On Assignment
By Arata Yamamoto, NBC News Producer
YEONPYEONG, South Korea – Ever since Pyongyang conducted an underground nuclear test last month, the 1,500 residents of Yeonpyeong, a tiny South Korean island situated about 2 miles from the maritime border with North Korea, have been exposed to much unwanted attention, both from the press and the military.
It’s not that the residents are unaware of the potential tension. They witnessed it firsthand when naval skirmishes broke out in the nearby waters in 1999 and 2002. The first clash left soldiers dead on both sides and offerings of flowers can be found at a statue by the port memorializing the fallen.
Across the island, there are reminders of the possible threat from the North: rows of large spikes made out of logs planted on beaches to keep away the enemy, a bunker overlooking the sea, and barbed-wire fences along deserted coastlines.
However, most of the islanders say these are remnants of the past. "They were originally placed for defense purposes, but that was long ago," our guide and innkeeper Young Ok Song said.
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By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
AMMAN, Jordan -- Rita Aziz, a 24-year-old Christian Iraqi woman, fled her country for Amman a few months ago after her two brothers were kidnapped on a highway leading north from Baghdad.
Shortly afterward, she received a telephone call from neighbors in Baghdad telling her that two bodies had been found and that they could be those of her missing brothers. They suggested she return to Baghdad to identify them. She took the next available flight from Amman.
Just as she arrived at her house, four men appeared and bundled her into a car and drove her to an unknown destination.
For the next five days they raped and tortured her, telling her they were punishing her for being a Christian.
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By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent
MEXICO CITY – Above a quiet, languid Mexico City, there is a hint of blue in the center of the sky. The usual haze, that obscures the view of the mountains and the sun-bleached homes that crawl up into them, is remarkably light. From a tall building these past two days, the view is stunningly clear. These are small gifts, for citizens still living through an international scare – and a national shutdown.
With little to do today around the normally electrified capital, a person can marvel at the prospect of a stroll down silent lanes, hearing single bird chirps, breathing in the clearer air – or a drive without a traffic jam. It is both refreshing and eerie – a good time for the mind to wander – and then you remember that the cause of this otherworldy calm is quite alarming. Or at least, it was.
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By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent
PUEBLA, MEXICO – It’s difficult to spot any evidence folks here are concerned about the swine flu.
In this city, about 60 miles southeast of Mexico City, few residents are wearing masks. Stores and restaurants are open. The town center, called el zocalo, is awash with families, children holding balloons. Lovers are in clutches on city benches, smooching.
In Mexico City, streets are empty, restaurants are closed and it’s so quiet you can hear the birds chirping. But Puebla is alive.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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 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?
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