BEIJING – As President Hu Jintao heads for the G-20 Summit in London to tackle the global financial crisis, Chinese media is abuzz with clashing views about how the Middle Kingdom should manage its increasingly central role in world affairs.

With their economy still expanding and banks still awash with cash – and the government holding $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves, more than half of which is invested in debt that supports the United States – the Chinese are generally taking pride in their unprecedented new clout in world affairs.

Sarah Jiang / NBC News

The new book stirring up nationalist sentiments in China: "Unhappy China – The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges."

"Superior system advantage" is how Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan explains China's relative strength. He recently called for an end to the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency, prompting concerns about China's assertive economic nationalism.

And nationalism is proving to be the sensitive issue that both Chinese leaders and the public have to grapple with as they try to define the nation's new "great power" status.

The latest salvo on the nationalism debate was fired by a group of scholars who argue in a best-selling new book that the current financial crisis is proof of the corruption of the world capitalist system led by the United States – and that it's time for China to take the lead.

The group put out a collection of essays called "Unhappy China – The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges" in order to "spur, stimulate and wake up" China's intellectuals.

The book declares: "With Chinese national strength growing at an unprecedented rate, China should stop self-debasing and come to recognize that it has the power to lead the world, and the necessity to break away from Western influence. We are most qualified to lead this world; Westerners should be second."

Conceived by the authors last October as the global financial crisis began to sweep America and the world, the book was published in early March and is selling for $4.40 a copy. Its first printing sold out and the second printing of 270,000 is reportedly selling fast as well.

According to Huang Jisu, one of the book's authors and a sociologist, the idea is for China to take the lead in reforming the world and not to be the new leader of the old system.

"In that sense, we also reject the idea of 'Chimerica' or  China and America jointly leading the world, if it means China merely sharing in the spoils of the current global system," Huang said, dismissing recent suggestions by analysts that the success of the G-20 Summit will hinge on G2, the partnership between the United States and China.

"We are for changing the world system, not for China becoming the new hegemon or new Big Brother of the world," he said.

The book itself has faced a barrage of criticism from bloggers and academics, who accuse the authors of cashing in on "extreme nationalism" that is embarrassing and unconstructive.

"Actually, much of the criticism is based on misunderstanding," said Huang, citing one survey by Sina.com, a popular Chinese web site, showing that a majority of Chinese support the main points of the book.

While the book's thesis contradicts China's official diplomacy that seeks cooperation and not contention in tackling the global crisis, Huang said they have not encountered any government interference or criticism. "In that sense, we have room for freedom of expression in China," he said.

But one critic of the book, Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, called its publication a sign of the "ideological chaos" in China.

"Extreme nationalism is not the answer, and China is not ready to lead," declared Hu, while acknowledging the authors' right to express their opinion.

"As for Chimerica, China cannot possibly exercise leadership shoulder to shoulder with the United States simply because China is not qualified," he said, arguing that China's "soft power" is far from adequate.

"China's value systems – its ideological, political and cultural systems – are not yet part of the global mainstream," he explained.

Hu dismissed China's prosperity as deceptive. "Essentially, we remain as the peasant laborer of the world, relying on cheap labor and cheap products."

He likened the current situation to the 1930's Great Depression when Stalin's Soviet Union seemed to have the upper hand over the ailing Western economies. "I hope China will learn the lesson and not take the road taken by Stalin," he said.

"Only by undertaking political reform and democracy can China qualify to lead the world, and also avert domestic crisis and insure long-term prosperity," he said.

TEL AVIV – Wafaa Younis is a woman whose heart is in the right place; she is an Israeli Arab who has made a real effort to help Palestinian children in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

She started with the boys; she wanted them to put down their stones and learn the violin, in the hope that they would not grow up and pick up a gun. I first met her three years ago when she finally persuaded the Israelis to allow the Palestinian children to leave the West Bank and go to her home in the Israeli town of Ara for violin lessons.

Tara Todras-Whitehall / AP file

Palestinian children from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank play a concert for Holocaust survivors in Holon, Israel on March 25.Â

She even took them on trips to the coast; even though they grew up 30 miles from the Mediterranean, they had never seen the sea. Her first attempts to teach a few boys the violin grew into a small orchestra of boys and girls. She even rented an apartment in Jenin so that she could teach them there, because it was easier for her to cross into the West Bank than it was for them to leave.

Then Younis had an idea; as part of Israel's annual Good Deeds Week, she would arrange a little concert in Holon, near Tel Aviv. Her young musicians from the "Strings of Freedom" orchestra would entertain Holocaust survivors. They would play their favorite classics, and also some songs of peace; a way to bridge the divide between Palestinians and Israelis.

