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The Herald Scotland
30-06-2025
- General
- The Herald Scotland
When Sandy Gall was marched to an execution cell splattered with blood
Died: June 29, 2025 Sandy Gall, who has died aged 97, was a Scottish journalist and author who became known to millions for his war reports and as an ITN news anchorman. Gall's career spanned six decades. He was present at the British withdrawal from Suez, the fall of Saigon, reported from both Gulf Wars and issued the first bulletins from a liberated Kuwait, but he was best known for his reports from Afghanistan, where he travelled with Mujahideen rebels fighting Russian occupation. While undoubtedly an intrepid figure with a taste for adventure, Gall was also grounded (a father of four, he was very much a part of his Kent village community) and had a deep sense of humanity, setting up a medical charity in Afghanistan. Born Henderson Alexander Gall in Malaya to Scottish parents (his father was a rubber planter), he spent his first four years in Penang, an experience he credited with giving him his love of foreign places. He then returned to Scotland to live with relatives in chilly Aberdeenshire, which remained his home after his father retired to Banchory. Gall boarded at what is now called Glenalmond College (then Trinity College, Glenalmond) before studying modern languages at Aberdeen University, graduating in 1952. He applied to a Reuters training course for foreign correspondents while still a student and was turned down for it, but, undeterred, tried again the following year after a few months spent working at the Press & Journal. This time, he was successful. He was posted to Berlin, then Aden and Hungary in 1957, where he met his wife-to-be, Eleanor, who was working at the British Embassy. During his 10 years at Reuters, he had some of his riskiest assignments, including a visit to Congo in 1960, when he and two other journalists were surrounded by an angry mob in a military camp and told they were to be shot as spies. It took UN negotiators to arrange their release. Read more Veteran broadcaster Sandy Gall dies aged 97 | The Herald Tributes to athlete and Black Watch officer who served in the Troubles | The Herald Trains, planes, raptors, and pianos. Tributes to polymath musician | The Herald In 1963, Gall moved to ITN where he worked until 1992. For 20 years he was co-presenter of News At Ten, but also continued reporting from overseas, covering three Arab-Israeli wars and the Lebanese civil war. In 1972, he was sent to Uganda, which was under the control of the savage and capricious Idi Amin. After detailing Amin's atrocities, Gall was rounded up with other journalists and marched to what he later learned was an execution cell – a hut spattered with blood from which he was lucky to emerge alive. He was deported three days later, remarking afterwards that he had never been so glad to leave the ground. He visited Afghanistan for the first time in 1982, the year of the Russian occupation, and was struck immediately by what he saw as the similarity between the mujahideen and the proud, independent Scottish clans of the 17th and 18th centuries. Gall addressed British audiences from among the mujahideen in the mountains, reporting on attacks against Russian forces by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjsher, whom he described as 'the most able and the most moderate' of the rebel leaders. His stories of the freedom fighters harrying the great military power captured viewers' imagination. That initial visit was followed by further assignments in 1984 and 1986. Gall set up Sandy Gall's Afghanistan Appeal in 1983, to help those whose lives he had seen blighted by war. To do this, he had to overcome his scruples, as he later explained, knowing that there would be times when objectivity in his reporting would become impossible if he was to avoid reprisals against the clinic. The charity was established to help soldiers and civilians who had lost limbs to landmines, and also children born with club feet or hip displacement. It came to be called the Kabul Orthopaedic Organisation, processing more than 8,000 people a year. In 2010, Gall was awarded the Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in recognition of his charity work in Afghanistan. He also wrote three books on the country. Gall remarked in 2012 that he did not miss being a war correspondent, being all too aware of the very real dangers it entailed. As well as Afghanistan, he wrote on other subjects, producing The Bushmen of Southern Africa, a book about indigenous people forced into reservations by the Botswana government. He was a keen golfer and family man. Brought up in the Church of Scotland, he said aged 76 that he was not a very devout Christian, but appreciated tradition, remarking that a service in the village church in Penshurst, Kent, would be 'a nice way to go'. He hoped his funeral would be a celebration, adding: 'There would be good claret and Chardonnay, but I can't specify right now what they will be, as I don't want to raise people's expectations.' Above all, he hoped his charity in Afghanistan would live on after him – as indeed it has. Gall was predeceased by his wife Eleanor Smyth, who died in 2018, and is survived by his son, Alexander, and three daughters, Carlotta, Fiona and Michaela.
