Here’s an interesting update to the story of the obviously staged video from Gaza promoted and vouched for by CNN.

The company that provided this video story to CNN and several other news outlets is World News & Features, as we pointed out yesterday after CNN published their defense of the piece.

At the lower right of the World News & Features front page, we find a link to Nepras.net as the designer of the site.

A WHOIS lookup for worldnf.tv reveals that the domain is hosted by nepras.net:

Domain Name: WORLDNF.TV
Created on: 07-Feb-06
Expires on: 07-Feb-09
Last Updated on: 07-Feb-08

Administrative Contact:
Martin, Paul
World News & Features
High gatte
London N6 6AT
United Kingdom

Technical Contact:
Martin, Paul
World News & Features
High gate
London N6 6AT
United Kingdom

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.NEPRAS.NET
NS2.NEPRAS.NET

And the primary contact and general manager for nepras.net is none other than the “freelance photographer” who filmed that hospital scene, Ashraf Mashharawi.

Overnight, I received several more emails from doctors and Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), all expressing the opinion that the video is staged and that the “CPR” shown is an obvious fraud, for many reasons. So far, not one doctor has written to say the technique shown in the video might be genuine.

UPDATE at 1/10/09 11:21:43 am:

And more connections to Hamas; the official website of the Hamas television station (Aqsa TV) was registered by Mashharawi’s company:

Domain Name: aqsatv.ps
Creation Date: 2006-03-13
Expiration Date: 2009-03-13
Status: Active

Domain Name Owner:
Name: aqsatv
Address: gaza
Tel:[redacted]
Fax:
Country: Palestine

Administrative Contact:
Name: aqsatv
Address: gaza
Tel: [redacted]
Fax:
Country: Palestine

Technical Contact:
Name: aqsatv
Address: gaza
Tel: [redacted]
Fax:
Country: Palestine

Registrar:
Name: Nepras For Media & IT
Address: [redacted]
Tel: [redacted]
Fax: [redacted]
WebSite: www.nepras.com