"Five days later, the same doctor came back online long enough to describe a nightmare scenario: the first thing he told Qorashi was he could still see “blood in the streets”, during his journey to work at the hospital." How Iran's brutal crackdown unfolded, my piece for @theobserveruk.bsky.social

Hundreds of photos revealing the faces of those killed during the violent crackdown on protests in Iran have been leaked to BBC Verify. The pictures reveal the bloodied, swollen and bruised faces of at least 326 victims - including 18 women. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

In the increasingly difficult reporting environment here in Turkey, a French journalist was detained while covering a protest from a Kurdish party in Istanbul earlier this week. He is being threatened with deportation, for doing a basic reporting task.

Activists worldwide have been warning for years, decades, that these supposed crowd control weapons like tear gas, rubber bullets etc can be dangerous or even deadly. Now US forces feel they have a free hand to misuse them in this way- starting with shots to the head.

Hannah Natanson is an exceptional reporter and should never have been subjected to this type of extraordinary intimidation tactic. We have few details now, but it’s hard to interpret this as anything other than an attempt to squash the freedom of the press.

The FT got is architecture critic Edwin Heathcote to write about data centres and it's wonderful. www.ft.com/content/7692...

Even some in Iran's religious community have voiced their discontent with the regime – and protests grew in the Mashhad, a pilgrimage site + hometown of supreme leader Khamenei. But Mashhad hasn't been spared the brutal crackdown even with its holy status. My piece for @theobserveruk.bsky.social

Before the Internet was shut off, cutting off Iran from the outside world, one protestor in Rasht told me “I am ready to pay a price to bring down this regime, even if that price is my death.” Those taking to the streets have "nothing left to lose," he said. My piece @theobserveruk.bsky.social

Polymarket is refusing to pay out millions - notably including $400,000 in winnings for one single anonymous trader - due to disputes over whether the US “invaded” Venezuela in order to capture Maduro. It will only pay out if the US captures territory, they said.

When U.S. forces captured Maduro, Chinese social media lit up. People with nationalist views asked: Why can’t Beijing do the same in Taiwan? On the other side of the political spectrum, people cheered the downfall of a dictator. by Li Yuan www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/b...

WH sources say Venezuela's opposition leader committed the "ultimate sin": She accepted the Nobel Peace prize. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one said. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

“Replacing the man at the top will not dismantle the web of bosses, private loyalties, corrupt practices and institutional ruins that have replaced public life here.”

Rights group says at least 16 dead in Iran during week of protests reut.rs/4spQnMw

“Mr. Maduro in late December rejected an ultimatum from President Trump to leave office and go into a gilded exile in Turkey, according to several Americans and Venezuelans involved in transition talks.” Sounds like Trump made this offer without buy-in from Ankara…?

“For more than a decade, real power in Venezuela has been held by a small circle of senior officials. Analysts and officials say though that the system depends on a sprawling web of loyalists and security organs, fueled by corruption and surveillance.” - @reuters.com

Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...

“He can be judged by the dignity and steadfastness with which he has fought for freedom – both the Egyptian people’s and his own. Maybe they could even trust that they did the right thing in the first place.” @naomiaklein.bsky.social on the British right’s attacks on Alaa.

“You are not entitled to a response from us, or anyone, ever,” is what a US Education Department spokesperson wrote to one of our reporters, @megomatz.bsky.social, after she repeatedly tried to get comment from the department and its officials. My column on the condemnation of good journalism.

Leaving prison after spending most of the past 12 years incarcerated did not mean freedom for Alaa Abd el-Fattah, until he could finally travel. The British government needs to do more to combat the harms of travel bans wielded by authoritarian regimes. My piece for @theobserveruk.bsky.social

Rishi Sunak personally promised Abd el-Fattah’s sisters he would act to free him from Egyptian prison. In writing, in 2022. It’s shameful that Alaa’s welcome to the U.K. has been marred by this racist campaign.

Too many Egyptian political prisoners are released from custody only to continue facing asset freezes and travel bans that leave them unable to rebuild their lives -- unable to be truly free. Today, we celebrate Alaa Abdel Fattah's travel as a symbol of him being finally free. 🤍🤍🤍

This by @parkermolloy.com is worth reading to the end: "The entire history of adversarial journalism depends on the premise that reporters can publish true, well-sourced information even when the subjects of that information would prefer they didn’t. What Weiss has done is abandon that premise."

Given that Kristi Noem already filmed an appalling video inside CECOT prison, what would getting "the principles on the record and on camera," add to the reporting that is so essential?

