World Blog

Israeli entrepreneurs make sure every drop of water counts

Petra Cahill — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:36:00 GMT

TEL AVIV – Israelis this week were shocked to hear that starting in January 2010, their monthly water bill will cost 40 percent more.

Being in an extremely arid climate, every school age child in Israel is constantly reminded that water scarcity is a critical national issue. The slogan "Every Drop Counts" is repeated over and over in schools and by the media. Water supplies have gotten so low that now Israelis will not only need to stop watering their gardens and take shorter showers, but will also have to pay more for every drop.

VIDEO: In Israel 'every drop counts'

But the issue has created a great catalyst for private Israeli companies to develop innovative ways to recycle wastewater, desalinate water and irrigate more efficiently.

The Water Technologies, Renewable Energy and Environmental Control (WATEC) exhibition in Tel Aviv this week showcased companies from all over the world working on water issues.

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A Gazan student’s dream hangs in the balance

Petra Cahill — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:22:00 GMT

By Lawahez Jabari, NBC News Producer

BETHLEHEM, West Bank – "I felt very nervous and frightened walking through the Erez Crossing today. I was forced to go back to Gaza. My family was waiting for me to return with my university degree, but I came home without carrying the dream that they were waiting for," said Berlanty Azzam, a 22-year-old woman from Gaza, in a phone interview Tuesday.

Azzam has been a student at Bethlehem University since 2005. Four years later and just two months shy of completing her degree in business management, Azzam was stopped on Oct. 28 at a routine Israeli checkpoint near Ramallah, in the West Bank, on her way to a job interview.

When the Israeli guard noticed Gaza City on her ID card, she was immediately arrested for being in the West Bank without permission. Within hours, according to her attorney, Yadin Elam, she was blindfolded, handcuffed, and removed to Gaza by force – without any kind of hearing or access to a lawyer before she was deported.

Tara Todras-whitehill / AP

Berlanty Azzam, a Palestinian student talks during an interview in Gaza City on Nov. 12.

Azzam admits that she did not have the required permission to study in the West Bank – something that has been increasingly difficult for Gazans to obtain since Hamas, the Palestinian militant movement, took over Gaza in 2007 and the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that students from Gaza had to obtain a permit.

But, Elam said, those permits didn’t exist when she initially enrolled in Bethlehem University back in 2005. At that time, Azzam received a four-day permit to enter Israel, traveled to Bethlehem to enroll and never went back to Gaza. She also said that she repeatedly tried to get permit-application forms, without success.

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Taliban commander: We're fighting for 'independence'

Petra Cahill — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:08:00 GMT

By NBC News' Mujeeb Ahmad

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan – Even as the Pakistani army steps up its offensive against the Taliban in Pakistan’s northern tribal region, there are increasing concerns about militants from Afghanistan seeking safe haven in a different part of the country: Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwest Baluchistan Province.

American military and intelligence officials believe that the Taliban ruling council, or shura, which commands and controls jihad efforts in Afghanistan, have abandoned their historic base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and crossed the border into Quetta.

In Pakistan, the issue is raised every day in the press and on the streets: Have the Afghan Taliban moved their power base from Kandahar and set-up shop in Quetta? Quetta is my home – my family and friends live there – so I had a personal, as well as professional stake in finding out what’s been going on.

Some colleagues urged me to talk to Mullah Manan, a commander of 70 foot soldiers in Helmand province in Afghanistan, to try to get some answers.
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Michelle Obama frenzy hasn’t hit China, yet

Petra Cahill — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:55:00 GMT

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent

BEIJING – OK, I confess. If a Web site features a photo gallery of Michelle Obama’s latest fashions, I click on it.

Like many other American women, I have a certain fascination with our first lady.

So there was a frisson of anticipation when we learned President Barack Obama would travel to China. Would Michelle come with him? What would she wear? Not red, surely? What about when she met Chinese leaders? Or when she met Chinese people? (Had anyone here noticed the fact that she chose a dress by Jason Wu, an ethnic Chinese designer for the inauguration? Even though he was born in that renegade province, Taiwan?)

SLIDESHOW: Michelle Obama's effortless style

As it turns out, Michelle Obama isn’t visiting China.

It also turns out the Chinese public doesn’t have quite the same fascination with her as many others around the world.

