August 2007 - Posts
By Mario Garcia, NBC News Producer
UPDATE: After traveling from Illulisat to Kangerlussuaq to Copenhagen and on to London, the NBC News crew made it back stateside when they arrived in Baltimore on Saturday.
Editor’s Note: NBC News Anne Thompson and her crew were on assignment in Greenland, but due to a strike by Air Greenland, flights have been few and far between. Anne managed to get out of town on Thursday evening, but her crew – producer Mario Garcia, photographer Bruce Bernstein and his son and soundman, Curt Bernstein were not so lucky.
KANGERLUSSUAQ, Greenland –
Once our correspondent Anne Thompson managed to catch a flight, the rest of us – Bruce, Curt, and I – decided to go ahead and hike out to an ice fjord in Ilulissat. And it was a good thing because after having been on iceberg cruises and flying over ice sheets, we all agreed that the most amazing sight was the sunset last night – at 10:30 p.m.
With 20 hours of daylight in Greenland during the summer – it means long working days or long layovers when you are delayed like we are. But we were delighted to catch one more glimpse of the natural beauty Greenland has to offer.
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| Curt Bernstein / NBC News |
| So many places to go, so few planes! NBC News’ Mario Garcia and Bruce Bernstein in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. |
Not so fast
On Friday morning we got some good news when we heard the Greenland Air strike was over.
With that, we presumed we could get from where we sat in Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland’s major airport on the west coast.
We called Air Greenland and of course they said, "There are flights, but you’re not on any of them."
However, after some back and forth and some time left on interminable hold, the agent from Air Greenland did get back to me with a flight from Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq. I asked here when it left and she said, "When you get here."
CONTINUED >>
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
Maj. Erica Clarkson would have liked to be in Special Forces or the Army Rangers. But she is barred from doing that - or serving in units likely to be engaged in direct combat.
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| Jane Arraf / NBC News |
| Maj. Erica Clarkson on the job with the Army’s 3-2 Stryker Brigade in Iraq. |
But in Iraq, even if female soldiers aren’t assigned to a combat unit, combat comes to them. Clarkson’s story isn’t about what women can’t do, it’s about what they are doing in Iraq.
She’s the physical therapist for the 3-2 Stryker Brigade. In her 13 months deployed here, she’s treated more than 4,000 patients. They’re not all office visits. She goes out on medical missions everywhere the Strykers are deployed – which happen to be some of the most volatile places in Iraq.
‘No front line’
"In terms of what job occupations the women are allowed to enter it’s still very limited – however in Iraq it doesn’t really matter what your job specialty is," she said. "There is no front line."
Clarkson has been in a firefight flying over Fallujah and had a rocket recently land 300 feet from her trailer. When she rides in the Stryker vehicles, the soldiers often ask her to stand in the hatch-and-pull security – an honor indicating that they feel she’s a capable soldier.
CONTINUED >>
By Anne Thompson, NBC News correspondent
Update: Anne Thompson managed to get a seat on a plane out of Greenland on Thursday evening. However, as of 8:30 a.m. EST Friday, the rest of her crew - producer Mario Garcia, photographer Bruce Bernstein and his son and soundman, Curt Bernstein - are still stuck there and hoping to get on a flight home...
ILULISSAT, Greenland – I had camped out on green ice sheet, ridden helicopters into glaciers where only a handful of people have been, scrambled up and down mountains, but nothing has been as challenging or frustrating as the Air Greenland strike.
We’re stranded on the world’s largest non-continent island. "We" is our NBC News team – producer Mario Garcia, photographer Bruce Bernstein and his son and soundman, Curt Bernstein.
Today we were supposed to fly from Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq and then on to Baltimore.
This evening’s flight to Baltimore is Air Greenland’s last scheduled flight to the United States until spring ’08.
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| NBC News |
| The NBC News team soaking in some sun with some new friends in Greenland. |
If we were in the states, we’d hop on another airline or rent a car and drive, but Air Greenland is the only domestic airline here and there is no highway system. There is not even a two-lane road connecting the few towns that exist. The only way you can get from place to place is by plane, helicopter, or boat.
