April 2009 - Posts
By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer
CAIRO – Amidst overflowing bags of garbage, Abu Sayed raises pigs, chickens, ducks, pigeons and goats on a small muddy plot of land in order to feed and clothe the extended family of 14 with whom he shares a blackened makeshift shack.
Since he doesn’t own a radio or a TV, we were the first to inform him that the Egyptian government decreed on Wednesday that his pigs, along with all 300,000 pigs in the country, had to be slaughtered as a precaution against the spread swine flu; despite the fact that no cases of the H1N1 swine flu virus have been reported here and it is spread by people, not pigs.
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| Charlene Gubash/NBC News |
| Egyptian farmer Abu Sayed looks at his pigs before he was forced to bring them to a slaughter house. |
Half of the families’ annual income comes from the sale of their small herd of 25 pigs, which usually sell for about $45 a piece.
Sayed looked away as he responded to the unwelcome news about the mandatory slaughter and said, "The interest of the country is more important than anything."
But his brother Ahmed Mohammed was less magnanimous. "If they want to do this, they must find some other kind of income to replace it. All the family depends on the money we get from the sale of the pigs. My mother is sick. She needs money to get medicine for her diabetes and needs to get her eye infection treated."
Encouraged by his brother’s frankness, Sayed ventured an opinion. "Before they take a decision, they have to see what people can do instead to make a living."
CONTINUED >>
By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
NICOSIA, Cyprus – It's a rare day in the Middle East when a news flash or a headline doesn't trigger a few memories.
But in Cyprus on Wednesday, when I heard on the car radio that nine Turkish soldiers had been killed by a Kurdish roadside bomb near the Iraqi border, I turned almost without thinking towards the eastern section of Nicosia and stopped on Theophilos Georgiadis Street outside a brown house with two flagpoles in its front garden.
Fifteen years ago a neighbor of mine was shot dead here. He was a Greek Cypriot active in Kurdish politics and although his murderers were never found it's always been assumed the gunmen were acting on orders from Turkish intelligence services.
CONTINUED >>
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
BEIJING en route to NEW YORK via LONDON –
My flight to London was half-full – perhaps from last-minute cancellations over swine flu fears, but more likely the result of the global economic recession, which has drastically reduced tourism and business travel, or maybe it was just due to the ungodly departure hour of 7:45 a.m.
As with elsewhere, coverage of the swine flu in China has been non-stop, but the Chinese passengers on my flight shrugged off the news.
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| Andy Wong / AP |
| Customs officers monitor passengers through a thermal detector machine at the arrival hall of Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China on Tuesday. |
An elderly woman said she wasn't worried; besides, this was only her second visit in seven years to the U.K. to see her daughter, who lives in England’s Midlands region.
And a young woman named Xu Man, who was traveling on to Amsterdam, likewise said she was "unconcerned" about the spread of the virus.
CONTINUED >>
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
MEXICO CITY – Almost two weeks ago Paola Alquicira woke up, complaining to her husband of a scratchy throat. As the day progressed, the young housewife felt even worse, but went about her normal day.
She dragged herself to an exercise class, called her mom once or twice and tried to keep pace with her 2-year-old daughter. By nightfall Paola was running a fever, had muscle and joint pain, and a runny nose. Although it was tough with a small toddler, Paola, 23, opted to stay in bed the next day, hoping to shake "la gripe," Spanish for the flu.
Instead, over the next two days her fever spiked and before the week ended she was hospitalized after an X-ray showed acute pneumonia. Her husband sent his small daughter to stay with relatives outside of Mexico City so he could keep vigil at his wife's bedside.
"She just would not get any better," said her husband Enrique, explaining that the family was baffled by her condition.
Then last Thursday, he learned the reason why.
His government disclosed that the nation was in the grips of a dangerous epidemic, that a new strain of deadly swine flu had been detected in the country.
CONTINUED >>
By Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer
GENEVA – Despite fears of swine flu turning into a full-blown pandemic, the atmosphere in the main hall of the 1970s-style headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva seems very business as usual.
On Tuesday morning, small groups of international health experts engaged in scientific talk over cups of coffee in the lobby's cafeteria, while others, with briefcases or paperwork under their arms, walked across the shiny marble floor to and from adjacent elevators.
