June 2007 - Posts
By Ali Arouzi, NBC News Producer
"Everyone here knew it was coming, but on Wednesday evening when the government suddenly announced it was enforcing gas rationing at midnight, the move sparked protests across Tehran.
Long lines turned violent at nineteen gas stations in the capital, as customers tried to get as much as they could before the new restriction came into effect, only 26 gallons per car per month.
We were at one gas station when we saw an angry mob set fire to the gas station while chanting derogatory slogans about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then the fury of the mob turned its attention to other targets, looting government owned banks and supermarkets.
VIDEO: Rioting over gas rationing
The sheer level of anger and resentment over this issue has seriously undermined the credibility of Ahmadinejad, who was elected two years ago on a platform of delivering Iran’s massive oil wealth to the workingman’s doorstep.
Instead, the opposite has happened. Gas hasn’t delivered any wealth to the average Iranian and instead the price of gas has become more expensive. Parliament voted last month to increase the price of gasoline by 25 percent to 64 cents a gallon.
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By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
One of President Bush’s biggest critics came to Moscow on Thursday, and you would have expected him to be welcomed with open arms.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is here on what has become almost an annual state visit with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Economic ties between the two countries have grown considerably – mostly in the form of billions of dollars of weapons sales from Russian to Venezuela.
With the relationship between the U.S. and Russia considered to be at its lowest point in years – missile defense in Europe, democracy development in Russia, and the status of Kosovo being just a few of the issues where the two are at odds – the occasion seemed ripe for Chavez and his harsh criticisms of Washington.
But even though the timing of Chavez’s visit may be perfect for him, it’s a delicate moment for the Kremlin, since Putin is heading to Kennebunkport, Maine, in two days to meet with Bush in an attempt to smooth over some of those differences.
While bringing most of the mainstream media within Russia under its control or influence, the Kremlin usually has little use for foreign media and foreign opinion, and constantly complains that that both are biased against Russia. But in a rare acknowledgement of the importance of both, it looks like the Kremlin has done all it can to tone down Chavez’s impact here.
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VIDEO: London, has been called "a city of shadows." NBC News' Dawna Friesen takes us on a trip through some of the strange stories that have been buried over the years in the London fog. Visiting abandoned tube stations, WWII bunkers trapped in time and glimpsing video of a purported ghost caught on CCTV, Friesen explores the city's murky underbelly.
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By Warren Pettine, NBC News Researcher, Beijing Bureau
On my first trip to China, my cab slammed into the side of a van. The second trip, I was hit while crossing a street – luckily no injuries. So I had plenty of personal interest when I was assigned to cover a forum on road safety in China.
Automobile accidents account for 3,000 deaths per day worldwide. As China gobbles up steel to produce automobiles, its contribution to this number is starting to look like its contribution to global warming: huge. Every five minutes in China a person dies of road traffic injuries.
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| Reinhard Krause / Reuters |
| Cyclists cross a street in Beijing. |
Injuries and violence in China, grouped together in World Health Organization reports, now cause more deaths and disabilities than disease and nutrition combined. Traffic injuries account for 25 percent of injury-related deaths in China, surpassed only by suicide at 28 percent.
To shine light on the problem, the WHO this week organized a forum on road safety in China. The event brought together members of the seventeen agencies responsible for road safety, along with foreign experts for a series of lectures and discussion sessions.
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By Kiko Itasaka, NBC News Producer
It was cold and damp at 6:30 a.m., but the press throngs were all in place. Armed with coffee, umbrellas, cameras, and a fair bit of good humor, the media were ready to note the last moments of Tony Blair's decade as prime minister.
It was hours before he finally made an appearance, jumping into his car swiftly as he headed for his final session of Parliament. The press started screaming "Tony, give us a shout." "Tony, say something, come on say something."
VIDEO: Blair resigns, Brown steps in
At least these demands were friendly if a tad aggressive. Far less friendly were the abusive shouts from some 100 protestors who were screaming "Yo Blair, You Criminal," and "Shame on you Tony."