We have too much gear to take a chopper. We could go by ferry to Kangerlussuaq, but that would take two days and we don’t know where we’d go once we got there. We are hoping Air Greenland solves this problem fast but we aren’t optimistic.
So we’re off to shoot another stand-up and then hike to the fjord; if worse comes to worse, the innkeeper has promised me a tree for Christmas if I bake cookies.
Hope to see you all before Spring!
CONTINUED >>
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
SYDNEY, Australia –
The cartoon showed two policemen trying to ride on a pair of kangaroos, grimly holding on as the animals tossed them around. "Hang in there constable," said one. "We've got to have all 36 of them battle ready by next Tuesday."
The caption beneath the cartoon read: "APEC security - plan B."
Next Tuesday is the start of APEC, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation’s annual get-together, which this year takes place here in Sydney, and culminates in a weekend summit of 21 regional leaders – including President Bush – on Sept. 8 and 9. It will also attract the usual and varied crowd of protestors, whose often-violent antics have become a routine sideshow at these international gatherings.
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| Reuters |
| A mounted police officer exercises her horse at the New South Wales Mounted Police stables in Sydney on Aug. 27. |
As a key plank of crowd control, the Sydney police were planning to deploy three dozen horses, but confirmed today that the animals have been quarantined following an outbreak of horse flu. Six of them have been confirmed sick with a virus that is sweeping Australia. Horses from elsewhere in the country can't replace them because all interstate horse movements have been banned.
Hence the cartoonist poking fun, while the police try and figure out how to replace the horses. "It will impact on our security plan, but we have to work around that," the deputy police commissioner told the Telegraph newspaper. "Security will be up to scratch, but it means we will have to go to another plan."
CONTINUED >>
Cuban athlete Erick Hernandez sets a new Guiness Book of World Records mark by bouncing a soccer ball on his head 350 times in one minute.
CONTINUED >>
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
The magic is finally here in Cuba and it didn’t take that long.
Harry Potter fans here waited just about a month before getting their hands on bootleg copies of this summer’s mania.
Pirated versions of both the book and the video are now available on the island – and can be had for just pennies.
At any Havana underground video club, 5 pesos gets you a "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" rental for the night. That's roughly 25 cents.
Diehard buffs can snap up their own bootleg flick for 50 pesos – about $2.50.
And to add to the magic here in Cuba – Harry Potter speaks Spanish.
CONTINUED >>
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
Nermeen al-Mufti reported on the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s – she was the only female Iraqi reporter on the frontlines.
Like many Iraqi journalists, Mufti is a nationalist. She didn’t live through the Saddam years, raise a child on her own, and spend years trying to show Western journalists parts of the real Iraq to give up now.
She moved from Baghdad to her hometown of Kirkuk and started an Arabic-language newspaper, as well as writing in English for the weekly al-Ahram.
Electricity cuts, curfews, and unpredictable phone and Internet lines are only the start of difficulties there. Like all journalists and any other Iraqi in the public eye, she faces the very real prospect of being killed for doing her job – being caught in a cross-fire or a car bomb, or like dozens of local journalists, deliberately targeted.
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| VIDEO: 'Most dangerous assignment in the world' |
More than 140 journalists and media workers have been killed in Iraq since the war began – most of them murdered and most of them Iraqi.
"Until now no one has been tried for killing, kidnapping or torturing a journalist," Mufti points out.
Apart from the physical danger, there are also increasing government restrictions on what Iraqi journalists can cover and the threat of suspension, fines or jail for unwarranted criticism of public figures.
"I’m not a hero, but I think it’s my duty to write toward keeping Iraq united," says Mufti. "I do it to try to restore the Iraq I knew – that gave me my identity, memories and pride."
CONTINUED >>
By NBC News' Mujeeb Ahmad and Carol Grisanti
It was not the fact that a large gathering of Muslims was taking place last weekend that drew our attention to the event – it was where it was and who might attend that attracted our curiosity.
"I traveled for five days," said Maroof Asad from Tajikistan. "The Pakistani officials detained me for 24 hours at the border, but I was determined to get here."