But appearances of normality aside, only a few feet away from the lobby coffee shop is WHO's Strategic Health Operations Center – the so-called SHOC room. It is an emergency center where WHO experts have been gathering over the last several days to monitor the evolving swine flu crisis.
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| Fabrice Coffrini / AFP - Getty Images |
| Employees enter the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday. |
"This is where we gather our scientists, our infection control experts, our epidemiologists, our logisticians," said Dr. Margaret Chan, the Director-General of WHO, as she explained how the international organization has been monitoring the feared pandemic.
"We capture information from all the offices of WHO through our regional office. We have a daily teleconference here and we can connect to countries if necessary, so that we can, in real time, share information as quickly as possible," said Chan. "And when dealing with new and emerging infection – action, speed and good information, good quality information is extremely important."
CONTINUED >>
By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
NICOSIA, Cyprus – On a small island like Cyprus, it's comforting to see the government hastening to reassure the population that there is no need to panic about swine flu and show precautions they have already taken to deal with a possible outbreak, even though officials have yet to diagnose single case here.
Cyprus depends on tourism and agriculture for its economic survival; a pandemic of swine flu would be disastrous for both sectors.
After the weekend news that swine flu had killed dozens of people in Mexico, and that cases had since been reported in the United States and Europe, the Cyprus Health Ministry convened an emergency meeting of microbiologists, epidemiologists and officials from pharmaceutical services to coordinate action and determine the readiness of emergency health services throughout the island.
"The fact that cases have been reported in Europe is worrying," said Health Minister Christos Patsalides. "This obliges everyone in Europe to increase their measures to deal with swine flu."
CONTINUED >>
By NBC News’ Carol Grisanti and Mushtaq Yusufzai
ISLAMABAD – After weeks of consolidating their control over large areas of the Northwest Frontier Province, the Taliban are in retreat.
On Friday, Maulana Fazullah, the firebrand Taliban boss in the Swat Valley, ordered his most trusted military chief, Commander Fateh, to leave Buner, a neighboring valley that Fateh seized on Monday.
The Pakistani authorities warned the militants on Thursday that they were ready to remove them by force if they did not lay down their arms and abide by a peace agreement hammered out in February.
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| Mohammad Sajjad / AP |
| Taliban militants hold their weapons outside a mosque in Daggar, Buner's main town on Thursday. |
According to the deal, the government ceded power to the Taliban in the Swat Valley and allowed them to impose Islamic law in the area in return for a cease-fire – ending two years of on and off military operations there.
But last weekend at a large gathering of supporters in the valley, the Taliban announced they would not lay down their arms and openly challenged the state. They declared that democracy was un-Islamic and called for harsh Islamic laws, known as sharia, to replace Pakistan’s constitution.
The next day, they began their advance into Buner. That valley’s proximity to the capital, Islamabad, just 70 miles and a five-hour drive away, sounded alarm bells in Washington.
CONTINUED >>
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
Will Howard used to think the biggest threat to the world's oceans came from the things you could see - like the detritus clogging so many our estuaries and coastal regions. Now he's found new evidence of how invisible changes in the chemistry of the water pose a disturbing new threat to life in the oceans.
"The impact has already begun. It's not a matter for laboratory experiments. It's happening now," he told me.
The world's oceans are becoming more acidic, as they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and Howard has discovered the first direct field evidence of the impact on marine life - tell-tale changes in tiny sea snails the size of a grain of sand, which are struggling to make their shells.
"These organisms are the base of the marine food web, and what happens to them reverberates throughout the eco-system - right up to whales and penguins," says Howard, who's based at the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre at the University of Tasmania.
Click here to read more of Ian Williams reporting on the disturbing warning signs coming from the world's oceans and efforts to try to preserve a protected marine reserve, the Mariana Trench.
By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
HAVANA – President Barack Obama may have charmed audiences all around the world and been all smiles with strongmen such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – but don’t count Fidel Castro as one of his fans.
In his latest blog, posted last evening, the former Cuban president took issue with a number of remarks Obama made during a Sunday news conference at the close of the Summit of the Americas.
