April 2008 - Posts
By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent
Last year saw several large-scale and highly publicized terrorist plots in Europe. There was the failed attempt to set off car bombs in London, including outside a busy nightclub on June 29; an attack on the Glasgow airport that ended in a nasty fire and a roundup of several suspects, most of whom worked in the U.K. in the medical profession; and arrests in Germany of young suspects who had been to Pakistan recently, allegedly for terrorist training, accused of plotting to attack U.S. interests.
These three cases attracted global attention, but would you believe that there were actually 583 failed, foiled or successfully executed terrorist attacks in the EU last year alone? That is about a 25 percent jump over 2006, according to the latest EU report on terrorism, released earlier this month.
More than simply a list of numbers and dates – its contents, compiled by Europol, are intriguing.
It paints a picture of suspected terrorist activities and trends in Europe. And what happens there is significant to the rest of the world. We've seen Europe become a first stop, in the exportation of terror from suspected training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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By Richard Engel, NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent
Over a meal this weekend at a Green Zone chow hall (chicken salad and Baskin-Robbins pralines and cream ice cream, a KBR delight), I had a revealing conversation with two senior U.S. military officials.
"We've pretty much defeated al-Qaida here," one of the military officers said. "If Iran stopped doing what it's doing, things would dramatically change."
"You think that would be it, a turning point? If Iran stopped backing militias, you think things would get much better?" I asked.
"No doubt. It would be dramatic," replied the officer.
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With the risk of contagious diseases creating an increasing international threat, NBC News visited Europe's Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, Sweden and interviewed Ben Duncan, a spokesman for the center, to see how they are strengthening their defenses against the spread of infectious diseases.
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By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
OUTSIDE GARMSER, Afghanistan –
The U.S. Marines began a major operation to try to disrupt the Taliban’s stranglehold on southern Afghanistan early Tuesday. NBC News’ Jim Maceda is embedded with Marines at Forward Operating Base Dwyer outside of Garmser, Afghanistan, in Helmand province, and responded to questions via satellite phone.
You’ve reported from Afghanistan extensively since the war began in 2001 – what makes this military embed different from your past trips to Afghanistan?
The most significant difference is that this embed is in southern Afghanistan. Most of my trips into Afghanistan over the last couple of years have been with U.S. forces in the east, along the Pakistan border. During those missions, the U.S. troops were self-contained, giving themselves their own orders. Here they are working with the British-led NATO forces responsible for Helmand province.
The troops in the east were making big changes, I think, in improving the situation for local Afghans up and down the border with Pakistan. In April 2006, they started to apply a kind of Gen. Petraeus counter-insurgency plan, which has not been the case in the south. Since probably 2002, this area has been no-man’s land for Westerners and for international coalition forces, and it has become a safe-haven and fiefdom of the Taliban.
The reason why we are here now is because we had the opportunity to embed with the first large contingent of U.S. forces to operate this far south in Helmand province, the first Marines to be here since they left in 2002. So this is really a kind of "back to the future" type operation. The Marines arrived in Afghanistan about six weeks ago, and after weeks of preparation, the first major offensive operation launched today.
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By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - The residents of this country deny it, but to an outsider it sure looks like they’re obsessed — or addicted — to mate.
Mate (pronounce ma-tay) is like an herb tea, and everywhere — from the shade of a tree in the park to sitting rooms to the back seats of cars — friends slow down and share mate. This is as much a social experience as it is a way to quench a thirst. Oh, and there are rules. (Aren’t there always rules! More on that later.)
First a warning to the germ-phobic: Mate is shared from the same cup, using the same straw, person to person. Why? Sharing mate with a buddy or a stranger is all about friendships.
Read the rest of Kerry Sanders' story about the Argentine tradition of drinking mate.
Three-thousand Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit have returned to Afghanistan to assist their NATO allies battling the Taliban. NBC News correspondent Jim Maceda, who is embedded with the force, reports on the Marines’ first southern Afghan tour in six years.