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Obama gets mixed reviews in China's blogosphere

Petra Cahill — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:10:00 GMT

By NBC News' Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

BEIJING – It was President Barack Obama’s first full day in China, jammed with morning meetings with city officials in Shanghai and afternoon sessions with central government leaders in Beijing.

But the headline event was easily his town hall meeting with a group of highly vetted students in Shanghai, during which he also took several questions submitted over the Internet. China’s blogosphere – the world’s largest with 350 million Internet users and 60 million bloggers – was buzzing before, during, and after the event.

Among English-speaking residents across China, the reaction veered between scorn and disappointment, particularly over Obama’s comment, "I’m a big supporter of non-censorship." He said this in response to a question about China’s Great Firewall, the online filtering and surveillance program run by the communist government’s Ministry of Public Security.

Jason Reed / Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama greets participants in a town hall-style meeting with future Chinese leaders at the Museum of Science and Technology in Shanghai on Monday.

"It pains me to write this…but Obama’s performance this afternoon reminded me of nothing so much as an overly coached American businessman on his first trip to China, so concerned about what he should or should not say that he forgets what he wanted to say in the first place, and ends up going home with nothing but a hotel bill and empty promises," Adam Minter, an American writer, wrote from his home in Shanghai.
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Beijing puts foot down on ‘Oba Mao’ T-shirts

Petra Cahill — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:21:00 GMT

By NBC News' Bo Gu

BEIJING – Liu Mingjie expected that President Barack Obama’s first visit to China would bring more business to his little boutique shop in Beijing’s popular Houhai area, a lakeside district filled with trendy restaurants and bars, souvenir shops and lots of tourists.

Until last weekend, Liu had been interviewed by both Chinese and foreign media about what he was selling: T-shirts that superimposed Obama's face over that of China's late Chairman Mao Zedong on the front, and the words "Oba Mao" on the back.

But Lui’s brisk business was suddenly terminated by local government officials, just days before Obama’s arrival in China, without any explanation. He says he was simply told, "No, you cannot sell Obama T-shirts anymore."

Liu Mingjie shows off the “Oba Mao” T-shirt he was selling out of his shop in Beijing, that is until the authorities told him to stop.

While the culture of mocking celebrities and politicians is not yet widely embraced in China, the possible embarrassment brought to the president of the United States by having his image on T-shirts dressed in the uniform of China’s infamous Red Guards, who caused mayhem during the Cultural Revolution, was too much of a ticking bomb for local officials. Liu doesn’t know when or whether he’ll ever be able to sell his T-shirts again, but he’s not the only one who is confused and upset.

Qi Zhiyong, a former factory worker who lost one leg during the crackdowns on student demonstrators 20 years ago that culminated in the infamous Tiananmen Square protests, has found himself suddenly forbidden to talk to the media and has been followed by plainclothes police for the last few weeks.

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Trips to Venus shake up women’s role in Japan

Petra Cahill — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:19:00 GMT

By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent

TOKYO – When I asked Masako Usui what she thought of Japan's new first lady, the news presenter for the NTV television network started to bang and twist her thumbs together.

"They were returning from a trip abroad, when we saw her thumb-wrestling with her husband through the plane's window," Usui told me, as we stood on the edge of NTV's vast newsroom. "That would never have happened before," she said laughing.

For Japan's media, politics has suddenly become a whole lot more interesting because there has never been a Japanese first lady quite like Miyuki Hatoyama. If there was a premier league for first ladies, she'd be right up beside Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni, the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, except that as far as I know neither of them has ever traveled to Venus.

Pool / Getty Images

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his wife Miyuki Hatoyama at the premier's official residence in Tokyo on Oct. 29.

That was the extraordinary claim Hatoyama made in a recent interview. More precisely, she said her spirit had flown there in a UFO, and that it was a beautiful place, very green.

She went on to describe how she "eats the sun" each morning to gain energy, and how she'd met Tom Cruise in a previous life. She said Cruise, who played a samurai knight in the movie The Last Samurai, was Japanese back in the other life.

That’s pretty wacky stuff, but you say that at your peril in Tokyo these days. Several people complained to me about the obsession of the foreign media with the first lady's eccentricities (Time Magazine called her "Mrs. Occult"), as if a trip to Venus was a perfectly natural thing to do.

Most Japanese are remarkably unfazed by Hatoyama's cosmic adventures, and see her as a breath of fresh air.