Castro accused the president of "arrogance" and "superficiality" while also criticizing his support of Washington’s trade embargo on the island, stating Obama has now made the "failed" policy "his own."
The 82-year-old Castro also said that Obama had "interpreted badly" statements and supposed signals of conciliation from his brother Raúl, now president, who recently remarked that his government was willing to discuss "everything" with the Obama administration, including "human rights, press freedoms and political prisoners."
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| Javier Galeano / AP |
| An employee of the Defense of the Revolution Committee reads an issue of the Cuban newspaper Granma next to an image of Fidel Castro in Havana on Wednesday. |
The apparent openness of that statement, made last Thursday during a meeting of leftist leaders in Venezuela, sparked speculation both in the United States and here in Cuba that the two adversaries could be heading to the negotiating table.
Obama even characterized Raúl Castro’s remarks as an "advance" and underscored that he was encouraged by them.
But he then called on Havana to free political prisoners and to slash the official exchange rate of the U.S. dollar on family remittances.
And that clearly riled Fidel Castro.
CONTINUED >>
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
QINGDAO, China – As China prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy on Thursday, its normally secretive military has taken the unprecedented step of showcasing some of its best vessels and naval weaponry.
On Wednesday, sailors from China and 14 other countries with naval ships participating in the international fleet review off the coast of Qingdao – including the United States – took turns visiting one another’s vessels.
Amid the clicks of digital cameras, one could almost imagine there were no such things as territorial disputes.
CONTINUED >>
Iraq's tourism industry is banking on Saddam Hussein's "popularity" by offering the former dictator's bedroom as the honeymoon suite for $150. NBC News' Richard Engel reports.
South Africans go to the polls this week, with presidential candidate Jacob Zuma and the ruling African National Congress poised to win a big majority. Martin Geissler profiles the man and the country, looking at the controversy that has surrounded Zuma and the troubling wealth gap that endures despite the end of apartheid.
By NBC News Bo Gu
BEIJING – On Sunday afternoon thousands of people gathered near Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium for a mass blind date.
But the scene was not the usual one of young swinging singles mixing and mingling; rather, it was full of anxious parents looking for love for their still single adult children.
At the entrance a billboard with heart shaped signs gave attendees instructions: "If you are a parent of a son looking for a girlfriend, please wear a blue ribbon. If you are a parent of a daughter looking for a boyfriend, please wear a red ribbon. If you are a single, please wear a tag [saying] ‘I’m looking for you!’"
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| Bo Gu/ NBC News |
| Parents crowd into the matchmaking event in Beijing’s Olympic Park. |
Parents strolled around hunting for different colored ribbons, striking up conversations and asking for details such as "How old is your daughter?" or "How tall is your son?" They exchanged information, complete with pictures and resumes, in the hope of finding their son or daughter the perfect spouse.
Some parents did come manage to bring their children along. Zhao Qi, a 31-year-old businessman who sells sea cucumbers – a product many Chinese believe to be extremely nutritious – came with his 74-year-old father.
"I’m not picky at all…age or appearance…they are not important. I just want to find someone who I can talk with, who I feel comfortable to live with," said Zhao.
Dressed in a gray suit and sporting a shy smile, he voiced his concerns about the dating scene. "Girls now are so choosy, they are very hard to please. I only have a diploma from a vocational school, so I think my low education is the reason they don’t appreciate me that much."
Compared to the son’s bashfulness, his father, Zhao Lianrun, seemed more anxious and aggressive, having bought him an expensive apartment near the Summer Palace, one of Beijing’s main tourist destinations. He’s ready for him to start a family.
"I didn’t have a son until I was 43 years old. Now I’m over 70, and I can’t wait to see a grandchild," he said. "People have introduced many girls to my son, but my wife is too picky! She wants the best for him, so we are here today to take a look."
CONTINUED >>
By NBC News’ Carol Grisanti and Mushtaq Yusufzai
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – "I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at al-Qaida and Taliban houses," confessed 19-year-old Habibur Rehman, just before the Taliban shot him dead for spying for the United States. "If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars," he said.
In a video released last week by the Taliban as a warning to other would-be spies, Rehman recounted how he was recruited to spy on the Taliban in North Waziristan and drop small transmitter chips on specific targets to call in CIA pilotless drone aircraft.