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By Marisa Buchanan, NBC News Producer
During my latest assignment in China, recalls have been all the news.
First there was the pet food, then the toothpaste, then Thomas the Tank Engine, and now tires.
All of these items have mostly low manufacturing costs and literally hit home because they are daily consumer products. The recalls have filled U.S. papers with views of China as a negligent factory floor and only helped fuel pre-existing fears of Chinese exports.
But as all is fair in love, war, and trade relations – there are now reports in Chinese papers of U.S. fruit products that have been halted at Chinese ports and a couple weeks ago there were concerns about a shipment of U.S. pistachio nuts.
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By Chris Hampson, NBC News London Bureau Chief
There’s a whiff of something special in Downing Street this week.
Could it be the smell of freshly-cooked apple pie coming from the kitchen of Number 11?
Perhaps a good and kind neighbor is busy baking a little farewell gift for the occupier of the more famous address next door: Number 10.
Prime Minister Tony Blair is – after 10 long years – giving up the most sought-after address in British politics and heading out the door.
VIDEO: Britain's next Prime Minister
And no one has sought after this address more than Blair’s neighbor, friend – and rival –Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and fellow resident of Downing Street.
At last, the most photographed door in Britain is letting Blair out – and Brown in.
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By Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief
Very few people are going to cry for Ali Hassan Al-Majid, "Chemical Ali," who was sentenced to death by a U.S.-supported Iraqi court on Sunday. Al-Majid was clearly guilty of horrible crimes. He admitted in court to ordering the destruction of Kurdish villages in 1988.
I have watched videos of mass executions of Kurds, lined up in what is now a public park in Irbil. They were shot for allegedly cooperating with Kurdish fighters, the Peshmerga. Kurdish villages, in particular Halabja, were also attacked with chemical gas, massacring about 5,000 men, women and children, their twisted dead bodies filmed by horrified international news crews.
But did Al-Majid, like Saddam before him, receive a trial that was free of political intervention? It doesn’t seem so.
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By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
We made our first inquiries about getting into Gaza at the beginning of the battles last week when Hamas routed Fatah. Our man in Gaza suggested we wait a while, and we were happy to comply. A BBC reporter was kidnapped in there 100 days ago and none of us felt like driving the roads -- long and straight into Gaza City and too much open ground on both sides. So we waited until Wednesday.
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By Michelle Neubert, NBC News Producer
I was convinced we were at the wrong gate at the Amman airport for our much delayed departure for Iraq.
The passengers looked more like the crowd that might be on a flight headed to Barcelona that had just been called and on which we wished we were traveling. In fact we walked right past the crowd because we were so convinced it was not our gate.
The reason being that the flight to Baghdad is usually full of khaki-clad contractors, military security types all brawn and dark shades, a few coalition government types in business suits and a few random fellow members of the press. But today there were additions to the pack – groups of smartly dressed Iraqi women and families all looking in holiday mood.
The place was packed, the first flight out after days of the airport being closed after the Askariya shrine bombing last week, so we were lucky to find a few spare seats and squeezed in next to a group of chatty Iraqi women.
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By Marisa Buchanan, NBC News Producer
Here is what I knew about Chongqing when we rolled into town late last week: it's big. Really, really big – over 31 million big, up from a mere 6 million in 1997.
The industrial and economic growth has been mind-boggling – with locals caught up in widening city limits and rapid development whether they want in on it or not.
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| Marisa Buchanan / NBC News |
| The bright lights of Chongqing beckon from the Yangtze River. |
Our NBC team was there at the invitation of the local government – but throughout our visit, we tried to define the city for ourselves. What slogan would we give it?
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
SHUIGUAN, China –
In the midst of all the Chinese blog chatter about investing in the stock market, the new compulsory dance curriculum due out in schools this autumn (parents debating whether "little girls and boys be allowed to touch"), and the college entrance exams recently endured by over 10 million students, one thread has been slowly gathering steam over the weeks: Will China’s Great Wall be a Seventh Wonder of the World?
