GRN Correspondents

Jon has worked for the Financial Times since 2003 and was the paper's education correspondent between 2005 and October 2007 before moving to Kabul to become Afghanistan correspondent. Before joining the FT he worked for The Friday Times in Lahore, Pakistan, and helped launch its sister newspaper, The Daily Times in 2002. While studying modern history at Oxford University he edited the Cherwell student newspaper

Tom is the Afghanistan correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and The Economist. He began his career in journalism with the London Evening Standard in 1999. In 2003 he moved to Pakistan where he worked for the Daily Times of Lahore and the Friday Times of Lahore before going freelance in Afghanistan in August 2004. While in Afghanistan he has written for the many publications including The Independent, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Magazine, The Far Eastern Economic Review and The Scotsman. He has been working in broadcast journalism since 2005 and does regular interviews for CNN as well irregular work for broadcasters including CBS, CBC, Radio New Zealand and DWTV.

Doug Grindle has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost four years as an embedded military reporter. He reports for radio, television and newspapers, and his work has appeared in outlets across the United States. Clients include Fox News Radio, New Hampshire Public Radio, CSPAN, CNN Presents, Yahoo News, and over 20 local television network affiliates, as well as regional newspapers such as the Arizona Daily Star and The Daily Oklahoman. He has reported live from Baghdad and Tikrit, and has covered hundreds of combat patrols

Jean MacKenzie has been a journalist for over 15 years, with a long history of covering Russian politics during the tumultuous post-Soviet years. She moved to Central Asia and Afghanistan after 9/11, as world attention shifted to the Islamic world. For the past four years she has been in Kabul, as the head of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which trains and mentors Afghan journalists. In September, 2006, she pioneered a reporting project in Helmand province, world capital of opium production and center of the renewed Taleban insurgency. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post Online, and numerous other venues, as well as on www.iwpr.net.

Jerome Starkey is a freelance reporter based in Kabul, Afghanistan. He spent three years as a staff news reporter on The Sun, in London, before moving to Afghanistan in October 2006. He writes for The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, The Sun, The Mirror, The Scotsman and The Independent.

Besar Likmeta is BIRN Albania editor. Since 2003 he has worked as professional journalist for various print publications, electronic media and television. He started his career reporting for the Florida Times Union in Jacksonville, Florida. He moved to Albania in 2005 where he has been a features editor for the Tirana Times, a world news editor for 24 hour news channel, TV Ora news, and lately as BIRN Albania editor. He has also contributed stories to various publications such as Jane's Intelligence Review, Businessweek and World Politics Review. He divide’s his time between his reporting duties and working on documentary on the Albania’s righteous among nations, Muslims that through their faith saved the Jews during WWII.

Uki is a Buenos Aires-based writer and journalist who has written for various major media in the United States, Great Britain and Argentina. These include The New York Times, Time magazine, The Miami Herald, The Sunday Times of London, The Guardian and The Observer. He is the author of three books, including his latest "The Real Odessa, How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina", published by Granta Books, London. The Real Odessa and its author have been the object of innumerable reviews and stories in international media, and of television documentaries by Discovery Channel, the BBC and television stations in Switzerland and Italy.

Paul Scheltus is based in Buenos Aires and reports regularly from across Latin America for The Independent in London and Het Parool in Amsterdam, as well as blogging on the region at latinamericawatch.blogspot.com. He is experienced in radio and TV and works well under pressure. He holds a Master's degree in Spanish and Latin American History.

Andrew Bolton is a senior journalist with SBS in Sydney.