"I thought this was a very easy job," Rehman said in the video before he was killed. "The money was good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money."
The chips transmit a signal to a satellite overhead. The drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, are controlled and remotely piloted by the CIA in the United States, according to Pakistani and western military analysts. Once the signal is received, the drone takes off from Shamsi air base in southwestern Pakistan and collects data and intelligence to attack the chosen Taliban and al-Qaida target.
A U.S. official, who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity about the Taliban allegation said, "People should recognize this for what it is … extremist propaganda."
President Barack Obama has stated that he considers the drone program an effective tool to target al-Qaida sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the mountainous border with Afghanistan. Nine out of 20 wanted al-Qaida operatives, who were on a list drawn up by U.S. official last year, have been killed by drones using intelligence provided from chips planted by Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen working as spies.
CONTINUED >>
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
BEIJING – Last September, less than a month after the end of the Beijing Summer Olympics, about 40 parents materialized in front of the Bird's Nest stadium. Somber and silent, they stood in a row; each one carried a large poster with photographs of their missing young children.
"Doesn’t this society have a responsibility? Why let these parents suffer?" a young college student who appeared to be the parents’ spokesman shouted out to the gathering crowd of onlookers. "Our Chinese government could do something as big as the Olympics, but they cannot find these kids? Why not?"
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| Adrienne Mong/NBC News |
| Parents publicize the plight of their missing children in Beijing. |
One of those parents was Peng Gaofeng, a handsome 30-year-old from originally from Hubei province in central China. His poster bore photographs of his son, Peng Wen Le – nicknamed Le Le.
"My son was taken away by a [child] smuggler so ruthlessly," said Peng. He had come to the Chinese capital with the other parents in the vain hope that they could gain an audience with Premier Wen Jiabao. They had heard that, months earlier, Wen had ordered an investigation into a case of eight children who had disappeared from Henan province, and a week later they were found.
"We thought if [Wen] knew…if we could see him, he would help us and know how much we suffer," Peng recalled.
Instead he and the other parents were rounded up by the authorities, detained for a couple of days, and sent back to their home provinces.
Eight months later, Peng is still searching for his son.
CONTINUED >>
By Scott Foster, NBC News White House producer
MEXICO CITY – On his second international trip in two weeks, President Barack Obama is visiting the largest metropolitan area in the western hemisphere: Mexico City.
It’s a bustling, crowded urban center of over 20 million people known for YouTube worthy traffic jams, spontaneous street protests and high crime.
Mexican security forces decked out in full combat gear and armed with heavy machine guns have been posted throughout the city and many streets have been blocked off for Obama’s two-day visit beginning Thursday afternoon.
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| Daniel Aguilar / Reuters |
| Mexican Federal policemen patrol around the Presidente Intercontinental hotel on Wednesday, ahead of President Barack Obama's visit. |
While the city boasts many important cultural and historical sites, including more museums than any other city in the world, it’s a chaotic place that makes moving a head of state enormously challenging.
Over the past century, visits by American presidents to Mexico City have been relatively rare; instead most have travelled for meetings with Mexican leaders in safer and more pristine resort locales.
In fact, according to USA Today, out of the previous 29 U.S. presidential trips south of the border, only five have come here: Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton.
Why is Obama coming to Mexico City then?
CONTINUED >>
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
SUMATRA, Indonesia – Waikiki was known as a problem child, but that was hardly surprising.
He spent the first few years of his life chained to a fence at the housing project where he got his name; it was also where he lost any fear of the humans who had killed his mother and sold him as a pet.
By the time conservationists rescued him, Waikiki was growing fast and had plenty of attitude. Once, after escaping from his cage and chasing off his keeper, he slowly and methodically dismantled the keeper’s motorcycle.
Conservationists tried twice to release him back to the wild, but he kept returning to human habitations, which were much more familiar to him than the forest. So they decided to take him deeper into the jungle, which is where we met the now 10-year-old orangutan.
His small travelling cage was carried to a remote part of the forest, and placed in a clearing near a river. We set up our camera about 10 yards from the cage, in the shadow of a tree, and placed another small camera in a bush close by the cage. We hoped our cameras would record his exit and ascent up the nearest tree – to freedom.