In two weeks, we’ll see the results of a
global electronic campaign to choose the new
Seven Wonders of the World, and concern here over whether the Chinese perennial favorite will in fact make the cut has grown so much that the Academy of the Great Wall of China has been running a campaign to get out the Chinese vote.
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By Michelle Neubert, NBC News Producer
I should have known when I switched on the TV in my Amman hotel room and saw the reports that insurgents had attacked the revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, Iraq on Monday.
I was working in Iraq the last time on the shrine was attacked and its Golden Dome was destroyed in 2006 – and the country is still reeling from the sectarian violence which has ensued as a result.
This latest act of violence didn't bode well either – it raised immediate fears that violent reprisals would be imminent. Within a few hours a curfew was imposed, then news came from our colleagues in Baghdad that the international airport had been closed. So now we are stuck in Jordan.
We – myself and another NBC News producer – are the lucky ones. Our only inconvenience has been to check out of our hotel and go to the airport just in case there was a chance things opened up; only to be called back, check back into the hotel and unpack for a few days. We are "stuck" in a good hotel in the increasingly thriving and vibrant Middle East business and tourist hub of Amman. Our only dilemma now is how best to kill two unexpected days of downtime.
Meanwhile our friends and colleagues who we were replacing are stuck in Baghdad with an increasingly dangerous situation unfolding and plans for family vacations postponed, a family christening about to be shelved. We feel awful.
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By Sohel Uddin, NBC News Producer
"This has now turned from a rescue operation to a search mission," said Sgt. Niedbalski, his voice despondent as he led a troop of Alpha Company on yet another search mission.
The men of the 10th Mountain division were looking for their missing comrades – Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, Pvt. Byron W. Fouty and Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr. – who disappeared May 12 when insurgents ambushed their patrol.
After a month of searching for their missing comrades under extremely difficult conditions, we saw a range of emotions during a recent week-long embed with the troops.
(U.S. forces later found the body of Anzack and an al-Qaida umbrella group – the Islamic State of Iraq – claimed in a video released on June 4 that they had killed the three missing soldiers. The U.S. military condemned the insurgent’s claim and said the search for the missing soldiers will continue.)
The bad news about the soldier’s abduction came at a time when the troops were still digesting new orders: their deployment had been extended for another three months.
Obviously everyone was disappointed that they could not return home to their families after a year, as they had expected. But on top of that – a $1,000 bonus, which was promised to them, was withdrawn. Now that everyone serving in Iraq had their tours increased it was unfeasible to pay the whole army this incentive.
To make matters worse, at this time of year in Iraq the temperature can reach a staggering 120 degrees Fahrenheit and in this heat the troops must live, sleep, fight, and in this case, search for their colleagues.
During the time the NBC crew was embedded, staying at a number of combat outposts around Yusufiya, we saw first hand how the troops manage to grapple with all of these challenges and get their jobs done.
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By Nancy Chen, NBC News Researcher
It’s a dance revolution.
Obesity is a growing problem in China, and the government’s new solution: mandatory dance classes, in the hopes that students will boogie their way to a slimmer waistline.
Starting in September, millions of students will have to spend their breaks or gym class time shimmying; each set of the seven designated dances – different for elementary, middle and high school students – will last four to five minutes, the Chinese Ministry of Education announced on Tuesday.
Chinese students, nicknamed "Little Emperors," have been growing chubbier by the decade. They are on average more than 2 inches taller and 6.5 pounds heavier than they were 30 years ago, according to the Chinese Ministry of Health.
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| Nancy Chen / NBC News |
| Chinese students demonstrate their dancing skills at press conference held by the Chinese Ministry of Education on Tuesday. |
Many Chinese blame the problem on the influx of Western fast-food chains – you can’t walk a block in a major city like Beijing or Shanghai without spotting a McDonald’s, KFC or Pizza Hut.
The restaurants are almost always full – the clean environment, air conditioning, fast service and American element all add to their popularity. And the $9 for a 12-inch pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut (delivered on bicycle, not car) is also becoming more affordable for the increasing number of affluent Chinese.
But children’s waistlines are growing along with their parents’ bank accounts.