We were determined too; we wanted to see just who might show up at the Tableghi Jamaat (Islamic missionary group) festival in Qila Saifullah, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
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| NBC News/Mujeeb Ahmad |
| A group of men gather at Tableghi Jamaat's annual festival in Qila Saifullah, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. |
The village was hosting more than 75,000 Muslim men who had come for three days of prayers and sermons to learn to emulate the life of the Prophet and then to instruct and convert others.
Similar gatherings of pilgrims belonging to the movement take place all over the Muslim world every year, but the location of this one along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was enough to make us hop in the car to check it out.
CONTINUED >>
By Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer
A mob attack on eight Indians who were chased through a small eastern German town on Sunday, as onlookers shouted slurs, has sent shock waves through the country.
Photos of victims' beaten-up faces and reports that the crowd of about 50 people threw stones and chanted, "Foreigners out!" as the Indians were chased through the town of Muegeln reminded many of the gruesome images from the country's dark Nazi past.
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| AFP - Getty Images |
| Kulvir Singh, one of the Indians injured in the attack speaks to the press. |
And – once again – it has stirred a fierce debate about racism and xenophobia in Germany that is
making front-page news and
triggering comments from all political levels.
Critics say that a lingering anti-foreigner sentiment in parts of German society is being ignored. A representative from Germany's Jewish Council argued on Wednesday that the country is lacking a coordinated "nationwide action plan" when it comes to right-wing extremism.
The German government was quick to condemn Sunday's attack, fearing that the developments could tarnish the country’s image.
CONTINUED >>
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
GUANGZHOU CITY, China –
Zhao Xian Yong sat at his desk, surrounded by a mean-looking team of U.S. Special Forces soldiers and a heavily armed private contractor. A Black Hawk helicopter hovered overhead. "We are all under a lot of pressure," he told me, "it's bound to have an impact on business."
Zhao was a toy trader and the soldiers all models. His store was one of hundreds that line the corridors and alleyways of Yidelu, a warren-like toy wholesale market in China's Guangzhou City. He represents a factory in Donguan, close to the border with Hong Kong, where the model soldiers, each around eight inches tall, are made for a few dollars, but retail for several times that in the West.
Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong Province in southern China, the country's toy-making hub. Nearly four out of every five of the world's toys are made in China, the majority of them in Guangdong. The province alone exports nearly $12 billion worth of toys a year and 1.5 million workers are employed in its more than 6,000 factories.
While the traders are clearly rattled by the latest product recalls in the United States, many trying to put on a brave face.
CONTINUED >>
By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent
NBC News’ Kerry Sanders called in this report from his cell phone in Chetumal, Mexico.
When Hurricane Dean roared in last night and we knew that this was a Category 5 storm, I was actually surprised. At first I thought, ‘OK, this needs to be stronger. I’ve been in Category 5 hurricanes, and this is not that strong.’
Yes, it was powerful. Yes, trees were being toppled, power lines were coming down and power poles were snapping – but ultimately, it did not feel strong enough to be a Category 5, the strongest possible hurricane classification.
So as we tried to calculate, and now we know, it looks like the eye came ashore north of Chetumal and it weakened quickly after making landfall. That is good news because north of Chetumal is primarily a huge national preserve known as the Mayan zone, an uninhabited jungle. That was good news because those 165 mile an hour winds had little to destroy as they came in. The area is mostly just trees and other vegetation.
CONTINUED >>
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
U.S. troops often turn to chaplains for guidance, but chaplains face unique challenges as well.
Chaplain Steven Rindahl of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment in Baghdad explains the challenges he faces on a daily basis trying to offer comfort and solace to the troops in such difficult circumstances.
CONTINUED >>
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
As hope dwindles for the lives of 181 trapped miners in China, angry relatives demand answers about one of the worst mining disasters in the country’s history.
It's the only the latest mining accident to hit an industry which has seen more than 2,000 deaths so far this year.
See video of NBC News trip to the mine in China's Shandong province and the desperate race reach the trapped men.
CONTINUED >>
By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent
We are headed south on Mexico's Route 307 to Chetumal. I am in a caravan of NBC News SUVs. Producer Martha Caskey and I are following Claudia Foghini from our Spanish Language network Telemundo.