But when the cage was opened he headed straight for us. One keeper, whose stub of a finger was a reminder of the last time he tangled with an angry orangutan, decided that humoring Waikiki was not an option.
"Run, to the river," he yelled.
We waded into the water, while Waikiki paced up and down the bank. The conservationists splashed him with water and shouted: "Go Waikiki, go! Climb! Climb!" Eventually he skulked off into the jungle and we began the two-hour trek back to camp, our team speculating as to when they might see him again.
CONTINUED >>
While China has been weathering the global economic crisis better than many other countries so far, the financial downturn is hitting some hard. NBC News' Adrienne Mong reports on a unique group of workers known as scrap peddlers, who are barely eking out a living in the wake of the worldwide recession.
KABUL For centuries, the women of Afghanistan have had to walk behind men, their faces hidden, their dreams denied. They have often been forced to live a harsh life in a place where most women are illiterate, forced into marriages, and beaten by their husbands.
In a rare protest, nearly 300 women gathered Wednesday to demand equality and the repeal of a new law imposing even more restrictions on their rights.
NBC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reports on a women's shelter in Kabul where Afghan women fleeing violent homes can find safe shelter.
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
L'AQUILA, Italy – Imagine this: their house was rocked so hard by the earthquake in L'Aquila, a husband and wife couldn't even lift themselves out of bed. When the shock ended, they leapt up to flee the house.
The wife stopped to put on her shoes. Her husband yelled, leave it, get out of the house. But she must have been in shock because not only did she put both shoes on, but she stopped to tie up the laces. He fled and lived. She tied a knot and died. The roof collapsed on her.
Almost every house in the village of Onna, about three miles from L’Aquila, has a similar story, Joanna Griffith-Jones told me. She pointed from house to house and described one tragedy after another. That's where Rina died; and over there, that's where Lana died, leaving a 4-year-old child.
Twelve of her immediate neighbors were killed. Some died when the quake struck at 3:34 a.m.; others were killed by their collapsing homes moments later.
Joanna had just installed anti-seismic supports in the roof. "That saved the house?" I asked. "No," she said, "but it gave us time to escape."
CONTINUED >>
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
BEIJING –North Korea has been in the news a lot lately, but for all the articles on its recent missile test or senior leader Kim Jong Il’s health, the isolated state remains a mystery – secretive and opaque.
But tucked away in a small residential compound here in central Beijing, a small exhibition of that rarest of pop culture media – North Korean film posters – helps demystify the country.
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| Courtesy of Koryo Tours |
| A poster for the North Korean film “A Girl Barber.” |
“We wanted to do something that would teach people about the place,” said Nick Bonner, a co-founder of Koryo Tours, a group that leads tours of North Korea, who organized the exhibition.
The 25 posters on display were used to publicize overseas films released from the 1960s to the present. Accompanying almost all the artwork are detailed, informative notes – including excerpts from “Korea Film,” a book published by the Korea Film Export & Import Company in Pyongyang.
The medium is the message
Films, of course, have long been a keen interest of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Il. Although the medium was the preferred propaganda tool in North Korea even before he succeeded his father Kim Il-Sung, the younger Kim is widely credited with keeping the industry alive and thriving.
He even went to the trouble of kidnapping a prominent South Korean director and his wife, a popular actress, in the late 1970s in an effort to revolutionize North Korea’s film industry.
What’s more, he has deftly used movies to justify his succession and grip on power. It was never a given that the younger Kim would become North Korea’s next head of state – film became the primary means he used to carry on his father’s legacy and solidify his own status, according to Suk-Young Kim, a scholar of North Korean arts and culture who teaches at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
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By NBC News’ Mushtaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Afghan intelligence agents are sharing information with militants about U.S. and NATO troop movements, a top Taliban commander told NBC News.
"The people of Afghanistan are with us," said Sirajuddin Haqqani, in an exclusive interview. "The Afghan intelligence officials are sympathetic to the Taliban and they communicate the movements of the occupying forces [U.S. and NATO] to us."