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By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
Eighteen months after defeating Fatah in legislative elections the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is poised to take military control of the Gaza Strip after a month of street battles.
Fatah, founded by the late Yasser Arafat, has been fielding units from police forces and some elite guard units in the fight with Hamas, but the Islamists have proved to be better disciplined. Hamas has been well supplied with weapons, communications equipment, vehicles and fuel.
Hamas has also proved to be more nimble in urban warfare. Its fighters now control both ends of the Gaza Strip. Fatah forces are largely confined to police stations and camps while Hamas gunmen surround them with firing teams based on high buildings.
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By Jim Long, NBC News Cameraman
"Doomsday planes," C-17s, helos, motorcades, Afghan commando squads... it's the stuff of Tom Clancy novels. It's also how an NBC News team spent a week traveling with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Producer Courtney Kube, soundman Johnnie Roth, and I circumnavigated the globe from May 30th-June 6th, filing dispatches from far-flung places like Hawaii, Singapore, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and France. We were the U.S. television pool team on the trip, which means we had the responsibility of covering the secretary for all five of the major networks.
In addition to shooting with my Ikegami HL-V55, I brought along a mini-DV cam to chronicle our adventure. In the first of a two-part series, we travel from D.C. to Colorado, where Gates gives the commencement speech at the Air Force Academy. Then we fly to Hawaii to meet with the Commander of Pacific Command Adm. Tim Keating. Keating next joins us en route to Singapore for an Asian Defense Conference.
Click here to watch Jim's video blog from the trip.
Read more from Jim Long in the Daily Nightly blog.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
ZHONGDIAN, China – It’s not commonly understood that the Tibetan kingdom once stretched well beyond what is today referred to as Tibet. Looking at a map of China, you realize just how vast it was – and thus why it is strategically important to Beijing. You also see how much Tibetan territory has been folded into the neighboring four Chinese provinces.
What meager media coverage Tibet receives these days is confined to what’s known as the Tibet Autonomous Region (which, according to historians and Tibetan rights groups, comprises only half of the original Tibetan kingdom). But there is very little international reporting done about the Tibetan communities that span the other half – in the Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Qinghai, and Gansu.
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| Adrienne Mong/NBC News |
| An ever-present Tibetan marker near Zhongdian. |
So it came as something of a welcome surprise to us when we traveled to Zhongdian, an old gateway to the Tibetan plateau, high up in the mountains fringing Yunnan and Sichuan. In this corner of the world, the Tibetan community seems to be thriving despite the signs of creeping urbanization.
Their counterparts elsewhere in China, however, are not, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch.
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By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
I went to my first Israeli funeral as a mourner today. The Arabs say the Jews love life; I was curious to see how they conduct burials.
We gathered inside the main gate of a Tel Aviv cemetery, about a hundred family members and friends of the deceased, the mother of a colleague of mine.
The dress code was informal. None of the men wore a suit or a tie, and only a few women were in black. The men wore yarmulkes, the skull cap worn by religious Jews and at religious ceremonies, and a few had added baseball caps for protection from the sun. The women were bareheaded.
Condolences were exchanged before the crowd moved slowly towards the body, which was on a bier covered with a black cloth emblazoned with a silver six-pointed Star of David. It was overlooked by a sign in Hebrew forbidding anyone with the family name of Cohen to go further inside the cemetery. (By tradition Cohens have duties in temples and may not be contaminated by the dead.) CONTINUED >>
By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent, traveling on the Amazon River-
As soon as
our small boat came to a stop in a muddy cove of the Janauaca lake region, along the Solimoes River, we sensed some movement behind the trees. Birds? Maybe an animal? No, just four small children padding out toward the water in a row, to see what the commotion was all about.
They were not so eager to talk, as we found throughout our trip.
The children here are extremely soft-spoken and polite, at least when outsiders are tiptoeing around.
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| Michelle Kosinski / NBC News |
| A young boy who lives along the Amazon River. |
I took a few pictures of them as they sat together on a fallen tree, then let them take a look at my digital camera, causing some giggles. They teased one another and then decided to follow us into the forest as we started a morning's trek.