The road south from Playa del Carmen is a double lane divided highway. It is wide open, both north and south.
There is not as much traffic as I would have expected, but then again, cars are a luxury here. The wealthy have cars, the poor take buses and there are lots more poor than wealthy here. We have seen some buses headed north, but not many.
VIDEO: Residents and tourists scramble to get out of Mexico's Yucatan Penisula
It's an odd thing: we are headed south to where Hurricane Dean will probably hit while others are trying to evacuate north and avoid the storm.
CONTINUED >>
By Mark Potter, NBC News Correspondent
LIMA, PERU -- One of the most difficult parts of covering the Peruvian earthquake tragedy was actually getting to and from the disaster zone, which is about 125 miles south of Lima, the capital. It was the same dilemma facing rescue and relief workers.
We set out from Lima before dawn, and headed for the hard-hit town of Pisco, having been told that on a good day it could take more than three hours to make the trip. Our goal was to tell the broader story of the earthquake by focusing on the recovery efforts at the San Clemente church in Pisco, which had collapsed on top of 300 parishioners. They had been worshiping at an evening Mass when the eight-magnitude tremor shook the ground for two agonizing minutes, causing the roof and walls to fall.
Our team consisted of producer A.J. Goodwin, photographer Alexis Triboulard, sound technician Hector Vasques and myself. We traveled in two mini-vans, and the first two hours of the trip south along the Pacific coast were uneventful -- until we felt one of the powerful aftershocks.
CONTINUED >>
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
I was covering a cyclone in Orissa, India. We walked into villages that had been cut off by the floodwaters, where villagers had run out of food and clean water. They’d been waiting for days for aid. "What did you bring us? Where is the food?" one woman asked me.
I had to tell her we had no food for them. What we had – all we had – was a camera and a link to the outside world.
VIDEO: Scenes of destruction
Flying into a remote Iraqi village Thursday – the site of one of the worst terrorist attacks of this war – I knew it would be awful but that’s a lot of what we do – go to awful places to try to shed light on what’s happened there in the hope that the rest of the world will care. What we came away with was the briefest of glimpses into a heartbreaking part of the country.
CONTINUED >>
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
What do you get if you combine John Locke from "Lost," the Marlboro Man, and a judo master?
Your first guess may not be Russian President Vladimir Putin, but if these pictures are any guide, it would certainly be the right one. (See video profile).
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| Dmitry Astakhov / AFP - Getty Images |
| Russian President Vladimir Putin fishes on the Khemchik River on Aug. 15. |
Taken earlier this week when Putin took Monaco’s Prince Albert II on a camping trip in southern Russia, they were splashed across the front pages of Russian newspapers and are all posted on the
Kremlin’s website.
They show Putin in various states of ruggedness, feeling at home and at peace with the rivers, the mountains, the horses and fish, and not least of all, his own bare chest.
CONTINUED >>
By Martin Savidge, NBC News Correspondent
I found Elvis Presley alive and well and living in Israel.
He's not hard to find; just take the highway out of Jerusalem toward Tel Aviv, follow the exit for Abu Gosh, drive up the hill and there he is.
He's taller than I remember, 16 feet and bronzed, which explains his longevity. And when you see his statue you know you've just found the Elvis American Diner. More than 1,700 photos and pieces of memorabilia cover the walls of this 50's-looking eatery and Elvis songs usually blare from the sound system.
But because this was the 30th anniversary of the day he died, Elvis was there in person. (This is the land of miracles you know.)
There was a young Elvis, an old Elvis, a couple of middle-aged Elvis’s – even two female Elvis's. They crooned, gyrated and had amazingly black hair. Many wore leisure suits, white mostly, unzipped to the navel, with sequins and gold piping – and sweat pouring through polyester.
They played to a packed truck stop where gas sells for around $5 a gallon. The Elvis's took turns passing the mike and performing along with the karaoke machine. Some just lip-synched, others actually sang, one guy, Eran Levron who was born on Elvis's birthday, could switch from his soft Israeli accent to a "THANK YOU, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!" It sounded like he'd just stepped out of Graceland.
