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BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen was shot in the head and leg today as demonstrations in Egypt ended in bloodshed. He was wounded as tens of thousands of people took to the streets over the ousting of president Mohammed Morsi by the military. Islamist leaders had called for a day of rage across the country after a military coup deposed Egypt’s first democratically elected leader.

The BBC’s Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, has rejected allegations that he is anti-Semitic after he tweeted an offensive message against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his speech to Congress last week. As Netanyahu was speaking, Bowen noted that he had mentioned Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, and added, “Once again Netanyahu plays the holocaust [sic] card”. Bowen immediately faced attacks on Twitter over his comment and, on the Jewish Chronicle website, Alan Johnson wrote that Bowen’s comments were a “bloody disgrace”. …

The leader of the Muslim group who defended ISIS executioner Mohammed Emwazi has sparked further outrage after he refused to condemn the stoning women. Asim Qureshi, the director of Cage, was last night quizzed about extremist positions advocated by Muslim scholars - including female genital mutilation, domestic violence and stoning as a punishment for adultery. But Mr Qureshi, appearing on the BBC's This Week programme, failed to speak out against the practices - while also defending the right of Muslims to wage jihad. It comes after he defended the London-raised fanatic Emwazi - unmasked as the infamous fanatic 'Jihadi John'...

Principal photography has started on the six-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic War And Peace which is being made by BBC Cymru Wales in partnership with The Weinstein Company and BBC Worldwide/Lookout Point. Paul Dano, Lily James and James Norton are already aboard to star, with new additions to the cast including Jim Broadbent, Gillian Anderson, Brian Cox and Ken Stott. The epic drama is written by House Of Cards and Bridget Jones‘ Andrew Davies. Anderson was nominated for a Golden Globe for her turn in his 2007 adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House.

...The Telegraph called it "fatally flawed", saying it stereotyped UKIP supporters as "an army of bald-headed, beer-swilling thugs".

Channel 4 was last night accused of anti-democratic ´fear-mongering´ for airing a controversial drama about what life would be like with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. UKIP: The First Hundreds Days painted a highly-critical vision of Britain under UKIP rule, including a country divided by race riots, mass unemployment and a crashing economy. Channel 4 said it ordered the drama - which lampooned UKIP, its leaders and its supporters - as a way of engaging people in politics in the run-up to the May General Election.

Two days ago's Question Time on BBC1 was one of the worst I've ever seen, beating its own record of mendacious and appalling programmes. The panellist George Galloway described fascism as a "Christian phenomenon", whereas it's a well-established historical fact that Nazism was neo-pagan, tried to destroy Christianity in Germany and persecuted Christian clergy and churches. The very symbol of the SS, the SS bolts or Runic "SS" (), consisted of runes, signs popular in Germanic neopaganism. Nazism wanted to replace Christianity with a "völkisch" (folkish or racial) cult, a moral doctrine derived from the pre-Christian, pagan Germanic heritage....

Egypt's top court had in January ordered a retrial of the three men. But an Egyptian official told Agence France-Presse news agency on Sunday: "There is a presidential decision to deport Peter Greste to Australia." Another official told Associated Press the release had been co-ordinated with the Australian embassy in Cairo. The BBC's Orla Guerin in Cairo says Egyptian law requires those deported under these circumstances to either finish their sentence in their home country or be put on trial again there, and it is unclear whether the Australian authorities have agreed to that. Al-Jazeera has demanded the release of...

Got an hour? Then spend it watching this BBC Four doc on one of the most influential bands of all time.

British media has long been accused of a strong anti-Israel bias, and even generating anti-Semitism. Those claims have surfaced once again when during an interview with UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis for International Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday, a TV anchor with Sky News went as far as to suggest that Israel “fuels anti-Semitism.” The anchor, Adam Boulton, began by asking whether the fact that “people revisit this issue” of anti-Semitism is “because of Israel.” In response, the rabbi explained that anti-Semitism far pre-dates the establishment of the renascent Jewish state, and in fact can be observed from the beginning...