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At the Beijing Auto Show, many hope that China's first-time car buyers are being encouraged to buy green. NBC News' Mark Mullen reports from Beijing.
By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent
LONDON – "Everyone around here is doing it."
"It has become a trend."
"I have thought about doing it myself."
Somehow, these are all quotes from teenagers, talking about – suicide.
Since the start of 2007, 19 teenagers and young adults have taken their own lives in the tiny towns scattered through the southern Welsh county of Bridgend, where people have been living along the Ogmore River for centuries. Total population: 130,000.
The rash of suicides has been an unsettling story, to say the least, here in the U.K.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
PHI PHI ISLANDS, Thailand – Andrew Hewett fished a small fragment of coral from a bucket of water and held it between his fingers.
"It's been knocked off, broken by an anchor or somebody standing on it," he said, explaining that while the devastating 2004 tsunami caused a lot of damage to the area's coral reefs, the bigger threat to the reefs comes not from nature, but from man.
He then showed how to drill a small hole in the fragment and attach it to a metal rack. Moments later, a production line was up and running on the deck of the dive boat, students threading hundreds of fragments and pulling them tightly to the racks.
"If I can't pull it off, then a fish certainly can't," said Nichole Niewald, a biology major at the University of Missouri.
The fragments had been collected from the ocean floor, the remains of a badly damaged reef.
"Day by day people are walking on the reef, not paying enough attention, and not treating the coral like the animals they actually are," said Steve Monson, who studies food science at Mizzou.
Eighteen students and staff traveled from Missouri to the Phi Phi islands in Thailand to take part in a pioneering coral rehabilitation project. Their trip was organized by Bob Sites, Professor of Entomology at Mizzou's Division of Plant Sciences, a regular visitor to the Kingdom. It's the second year he's brought students to the coral project. All the students are from Mizzou's College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
Read the rest of Ian Williams blog about Restoring the Reef in the Daily Nightly blog.
By Mark Mullen, NBC News Correspondent
"Do you work for that American news company that said all those bad things about the Chinese people?" That question was posed to me yesterday by a taxi driver as I was riding to NBC News’ Beijing bureau. Not exactly your typical ice-breaker.
The driver was referring to CNN commentator Jack Cafferty, who made a comment on air about China’s leaders being "thugs and goons" – which has been taken as a personal affront by the nation of 1.3 billion people.
I might have thought it was unusual for someone in China to bring up a politically loaded subject like that except for the fact that a Chinese babysitter my family has worked with for about two years asked me the day before to clarify who my employer was.
And later that same day, as we were shooting news footage inside a Beijing restaurant, a Chinese couple who recently returned from a vacation in the United States started complaining to the crew and me about Western press coverage of China – especially when it comes to the issue of Tibet.
The series of comments are an illustration of how far the current wave of Chinese nationalism has reached. It's fueled by anger over the tarnishing of China's image at a period of great pride for hundreds of millions of Chinese excited to be hosting the Olympic Games.
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
At Passover, Jews invite the prophet Elijah into their homes, believing that he will herald the Messiah. Elijah didn’t make it to my place on Saturday, and nor did the Messiah, but Abraham did, along with his friend Angos.
These foreign guests taught my family and friends that while on this holy day we remember the hardships of our ancestors as they fled oppression in Egypt, others face remarkably similar pain today.
Habptom Abraham and Pesfalem Angos, 15-year-old Christians, fled the fighting in the Horn of Africa nation of Eritrea three years ago with one goal – to reach Jerusalem, and their savior, Jesus Christ.
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By Michele Neubert, NBC News Producer
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Ever had the desire to wear X-ray specs?
Well, maybe that’s why the ThruVision, a new security scanner that looks through clothing and can detect weapons from up to 25 yards away, was all the rage at a recent international counterterrorism conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
But instead of the usual X-rays, the machine uses non-invasive "terahertz" technology, as I learned from Mikael Karlstrom, the machine’s designer.
