About David Weman

The founder of A Fistful of Euros. He is Swedish, and was born in 1980. Works as a translator and subtitler.

Explosions in London, suspected terror attacks

Many people were hurt today in a “major incident” on London transport as suspected terrorist attacks caused multiple explosions on tube trains and buses and plunged London’s transport network into chaos.

There’s still a lot of confusion, and little information.
The Guardian Newsblog and Europhobia are liveblogging.

British Transport police initially said power surges had caused explosions, but now people say it’s likely terrorism.

Officials shut down the whole of the London Underground system and cancelled all central London bus services as they tried to comprehend the scale of the disaster. All London hospitals are on major incident alert.

An explosion ripped apart a double-decker bus near Russell Square. Union officials said they had received reports of two more bus explosions, but details were not immediately available.

Laura Matthews, a press officer at Universities UK, which has offices in Tavistock Square, said there were bodies lying around the bus explosion, some of them without arms or legs. “Get people down here quickly,” she sobbed. She thought a bomb had gone off and was trying to evacuate her office.

There were unconfirmed reports that a number of people on the bus had died

London explosions ‘mirror Madrid bombings’ says terror experts, but at this early stage, I’m sceptical anyone really knows what they’re talking about.

Two years ago today…

Hey, I know!

I just got the idea of starting a politics weblog with a bunch of euros (expats would be ok too.)

Brilliant, eh? Of course I’ve only thought about for five seconds.

Now I just have to find some reasonably smart and not too wingnutty people who’s interested?

Anyone up for it?

Update: Nah.

Update: Yes!
Posted by David Weman at 01:56 AM | TrackBack

I can’t really put my mind around the fact that it was two years ago today, or that afoe’s will soon have its 2nd anniversary. If I accomplish nothing else in life, well, this is… something.

Dirty Deeds, Not Dirt Cheap (Reprise)

For 19 American intelligence operatives assigned to apprehend a radical Islamic preacher in Milan two years ago, the mission was equal parts James Bond and taxpayer-financed Italian holiday, according to an Italian investigation of the man’s disappearance. …

During January 2003, they were regular patrons at the Hotel Principe di Savoia in Milan, which bills itself as “one of the world’s most luxuriously appointed hotels” and features a marble-lined spa and minibar Cokes that cost about $10. Seven of the Americans stayed at the 80-year-old hotel for periods ranging from three days to three weeks at nightly rates of about $450, racking up total expenses of more than $42,000 there. …

Hotel records show that all but one of the Americans allegedly involved in the abduction stayed in Italy for a few days afterward. Four of them checked into luxury hotels in Venice. Two others spent a couple of days in the Italian Alps before leaving the country.

#afistfulofeuros

I’ve set up an afoe IRC channel on the nightstar channel, if your into that kinda thing. The nice thing with nightstar is that you don’t have to use a client if you don’t want to, they have a web based interface.

If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, just go here, enter #afistfulofeuros as channel, hit connect, and then you can chat with your fellow afoe readers (and us bloggers).