At the concert last Wednesday, the group of 13 young musicians from Jenin played for about 30 Holocaust survivors and they even dedicated one song to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who has been held prisoner by Hamas in Gaza for three years.

Younis is not the first person to make such an effort – there are literally hundreds of peace groups that have the same aim – bringing together Arabs and Jews with similar interests and hopes.

Tara Todras-whitehall / AP file

Holocaust survivors listen as Palestinian children from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank play music in Holon, Israel on March 25.Â

But playing for the Holocaust survivors turned out to be bridge too far. Adnan Hindi, a Palestinian political leader in Jenin, was outraged by the concert. He called the Holocaust a political issue and said that the Palestinian children had been tricked.

He complained that Younis had not told the children they would be playing before such a politically sensitive audience. She answered that she tried to explain to them, but that they made too much noise on the bus and didn't hear her. Other Palestinians said that was a bit late to tell them.

Younis said she didn't realize anybody could possibly object to playing a concert for those "poor old people" – and anyway, most of the Palestinian children had never heard of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust is a particularly sensitive subject for Palestinians. There is widespread ignorance of the details of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against Jews during World War II and there is a sense among many Palestinians that why should they care about Jewish suffering more than 60 years ago when Israelis don't seem to care about the suffering they are causing Palestinians today.

Younis is an Israeli Arab who tried to do a bit of good. For her pains, her apartment in Jenin has been boarded up and she is not allowed into the town anymore. Her orchestra has been disbanded. She said the Palestinian officials just want to take the money that she had raised for the children's orchestra.

I know Younis. After I met her several years ago she called me for months, asking for donations, for a contribution for a new violin, or even an old one, just so that she could teach music to her Palestinian students.

She wanted to introduce a bit of light into their lives and direct them toward the violin bow, and away from the gun. She had many ideas to help people, and she possessed in abundance that peculiar combination of strength and naiveté that mark people who, against great odds, achieve great things.

Today she didn't answer her phone.

A report by the Government Accountability Office, says the U.S. pullout of 140,000 troops from Iraq will be a "massive and expensive effort." The GAO says that the withdrawal will likely increase Iraq-related costs over the next several years rather than decrease expenses.

NBC News' Steve Wende reports on the cost of packing-up all of the troops and equipment.

VIDEO: Iraq pullout will be 'massive and expensive'

BEIJING – When American laser-graffiti artist James Powderly was arrested and jailed for six days in Beijing during the Olympics last August for plotting to project the words "Free Tibet" on a building near Tiananmen Square, he probably wouldn't have imagined that half a year later Greenpeace China would be allowed to do something similar – only this time with the message: "Time is Running Out to Stop Global Warming."

On Monday Greenpeace China turned Yongdingmen, one of Beijing's ancient city gates, into a gigantic countdown clock ticking down to the United Nations' Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December. 

Greg Baker / AP

A security guard looks at the Greenpeace China countdown clock projected onto Yongdingmen Gate in Beijing on March 23.  Â

The group also called on China to play a leadership role at the meeting with strong emission control commitments, urging President Hu Jintao to personally attend the Copenhagen meeting.  "As the largest global greenhouse emitter, China can and must take a leadership role in tackling global warming," Greenpeace campaigner Li Yan declared at the event.

But while Greenpeace China, which was allowed to set up shop in Beijing in 2002 (albeit only as a "branch" of the Hong Kong- registered organization), has enjoyed greater leeway than most non-governmental organizations, that doesn't mean the floodgates of public protest are now open to all comers. Rather, the group's environmental message happens to dovetail nicely with the Chinese government's growing recognition – spurred by public worries – of the importance of environmental protection.

In his report to parliament earlier this month, Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to "work tirelessly" to reduce China's energy consumption, lower emissions, protect the environment and "implement the national plan for addressing climate change." The large caveat is that economic growth will remain the government's primary goal, especially in the face of the current economic crisis.

There does appear to be some sincerity behind the talk, though some of it springs from self-interest, such as drawing attention away from controversial irritant issues such as human rights. 

Hoewever, Hillary Clinton's recent visit shows that China's leaders are more willing than before to engage with the United States, and the world, on issues of global warming and climate change. Efforts to curb greenhouse gases were a central issue during the U.S. secretary of state's February talks and her trip included a visit to an energy-efficient power plant in Beijing.

According to a source familiar with the Greenpeace campaign, the planning of the gigantic countdown event took into consideration China's growing desire to be seen as part of a "positive force" in the fight against climate change.