And for those hoping to see everything, it’s a disappointment.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer
What a difference a couple of months can make.
As people returned to work following the end of the Chinese New Year holidays in February, there was a palpable sense of anticipation for the Olympic Summer Games. The intense winter cold snap lasted longer than the holidays, but there was a spring in everyone’s step.
Friends working in professions as diverse as business and the arts spoke of an accelerated rate of activity; people seemed to be jetting back and forth from the United States and Europe in a frenzy to meet deadlines on special projects before the Games begin August 8.
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| AP |
| Chinese youths protest outside a Carrefour supermarket, a French owned company, in Qingdao in east China's Shandong province on April 18. |
My e-mail inbox was getting clogged on a more regular basis with press conference notices from the Beijing Olympic authorities, BOCOG. And I was fielding dozens of requests from far-flung friends to crash on the floor of my apartment in the months leading up to August.
It was as though Beijing had become the center of the world and everyone wanted to be here.
And then, the protests and violence in Tibet and surrounding regions happened.
In response to international condemnation of its policies in Tibet, the Chinese government has taken a hard line against critics. At the same time, Chinese people have become more upset over what they perceive as Western media bias against their nation.
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
TEL AVIV, Israel – You would think that Palestinians in Gaza would be upset at Hamas’ provocative stance against Israel, which has brought economic sanctions and contributed to massive unemployment and food and fuel shortages.
It has also brought Israel and the Palestinians closer toward a military confrontation in Gaza that Hamas cannot win.
But instead, polls show that Hamas is tightening its grip on power and growing in popularity. Resistance pays in the polls.
Following a storm of Palestinian rockets, Israel killed 120 Palestinians in Gaza six weeks ago and bought a few weeks of relative calm. Now Hamas is back again, firing rockets and ambushing Israeli soldiers.
In return they got 20 dead Palestinians on Wednesday and provoked yet more threats from Israel that it would launch a major offensive to clean out Gaza of rockets and gunmen.
However, Hamas has about 20,000 trained and well-equipped fighters ready. That means that if Israel were to invade, it would be long, bloody and painful for both sides. But still, Hamas appears to want this to happen
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By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer
TEL AVIV, Israel – How symbolic could this rehearsal be?
Standing next to one another on stage in Tel Aviv – dancing together and singing in perfect harmony – were the Dar Fur Stars, a band made up of Muslim refugees, and the Jewish group Aharit Hayamim (Redemption).
Ending their practice with both bands playing the theme music from "Schindler’s List," The Dar Fur Stars were preparing to join the Israelis in their celebration of Passover, which begins on Saturday at sundown and commemorates the biblical exodus from Egyptian slavery.
The unique pairing marks the end of a harrowing journey, which began when the twelve narrowly escaped the horrors of genocide in Darfur and eventually snuck through the Egyptian-Israeli border. An Israeli patrol picked them up and imprisoned them for three months.
It turned out that music was the answer to the boredom and misery. Bushra Musa, 34, found himself and his fellow inmates picking up sticks and using old pots as drums. Every night, he recalled, they would gather and play for hours. The seeds of the Dar Fur Stars were planted.
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By Ned Colt, NBC News Correspondent
BAGHDAD – For Um Wissam, a small office packed with food aid in Shiite-dominated Sadr City is a lifeline. With her son killed two years ago, the widow has nowhere else to turn for support.
"They're really great," she said. "They give us whatever they possibly can."
"They" are fervent anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.
A new report from Washington-based Refugees International says that Muqtada and his Mahdi Army are the largest "unofficial" aid agency in the country. And they're not alone. In the patchwork quilt of sectarian neighborhoods that make-up Baghdad, almost all aid is delivered through political and religious groups, according to report co-author Kristele Younes.