The children were irresistible –we couldn’t stop watching them watch us. They were curious and heart-wrenchingly beautiful. One boy carried his baby brother. Another helped his little sister fix her hair, patiently twisting it over and over again so it would fit into a pink plastic clip.
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By Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief
One Palestinian refugee camp here in northern Lebanon is today a smoldering, sniper-infested, booby-trapped battlefield where a few hundred al-Qaida inspired fighters have been making an Alamo-like last stand against the Lebanese army.
Another refugee camp in the south seems to be heading in the same direction, and there are more, many more, al-Qaida inspired time bombs like these slowly ticking away in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East.
The jihad-inspired militants fighting Lebanese troops today in what’s left of the shelled, scorched and bullet-strafed Nahr al-Barid camp are from a small cell called Fatah al-Islam, "Islamic victory," but the name isn’t important. There are other groups here too, Jund al-Sham, "Soldiers of the Levant," Esbat al-Ansar, "League of Partisans," and Al-Qaeda fi Bilad al-Sham, "al-Qaida in the Levant."
While the names are unimportant (they change as the factions split off and meld into each other), don’t ignore the groups. It didn’t work for Lebanon, and won’t work for the rest of the Middle East and the United States.
Click here to read the rest of Richard Engel's analysis "'Al-Qaida franchises' - ticking time bombs"
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
China may have 144 million Internet users, but spend a Sunday afternoon at the multi-storey Xidan Books, and you’ll discover a whole lot of Chinese folks trawling for information the old fashioned way.
Three sections in particular were jammed with people, nose deep in pages, faces set in deep concentration.
As China’s economy grows at breakneck, double-digit speed, it was hardly surprising to see clusters of hopeful entrepreneurs parked in front of shelves labelled "Store Operation."
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| In search of the next big thing... at the Xidan Books Building. |
Nor was it unexpected to find people crowding around books on how to invest, given the rollercoaster performance of China’s stocks. The A-shares market, for instance, which is open to domestic traders and some foreign institutional investors, has surged 250 percent since 2006.
Reading one’s way to spirituality?
However, my jaw dropped when I spun directly around and noticed dozens of readers crowding the aisle for "Buddhism and Taoism."
This is, after all, a country run by a government famous for its harsh views on religion and religious philosophy.
And, yet, in recent months local media have reported a growing popular interest in organized faiths like Buddhism and Christianity as well as traditional Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism and Taoism.
In fact, one could say the Chinese central government has been shilling for Taoism. The evidence? In April, China’s director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Ye Xiaowen, led a promotional tour of the Tao Te Ching – Taoism’s principal text, written roughly in 500 B.C. by Lao Tzu – to several Chinese cities, at an estimated cost of $1 million.
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By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
Every few months Israel holds a military exercise, often in the south of the country in the Negev desert, to train its troops to fight. The latest exercises involved tanks and infantry with aerial assets, ending this week after simulated battles against Syrians and Palestinians. These are the two fronts that most worry Israel.
The exercise sharpened some of the soldiers' urban fighting skills, a coincidence perhaps to remind Israelis that the battle skills displayed by their paratroops capturing Jerusalem from the Arabs 40 years ago this week in the Six-Day War may be needed against Syrian or Palestinian towns one day soon. CONTINUED >>
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
It is an icy spectacle to behold – the Columbia Icefield certainly lives up to its billing.
This 130-square-mile complex of mint-green headwalls and moraines, up to nine football fields thick, contains the largest glaciers in all of the Canadian Rockies.
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| The Columbia Icefields on the boundary of Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies. NBC News/Jim Maceda |
This was to be the perfect "get-away" from my more routine "mountain" experiences with U.S. forces in the remote, arid ridges separating Afghanistan and Pakistan. But another kind of war – the one on the environment – has taken a serious toll here as well.
CONTINUED >>
By Karl Bostic, NBC News Bureau Chief
After four years of coming in and out of Baghdad, I've learned to always expect some kind of change each time.
