May 2007 - Posts
By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent
Onboard the Iberostar –
As soon as we stepped onboard, we were stunned. The luxury. The comfort. The marble bathrooms and chilled champagne waiting in each incredibly appointed stateroom.
The Iberostar is a five-star cruising ship – on the Amazon.
It was an odd feeling, having spent the day before in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Brazil’s river port city of Manaus.
That was one side – and this was surely, strikingly, the other.
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| Michelle Kosinski/ NBC News |
| Sunset on the Rio Negro. |
It is the first of its kind, a luxury cruise up the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon, stopping in several villages, then going up the Rio Solimoes and returning to Manaus, the colorful sprawling city built into the hills of what was once a rubber barons' town.
The Iberostar has 74 cabins, and just about everything you could ever want or need.
The people who work here feel strongly that tourism – in a limited, responsible manner – can help the people of the Amazon. But it must be done the right way, without intruding or polluting.
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By NBC News’ Fakhar ur-Rehman and Carol Grisanti in Islamabad
Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf has long been a true political survivor. In the eight years since he seized power in a military coup and pursued a vision for a non-theological Islamic state, he has endured three assassination attempts as well as weathering many political storms -- from the opposition parties, Islamic parties and even from within his own political base.
But he may now have picked a fight he cannot win.
His decision on March 9 to suspend the Supreme Court’s chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, on allegations of misconduct has unleashed a crisis that has left his regime struggling to survive as it faces a countrywide pro-democracy movement, with Chaudhry becoming a touchstone for those who want to see an end to military rule.
"Go Musharraf Go!" shouted the thousands gathered outside the Pakistan Supreme Court building in the nation’s capital, Islamabad, last Saturday night.
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely," warned Chaudhry, quoting the 19th century English historian Lord Acton in a 25-minute speech against military dictatorship.
The protests against Musharraf have become more widespread and more violent -- plunging the country into the worst political crisis it has seen since the army seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
More than 40 people were killed in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and financial hub, when Chaudhry tried to address the local bar association. Most Pakistanis blame Musharraf and his political allies for the carnage.
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By NBC local journalist in Baghdad*
As Iraqis, the everyday scenes of blood and killing have become normal to us and even our children; we have become numb to a certain extent.
But it is different when you hear news about the death of a relative or friend.
I got a early phone call on a recent morning; I'm always afraid of early-morning calls because they are almost always bad news.
It was from my brother who told me that a close cousin had been killed after evening prayers. He was coming back home from the mosque and was carrying a big bottle of Pepsi he had bought for his kids on the way back. I was upset, as he was family.
But what was almost worse was hearing about the death of a close friend on the very same day.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
A lot of things come to mind when visitors think of Beijing: the Forbidden City, Peking duck, urban renewal, traffic, and pollution. But modern art probably isn't one of them.
It turns out, however, that it has a vibrant arts community, with one of the capital's biggest recent draws being avant-garde art communes, which group studios, workshops and galleries in industrial spaces.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Chinese contemporary art has become so popular in the west that copies of famous works are available on the streets of Beijing. |
The best known of these is 798 Art District or Dashanzi in East Beijing, where artists and dealers work out of Bauhaus-style factories built in the 1950s. Since it surfaced six years ago, Dashanzi has grown so popular that traffic jams spring up on weekends as locals and tourists flock to the area, seeking not just art but also commerce – trendy cafes and teahouses, the odd nightclub and antiques shop.
Now it faces the growing pains and soul-searching encountered by similar districts across the world. Critics now decry Dashanzi for having succumbed to rampant commercialism, driven in part by an international market looking for the next big trend and eager to snap up anything Chinese. Those making money, of course, welcome its financial success.
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By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent
MANAUS, Brazil – Rubens Gomes is not the easiest man to find. But when we had trouble reaching him by phone or email, we decided to set out in a taxi from Manaus – a city of more than a million people, surrounded by rainforest – to find the illustrious Brazilian musician and environmental innovator.
It was a fairly long and uncertain ride to Barrio Zumbi, where Gomes was said to live, past myriad shops and markets full of fantastic colors. One thing that struck us was the large number of workers, wearing uniforms from head to toe in the brightest orange imaginable, who clean the streets and sidewalks at all hours of the day and night. The city was amazingly clean.