CONTINUED >>
By Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief
It was a launch party that would have made Microsoft proud, if Microsoft were an anti-Israeli militant group.
Hezbollah held on Thursday what was basically a giant garden party to announce the release of its latest video game, "Special Force II," in which players destroy Israeli tanks, shoot down helicopters and destroy warships; killing Israeli soldiers earns bonus points.
Under a giant marquee in Beirut’s dusty southern suburbs, Hezbollah displayed captured Israeli helmets, rifles and ammunition in glass trophy cases. The turret of an Israeli tank and jeep Hezbollah captured during its 34-day war with Israel last summer were set on mounds like garden statues, artistically lit by red and green spotlights. Families took pictures of the Israeli weapons as their children paid $10 for a copy of Special Force II, designed by Hezbollah’s "Internet Division."
CONTINUED >>
By Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer
It's "funny how time slips away." Elvis has – supposedly – been dead for 30 years now. But, he’s still rocking Germany where fans are "all shook up" this week with celebrations, exhibits and look-a-like festivals.
For the German media it seems like "it's now or never" to show old Elvis movies. While it might seem like a bit much, but there is a certain charm in seeing Mr. Presley speak German as a young cowboy in "Flaming Star" or with a flower lei around his neck in "Blue Hawaii."
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| Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters |
| Singer Grahame Patrick performs dressed as Elvis Presley during a show in Berlin August 15, 2007. |
The American superstar had a special link to Germany. Not only because of his interpretation of the German folk classic "Muss i denn, muss i denn...," but Elvis was of course stationed in Germany with the U.S. military from 1958 to 1960. And it was in Wiesbaden, Germany, that Presley met a 14-year-old girl named Priscilla Ann Wagner, who later became his wife in 1967.
CONTINUED >>
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
For Iraq's small and secretive Yazidis community, Tuesday's attack was one of the worst massacres in the living memory of a community that believes they were the first people God created.
"We want the world to know us better," the sheikh known as the Prince of the Yazidis told me in northern Iraq well before the war when his diminishing community decided that they could no longer afford to be known as devil worshippers.
VIDEO: NBC's Jane Arraf discusses the aftermath of Tuesday's deadly attack in Iraq.
That label is believed to be part of the reason for the simultaneous suicide bombs that have killed 250 people - many of them women and children - in what will likely be deadliest suicide attack since the war began. Officials say the Yazidis, members of a secret pre-Islamic religion considered infidels by fundamentalist Muslims, received letters from al-Qaida in Iraq telling them to leave.
CONTINUED >>
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
In Baghdad’s Sunni stronghold of Amariya, American soldiers can't always count on the Iraqi Army or police, so they are turning to former insurgents to help battle al-Qaida in Iraq.
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
I always found it hard to imagine Thai policemen wearing Hello Kitty armbands as a mark of shame for wayward officers.
Evidently most policemen did too, because Thailand's top cops decided Friday to abandon the idea.
It seems there was a rebellion in the macho ranks, as well as outrage on Hello Kitty Web sites.
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| Yasushi Ukigaya / AP |
| A police officer in Bangkok showed off the Hello Kitty armband that was going to be a used as a disciplinary measure on Monday. The police have since abandoned the idea. |
"You have to understand that it's embarrassing for our 30- to 40-year-old policemen to be made to wear this girly, pink armband," conceded police Maj. Weeraprach Wongrat, of the Crime Suppression Division, whose idea it was in the first place.
"It also attracted so much attention – a lot of praise, but a lot of criticism," he said Friday. The Thai police found themselves blasted by Hello Kitty lovers for using their cute icon as a means of punishment.
"We are concerned about the image of police as much as that of Hello Kitty," Weeraprach said. "We decided to drop the plan."
He said they would be looking at other designs.
CONTINUED >>
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
It’s a personal first: I’m taking off the month of August. Four weeks – no work.
Au revoir, silly summer stories: No more of David Beckham visiting the Blue Jays dugout, swinging a bat for the cameras; no more of the English man who grows up healthy eating nothing but Marmite (the British equivalent of axle grease); no more freak snowstorms in New Guinea or forest fires in Dubrovnik.