There was no way to confirm Haqqani's claims, but nearly eight years after the attacks of 9/11, the United States has struggled to oust the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies from parts of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
On March 27, President Barack Obama pledged a fresh infusion of U.S. troops to the region. "If the Afghanistan government falls to the Taliban or allows al-Qaida to go unchallenged," Obama said, "that country will again be a base for terrorists."
The United States also has hinted at possible negotiations with some elements of the Taliban. On March 31, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Taliban members in Afghanistan who abandoned extremism must be granted an "honorable form of reconciliation" while Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted that a similar rapprochement worked in Iraq.
However, the Taliban commander – who has a $5 million bounty on his head – dismissed U.S. efforts. Haqqani said that, contrary to comments from U.S. officials, there are no moderate Taliban willing to talk to America. As for other negotiations, Haqqani said that rumors of Saudi Arabia brokering peace negotiations with the Taliban leadership were just that – rumors.
Haqqani said Taliban fighters are now more resourceful than in the past. "We have acquired the modern technology that we were lacking and we have mastered new and innovative methods of making bombs and explosives," he explained.
The commander said he travels freely around Afghanistan because most people don’t know what he looks like. The 29-year-old said he keeps a low profile by travelling alone or just with one companion.
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By NBC News Bo Gu
BEIJING – Just 126 years after his death, Karl Marx’s moment may finally have arrived.
The People’s Press – the biggest publishing house for China’s orthodox revolutionary books – reports that Marx’s anti-capitalism opus "Das Kapital" has been selling about 4,000-5,000 copies nationwide a month since last November. That’s a big jump from before the economic crisis, when the book sold well under 1,000 copies per month on average.
The "Selected Works by Mao Zedong," a book owned by almost every Chinese citizen a few decades ago, is also witnessing a big jump in sales since late last year, according to Mr. Pan from the People’s Press circulation department.
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| Bo Gu/NBC News |
| Chinese shoppers peruse Beijing’s Utopia bookshop. |
Han Deqiang, a university professor, believes these sales trends reflect the fact that many Chinese are starting to question their new economic orthodoxy.
"For so many years we’ve been wading across the stream by feeling the way, trying to reach the other side of the stream in capitalism. Now the building on the bank has collapsed, and we realize maybe we had a wrong goal?" said Han.
With China’s economy characterized by widespread privatization and double-digit growth rates over the past 30 years, Marx’s critique of capitalism had fallen out of favor. But his "bible" of communism – first published in 1867 and worshipped by the Chinese people decades ago – seems to have found a new audience in China amid the global economic crisis, as evidenced by book sales.
CONTINUED >>
By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer
ISLAMABAD – Perhaps the $5 million bounty recently put on him by the United States has gone to his head.
Baitullah Mehsud, the notoriously reclusive chief of the Pakistani Taliban, suddenly thrust himself into the media spotlight last week by telephoning local journalists to claim responsibility for a recent series of brazen terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
And then came another surprise (this one fantastical): On Saturday he called back to brag that he was behind the attack on an immigration center by a lone Vietnamese gunman in Binghamton, N.Y., saying that the attacks were in revenge for the ongoing missile strikes on Pakistan’s tribal areas by unmanned United States drone aircraft.
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| EPA file |
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Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud (left with brown cap) speaks to journalists in South-Waziristan in a file photo from May 2008. |
But information coming out of the tribal areas and from intelligence officials in Islamabad suggests that Mehsud’s bravado might just be his way of jockeying for power among the various militant groups seeking sanctuary along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It seems that Mehsud, who has recently deepened his ties with al-Qaida, is trying to assert himself as commander in chief of the entire jihadist network in Pakistan.
"There is an internal power struggle going on now," explained a former ISI station chief in Peshawar who spoke on condition of anonymity. "When [Mehsud] thinks that someone new is coming up and could overshadow him, he kills him," said the official.
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BAGHDAD -- Abu Ghraib prison has been cleaned up, but newly painted walls and amenities don't change its notorious history, or the fact that a prisoner release has Iraq concerned about renewed violence. NBC's Steve Wende reports.
By NBC News' Sonia Narang
NEW YORK – Though it's a long way from the subways of New York City to the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, a group of teenage refugees from Nepal are trying to adjust to a new life in the U.S.