Daily Mirror
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
'Trump let Iran make nukes he's mad about - he's at war for a Nobel Peace Prize'
If there is one disease which lies behind the constant spasms of horror with which our days our currently blighted, it is the human race's inability to remember what happened five minutes ago. Once upon a time, journalists would go to the pub, and then bed. Sometimes they'd go to bed with each other, because they'd been to the pub. But they'd wake up in the morning and go "blimey, an earthquake in Japan. I had better find a good story of my own about this". And they would have to go deeper into a story and its origins. Today they don't drink, barely know their colleagues, and wake up to emails from a 24-rolling news ecosystem that demands constant feeding. Journalists think "blimey, everyone else is ahead of me" and scramble to catch up. No-one has time to think, which is why no-one has told you that Donald Trump just bombed Iran for making nuclear weapons that Donald Trump let them make. I wish I was making this stuff up, but no-one's got time for that. It's imperative people start remembering how we got to the cliff edge, because we did it by skipping about blindfold and if we don't stop soon we're going to go right over. America gave Iran nuclear technology in 1957. The aim was 'atoms for peace', to create wealth, and allies in the Middle East. After years of the world's greatest democracy propping up a cruel monarchy, the shah fell, the mullahs arose, and Iran was in less-friendly hands. The 1980s was taken up with a war against Iraq, but in the 1990s two Gulf Wars and continued US tinkering led the mullahs to the not-entirely-mad opinion that a nuclear weapon was the best way of keeping the Great Satan at bay. Israel, quite reasonably, was less than chuffed. And as technology sped up it became imperative to find ways of stopping Iran getting a weapon that apocalyptic fundamentalists would see very little reason not to detonate, slap-bang in the middle of a resource-rich, conflict-heavy trade route. And so in 2015, six countries signed a deal with Iran. In return for checks that it wasn't building The Bomb, everyone was open for business. And for three years the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action worked. Germany, China, Russia, France, the UK, China and the US lifted economic sanctions, and every 90 days would ratify everything was non-nuclear and tickety-boo. But such a vague agreement could not withstand the arrival of Donald Trump, whose tiny hands happily dismantled everything that made Barack Obama look good. In 2018 when Benjamin Netanyahu - yes it really is all the same people - gave a speech claiming his spy agency Mossad had stolen 100,000 documents showing Iran had lied and was enriching uranium, Trump saw a 30-second clip and decided it must be true. It might have been. The other nations in the deal didn't think so. But rather than renegotiate, send in inspectors, react as any sane human might, Trump just went "nah", and pulled out of the deal. The other countries tried to keep it going. The International Atomic Energy Authority said there was no enrichment. But the US whacked the regime with sanctions, and Iran said it too would pull out unless they were lifted. They were not. In 2020 the IAEA said Iran had tripled its uranium stockpile, a year later it blocked access to inspectors, and by 2023 it had weapons-grade material. Over the same period, Iran's population suffered. A third were ground into poverty. The economic woes weakened the regime just enough to make it lash out. Iran was behind terror attacks worldwide, former Republican Guards were linked to planned assassinations of ex-Trump officials, and it faced internal protests too. Then Iran funded the October 7 massacre by Hamas. Cue Netanyahu, who was leading a rickety coalition and facing jail the moment it fell, cue the war in Gaza, cue pro-Palestine protests, and cue a lot of blaming Iran. This isn't hard to figure out or remember. It's just that the constant churn of new things to hold our attention never scrolls back to the start of the liveblog, or delves into the third page of search results. Iran is definitely run by a bunch of rotten eggs who could well have been pulling the radioactive wool over the world's eyes in return for a financial boost to stabilise their rule. But the best way of fixing that wasn't walking away from the only half-arsed deal anyone had. It was making a better deal, and if Trump had actually written his own biography rather than paying someone else to make him look good, he might have known how to do it. Trump's withdrawal was supported by Israel and Saudi Arabia, with 63% of US voters, most of the planet and his own advisers screaming at him not to. It was "a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made", he insisted. "It didn't bring peace and it never will." And so he destabilised and raised the oil price with sanctions, screwed regional trade which meant the price of wheat rose and people starved across several countries, and gave fresh targets to jihadis. Back in office for a second time, Trump wants a legacy and more than anything he wants the Nobel Peace Prize that Obama got, largely for diplomatic efforts with the Muslim world. Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine "on day one" and it only got worse; he suggested building a golden beachside golf club in Gaza, and got laughed at. So his eye turned to Ayatollah Khameini, and the country which the US has done so much to make worse, for so long. Anyone with an ounce of realism in their body might wonder at the convenience with which the B-2 bombers and their bunker-busting payload were able to fly in unmolested, after the Israelis had suddenly switched attention from Gaza to take out the Iranian air defences a week earlier. It does seem odd that the imminent threat Netanyahu had predicted in 2018 bloomed 7 years later, 6 months after Trump returned to office and only after his other draft entries for the peace prize had evaporated. We might also ponder why the US president with the worst personal polls in history at this point in his leadership might be in want of some surgical strikes to appease his Muslim-hating base, and whether it would do him any harm if there were a couple of small terror attacks on US bases that would give an excuse to bomb the mullahs to the table. And having thought this far, we could ask ourselves how close to the edge of nuclear catastrophe Trump will allow the world to careen before he picks up the phone to "make a deal" which will be the bigliest, most beautiful peace deal of all time. And whether it will be worse than the one we used to have, before he ripped it to shreds out of petulance and exploited the disastrous consequences for the sake of vanity. With Iran alone, Trump has cost the world trillions. Now he is about to march an entire planet to the gates of hell, just so he can look good for marching everyone back again. And this plan works if he is a diplomatic genius able to unpick decades of crapola, and capable of remembering why and how it happened in the first place. But when all he watches is 24-hour rolling news, with constant updates about new stuff that isn't new at all, the best we can hope for is that the Nobel Committee gives him the prize now, just to make him stop.
CNBC
23-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Oil at $100 a barrel? U.S. role in Iran-Israel fight fuels market jitters
Oil markets are entering a new phase of uncertainty after the U.S. entered the war between Iran and Israel, with experts warning of triple-digit prices. Investors are closely watching for Iran's reaction following the U.S.' strikes on its nuclear facilities, with Iran's foreign minister warning his country reserved "all options" to defend its sovereignty. Oil futures were up nearly 3% as of early Asia hours. U.S. crude oil rose 2.93% to $76 per barrel, while global benchmark Brent was up 2.86% at $79.22 per barrel. "There is real risk of the market experiencing unprecedented supply disruptions over coming weeks, of a much more severe nature than the oil price shock in 2022 in wake of the Ukraine war," said MST Marquee's senior energy analyst Saul Kavonic. While the market reaction post U.S. strikes has been less aggressive, relative to just over a week ago when Israel launched airstrikes against Iran, industry watchers believe that the latest developments usher in a new era of volatility for the oil markets, especially as they await for potential Iranian countermeasures. Threats of blocking Strait of Hormuz, after Iran's parliament approved closing it as per state media, have added to market jitters. The strait, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, is a critical artery for global oil trade with about 20 million barrels of oil and oil products passing through it per day. That makes up almost one-fifth of global oil shipments. If Iran does close the Strait of Hormuz, Western forces will likely "directly enter the fray" and try to reopen it, Kavonic told CNBC, adding that oil prices could approach $100 per barrel and retest the highs seen in 2022, if the closure goes beyond more than a few weeks. "Even a degree of harassment of passage through the Strait, short of a full closure, could still see a serious heightening of oil prices," said the senior energy analyst. Kavonic's view is echoed by other industry experts. The U.S. and allied military would eventually reopen the Strait, but if Iran employed all its military means, the conflict could "last longer than the last two Gulf Wars," said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group. And should Iran decide to attack Gulf energy production or flows, it has the capability to disrupt oil and LNG shipping, resulting in large oil and LNG price spikes. "A prolonged closure or destruction of key Gulf energy infrastructure could propel crude prices to above $100," he said. The CBOE crude oil volatility index, which measures the market's expectation of 30-day volatility in crude oil prices, is at March 2022 levels it hit shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. While there has been some level of uncertainty with regards to how developments in the Middle East could play out for oil supplies, Lipow Associates' Andy Lipow noted that the current developments carry a different weight. "This time feels different, given the barrage of missiles that have been fired for over a week and now the direct involvement of the USA," he said, adding oil could hit $100 per barrel should exports through the Strait of Hormuz be affected. While an attempt to block the Hormuz waterway between Iran and Oman could have profound consequences for the wider economy, threats of blocking the strait have mostly been rhetorical, with experts saying that it is physically impossible to do so. "So the picture is a little bit mixed, and I think traders will err on the side of caution, not panicking unless there is more real evidence to do," said Vandana Hari, founder and CEO, Vanda Insights. Iran in 2018 threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz amid heightened tensions after the U.S. exited the nuclear deal and reinstated sanctions. Similar threat were issued in 2011 and 2012, when senior Iranian officials — among them then–Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi — warned of a possible closure if Western nations imposed more sanctions on Iran's oil exports over its nuclear activities. Additionally, it is worth noting that Iranian energy infrastructure has not been a target thus far even with the recent conflagrations, said Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth. "It appears that both sides have an incentive to keep oil out of the line of fire, at least for now," she said.