“Thousands of newcomers with little to no computing capacity today are hoping to claim a piece of the AI infrastructure gold rush.”

The use of AI for translations of artwork overlooks something key: Quality translation is also an art form! Never mind also that the AI doing the translation had to be trained on something (i.e. the work of translators).

Colombian mercenaries in Sudan ‘recruited by UK-registered firms’

Today the city appears eerily silent. Seen from the sky, once bustling markets are empty and overgrown with vegetation. The streets are devoid of traffic, except for vehicles known to be used by the RSF. Water points, too, appear deserted: www.economist.com/interactive/...

When the Trump administration took away her family’s food this summer, Rose Natabo had to choose which of her three sons to care for — who ate and who didn’t. This is her story... and the story of too many others. New, @propublica.org

In late 2020 a Chinese man called Guan Heng travelled to Xinjiang with our BuzzFeed map of detention facilities to provide ground truth for our work - he provided the first corroborating evidence for many sites. He escaped to the US - then ICE detained him. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

US lawmakers say Israel hasn't held to account those involved in 2023 strike that killed journalist reut.rs/3XTLmhc

"Everyone had stories of being watched." This piece on Israeli surveillance in Gaza by @mohamhawish.bsky.social is one of the best pieces of reporting I have read recently. Sadly I associate Gaza with the constant buzz of drones, but the world needs to understand how deep the surveillance goes.

"I told him ‘You need to be as ambitious as Gamal Abdel Nasser’" – my piece on Syria's new president and what life is like under his rule, a year after the fall of the Assad regime. With Saad Alnassife, from Damascus:

“The Trump administration last week told lawmakers that it would further shrink the broadcasting capacity of Voice of America despite a judge’s order to maintain robust news operations at the federally funded news group.”

“The presence of so much fakery makes it possible to cast aspersions on any piece of information, any actor, or any conversation to the point that the truth is effectively meaningless.”

‘We saw so many bodies that we lost count’: uncovering the hidden horror of El Fasher. Eye-witness reports, satellite images and social media videos record the carnage when RSF fighters seized the famine-stricken capital of Sudan’s North Darfur: https://bit.ly/3JSvdW5

“Like, for example, I would never resuscitate a baby. That’s cuckoo bananas to me.” Haunting reporting on a pseudo-cult preaching the idea of pregnancy and birth without medicine - but where this advice comes at considerable financial and personal cost.

MBS's physical reaction here is...quite something to see.

This contribution to the volume of human misery is yet another policy from Labour based on a false premise, in this case that refugees are overly attracted to Britain. It will increase bureaucratic limbo, thus making worse the problem of "cohesion" it purports to solve. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"But a covert proxy war between Ethiopia, Eritrea and their allies has, in effect, already begun. It needs worryingly little to explode into the open." www.economist.com/middle-east-...

“”If it doesn’t rain in Tehran by late November, we’ll have to ration water. And if it still doesn’t rain, we’ll have to evacuate Tehran,” President Masoud Pezeshkian was cited as saying on Thursday by the SNN.ir semi-official news agency.” apnews.com/article/iran...

New: Conde Nast fired four employees who were among a group that confronted the company's head of human resources on Wednesday over the decision to fold Teen Vogue into Vogue/recent cuts. Employees who were fired included journalists from the New Yorker, Wired, and Bon Appétit.

An essential piece of reporting from @skynewsrss.bsky.social on something any user of X can feel to be true: How the site boosts far right content to users and makes it unavoidable, even those looking to escape it.

The best thing I've read so far on Mamdani's win– and no shying away from the Islamophobia he faced. "At a time when leading figures in the Democratic Party seem practically complicit in the abuses and outrages of the Trump era, Mamdani offered his supporters an unsullied message of hope."

We've covered how Meta Ray-Bans could have been worn by CBP during ICE raids, how it's being modded for facial recognition, and how it's being used as a spy tool. Every time Meta argues: What is the difference between Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses and an iPhone? SO yeah—here's a guide for Meta's PR team:

Literal insanity that a company that made a product that saved millions of lives just a few years ago could go out of business www.statnews.com/2025/10/30/m...

"More seriously, the stunning unity of the papers in their opposition to the possibility that Mamdani may represent something positive is indicative of what all these publications have in common." - @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social on why legacy media has keenly ignored why voters like Mamdani.

On the left, the refurbished Lincoln bathroom. On the right, picture I took in Saddam Hussein's palace in Basra in 2005.

A cautionary tale for all journalists blood-curdling enough to fit with Halloween: “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor Wednesday evening. “So I just gave him my opinion.”