I’m taking my signal from the news anchors, from the leaders and lawmakers of America, the U.K. and even war-ravaged Iraq – who can ill afford it – it’s time for a break. If only it were so …
For August, it turns out, is NEVER slow on news. And the only silly thing about August are the journalists – like myself – who still cling to the notion – somehow – that they can tune out on July 31 and return to Earth on Sept. 1.
Case in point – the last quarter-century of my Augusts with NBC News. A caveat here: having spent a few formative years in France, I guess I share that French gene that wants to "vacate" in August. There has been many a desirable destination: the Algarve, Morocco, the Seychelles, Mauritius. But, more often than not (I have the old calendars and agendas to prove it) my destinations morphed into datelines, as I was pulled out of –or never made it to – that August state of mind.
CONTINUED >>
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
Although U.S. forces have stabilized security in Iraq, the country’s humanitarian situation continues to worsen, with up to 50,000 Iraqis a month still fleeing or being forced out of their homes by sectarian violence, the top U.N. official here said.
"Overall the situation remains of great concern and has not been improving. In fact, it has been worsening, there’s no doubt about that," Ashraf Jehangir Qazi said in an interview over the weekend with NBC News.
Qazi, the special representative of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, called the current situation in Iraq one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
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| Khalid Mohammed / AP |
| An Iraqi family flees after clashes erupted between Iraqi security forces and gunmen in the Amil district of Baghdad on June 9. |
In addition to tens of thousands of civilians killed and many more injured since the start of the war, one in six Iraqis have been forces to leave their homes, according to the United Nations.
The Iraqi Red Crescent, the sister organization of the Red Cross, estimates that while two million Iraqis have left the country, more than two million others have been displaced within Iraq. Most of these Iraqis have fled fighting or sectarian cleansing in mixed neighborhoods or communities, which have increasingly become almost exclusively Shiite or Sunni.
Qazi said the exodus is continuing.
"According to some estimates, this rate of internal displacement is continuing at 50,000 a month or even more, so this makes it an extremely serious situation," he said.
CONTINUED >>
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
"Aiya," the Beijing cab driver turned to me. "Does it get this dirty in America?"
He pointed out the window to air so thick that calling it a haze was an understatement.
Before I could get a word in, the driver barreled on with his monologue, "But it's OK! It's the Green Olympics, right?"
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| Adrienne Mong/NBC News |
| Tiananmen Square goes through a final dress rehearsal on Tuesday evening for the official countdown ceremony. |
He paused to chortle. "It'll be clean next year!"
It doesn't seem soon enough.
Tiananmen Square kicks-off countdown
Tomorrow marks the start of China's official countdown to the 2008 Olympic Games – an event to be celebrated with a vast musical performance on Tiananmen Square.
For the occasion, the square has been overrun by lights, booms, giant TV screens, huge metal scaffolding, and by a potent mixture of smog and humidity that has plagued Beijing all summer, especially the last two days.
Here on Tiananmen Square, NBC has a ringside seat as the only western broadcaster to cover the events live, direct from the square. Between rehearsal sets and setting up, we – with NBC Sports and NBC Olympics colleagues – talk a lot about the weather and the rain.
Across town, foreign correspondents are parked outside the Bird's Nest (aka: the National Stadium – the main Olympic venue). Seeing them on camera, you can barely make out the stadium's distinct metal twigs in the background.
CONTINUED >>
Motorcycle sidecars – usually only spotted in World War II movie clips – are having a retro resurgence on Beijing's streets.
Click here to read a blog about Luke Zeng, a sidecar enthusiast and entrepreneur, who has taken his love of the motorcycle on the road and has built a business around it.
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi leaned forward as he explained that he believed there were a lot of others who could do a better job than Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
"We have here, I think, a reservoir of leaders who, in fact, could shoulder responsibilities in these very hard circumstances," Hashimi said in an interview Monday. "I do have a feeling that many, many Iraqis could be qualified for this job." He didn’t want to name names.
