Friday, February 06, 2004



It started with a whiff of gas at Town Hall station, and spread through the tunnels under the city in minutes

Who was to blame?
At last, we have the inquiry we need: a full, independent inquiry into the Paris bombing of 2009. As we all know, in that appalling attack, a large area between the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the River Seine was devastated by a small nuclear bomb, detonated by suicide bombers linked to the Algerian-based Islamic Armed Group (GIA). Some 100,000 people were killed or wounded. The supremely cultured heart of one of the most beautiful cities in the world was reduced to smouldering ruins. None of us will ever forget the photograph of Rodin's statue of Balzac, looming as if in tortured grief above the half-dismembered but recognisable corpses of a young couple on the Boulevard Raspail.
· Timothy Garton Ash welcomes an independent inquiry into the Paris bombing of 2009 ]
· It's scandalous that a city like Sydney can effectively be shut down because of its decaying, neglected rail network
· Former head of Pakistan's atomic weapons programme confesses on television that he traded nuclear secrets