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By Michele Neubert, NBC News Producer
Trying to counter the world’s myriad terror threats is like "learning to eat soup with a knife." That mantra, which is actually the title of a counterinsurgency manual written by Lt. Col John Nagl, seems to sum up the tremendous challenges facing the West’s top military and terror experts, many of whom invoked the phrase at a recent counterterrorism conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
The conference, which was co-hosted by the Swedish National Defense College and the UK's Defense Academy, brought together American and European defense officials, police, intelligence agents, and academics, who sat in a converted brewery overlooking the Stockholm skyline, trying to get a handle on the slippery problem of terrorism, radicalization and insurgency.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer
BEIJING – Last November, during a state visit by French President Nicholas Sarkozy to China, the Chinese-language media here spoke warmly of Sino-French historical relations.
"From a personal perspective, Sarkozy has a deep China complex," the state-run news agency Xinhua wrote approvingly. "He has visited China three times and was very happy to meet President Hu Jintao. During this year's spring festival he had a function for Chinese residents in France and said, ‘I'm a friend of the Chinese and I have deep feelings towards China.’ To choose China as his first stop in Asia shows his high attention."
Capping off the three-day love fest, the French president and his delegation of business executives flew back home with more than $30 billion in business deals.
And the central Chinese government was reassured it had an ally within the European Union, with whom China's relations were growing increasingly frosty over trade and economic issues as well as Beijing's human rights record.
But that honeymoon period seems to have come to a crashing end, following the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay last Monday.
Fury against France
But ever since newspapers and TV broadcast images here of anti-China demonstrations in Paris and protesters attempting to disrupt the torch relay, France is no longer considered a good friend of the Chinese people.
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By Ed Flanagan, NBC News Researcher
BEIJING – In recent days it has been difficult to take away any positives from China's now unfortunately titled torch relay, the "Journey of Harmony to Beijing," at least based on international news coverage of the events.
But the media here have found a positive face in the young, handicapped woman who was confronted by protesters in Paris this week.
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| AFP - Getty Images |
| French policemen hold down a pro-Tibet protestor as the Olympic flame is protected by Jin Jing in Paris on April 7. |
Jin Jing, 28, a former Paralympics fencer from Shanghai who uses a wheelchair, won national acclaim for what the media described as her heroics in protecting the Olympic torch from a group of pro-Tibetan protesters (all protesters have been ubiquitously labeled "Tibetan separatists" and "pro-Tibet independence activists" in state media reports).
Jin's feisty defense of the torch – she suffered scratches and a bruised leg during the confrontation – has been heavily covered by China's media, which has the unenviable task of mitigating the scope of the protests.
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PORT-AU-Prince, Haiti
Protests and looting over soaring food prices have paralyzed the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. NBC's Mara Schiavocampo files a video blog from a seven mile drive across the city that's riddled with road blocks, burning tires, and gunshots.
By Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief
I have been humbled, overjoyed and, at times, brought to tears by their ability to cope, even smile and play, despite their tragedy.
For the past two years, we have followed the lives of the Hussein sisters, Marwa, Aliya and Sora, orphaned and institutionalized after their parents were murdered in front of them northeast of Baghdad.
When we returned last month to the Baghdad orphanage where they now live, my first impression was that the girls are stuck in time. I saw them in the same dining room eating the same lunch (rice with a little chicken and yogurt), playing the same games (basketball and ring around the rosy) in the same yard surrounded by (new) barred windows. But after visiting Marwa, Aliya and Sora for several days, it was clear their future is as uncertain as Iraq.
Click here to read the rest of Richard's blog in the Daily Nightly blog.
Read Richard's original story about the Iraqi orphanage from May 2006: Needed: Love for a Baghdad orphanage
How to help: Visit the International Rescue Committee's website
By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer
TEL AVIV, Israel – Israelis in desperate need of an organ transplant can now breathe a little easier. A new law passed last week in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) will hopefully help bridge the gulf between Orthodox and secular Jews on the controversial issue of organ donation and help pave the way for more transplants.