They recently moved to this country with their families from refugee camps along the Nepal-Bhutan border in one of the largest resettlement efforts in recent history. Ethnic tensions forced them from their homes in Bhutan and they had to flee to refugee camps on the Nepal border. Just one year ago, the first refugees began moving to the U.S.
While many are still struggling with English, music has given them a voice. For the past few months, a group of New York City musicians has been teaching the kids drumming and singing – in preparation for their American musical debut. NBC News Sonia Narang reports on their progress.
Reporter's Notebook
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
BUDAPEST – If anyone wonders how bad the economic crisis is in Europe, consider this: While shooting a story in Budapest, last week we parked our vehicle on a street in a part of town that has fallen on hard times.
Our translator, Andras Krucsai, suggested we not stray too far from the car. But it was broad daylight. And we weren’t headed far enough away to lose sight of the vehicle.
Still, within no more than three minutes, vandals struck, seemingly out of nowhere. In a blur, two teenagers broke the glass and grabbed our GPS navigational device, which was sure to fetch good money on the black market. They'd disappeared by the time we ran the distance – around 300 yards – screaming all the way back.
''I saw them clearly,'' said Andras, who owned the car, brushing glass shards from the front seat. ''Just kids, 16 or 17, but you know it's gonna happen more and more often. It's gonna be worse and worse.''
CONTINUED >>
By Chris Hampson, NBC News Director of International News
LONDON – Of all the
G-20 moments, it was always tipped by those of us in the know as the meeting to watch, because the unthinkable could always happen. And it did.
It wasn’t President Barack Obama talking to Prime Minister Gordon Brown about how to bail out the world’s economies. Not the nuclear discussions with those tricky Russians either. Nor even what the Axis of Evil might get up to in London (France’s Sarkozy and Germany’s Merkel, that is!).
No. It was a simple touch.
It came when the first lady of the United States of America met the first lady of Great Britain – Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State of the United Kingdom and of 15 other Commonwealth realms. She is our Head of the Armed Forces, Fount of Justice and Defender of the Faith.
The queen’s been on the world stage for more than five decades; Michelle Obama for about five minutes – but all of them quite dazzling.
Yesterday she showed Britons why.
It wasn’t only President Obama who slayed Britain with his charm. His wife was also successful, standing head and shoulders above the best.
She strode across the plush Buckingham Palace carpet to shake the queen’s hand with the kind of courteous informality that characterizes Americans. Unlike the British royals, they don’t do "stuffy." And they don’t curtsey much either.
The queen – accustomed to pomp and protocol at every step – seemed surprisingly at ease too. She took hold of Mrs. Obama’s hand firmly – not her usual end-of-fingertips, don’t-come-too-close handshake.
CONTINUED >>
By F. Brinley Bruton, msnbc.com reporter
LONDON – Thousands of protesters from disparate walks of life danced and chanted in downtown London on Wednesday ahead of the G-20 meeting of world leaders.
Some came dressed as "zombie" bankers, while others donned crazy wigs and platform shoes. Many just wore jeans and t-shirts. A few even wore suits.
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| Brinley Bruton / msnbc.com |
| Lucien Windridge, 50, a skull painted on his face, attended the protests with his wife, son and daughters. |
Dozens got bloodied scuffling with police, and more than a few drank beer out of tall cans.
Smiling through the skull painted on his face, Lucien Windridge said he was protesting because he believed regular people should have more of a voice in the global financial system.
"If people don’t protest, if people don’t have a voice, it means that they are complicit with corruption," the 50-year-old said at the start of one major protest in the heart of London’s ancient financial capital, The City.
"People must be able to express their anger at the system that has let them down," he said, standing next to his wife, son and two daughters.
Windridge was diplomatic, but his daughter Aeyla was less so. What did the 12-year-old want? "The death of capitalism," she said.
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Despite the gloomy economic times and shrunken fashion shows in the U.S. and Europe, China hosted its Fall/ Winter 2009 Fashion Week with great flare last week. More than 20 well-known brands launched new collections - and many of them were Chinese designers.
Su Mang, editor in chief of Bazaar-China magazine, discusses the growing trend of Chinese designers creating fashions that suit Chinese styles, as opposed to China's traditional role as simply a manufacturer of clothes for Western consumers.