Soon after we arrived in Barrio Zumbi, we stopped to ask for directions. By luck, we came across a shop selling musical instruments. The owner immediately knew where to find Gomes, and even climbed into our cab to come along and give us perfect directions, up and down the steep hills and heavily potholed roads of the town.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and on the corners, in open air convenience stores, men gathered to play pool in large groups. Children ran around with their dogs. A boy had a weathered wooden skateboard. One little sweet-faced girl was hugging a puppy almost as big as she was.
And, we actually found him – there was Gomes, a forty-something year-old man, in his home/workshop. He was immediately welcoming even though: a) he had no idea who we were or why we had suddenly shown up in the middle of his day to interview him, and b) none of us spoke Portuguese and we had to rely on my broken Spanish (which my friends would probably laugh at the thought of) to communicate.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer
Hong Kong --- You know you’ve hit it big when Chinese companies are trying to counterfeit your product.
At least that’s one way Lori Quon* might see it.
Late last year, she and her husband, Danilo - Americans who shuttle between Los Angeles and Hong Kong to run their small family business as well as parent two little girls - launched a new household product that has since taken off, landing in homes around the world.
This cleverly simple gizmo -- which organizes shoes -- has been featured in all the right media: TV shows, magazines, and newspapers. As a result, orders have flooded in from around the world and their product is on back-order.
Now they’re anticipating shipping every month at least a container’s worth of goods, which are made in China’s Zhejiang province.
It should be a great boon, but Lori is very attuned to that delicate turning point: when a great product becomes a victim of its own success -- by attracting copycats.
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By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer
“In New York when Rudy Giuliani was mayor and he closed the brothels and all those things, no one said he was an agent of the Taliban, did they?” Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi shot back to a question about the creeping Talibanization in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. He was referring to Giuliani’s campaign in the ‘90s to clean up Manhattan’s Times Square, ridding the area of strip clubs and X-rated video stores.
Ghazi and his older brother Abdul Aziz run the Lal Masjid (The Red Mosque) in the heart of Islamabad. The sprawling complex consists of a mosque and separate religious school (madrassa) that houses several thousand boys and girls.
VIDEO: Watch an interview with Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi
The mosque, a well-known center for radical Islamic teaching, has become a symbol of the growing threat of Islamic militancy in Pakistan and the government’s inability – or unwillingness – to confront it.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer
Near Lijiang, China -- It’s no surprise that in a country as vast as China there are all kinds of drivers. But it has been a pleasant discovery how many are actually quite skilled in this rapidly modernizing society, where 18 years ago the few drivers that existed would turn off their engines whenever they stopped at a traffic light.
Back then, the best driver I knew here was Xiao Lu, a wiry chain-smoker and personal chauffeur to a former Bank of China vice-chairman in Tianjin. Xiao Lu was a demon on the road, fearless of the millions of bicyclists who swarmed around us. He was also awfully proud of his burgundy Santana -- one of the first Volkswagen-China joint venture models to roll off the factory floor.
NBC News Beijing bureau driver, Mr.Guan, has been with working with the bureau for eight years. A diminutive man four years short of China’s optional retirement age of 60 (65 is the mandatory retirement age for Chinese males), he loves to hum while he works and dance a little soft-shoe when he’s not. He grew up in the Chinese capital and likes to point out his former childhood haunts as we navigate the city. He’s also a very good driver.
When we travelled around Yunnan province, we hired Mr. Mao, a native from a village near Lijiang. Of a sweet disposition and bearing a ruddy complexion that comes from living at high altitude, Mr Mao also had a strangely vacant expression whenever we tried to instruct him to stay with the car in case anyone tried to break in to steal our camera equipment. He was, however, a conscientious driver, rarely allowing the speedometer of his “bread car” (what the Chinese call vans because their shape resembles a bread loaf) to inch above 40 miles an hour.
But the driver that won my admiration most recently was Mr. Yang, a slender man of indeterminate age. We were introduced to him by an off-beat café owner who promised he could take us up to one of the lookout points atop Tiger Leaping Gorge.
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By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
No matter how many times I’ve visited the country, or been embedded with US forces, or covered the lives of ordinary Afghans caught up in the almost 6-year-old war, I still cringe when asked – and I’m ALWAYS asked when I get back – ‘how’s things in Afghanistan?’’ Invariably I pause for a few seconds, hoping to find the magic answer as I collect my thoughts. But there is no silver bullet: ‘’Good,’’ I venture. ‘’And bad.’’