An issue which has long been a sticking point in the organ transplant debate in Israel has been the question of when a person is considered to be officially dead. The new law hopes to assuage the concerns of Orthodox Jews by introducing new guidelines for doctors and families to follow if there is an opportunity for a donation.
Despite the change, there is still a great deal of opposition among Orthodox Jews. Beni Moshe, who is number one on the list of people waiting for a new lung, fears it may already be too late for him.
The 46-year-old Moshe, who is married and the father of three, suffers from a severe lung disease which means he is attached to an oxygen tank 24/7.
"I hope the new law will encourage people to donate, I have been waiting since August for a transplant and feel I’m floating between life and death," Moshe told Haaretz newspaper.
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Take a rare look at one of the most important and secret art collections in the world in Tehran. NBC News Ali Arouzi reports.
By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer
CAIRO, Egypt – A young woman in a pink scoop neck shirt with her hair neatly tied back in a ponytail pumped each hydraulic exercise machine single-mindedly as she moved through the circuit, focused on her workout.
She could have been a young mother taking a break from her day at any one of the thousands of Curves women's exercise franchises throughout the United States, but she was at a Curves branch in a quiet Cairo suburb.
And when Sherin Ismail emerged from her workout, her ponytail was gone from sight – she was carefully veiled and dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and pants, despite the warm spring temperatures.
For Ismail, Curves, is more than just a place to work out, it is a chance for the 37-year-old mother to have fun. "I come here [and] I am happy. I spend very good times here," Ismail said.
Ismail explained that she originally came to Curves to get into shape and have "a good body," but she said she also found a support system that cares about her well-being.
For Debra Alcala, the Curves branch owner, her business is all about providing a space to make customers healthy and happy – especially in a usually male-dominated society.
"Women on the streets [here] are so sober. They don't seem to have a sense of joy," said Alcala. "When they walk in here, they are fun people. They love to dance, laugh and be silly, but I never see that outside."
Alcala explained how she has two members who always enter the health club wearing the all-enveloping black hijab (veil) that reveals only their eyes – making them appear somber and serious. But she said that once they change into their t-shirts and start their workout, "They are laughing and carrying on like everyone else."
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By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
Cubans can strike another complaint off their laundry list of grievances about life’s daily grind.
Sunday night, the Cuban government ended its decade-old ban against ordinary people staying at tourist hotels and renting cars. This is Raul Castro’s third edict in less than a month aimed at loosening government controls over consumer spending.
Previous rulings allowed any Cuban to buy a cell phone and pay for cell phone service and anyone with enough money in their pocket to walk into a government store and legally buy electronic items like computers, microwave ovens and DVD players.
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| Roberto Leon / NBC News |
| Bellhop opens door to the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana. |
The old regime of Raul’s brother Fidel Castro strictly limited these luxury items to foreigners or the upper echelon of Cuban society holding privileged jobs. The only way regular consumers gained access had been through purchases on the black market.
Lucy Alvarez, a retired electrical engineer who learned to cut hair to supplement her pension, doesn’t expect to take advantage of her new economic freedoms anytime soon. "We live hand-to-mouth," she said.
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By John Yang, NBC News' White House Correspondent
KIEV, Ukraine – During the
NATO alliance summit later this week in Bucharest, Romania, Bush administration officials say they anticipate that NATO allies will commit "upwards of several thousand" more troops to the group’s forces in Afghanistan.
The biggest contributors are likely to be France and Poland, with other nations kicking in relatively small numbers. In addition, officials say, countries such as Spain may be making their first troop contributions to the effort.
The additional troops would allow the U.S. to shift some of its forces to the south, where most of the fighting is, in order to address the concerns of the Canadians, who are in the lead there. Canada had threatened to withdraw troops unless another ally sent at least 1,000 more troops to the south.
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Many Zimbabweans are convinced that President Robert Mugabe has lost the weekend election -- but they also suspect that something is happening with the official count. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Adrienne Arsenault reports from Zimbabwe.