"The local police and authorities were told that it would be a public education event, and they said 'Yes,'" said the source, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of obtaining government permits for public demonstration.

Still, China's policy on what is allowed in the arena of public discourse is an ongoing evolution.

In part, this is because the government has come to realize that it is no longer the only source of news. Although people working for government organizations are still forced to subscribe to state-owned propaganda newspapers like the People's Daily; when they go home they can share stories on their personal blogs or Twitter accounts and exchange photos or videos on websites like Picasso or tudou.com.   

And when citizens in Xiamen (in south China) "mass walked" in the streets to protest a chemical plant project and used cell phones to spread the message or when people in Weng'an burned government buildings and police cars during a demonstration – it was an alarm bell for authorities that maybe they need to change their own public relations strategy. 

In similar vein, Beijing is reportedly planning to invest more than $6 billion in Chinese media organizations, similar to CNN or the BBC, that will be compelling and informative – but, most important, patriotic. In addition, crisis management training is being delivered to government officials who used to know next to nothing about talking to the media.

But there are still some taboo subjects. Open Google in China and type in "Falungong," a banned spiritual sect, and all you can read is how evil this belief is and how many victims the religion has directly or indirectly killed. Or if you try "Dalai Lama," you find "Dalai Lama's five lies," or "How the Dalai Lama Clique betrayed and fled China."

So if James Powderly thinks he could come out to project his ideas on a city wall like what Greenpeace has done, he'd be wrong. The line remains very clear. Don't expect to cross it.

QUETTA, Pakistan – The 11-year-old girl blushed as she walked into the car dealer's showroom on Quetta's Adalat Road in southwest Pakistan. Her 17-year-old cousin, eyes fixed to the ground, followed her. When the younger girl asked the owner for five rupees (6 cents), he pointed to the back room and told both girls to follow him. 

A stocky man in his mid-forties with sallow skin and puffy eyes, he told the girls to lift their shirts – he wanted to see. "Very nice," the owner said. "They are getting bigger," he told the 17-year-old as he touched her. 

The 11-year-old was excited as she told us the story; we had followed them inside the showroom pretending to be customers interested in renting one of the Land Cruisers parked inside. The owner had given them 10 rupees (12 cents), the girls told us, more money than they had asked for. Then, giggling, they ran away.

It's dangerous to be seen following these girls – some of their clients are wealthy feudal land barons and powerful politicians, others are ordinary shopkeepers who will give money to the poor, but want to get something in return.

The girls are part of an alarming problem that gets little attention in Pakistan.

"Prostitution is rampant in all the big cities throughout the country," said Senior Superintendent of Police, Raja Shahid, who heads the police investigation unit in Rawalpindi, a city close to the capital Islamabad.

"There are loopholes in the laws that need to be changed. For example, in order to nab the culprits, we need to conduct a raid – but we cannot conduct a raid without permission from a magistrate. By the time we get the permission we have missed our chance," he said.

Others in the country have targeted the police's inability to protect children as a reason to rally the people against the government.

"This is exactly why all the religious parties are campaigning for Shariah law," said Maulvi Noor Mohammed, a hard-line Islamic cleric, known for his ties to the Taliban.

Mohammed preaches "jihad" against the West to young boys in his sprawling madrassa (religious school) on the outskirts of Quetta. In an hour-long interview with NBC News, Mohammed argued that prostitution in Quetta is the perfect example of the corrupt morals of the secular, pro-Western Pakistan government and why it showed the need for a worldwide Islamic revolution. 

"What these men are doing is against Islam and they must be punished accordingly," he said. "Islam guarantees protection for these young girls."

The last study on child prostitution in Pakistan was conducted by the government's Federal Bureau of Statistics more than 10 years ago. At that time, the study concluded that an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 children were involved in prostitution.

Today, there is no reliable data or updated figures, perhaps because it is a national shame.

Shahid Qazi/NBC News Chaotic street scene in Quetta, Pakistan.

Poverty increases problem
Fathers often send their young daughters out on the streets to earn money for the family. The girls begin by begging – some as young as 3-years old – and as they grow older, they become part of the flourishing sex trade in this deeply conservative city in southwest Pakistan.

 "The fathers of these girls are usually drug addicts or alcoholics and the family is impoverished," said Fauzia Baloch, a coordinator for the Aurat Foundation, an NGO that works for women's rights in rural Pakistan. "We can act, often only when a member of the family comes forth and complains, usually of domestic violence, and then we provide shelter for the girls and their mothers."