In fact, if you were to list – as I often do after each trip – both the encouraging and disturbing developments in Afghanistan, or what is better now than, say, a year ago, I suspect your columns would be pretty much like mine: equal. And that holds true on ANY scale. Take Kabul, for instance. On the plus side, business is booming. 5-star hotels, shopping malls, modern glassy trade centers, electronics stores and expensive foreign cars jam the streets. Also, former enemies now seem to be working together. At a recent reception for the Ahmad Shah Masood Foundation, held at the relatively luxurious Serena Hotel in central Kabul, the ‘beautiful’ people I saw tended to be former Mujihadeen generals and wily warlords. Those nice, smiling men sipping their black tea and chatting now were killing each other’s militias 10 years ago.
But, say critics, Kabul’s success is built on nothing but funny money: either from the billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance that never spread beyond the capital, or from war booty and drug money. And while there may be bubbles of peace here and there, overall, Kabul is too unsafe today for a foreign reporter to walk its streets without the kind of protection he would take into the streets of Baghdad. What about Afghanistan’s progressive President, former Baltimore restaurateur Hamid Karzai? We, in the West, tend to see him as a bastion of moderation, a leader who understands the value of bringing democracy to a nation that still lingers in a previous millennium. But many Afghans see Karzai as the failed leader of a failed state, rampant with corruption. ‘’This government and all of those in it are thinking only of themselves, ‘’ says one outspoken critic, Dr Wadi Safi of Kabul University. ‘’They don’t know the nation, and they don’t think they are accountable to the people because nobody punishes them.’’
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By Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief
Baghdad's dwindling press corps learned today that two of our own were brutally murdered, apparently for doing nothing more than their jobs.
ABC News announced that its Baghdad-based cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz, 33, and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf, 26, were ambushed yesterday while driving home in western Baghdad. Their bodies were discovered today. Iraqi police told us they'd apparently been tortured before they were killed, and then shot in the head execution style.
I was always impressed with Alaa. He was smart, well connected and savvy. I liked him so much I tried to hire him for NBC News about a year ago, but he didn't want to come. He liked his job at ABC. They respected him, he told me, and felt he was a critical part of their Baghdad-based newsgathering team.
But why kill Alaa and his soundman Saif? Why have insurgents in Iraq murdered 102 journalists and kidnapped 48 since 2003, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, making Iraq the deadliest conflict ever to cover?
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By Chris Hampson, NBC News London Bureau Chief
What is it about some news stories that capture a nation's attention and have the public clinging to its every twist and turn?
Such a story has captivated the British media and its audience: the disappearance of 4-year-old Madeleine McCann two weeks ago.
Her parents Kate and Gerry McCann – both doctors in their late thirties – left Madeleine with her two-year-old twin siblings in bed in their holiday apartment in Portugal – a popular family-friendly destination for Britons – while they ate with friends just a hundred yards away.
Every half hour Gerry or Kate went back to check on them. They were sound asleep.
Then came the moment of horror that every parent in the world surely dreads: Madeleine was gone. No one knows where. No one knows how.
Did she wake and wander off? Or – as seems more likely – was she taken?
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By Tom Aspell, NBC News’ Correspondent
Israel has moved tanks, artillery and infantry into positions inside the north end of the Gaza Strip to stop the militant Palestinian group Hamas firing rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, which has been partially evacuated. Israeli airstrikes have been targeting Hamas military commanders in their Gaza hideouts. It's the most serious confrontation between Israel and Hamas in six months.
Inside Gaza, gunmen from Hamas and its Palestinian rival Fatah have been fighting each other for the past week. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed. The street battles have destroyed a unity government formed two months ago by Hamas and Fatah to avoid such clashes, and dampened hopes of peace talks with Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under pressure to respond to Hamas rocket attacks and is fighting for political survival in the face of criticism of his handling of last summer's war in Lebanon.
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By Petra Cahill, World Blog editor
We received a number of emails asking for contact information for Dr. Ho Shitiu, the renowned Chinese doctor featured in the blog "Pilgrims flock to famed Chinese herbalist." He can be reached via email at: jdsmchmcl@yahoo.com.cn .
Thank you for your continued interest in the World Blog.
By NBC News' Lawahez Jabari
I speak by telephone with my friends and colleagues in Gaza almost everyday, and they say what's happening right now in Gaza is gruesome.