Hashimi is Iraq’s top Sunni Arab official. His party, the Iraqi Accordance Front, known as Tuwafaq, is at the center of a political crisis threatening al-Malaki’s Shiite-led government. Six cabinet ministers from Hashimi's party have resigned. On Monday, five ministers loyal to former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi announced that they would boycott Cabinet meetings.
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| NBC News |
| Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi discusses the political situation in Iraq. |
Hashimi said that if the government doesn’t meet key demands, he and Tuwafaq’s 44 members of parliament will resign.
"We decided to quit first of all from the government, and if this situation continues definitely the next step will be to quit my position and we’ll think seriously of quitting parliament also," he said, describing himself as unbelievably frustrated.
CONTINUED >>
By Warren Pettine and John Bailey, NBC News Researchers, Beijing Bureau
The welcome ceremony to Anyang, a city in Henan province, for the Miss Tourism Queen International Beauty Pageant didn’t quite go as planned.
The microphones stopped working halfway through the show, streamers randomly burst upon the stage, and as confetti fell at the end of the show, the band on the right of the stage was playing "Jingle Bells" while drummers to the left banged out a traditional Chinese song.
Yet the beauty queens smiled through it all.
China has only allowed competition in beauty pageants since 2002. The Anyang ceremony was just one of many stops during the month-long Miss Tourism International Queen, an international beauty contest which toured through China from July 9 to August 2. With 108 women from 75 countries around the world competing for the crown, the contest is one of the largest pageants in the world.
While contestants battle for titles as varied as "Best Smile," "Miss Friendship," and "Miss Charm," the pageant’s organizers say the goal of the event is to enhance "tourism development, the friendship among different countries, and international culture exchange."
CONTINUED >>
By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer
Habiba Aslam surprised me.
I expected her to cry, or at least show some emotion, as she recalled the ordeal she went through when Pakistani commandos stormed Islamabad’s Red Mosque compound three weeks ago.
"I saw some of my classmates die before my eyes," Aslam, a 20-year-old student at the Red Mosque madrassah (religious school), told me matter-of -factly.
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| Carol Grisanti / NBC News |
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Habiba Aslam, a survivor of the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad, Pakistan. |
"We saved ourselves with our burqas (head to toe garment) by wetting the cloth and breathing into it. The tear gas was so intense, the smoke from fires was suffocating and the gunfire so deafening, we all thought we would die."
At the beginning of July, the Red Mosque, a well-known center for radical Islamic teaching and it’s adjoining girls’ religious school, housing several thousand students, was stormed by Pakistan army special forces after a six month standoff between the government and the Islamic extremists inside the compound.
The mosque’s clerics had provoked and embarrassed the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf by calling for jihad against his government, and attempting to establish Taliban-style laws in the country’s capital.
CONTINUED >>
By Nancy Chen, NBC News Researcher, Beijing Bureau
About 22 miles outside of Beijing, in the Fragrant Hills, there’s a god – or at least that’s the way I thought of him.
With the ability to make it rain within 10 minutes of his heart’s desire, Wang Guanghe is a modern-day Rain God.
Wang, the director of the Weather Modification Department, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, said he decides within three to five minutes what to do if Beijing needs rain.
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| Nancy Chen/ NBC News |
| A worker at China’s Weather Modification Department sets off rockets to create rain. |
If conditions permit – meaning if there are clouds in the air – he calls the farmers at the Fragrant Hills weather modification base, who blast shells and rockets into the sky. And, voilà, it begins raining within minutes.
CONTINUED >>
By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent
Now that (most) of the mayhem has died down surrounding the release of the latest and last Harry Potter book, neighborhood booksellers in London are able to rub their eyes and survey the aftermath.
No, not shelves picked clean and lines outside shouting demands for ever-more book orders. Not at all. Time to assess their losses.
At least, that's what they fully expect.
How is that possible?? How could the unprecedented worldwide mania that IS Harry Potter, bring anything but enormous profits to anyone in the book business? Like a gift from heaven to the bookseller's door -- or so one would think.
The answer is competition. Leaving independent booksellers shaking their heads and feeling kicked to the curb in all this excitement.
CONTINUED >>