"She's very confident. Her attitude is: ‘This is me, accept me for who I am. This is what I do, and if you don't like it, take it or leave it.’ But in a very positive way," said Hayami Yu, an actress and singer, who has met the first lady on several occasions.

And that seems to have a broad appeal in a country where first ladies have been traditionally far less visible, and where women are still very poorly represented at the top levels of business and politics.

"In Japan, the man is the man, and the woman is the woman, walking five steps behind," said Jane Yamano, who runs a string of beauty schools and is a friend of the first lady. She says that is changing, albeit too slowly, and that Hatoyama confidence and openness is "inspiring."

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Kenyan girls given a chance to dream

Petra Cahill — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:32:00 GMT

By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent

KAKUMA, Kenya – I've been back from my latest trip to Africa for several weeks, but there are two girls I can't get out of my mind: a mature 14-year-old called Nyanuel Noang from Sudan, and an impossibly sweet little 11-year-old named Michu Danabo from Ethiopia.

We met them at the unlikeliest place. While driving through an arid plain in northern Kenya we saw in the distance, in the middle of nowhere, a cluster of low buildings surrounded by razor wire. Was it a prison? An army camp? A food depot?

It turned out to be at school run by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called the "Angelina Jolie Boarding School for Girls." The actress, a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, donated money to help construct the school. But while the money came all the way from Hollywood, the girls came from the Kakuma refugee camp a couple of miles away.

VIDEO: Girls get a chance to learn at Kenyan school

At the Kakuma camp, about 50,000 forlorn people from Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda are fed by aid agencies that work with the UNHCR. They live in shacks made of local materials like branches, mud, leaves and wood. Water is often available – but not always. Some Somalis have been there since 1991. There are schools, clinics and food depots. The camp offers security, support and comfort. What it cannot give is any hope for the future.

But for the past three years, the brightest of the refugee girls from Kakuma, as well as a few from the local tribes, have been permitted to dream.

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A cup of Kenyan tea and a necklace

Petra Cahill — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:20:00 GMT

By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer

SAMBURU, Kenya – We were on a five-hour journey from Maralal to Samburu in northern Kenya. It was noon and we asked our driver, Albert, to stop at a beautiful village we were driving past for a cup of tea.

The menu was hand written on the wall of the "Small World Hotel." The local tea is called "chai" and costs ten Kenyan shillings for a cup, or about 15 cents.

The small village was made up of one main unpaved street with mud shops lining it and straw huts scattered behind them. The town is in the middle of nowhere and the three-year drought here has left most of this region without water, food or tourists.

We ordered three cups of chai and sat on the ground beside the main road. After the very first sip, we all looked at each other, thinking the same thing: It was undrinkable. But by now, what seemed like most of the village’s residents had sat down beside us, watching our every move. Could we possibly pour out the liquid in front of the locals?

Krzysztof Galica / NBC News

Paul Goldman, left, and NBC correspondent Martin Fletcher, right, stop for a cup of "chai" tea at the "Small World Hotel" in a small village in northern Kenya.

Albert came over and explained that in this area they combine the tea with hot water, milk and sugar. Lots of sugar. Ever the diplomat, Albert passed the cups to some women who had just arrived. By now I realized why he hadn’t ordered a cup for himself.

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Germany still coping with ‘wall in the mind’

Petra Cahill — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:43:00 GMT

By Doug Adams, NBC News Producer

BERLIN – As Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in many ways this is still a divided city.

It's not a physical divide – little remains of the former wall today. But spend a few days in Berlin and you realize that the city is still split by psychological and economic barriers.

There is an expression about the "wall in the mind," referring to psychological and social barriers that keep easterners (ossis) and westerners (wessis) separate.

Many West Berliners, for example, say they rarely venture deep into East Berlin even now. Josef Jaffe, who has been an editor for the Die Zeit newspaper his entire career, described how he knows his way around Paris and New York better than around East Berlin.

And in Germany, a nation of newspaper readers, the four biggest East German newspapers and magazines are hardly read in West Berlin.The same goes for the largest West Berlin papers in the East. And therein lies the "wall in the mind."

SLIDESHOW: The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall

Still wrestling with differences
I recently spent a week in Berlin as part of journalism fellowship sponsored by the RIAS Berlin Kommission to study German politics and media. In our meetings with journalists, politicians and academics, the East-West tension was a constant undercurrent.

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