My friends tell me that when you walk down the streets of Gaza you see masked people, everyone is masked. Not just militants, but civilians as well. Everyone is scared to be seen.
They are scared because they could be killed or injured randomly, regardless of whether they have done anything wrong.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
Baisha, Yunnan Province --
It's not often that an 84-year-old in China's remote southwestern mountains can build a successful cottage industry around one 3,000-word article, but that’s exactly what Dr. Ho Shitiu has done.
Ho, a spry herbal medicine practitioner from the Naxi tribe -- descendants of a Tibetan tribe with a matriarchal bent -- has been researching herbs and plants in the surrounding Jade Dragon Snow Mountains for half a century.
The octogenarian started out with a degree in mechanical engineering at Nanjing University, but his course of study was interrupted when he fell ill and had to return to his home village, where he immersed himself in the mysteries of herbs.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Dr. Ho Shitiu at work in his "laboratory." |
"My father knew some herbal medicine," said Ho during a recent interview. "I read many books and studied in the mountains."
One of his tutors was the Austrian-American botanist Joseph Rock, who traveled in the region from 1922 to 1949.
And it was an interest in Rock that led British travel writer Bruce Chatwin to the tiny Naxi town of Baisha (pop. 2,000) in northeastern Yunnan province and, eventually, to Ho.
Chatwin's vivid portrait of the doctor sowed the seeds of an international celebritydom.
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By NBC News' Iqbal Ahmed in Kandahar, Afghanistan and Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer in Kabul, Afghanistan
"I expected NATO forces to apologize to me. They never came; no one ever came. They killed my son," said Akhtar, his voice faltering as he recounted the night of March 4 when his youngest son, Faiz, 25, was shot and killed by NATO troops on a well-traveled road in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
"A NATO convoy was parked alongside of the road with full headlights blinding the oncoming traffic," said Akhtar. "My son would not have known what to do, because he would have been blinded by the lights. Eyewitnesses told me the soldiers fired into his car, then took him from the car and shot him over and over again. His body had more than 30 bullet wounds from his head down to his legs. How can a father bear this?" asked Akhtar, who goes by one name as is common in Afghanistan, and whose eyes, by now, were brimming with tears.
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NBC News
Akhtar plays with his grandaughter’s Frishta and Madina, the children of his son who was killed, inside his home in Kandahar.
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"When I told his mother she screamed, tore her clothes and then collapsed," said Akhtar.
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By Chris Hampson, NBC News London Bureau Chief
You know when you’ve been around a long time when you can’t readily recall how many prime ministers have been through 10 Downing Street in your lifetime.
I can vividly remember Maggie Thatcher’s victory in 1979. I got my job as a political correspondent for a national newspaper on the back of it. She changed my life, and – for better or worse, depending on your politics – the nation’s as well.
Eleven years later I recollect, equally intensely, watching the removal men pack up her furniture and move her out of Downing Street, her belongings in packing cases and the Iron Lady in tears.
But most of all I remember May 2, 1997 – when Tony Blair became the country’s youngest prime minister of the 20th century, ending 18 years of Conservative rule, with promises of a different Britain.
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NBC News' Ann Curry conducted a lengthy interview with Syrian President Bashar Assad about Syria's role in global politics, Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's meeting with the Syrian foreign minister at the regional meeting in Sharm el-Sheik last week and the controversy over the recent visit of Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Watch the entire interview here.
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By Eric Baculinao, NBC News Beijing Bureau Chief
Binzhou, China –
Something was definitely amiss when we tried to film at the company headquarters of the Binzhou Futian Bio-Technology Company, one of the Chinese companies accused of using the mildly toxic chemical melamine as an additive to animal feed, exporting it to the U.S. and setting off a wave of animal deaths in March.
Housed in a building owned by the government's Grain Bureau, the privately run high-tech company showed no signs of life. Even the guardhouse at the gate, the first point of contact when trying to visit any government-run facility in China, was unguarded.
Gamay Palacios, the cameraman I was working with, began to roll his tape, pleasantly surprised by the rare measure of freedom to gather elements for a sensitive story. The official interference – usually expected when covering controversial news without prior Chinese governmental clearance – was nowhere in sight.
Not so fast…
But it wasn’t to last for long. As we made our way to the building entrance – with the idea of trying to seek out company officials for a possible interview – we were met by a firmly locked glass door. And then a young guard appeared. "No one allowed in, no company officials today," he shouted through the glass.
