Her Majesty's Ambassador to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen Timothy Torlot survived a suicide bomb attack earlier this morning. The explosions which occurred approximately 800m from the British Embassy on Thaher Himiyar Street occurred at around 08.10 local time. Tim Torlot has been in the media in recent months due to his somewhat surprising personal affairs – namely moving his pregnant mistress into the official residence. To add flames to the fire Jennifer Steil - an American journalist has done what journalists do and written a memoir covering her time in Yemen and the affair. This in a deeply conservative country where adultery is punishable with death by stoning and the human rights record is poor. Yemen is deemed a high risk country and it is known the ambassador travels with an armed British Protection officer and an armed Yemeni Protection officer whenever he leaves the residence. Yemen recently namechecked in the second Live leaders debate by the Prime Minister as another territory of concern will come under the spotlight once again.
posted by numberstation on Apr 26, 2010 - 23 comments

America the Resilient. [more inside]
posted by wittgenstein on Mar 29, 2008 - 38 comments

the most maritally challenged crop of presidential hopefuls in American political history --meet 3 leading GOP candidates for 08. We've already read about Hillary's sexlife (or lack thereof), but will the double standard hold? ...if the top three Democratic presidential hopefuls each had extra-marital affairs in their backgrounds, it stands to reason that Republicans would have something to say about it--and if the past is any guide, those concerns would find their way into the papers. Will the same happen when it's about the "party of family values and morality"?
posted by amberglow on Jun 20, 2006 - 84 comments

For any society, in any age, the study of politics ultimately comes down to one elemental question: how are people persuaded to acquiesce in a polity where the distribution of power is manifestly unequal and unjust, as it invariably is. -- The quote from David Cannadine that opened a recent Newsnight newsletter from Jeremy Paxman. Email may not be the sexiest 'net medium, but I wait daily for two witty, well informed summaries of UK current affairs; the second is Channel 4's Snow Mail. And weekly, there's the Guardian's Backbencher.
posted by andrew cooke on Dec 6, 2003 - 2 comments