Like a violent storm, with an occasional lull, there would always be some deadly shift: more kidnappings, tortured bodies, car bombs, booby-trapped donkey carts, phony cops at phony checkpoints, and always more of the improvised explosive devices.
But if there was any constant or calm at the center of the storm, it was those members of our local staff, the ones who would never leave. That is, until now. Mohammed*, our fixer/local producer, has given up, and has left to find a new life.
I arrived last week to the news that Mohammed would be leaving in a few days, to join his family, who he had moved a year ago to Damascus, Syria. Now he was leaving for good, with his mother. His father refused to leave, saying he was too old to start again.
Actually Mohammed has two families. "It's not easy to leave after four years of working for NBC," he told me. "I've spent more time with NBC these last four years than even seeing my own family. I expected one day to finish with NBC, but not like this."
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
I was speaking recently with a doctor who works at the Kindi Teaching Hospital in
central Baghdad. I wanted to get a sense of how they were coping with so many doctors having fled the country. In a very matter-of-fact tone she told me that two more doctors had been kidnapped and murdered the week before.
"It happened right in front of the hospital, right in front of our guards," she said with a nervous chuckle that seemed to sum up the brutality and absurdity of it.
The Kindi hospital is on the front line in treating the causalities of Baghdad’s horrendous violence. Ninety percent of surgeries are trauma cases – mostly bomb and shooting victims. Half the teaching positions are vacant.
Doctors are frequently targeted by kidnap gangs, demanding ransoms of between $10,000 and $400,000, according to the Iraqi Medical Association. The association says that between 350 and 400 have been abducted since the fall of Saddam – "and that’s just the ones we know about," a spokesman told me.
And it is not just doctors. Lawyers, teachers and other professionals are regularly targeted.
CONTINUED >>
By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent
Editors note: Kerry Sanders is reporting from Cuba as part of NBC News Today Show’s special coverage: Today in Cuba.
Coke. Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. Duncan Hines cake mix.
It’s all available at the grocery store here in Cuba. Not exactly the picture of a country economically pinched by a 45-year U.S. embargo.
The U.S. embargo is designed to prevent American companies from doing business, while at the same time, denying most U.S. citizens entry into this communist country.
The theory: Keep hard U.S. currency out of the Cuban economy and it’ll help bring about democratic change.
VIDEO:
What's next for Cuba?
But why then is the grocery store here full of these American products?
And why did I meet a group of 18 Californians in Havana on vacation?
The devil is in the details.
CONTINUED >>
By Marisa Buchanan, NBC News Producer
It seems like just another day in Tiananmen Square, even though it’s far from it -- it’s the 18th anniversary of the 1989 government crackdown on student demonstrations in and around Beijing.
The numbers of people who died at the hand of the Chinese government are conflicting, though there are independent estimates of more than 1,000. But today you would never know it even happened. There is no anniversary news in the papers in Beijing, no candlelight memorials, no flowers at the foot of any of the monuments in the square.
An ordinary day
Journalists, especially with TV cameras, usually get stopped even on regular days in the square, but leading up to the Olympics the police seem on their best behavior, so I was curious what would happen today in terms of access.
So as I emerged from the subway into the square, I took out my cell phone camera as I began to walk around. Then I took out my other camera, which is small but it looks a bit more professional than your average tourist.
No one stopped me even though I was trailed a bit here and there by guards. Periodically their vans cruised up next to me and loitered. A watch seller who struck up a conversation with me was shooed away by the police, but they said nothing to me.
Otherwise, Chinese tourists just asked to look at my camera and asked me to be in their pictures.
After a short stroll, I sat down to take in the sights and sounds of the square. With the sun shining, it was a picture-postcard scene – no small feat in often-smoggy Beijing.
I tried to imagine what it was like over those days and nights 18 years ago. I have read a lot about that period, seen all the footage of the chaos – students gathered, tanks, barricades, banners waving. The only waving I saw today was small children running around with Chinese flags, and older children waving over to their mothers to take pictures.
It was what I was expecting – just another day in Tiananmen Square. Then something unusual happened.
CONTINUED >>
By Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer
The international press is now in place, waiting for the annual summit of G-8 leaders to begin in the next days.