Arab News
30-04-2025
- General
- Arab News
Droughts in Iraq endanger buffalo, and farmers' livelihoods
'People have left ... We are a small number of houses remaining,' said farmer Sabah IsmailBuffalo have been farmed for centuries in Iraq for their milk DHI QAR, Iraq: Iraq's buffalo population has more than halved in a decade as the country's two main rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, suffer severe droughts that endanger the livelihood of many farmers and breeders.'People have left ... We are a small number of houses remaining,' said farmer Sabah Ismail, 38, who rears buffalo in the southern province of Dhi Qar.'The situation is difficult ... I had 120 to 130 buffalo; now I only have 50 to 60. Some died, and we sold some because of the drought,' said Ismail while tending his have been farmed for centuries in Iraq for their milk, and are mentioned in ancient Sumerian inscriptions from the to Iraqi marshland experts, the root causes of the water crisis driving farmers out of the countryside are climate change, upstream damming in Turkiye and Iran, outdated domestic irrigation techniques and a lack of long-term management country has also endured decades of warfare, from conflict with Iran in the 1980s, through two Gulf Wars to the recent rise and fall of the Daesh within the cultivable lands known as the Fertile Crescent that have been farmed for millennia, the Iraqi landscape has suffered from upstream damming of the Tigris and Euphrates and lower rainfall, threatening the lifestyle of farmers like Ismail and leading many to move to the marshland expert Jassim Assadi told Reuters that the number of buffalo in Iraq had fallen since 2015 from 150,000 to fewer than 65, decline is 'mostly due to natural reasons: the lack of needed green pastures, pollution, illness ... and also farmers refraining from farming buffalos due to scarcity of income,' Assadi said.A drastic decline in crop production and a rise in fodder prices have also left farmers struggling to feed their difficulty of maintaining a livelihood in Iraq's drought-stricken rural areas has contributed to growing migration toward the country's already-choked urban centers.'This coming summer, God only knows, the mortality rate may reach half,' said Abdul Hussain Sbaih, 39, an Iraqi buffalo breeder.
Zawya
30-04-2025
- General
- Zawya
Droughts in Iraq endanger buffalo, and farmers' livelihoods
Iraq's buffalo population has more than halved in a decade as the country's two main rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, suffer severe droughts that endanger the livelihood of many farmers and breeders. "People have left ... We are a small number of houses remaining," said farmer Sabah Ismail, 38, who rears buffalo in the southern province of Dhi Qar. "The situation is difficult ... I had 120 to 130 buffalo; now I only have 50 to 60. Some died, and we sold some because of the drought," said Ismail while tending his herd. Buffalo have been farmed for centuries in Iraq for their milk, and are mentioned in ancient Sumerian inscriptions from the region. According to Iraqi marshland experts, the root causes of the water crisis driving farmers out of the countryside are climate change, upstream damming in Turkey and Iran, outdated domestic irrigation techniques and a lack of long-term management plans. The country has also endured decades of warfare, from conflict with Iran in the 1980s, through two Gulf Wars to the recent rise and fall of the Islamic State group. Located within the cultivable lands known as the Fertile Crescent that have been farmed for millennia, the Iraqi landscape has suffered from upstream damming of the Tigris and Euphrates and lower rainfall, threatening the lifestyle of farmers like Ismail and leading many to move to the cities. Iraqi marshland expert Jassim al-Assadi told Reuters that the number of buffalo in Iraq had fallen since 2015 from 150,000 to fewer than 65,000. The decline is "mostly due to natural reasons: the lack of needed green pastures, pollution, illness ... and also farmers refraining from farming buffalos due to scarcity of income," al-Assadi said. A drastic decline in crop production and a rise in fodder prices have also left farmers struggling to feed their animals. The difficulty of maintaining a livelihood in Iraq's drought-stricken rural areas has contributed to growing migration towards the country's already-choked urban centres. "This coming summer, God only knows, the mortality rate may reach half," said Abdul Hussain Sbaih, 39, an Iraqi buffalo breeder.
