More4 News Blog

An Iraqi Kurd confronts his accuser

An extraordinary tale of betrayal and forgiveness. Karzan Sherabayani, an Iraqi Kurd who has lived in exile for decades, returns to the room in Kirkuk he was tortured by Saddam Hussein's secret police.

He was just fourteen years old when he was suspended by his ankles and beaten. The cell is still there, complete with the haunting graffiti carved by other victims, begging God for deliverance.

He confronts the man who gave his name to the Secret Police - another individual who was tortured into making a false confession, and accusing his friends to save his own life. Watch their remarkable conversation here.

Watch the report here

Sudan government bombing Darfur

More4 News has obtained evidence the Sudanese air force has resumed aerial bombardment of villages in Darfur.

It comes in breach of a ceasefire and no-fly zone agreed more than a year ago.

Last week we filmed charred and blackened huts in several villages which had been recently set on fire by Janjaweed militiamen, confirming reports of an increase in attacks since the beginning of the year.

But in the village of Donkey Dreisa, south of Nyala, the damage was clear. Buildings had been reduced to rubble by bombardment which villagers told us came from Sudanese air force Antonov jets.

More 4 News was told that the attack on Donkey Dreisa on February 17th followed earlier aerial bombardment of villages near the town of Omgonya, also in South Darfur.

Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for International Development told More 4 News he was very concerned to hear the news.

"We were aware there had been attacks in Gereida in February but these are the first reports that I have heard that there may have been attacks from the air."

Watch the report here

The Jews of Iran

More4 News meets the large Jewish community in Tehran.

Already feeling threatened by President Ahmadinejad's violent anti-Israeli rhetoric that talks of wiping Israel off the map and calls the Holocaust a myth, the recent cartoon controversy has added to their concerns.

Many of them are now starting to wonder how long they can stay in Iran before, like so many before them, they feel driven to move to Israel itself.

Watch the report here

On the trail of the fake veterans

Andrew Thomas is in North Carolina on the trail of a new wave of fake US military veterans. He sent this report about his hunt for the college student who was treated like a hero, and even blagged free tuition with her bogus tales of warzone adventures.

"That's her".  Those were the words I wanted to hear. 

Nothing makes the US military, or its old soldiers madder than people passing themselves off as veterans of combat.  For years, the problem was fake Vietnam vets. But new wars mean new fakes and now cases are popping up all over America of people pretending to be veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina trying to track one down.

Iranians Reunited

More4 News has reunited three Iranian brothers who fled after their father's murder

We hear their story of why they are here and why they say they can't go back.

Watch the report here

Up and down the Mexican border

More4 News is bringing you a film about the volunteers guarding America's Mexican border. The team have been blogging their trip - here's the second installment of their trip with the border patrol.

American Border Patrol Minutemen Blog When Tennessee Williams wrote "One thing you can grow on a big place, more important than cotton, is tolerance", you know he was not born in Arizona. I spent today with Richard Humphries. He is a died-in-the-wool Minuteman.

A 71-year old, ex-undercover drug enforcement officer, he stands at 6'2", wears a Stetson and carries a gun. He hates President Bush with a passion, and has a sticker on his rear bumper that declares: "The King of England didn't like the Minutemen Project either". He lives near the improbably-named town of Tombstone and, at his ripe age, has a 16 and 11 year old daughter at home. He is far more of Arizona than Tennessee Williams.

We spent the day driving up and down the border. Across the thin barbed wire that divides the US from Mexico, we saw trucks filled with migrants being driven into the desert, and a group of 12 young men and women, shy of the camera, loitering near the border - waiting for night to come to mask their breach of the border line.

Podcast: From Isfahan to the Internet

Jon Snow broadcasts from the ancient Persian capital, and finds that the bloggers got there first. Listen to the podcast

What a country! Look at this place for a start. Where are we? The sumptuous centre of Persian Islamic art a few miles from... the far less sumptuous rather more contentious centre of Natanz, where nuclear enrichment continues somewhere under the mountains marked only by stacks of excavated earth, a few low-lying buildings, watchtowers and anti-aircraft batteries.

Yet it feels a million miles from here as does the amazingly ill-tempered row between America and Iran. Funny old world...

Spending time with the Minutemen

More4 News is bringing you a film about the volunteers guarding America's Mexican border. Read their blog here.

Last year over a million immigrants were smuggled across the US/ Mexican border and this year the numbers are rising sharply. In the last two months alone it's reported that four hundred thousand "aliens" were smuggled across the border, often they're trafficked by ruthless gangs.

More4 News has travelled to the hot deserts of Arizona to film with the so-called "minutemen" - the groups of American volunteers who run their own patrols on the 2000 long border. Often these self-appointed "guardians" are ex-military - many Vietnam Vets - it's a fascinating and provocative story. This is what our camerman/director Iain Overton has seen so far. It should be an interesting film!

We spotted the Mexicans 500 metres away. From the air, seeing them was easy. Their dark clothes stood out in the ochre Arizonan desert like wine spots on a tablecloth.

Our pilot, Glenn Spencer, manoeuvred his small plane with ease, 30 years of flying experience coming to bear as we made tighter and tighter swoops over their huddled bodies. The photographer laughed and squeezed off some more shots.

Doctors 'concerned' about NHS

A More4 News survey of doctors reveals growing concerns for the quality of patient care in Britain.

More4 News sent out a survey to doctors throughout England, Wales and Scotland: Our results are based on the answers of the first 200 to respond.

Many GPs reported that patients are being discharged from hospital without proper care and that more are being readmitted.

The survey also said: they'd seen an increase in patients discharged from hospital without proper care, while 17% said they hadn't, 10% said they didn't know.

Of that 73%, 90% said that that had resulted in more readmissions to inpatient care.

52% said it had become more difficult to get specialist consultant outpatient appointments over the last few months, while 37% said it had stayed the same. Just 9% said it had got easier.

In response to the More4 News survey results the Secretary of State for Health Patricia Hewitt said: "Well I'm obviously concerned to hear about that survey.

"I would certainly accept that there will be individual cases where that has happened, but it should not be happening; it is bad practice.

"It's obviously dreadful for patients to be sent home too early without the support that they need, and then finding themselves readmitted as a result."

In our survey, we also asked whether it had become harder or easier to get specialist consultant outpatient appointments over the last few months.

Podcast: Chasing Larijani

Jon Snow tells the behind the scenes - seat of your pants - story of our exclusive, live interview with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani.

You can listen to the audio here or subscribe to our podcast guaranteeing you get to hear subsequent broadcasts.

This post first appeared on Channel4's News from Iran blog.