On a recent afternoon, we sat outside a tea shop on Quetta's Adalat Road and watched young girls move easily in and out of the crushing traffic – a chaotic scene of rickshaws, donkey carts piled high with bathtubs, rainbow-colored trucks decorated with gaudy paintings and men on bicycles. The girls made contact with the shopkeepers and with the men sitting in parked cars who were waiting for them.

"We know this is going on," said Inspector Malik Durrani of the Quetta police. "Even though prostitution is illegal in Pakistan, the police cannot arrest anyone without first lodging a case in the courts," he said. "[President Pervez] Musharraf changed the laws in 2007 to give women more rights but the laws are now so complex that unless the woman complains the police are powerless to act."

One 30-year-old woman with piercing light blue eyes said she has worked the Adalat Road for 25 years. She goes by the name of Shin Khalai.

"I started begging when I was 5 years old," Khalai said. "My father was a drug addict and my mother sent me and my seven brothers and sisters out on the streets to beg. I am married now – my husband is a gambler and he knows I sleep around with other men but he wants the money I earn so he can keep on gambling."

Haji Naseem, another car dealer on Adalat Road, blames the city's politicians and religious leaders. "Everyone knows what is going on with these children," he said. "No one bothers to stop it because our leaders have forgotten their duties to the people and are only after their own power and their own riches," he said. "We are being destroyed from within by moral corruption and greed." 

"Look at them," Khalai pointed out three girls, as they walked down the street, dressed in colorful shalwar kameez – the term for traditional baggy trousers and long tunic shirts.

"They are the working girls of Quetta – those little children. What life do they have? This is no life for any of us," she said as she walked away – to go back to work.

With violence drastically reduced in Iraq, car sales are taking off – dealers are reporting up to a 300 percent increase in sales from last year.

As NBC News Steve Wende reports, with all sales in cash and demand high – particularly for Humvees – there is little room to bargain prices.

VIDEO: Car sales swift in Baghdad

BEIJING – In an exclusive interview with NBC News in Beijing, prominent American economist Joseph Stiglitz discussed the challenges facing leaders at the upcoming G-20 summit and lauded China's handling of the global economic crisis. 

Formerly chief economist of the World Bank and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, Stiglitz is in Beijing as part of a high-powered delegation from New York's Columbia University. They are here to celebrate the opening of the new Columbia Global Center in Beijing that will promote inter-disciplinary research on global issues.

VIDEO: Stiglitz: China's economic model 'working well'

Stiglitz cited "difficult issues" facing the G-20 meeting of leaders from the world's biggest economies beginning on April 2 – chief among them being the need to reform international financial institutions and the need for a coordinated global response to the crisis.

He also compared the Chinese and the American economic models.

"What is true is that the Chinese economic model is working very well for China, and what is also true is that the American economic model is not working well for the United States or for much of the rest of the world," he declared.

Click above to watch the complete video.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – "I am Khadija Abdul Qahaar. I am a convert to Islam. I have been advised to make this video. I am going to be killed at anytime." So began a chilling video released on Wednesday by Taliban militants who are holding Qahaar, a Canadian woman, hostage somewhere in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Qahaar, whose former name is Beverly Giesbrecht, converted to Islam after 9/11. A 55-year-old journalist from Vancouver, she tried to travel into North Waziristan – one of the most dangerous areas in the world – last November with two Pakistani reporting assistants. 

VIDEO: 'Please help me' says Taliban hostage

She wanted to interview survivors of the first ever U.S. drone attack in Bannu, a town in the Northwest Frontier Province, and then travel on to Miranshah, the main city of North Waziristan. 

But Taliban militants, who patrol the Bannu-Miranshah road, intercepted Qahaar's taxi and dragged her and her two Pakistani companions out of their vehicle at gunpoint.

The video released Wednesday shows Qahaar sitting in a dark room with a dagger pointing at her as she makes a desperate plea for help.

"The time is very short now and my life is going to end, so I need someone to help me – either the Pakistani government or my own country. I want to go home," she said.

She pointed to the dagger and said that the Taliban were likely to behead her – as they did to Polish engineer Piotr Stanczak in February – if a ransom of $2 million was not paid by the end of March.

"These people are serious. Please help me," she said.

Qahaar runs a Web site called Jijadunspun, which says its mission is to provide independent journalism about the Middle East and an "alternate voice to Western media."  

According to Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, she left Vancouver last April, spent several months in London and then landed in Lahore, Pakistan, at the beginning of August. She carried two letters verifying that she was on a freelance reporting assignment, the newspaper reported.

Shortly before she was abducted, she posted an entry on her Web site appealing for financial help to leave Pakistan.

