Keeping up with Middle East news, other than Iraq

It is risky to trust the United States mainstream media for accurate and objective news about what is happening in the Middle East. And I am, frankly, very upset by the current stories coming out of Iraq. Thus, today's post focuses on the other big things that are going on in the region.

Each day I get RSS "feeds" from al-Jazeera, Haaretz (from Israel), The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, Deutsche Welle (from Germany), Ria Novosti (Russia), and the BBC. Of course, each of these sources will have its own bias. But it is probably easier to detect than the bias of U.S. news sources.
The BBC News has a very fine "Middle East" section. Recently it announced an "international day of action" on behalf of missing BBC reporter Alan Johnston. I posted about this story recently as I focused on radical extreminsts. (See also al-Jazeera regarding this same action event). To quote the BBC:

Family appeal for missing BBC man -The parents of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston have made a direct appeal to his captors in Gaza for his release. In an open letter, Mr Johnston's father read: "You have family. Please think about what this is doing to my family. Please let my son go now, today."
The appeal comes on an international day of action to highlight the plight of the veteran reporter, who was seized by gunmen one month ago.
The BBC, al-Jazeera, and Sky are also to televise a special live programme.

Leftovers with the British Navy - Conflicts between countries in the Middle East and the West often get Western leaders into big trouble. That is what happened in the following case in the United Kingdom. And it was over something as bizarre as whether the returned members of the British Navy could make money as a result of selling their stories. These are the headlines from the BBC News:

Sailors' story answers demanded -Faye Turney's story was bought for a reported six-figure sum.
Ministers have come under renewed pressure over allowing British sailors freed by Iran to sell their stories.

The Financial Times also has an excellent comprehensive mid-east section. Here is one of the headlines recently seen in the U.S., "Algiers bomb attacks kill at least 23." (See also the IHT bomb story). It is an awful reminder of another "long war," the one that went on for ten years a decade ago in Algeria. To quote the FT:

April 11 2007 -
Three cars driven by suicide bombers blew up on Wednesday in Algiers, killing at least 23 people, injuring scores of others and reviving memories of the bloody Islamist insurgency that divided the country for most of the 1990s and cost 200,000 lives.

The following FT story will likely be more objective about the issue of U.S.-Iranian relations than most U.S. news sources. The headline reads, "Iran and the US ramp up war of words." (See also Ria Novosti for this, "Russia nuclear chief doubts industrial uranium production in Iran.") To quote the FT,

Iran and the US ramped up their war of words Wednesday, with an Iranian diplomat alleging he was tortured by an American intelligence agent while kidnapped in Iraq and the US army displaying what it said were Iranian-made weapons found in Baghdad.

My RSS feeds update regularly, and auto-delete what I have read. Today's feeds came through a very handy aggregator, Bloglines. This site allows me to keep stories as "new" for later; it also has allows blogging. I also use Newsgator regularly. Newsgator allows me to keep stories in folders by subject. Each offers news gathered by areas of special interest.
Technorati tags: war articles current affairs media news Middle East
My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Good Second Mondays is about the promise of Spring.