Hi everyone. Yes, it is true: I am back from vacation, and I have been stalking the comments section for a few days now, but I am trying very hard *not* to post regularly since I still have some outstanding work I want to finish before I get too sucked in. On the other hand [...]

The Times has a pretty reasoned assessment of the state of play. We are still with the same two theories, the copycats, and the same group. I don’t like the copycat one since it seems to overlook some basic details. These attacks are not so easy to carry out logistically. Normally there is a high [...]

The press and TV stations are begining to report a series of new incidents on the London underground. I use the word ‘incidents’ since things are so confused it is not clear what is happening. In one incident a rucksack apparently exploded, but the explosion was small. I will update as more [...]

UK police said this morning they searched five homes in northern England. They described the search as forming a “significant” part of the investigation into last week’s London bombings. I think it’s useless speculating at this stage what this might mean. I also think it is important that the police are seen to be [...]

This is not an analytical “perspectives” type post. Just a number of bitty threads that seem in one way or another worth noting (small pieces loosely joined). They could basically be grouped together under the following headings: photos, suicides, explosives and origins.
Maybe I should also point out the obvious: that living in Spain while [...]

A quote from a Johann Hari post, via Digby:
But another fight began yesterday: to defend our civil liberties ? and especially those of the decent, democratic Muslim majority ? in an age of terror. I headed for the East London Mosque ? a few minutes? walk away from the bomb in Aldgate ? to watch [...]

Brian Paddick, assistant deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police has just explained to a press conference that the bomb which exploded on a London bus in Woburn place may have gone off early.
“British police said a bomb that blew the roof off a London double-decker bus on Thursday morning may have been destined for [...]

Update (16:35 CET):
London’s mobile phone network is overloaded and spotty. The police is asking people not to call unless it’s important.
AP:
Two U.S. law enforcement officials said at least 40 people were killed and London hospitals reported more than 350 wounded. A senior police official confirmed at least 33 deaths killed in the subway [...]

As you consider the ongoing saga of US treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere, spare a thought for Wolfgang Daschner. As I wrote in an earlier post, Daschner, Frankfurt’s former deputy police commissioner, faced trial for threatening one Magnus G?fgen with torture. G?fgen had kidnapped young Jakob von Metzler, and the police [...]

As the Constitutional Court seems to be playing wait and see, progress on the legal front has become unlikely in the immediate future. Yet following the increasing tension between the camps, what may be the first major outbreak of violence in the ongoing Ukrainian stand-off may have occurred in the Eastern city of Luhansk. Maidan [...]