The BBC has been accused of “race-baiting” for inviting radical anti-Israel MP George Galloway to appear at a high-profile show hosted in Finchley and Golders Green, which is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the UK. “Question Time” sees commentators and political figures take part in a panel discussion on hot political topics, as well as fielding questions from members of the audience. Each episode is filmed in different locations around the country to allow different communities to take part. But the decision to invite Galloway of all people to the upcoming showing—which will be based in...

A BBC reporter has faced calls to resign after he told the daughter of Holocaust survivors in Paris: 'Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well'.  Journalist Tim Willcox sparked anger during his coverage of yesterday's rally in Paris, held in memory of the 17 victims of last week's terror attacks, including four Jewish people in a siege at a Kosher supermarket. During a live report from the streets of Paris, Willcox was speaking to a number of participants in the march, including one woman who expressed her fears that Jews were being persecuted, and 'the situation is going back...

Live Reporting By Stephen Robb, Kerry Alexandra, Julia Macfarlane and Sarah Fowler Get Involved All times stated are UK Recent live reporting posts Posted at 17:04 It is still unclear how many hostages were held inside the Paris supermarket but multiple sources are now saying around 10 people were seen running from the building during the police operation to free them. Posted at 17:04 Le Monde reports that the hostage-taker killed in the kosher supermarket in Paris is Amedy Coulibaldy, who was wanted by police over the shootings in Montrouge on Thursday.

Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television, said this week that he was deeply troubled by the anti-Semitism in Europe in general, and in Britain in particular. Speaking at a conference in Jerusalem, where he was interviewed by Channel 2 News anchor Yonit Levi, Cohen said, “I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK as I’ve felt in the last 12 months. And it’s made me think about, you know, is it our long-term home, actually.”

Top Gear, In the Night Garden and Doctor Who could all feature in a new £2billion theme park alongside characters from Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. The BBC has signed a deal to allow some of its programmes to feature in the new multi-billion pound resort in Kent. Plans are still being drafted for how the theme park will work, but BBC shows and characters could feature in specific lands, games and rides at the London Paramount Entertainment Resort.

I've been binge watching an ITV series on Amazon Prime. It ran from 1996-2001. Storyline Peter Clifford, a young Catholic priest from Manchester, is transferred to the village of Ballykissangel, Ireland, and is taken by the dry-humored publican Assumpta Fitzgerald who has almost the exact opposite of his good nature and dislikes the organized church. He has to deal with occasional battles against his hateful superior, Father MacAnally, and the day-to-day problems of the people:

Sir David Attenborough's new series Life Story tells the remarkable and often perilous story of the journey through life. Every animal on earth is in pursuit of nature's greatest prize - the continuation of its own bloodline through its offspring. The odds may be stacked against any individual succeeding, but each is born with a relentless instinct to overcome the odds. An animal must triumph again and again, over every challenge, if its life is to culminate in success. Life Story captures stories and unique behaviour from around the globe, from Australia and South East Asia to Africa and the...

The BBC is adapting John le Carre's novel The Night Manager for a new six-part series. The book, published in 1993, is about a former British soldier who ends up going undercover as part of a sting against a black market weapons dealer. Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston are set to star, according to the Hollywood Reporter, but the BBC said that was just speculation. US networks are also looking to pick up the series, the magazine reported.

When Ariel Sharon died in January this year, eight years after a stroke, he'd survived for longer than would probably be expected had he lived elsewhere in the world. Since 2005 it's been illegal in Israel to turn off ventilators when a person is dying or has no hope of recovery. The result is that large numbers of patients spend years on life support, many of them unconscious... In most countries a ward like this would not exist, and doctors and families in discussion together, might have made the decision to turn off Schmail's ventilator to allow him to die....

The atheism that is currently prevailing in Western Europe has not been a naturally occurring development in the mind of large numbers of people. It's not, as individuals like Richard Dawkins and the 19th-century French positivist sociologist Auguste Comte would have you believe, an effect of the progress of science. In fact, scientific progress points exactly in the opposite direction. The more we know about the universe, life and consciousness, the more we realise that the probability of all these extremely complex natural intricacies and perfectly accurate mechanisms have no chance of having happened by chance. No, present common...