Only a few late arrivals are still standing in line at the press accreditation center in Kuehlungsborn, a small beach resort in eastern Germany that was once under communist rule where the German government built a state of the art press center in the middle of nowhere.
Foreign visitors may have a tough time recognizing that this was once East Germany. Most of the houses have been colorfully remodeled, the streets are well paved, and the stores are filled with western goods.
Despite several small demonstrations – protests calling for better immigration laws, anti-capitalism groups – the city of Rostock, near the summit site, is trying to maintain business as usual.
While people tried to get to work on time, approximately 1,000 protestors marched through the city before lunch time. Police officials expect a similar number of peaceful demonstrators to gather in Rostock's market square later today.
There has been no violence since the riots on Saturday. But, the brutal clashes are still dominating newspaper headlines here today.
CONTINUED >>
By Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer
Rostock had the feel of a quiet port city on a Sunday morning. Young couples were strolling along the sea banks, kissing, holding hands, peeking at the burnt-out car that was left behind by violent protesters last night. Even the weather had improved. Despite a chilly sea breeze, the sun peaked through the clouds to light up the picturesque architecture in the old town part of this northern German sea port.
About 1,500 activists from a group called "Global Agriculture" poured into Rostock at mid-day Sunday to demonstrate for their cause. Police had to temporarily block off some streets in the city center, but did not report further violent clashes. During the G-8 week, protest organizers have officially announced the gathering of up to 20,000 activists each day.
Despite a peaceful Sunday so far, security forces are on high alert. Yesterday’s riots give them all the reason to be. Official police reports say that 433 police officers were injured in the violent clashes during the main demo on Saturday. Even though these numbers include small cuts and bruises, 30 police officers had to be hospitalized with more severe injuries.
The international press, gathered and watching on the periphery of the demo grounds, had several close calls too.
CONTINUED >>
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
Sometimes the trickiest part of working in China isn’t navigating the bureaucracy but figuring out specialized vocabulary.
For instance, our resourceful researcher Ed Flanagan has lived in Beijing for two years and speaks fluent Mandarin, but even he was stumped when one of our cameramen asked him to locate a light diffuser. (To this day he still doesn’t know what the word is in Chinese, but "cloth that makes the sun softer" and some hand gestures did the trick anyway.)
Too often, I’m similarly flummoxed. During recent conversations with members of the Beijing Tigers baseball team, I struggled to figure out words like "pitcher" and "league." I won’t be forgetting "pitcher" any time soon: "tou shou," literally "throw hand."
But the word I enjoyed most adding to my vocabulary was "gong zai," which means mascot. One meaning for the character gong is "male." Zai is a common Cantonese (southern Chinese dialect) term that indicates "young man" or "guy." Somehow, together, in Chinese, they mean mascot.
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| Adrienne Mong/NBC News |
| The Beijing Tigers' mascot shows off its English |
So I wondered, as the Beijing Tigers’ giant fuzzy mascot doled out lollipops to kids at Lucheng Field, how manly one had to be to get the job wearing a Tiger costume in 90 degree heat.
As it turns out, not manly at all.
CONTINUED >>
By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent
Pink dolphins. Sloths. Toucans. Monkeys. Hawks. Parrots. Caimans. Snakes. Piranha. Macaws. We encounter all of these within two days, half of them within a 30-minute span.
The multitude of birds, even the front-heavy toucans in flight, has almost become commonplace and barely turns heads anymore.
Only the anaconda seems to elude us, doubtlessly slithering somewhere below as we wind our way in small motorboats through the endless tributaries of the Rio Negro, a major tributary of the mighty Amazon. It supports more life than we fully understand, the greatest moving mass of fresh water on earth.
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| NBC News/ Michelle Kosinski |
| Children of Novo Airao play in the waters of the Rio Negro. |
Yes, we are wide-eyed tourists -- well, actually journalists with some of the appearance and all the excitement of tourists -- traveling with other tourists from all over the world.
There are indeed "tourist stops" along the Amazon. Who knew?
CONTINUED >>
