Corruption in Gaza Lines

Al-Jazeera has an interesting story about Gaza.  Apparently some American companies had to pay bribes to the Israelis to get their products past the border crossing.  All this was before Hamas took over and Israel started the blockade.  This information came to light from the latest WikiLeaks cable release.

News in Yemen

I thought some of you might be interested in where I get the information for my YemenWatch posts.  Getting news from some countries often feels like an art more than a science.  Yemen is one of those countries.  I get my news (in English) from several different sources.  And some of those have problems writing in English. 

• There's the "official" news from the Yemen News Agency.  Like most government news agencies you have to take what they say with a grain of salt.
• There's the Yemen Times, which has interesting articles but feels more like a magazine. 
• There's Al-Sahwah, which seems to have regular news, but has formatting issues.
• There's NewsYemen, which doesn't have a lot of stories.
• There's the Yemen Observer, which has a problem I'll mention in a minute.
• There's the Yemen Post, which claims to be the "First Hourly Updated Independent English News Website" in Yemen but has some English language problems.
• I also get random articles from people I follow on my twitter feed.

I get a lot of my news from the Yemen Post, the Observer, and even the Yemen News Agency.  Lately I've been perusing the WikiLeaks cables from the US Embassy in Sana'a, and I came across something I didn't know.  In 2009, there was a cable that mentioned that the Yemen Observer was owned by President Saleh's secretary.  That fact is pro,bably known by Yemenis, but it was news to me.  And that may explain why the Yemen Observer said the attack against 4 Americans was definitely AQAP, while the Yemen Post didn't.  Like I said above, reading the Yemeni news is an art-form.