Stephen Cole

Stephen Cole's picture
Stephen Cole
Presenter and Correspondent | United Kingdom
Biography

Stephen Cole, a presenter and correspondent based in London, is a veteran of international television news having launched Sky News,then six years later joined CNN in Atlanta before moving back to the BBC. In 2005 he joined the launch team at Al Jazeera in London.

Stephen has more than 30 years of experience in the field of journalism, working his way up from trainee newspaper reporter to senior television anchor and correspondent. He is also a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and a judge at the Royal Television Society...

Latest posts by Stephen Cole

By Stephen Cole in Asia on April 28th, 2010
Photo by Dan Kennedy, via Flickr

Almaty is the commercial heart of the country. Like Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, it is a city encircled by snow-capped mountains, and because of its altitude, it suffers a haze similar to the one which hovers over Los Angeles.

Hundreds of delegates are here from 37 countries.

By Stephen Cole in Asia on April 27th, 2010
Photo by Dan Kennedy, via Flickr

As a journalist, you can never expect the red carpet to be rolled out when you arrive in a country.

So, I was more than happy to walk on the blue one rolled out when I disembarked from the plane at Almaty in Kazakhstan. It wasn’t just the blue carpet either. Standing on it was a small delegation of military officials all wearing the extra-large Soviet-style caps that are worn here.

The caps are always at least twice as large as the faces underneath them, are tipped way back and for some reason, always make me smile when I see them.

But the carpet from plane to terminal is an improvement on the grey metal hallway usually reserved for disembarking passengers.

By Stephen Cole in Europe on February 12th, 2010
Photo from AFP

There were at least a dozen assorted government leaders and Heads of State gathered around the Finlandia Conference Centre in snowy Helsinki, Finland's capital, but there was only one the crowds had come to see.

Inside the hall I looked up from my computer just in time to see, on the large visual display, the Zil limo sweep in front of the media entrance. It stopped outside the media entrance and a small figure, screened by extremely large figures, darted inside.

And make no mistake former Russian president, now prime minister, and who knows possibly future president again Vladimir Putin is very small. Even President Sarkozy is taller.

But what he lacks in height he more than makes up for in charisma. He looked tired but his appearance at this summit confirmed its importance.

Premier Putin spoke well about the environment and promised that Kalinograd would no longer spill the raw sewage of 400,000 people into the Baltic.

By Stephen Cole in Europe on February 10th, 2010
Photo by Argonowski via Wikimedia Commons

I had never walked on the Baltic Sea before and when I stepped off the icebreaker, I was somewhat nervous. Ice stretched as far as the eye could see, and underneath me, an ocean.

It’s a sea that is described by the Baltic Sea Action Group as the most polluted in the world. The water, quite simply, is poisonous.

Large areas suffer from eutrophication, which means that theres no oxygen.

We are here in Helsinki to see if a group of nine countries can save the sea from a certain death.

We will see today whether Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, can persuade governments and business leaders to follow through on over a 100 commitments to save the Baltic.

Tags:
By Stephen Cole in Europe on January 27th, 2010
Photo by AFP

Davos opened with a whimper not a bang. Not a happy face anywhere, or at least that's what the forum's founding father Klaus Schwab has ordered.

In my experience, there's always a party somewhere here, but Schwab insists that this year " there is nothing to celebrate".

He even went further and, with I suspect no sense of irony, (academics tend not to get irony), said: "Some bankers have understood the seriousness of the situation."

I'm sure I will find one somewhere.

Inside the main conference chamber, the hand-picked panels, all chuffed to bits at being asked, went through the motions about bankers' bonuses and  greater regulation.

But the protagonists didn't find any consensus. Around the fringes though, amongst the aid workers, some of the righteous people were making it crystal clear that moneymen and women have lost the trust of the public.

By Stephen Cole in Europe on January 25th, 2010
Photo by EPA

Davos is celebrating its 40th birthday this year. Yes, for the World Economic Forum and its founder Klaus Schwab, life could really begin at 40.

But don't expect any fireworks or cake in this normally serene Swiss mountaintop town as 2,500 decision-making delegates start to arrive not to celebrate but to try and "decision-make".

That's not  to say there won't be parties, but to attend any of the cocktail events, dinner-parties, champagne receptions, or  Havana cigar nights you have to have a private invitation.

And the number of invites you receive over the five days is decided by how useful the corporate event organisers think you might be.

However, all the parties take place after the business of the day and that covers a very wide spectrum of subjects ranging from how to save the global banking system to finding a cure for prostate cancer.

Al Jazeera Live

Biography

Stephen Cole's picture
Stephen Cole
Presenter and Correspondent
Stephen Cole, a presenter and correspondent based in London, has more than 26 years of journalism experience.

What's Hot


Recent Comments

This work is licensed under Creative Commons. Please read our attribution policy.