He was very soon joined by other officialdom – a car screeched into the company compound and three people emerged. They stopped Palacios from filming any further and checked my press card, issued by China's Foreign Ministry. There was some muttering about ordering us off the premises until they realized that they were misreading the year "2007" on my card as "2001" due to poor print.
They introduced themselves as officials from the local "Propaganda Department" and told us to wait for a "higher official" from the local government. Indeed, a frail-looking man introduced as "Mr. Chen" soon alighted out of another arriving government car.
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By Carla Marcus, NBC News Producer
From my vantage point here in Baghdad, I'm aware that certain businesses are prospering. Glass for example, is in high demand to replace windows blown out by explosions. And despite limited electricity and rising prices due to inflation, sidewalks in shopping districts are overflowing with appliances.
One business I recently came across which sadly can't keep up with orders is a workshop which makes, as well as recycles, artificial limbs. It should hardly come as a surprise in a country ravaged by violence, but it still did.
The location for this shop is a secret. It was only found after one of our Iraqi producers canvassed various medical supply dealers and they deemed him trustworthy enough to disclose the shop’s whereabouts.
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Tel Aviv Bureau Chief
Americans often ask me why they’re so unpopular in the Arab world. Finally I have a story that explains it.
For sheer obtuseness and poor manners, it was hard to beat the performance of Sean McCormack, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, while managing his boss’s press conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt on Friday.
When Condoleezza Rice finished her presentation to a crowded room of journalists at the two-day regional conference on Iraq, McCormack threw the floor open to questions.
Practically every reporter in the very large room put up his or her hand. The small group of American reporters who traveled from Washington with Rice were seated together up front, along with their minders from the State Department: they make up what everyone refers to as the "Traveling Bubble."
McCormack pointed to one of the American reporters to ask his question, then to another, and then to another. Finally he said, “One more question,” and pointed to yet another American reporter from inside the "Bubble."
At this point one of the few hundred other reporters in the room shouted, “How about a question in Arabic?”
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VIDEO: Despite apartheid and poverty South Africans have hope that things will improve. Today Show's Tiki Barber takes a look at Cape Town's past and present.
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By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent
I’m breathless, and so is everyone around me, tourists that is.
It’s not just the spectacular view that’s stolen our breath: It’s the steep hike at this altitude.
The Bhutanese are used to this thin air, and thankfully they’re politely not laughing at us. The climb to Tigers Nest is a challenge, especially for a flat-lander who lives at sea level like I do. This Buddhist monastery sits at 11,000 feet. The only way to get here is a long, narrow, well worn, mostly dirt path. The hike up begins at around 8500 feet.
If there is one must-stop for every tourist who comes to Bhutan, Tigers Nest is it. But if you’re coming here, consider yourself in rare company: during 2006 only 18,000 tourists were given visas to travel to Bhutan.
Read more of NBC News' Kerry Sanders blog about his visit to the Tigers Nest in Bhutan while reporting for the Today Show's "Where in the World is Matt Lauer?"
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By Ali Arouzi, NBC News Producer
"Things are starting to feel like the old days again," said a cautiously dressed woman in her early 30’s doing some grocery shopping on Valiasr Street, Tehran’s main thoroughfare. "I am very careful about what I wear these days. The police are arresting woman all over the city for what they think is immoral clothing."
"I don’t like to wear the heavy clothing I have on now, especially as it’s almost summer. I hope this doesn’t last," she added.
Under the previous leadership of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, women started to enjoy some freedom about how they could dress. "Moral codes" loosened - allowing woman to show more hair under their headscarves and some flexibility in the style of the "montos" or gowns they wore.
Over time women began sporting outlandish hairstyles under their headscarves, putting on heavy make-up and wearing shorter and tighter montos.
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An Iranian woman shows off a bit of her own personal style in Tehran. NBC News/ Ali Arouzi. |
But when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, there were warnings that strict Islamic codes would be reinforced. Nothing really came of the warnings and commentators predicted that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric was just hot air. Many believed it was too late to roll back social reforms – especially in Tehran.
But the mood on the streets has changed dramatically in recent days. Thousands of Iranian women have been cautioned about their dress and many more have been arrested in the capital in the fiercest crackdown on what's known as "bad hijab" since the mid-1990’s.
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