...

Today we here in the press office thought wed take our lead from the Daily Express. So like the Desmond title we are going to give Egyptians our attention. However, sadly for those gossip-lovers out there, were not talking about the...

One of the things that I enjoy about working in the media is being in the thick of key moments as they happen. Until yesterday my two top faves were helping to cover events at Canary Wharf on September 11, 2001 for BBC London, and...

I'm in Nottingham at the Amnesty AGM – yesterday 300 of us laid red roses to spell 'Human Rights for China' in solidarity with the Tiananmen Mothers, who each year are prevented from doing likewise to commemorate the killing of their...

Barely a day goes by at the moment without the Chinese authorities’ appalling human rights record falling into the spotlight, and today is no exception. Sadly, early yesterday morning the human rights activist Hu Jia was sentenced to...

The sickening death of Banaz Mahmod is widely covered today. This, you’ll remember, is the case of the young Kurdish woman who was killed by members of her family in London for the “crime” of having a lover her family didn’t approve of...

I admit my blogs seem to be following a bit of a ‘Bob’ theme. Dylan yesterday, Marley today… I promise it won’t be Monkhouse tomorrow. But in his song, ‘The Real Situation’ Bob Marley describes how many Jamaicans living in poorer inner...

Bob Dylan summed up the current events surrounding Zimbabwe’s elections succinctly when he wrote this : “Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon...

Can’t beat a bit of stardust on a Friday, and well a big thanks to Emily Dugan in The Independent for providing it. She’s tracked down the TV presenter Konnie Huq. The former Blue Peter star is also one of the 80 odd torchbearers when...

"Shameful”, “inhumane”, “oppressive”, “indefensible”, “adversarial”, “wholly unjustified”, a “blemish” on Britain’s reputation, and treatment that falls "seriously below the standards to be expected of a humane and civilised society”...

Elections in Zimbabwe are never uneventful. Just three days to go now and the country’s opposition party supporters and members are definitely feeling the heat. Amnesty’s Zimbabwe researcher has just returned from mission where he has...

It’s an old media trick (and Rageh Omaar’s already done it on ITV earlier this week ), but it works – so today I’m starting off with ‘Iraq In Numbers’. To quote Amnesty’s (well-titled) ‘Carnage and despair’ report, the figures tell a...

I was thinking about this the other day – surely Iraq has been the most reported-on war in the entire history of the world. Well, ok, the Second World War got a lot of coverage (books, television programmes) but my theory is that it...

One of the parallels between events in Tibet and those in Burma last year – apart from the obvious involvement of monks and the use of military might to crush them – is the way in which footage is finding its way out of the country...

The countdown is on. This Thursday marks five years since the invasion of Iraq. To mark the anniversary, Amnesty International has put out a briefing document today detailing the wide range of human rights violations that have been...

Most people are counting the pennies after the Government has increased taxes on a bottle of wine by 14 pence, and set higher taxes for car drivers in yesterday’s Budget. But is the Government counting the cost on the amount needed to...

OK so who cares about the budget? For us in the media team, it means but one thing: the issues that matter in the world of human rights get pushed aside with a few notable exceptions. So congrats to The Independent for leading on...

To coin a phrase that may become rather common in the run-up to 8 August, there’s a lot of news about China at the moment. First there was the ‘terrorist plot’ by ‘Uighur terrorists’ that the authorities ‘foiled’. Why the plague of...

Waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques have been saved! On Saturday – in a move anticipated and feared by many observers – outgoing US President George W Bush bravely stepped in to preserve the CIA’s right to use...