"Pakistan is now erupting into a full scale war zone," she wrote in October, according to the Associated Press. "We have been in some very sensitive areas and even Islamabad (the capital) is now locked down. As foreigners, we must leave the country; however, we do not have the funds to get out."

In an earlier video, released at the end of February, two militants carrying AK-47 assault rifles were shown standing behind her. She pointed to the two men and said they were ready to kill her if their demands were not met. She begged the Pakistan and Canadian governments to accept the demands of her kidnappers so they would set her free.

VIDEO: Canadian captive appeals for help in video released in February

In the latest video, she said her situation had not improved since the last video.

"Please do something to help me," she begged in a choked voice. "The responsibility of this will be on somebody's shoulders. I have done nothing wrong. Help me and save my life."

BAGHDAD – Many Iraqis are feeling optimistic about the future of their country as peace and stability seem to be making a comeback, six years after the U.S. invasion.

The security gains have allowed many people who were displaced by years of sectarian violence to return to their former homes and neighborhoods – or contemplate doing so soon. 

Basil Yassen said the gains achieved in the past two years have given the Iraqi people renewed hope. He should know; the horrors of war touched his family directly.

SLIDESHOW: In Baghdad, signs of rebirth

He used to live in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, a former bastion for al-Qaida militants who killed his son, Ali, and his wife, Basima, in June 2007.

Their deaths were grisly. Both were tortured and placed in sulfuric acid before they were shot. Yassen only found their corpses 10 days after they were killed.

But now he's confident that major strides made in Baghdad's security will allow life to return to a level of normalcy.

"The stability has allowed many displaced families to return to their former neighborhoods and jobs," said Yassen. "Now, I can wander in Baghdad without the fear of being killed or kidnapped for my ethnic or religion or sect background."

An engineer in the Iraqi Naval Force in his late 50s, Yassen thinks that during the coming months Iraq will witness a "revolution" in construction projects, as well as progress in industry and agriculture.  

Despite Yassen's optimism, others are still waiting to go home. Suhad Ali, a 42-year-old high school teacher and the mother of a boy and girl, used to live in Ghazilia, a Sunni neighborhood. But she was forced to relocate her family to the Shiite neighborhood of Ghadeer during the height of the sectarian violence in 2006.

"Security is good in my ex-neighborhood [now], but I wish in the near future it will be fully stable so my family and I can return without being worried," she said.

Ali recalled with pain the day when an armed group gave her husband a warning to leave their house. As Shiites living in a Sunni neighborhood, they had been branded by the militants roaming the area. "We were forced to leave the neighborhood because my husband and I are originally from the Shiite city of Najaf."

She fondly remembered her former students. "I won't forget a single face of my students. I loved them as my daughters, without paying any attention to their religious or sect origin."

Ali is now a teacher in another school, but she is sure that one day she will meet her former students again. "All my students are dear to me, whether in this school or in my previous one, but still I hope to get my job back in my old school."

VIDEO: Betting on Baghdad's recovery

Back from abroad
When bombers blasted the gold-gilded dome off Shiite Islam's holiest site in Iraq, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, in February 2006, it set off a wave of sectarian violence in which thousands were killed.

Hameed Majeed, a Sunni, was forced to flee his longtime neighborhood, Bay'a, because it was a Shiite enclave. 

At the time, he got a threat letter telling him to leave his house. "The militiamen gave an ultimatum to leave my house or else I would be killed because I am a Sunni Kurd."

He and his family lived for some time with his brother's family in the Rasheed neighborhood of Baghdad before moving on to Syria for two years in the hope that they might get a U.S. green card or emigrate to Europe. But their efforts were unsuccessful.

"We spent all our money and no U.N. or world organization gave us any aid," said Majeed.

Now a paramedic in a government hospital, Majeed, 38, returned to Iraq with his family in December 2008 after security improved in Baghdad.

 "I feel safe and my kids are back to their school. I have no money to buy furniture, but the main thing is that I am in my house again," he said.

VIDEO: Iraq's art comes back to life

Salim Mohammed, a 47-year-old pick-up driver, has not moved back to his old neighborhood yet, but is glad to be "feeling alive."

He used to live in the predominately Sunni neighborhood of Adamiya, but feared for his family's safety after al-Qaida fighters killed, tortured and abducted many Shiites in the neighborhood.

"Those atrocities were a clear message to all Shiites to leave their houses. So we left everything behind and came to Shiite neighborhood of Karrda."

Mohammed, a father of two girls and three boys, now goes from time to time to his old neighborhood to see his house and visit his friends and neighbors. He is impressed with the security gains.

"It is very quiet and peaceful now thanks to joint Iraqi-American forces and the Awakening council members," he said, referring to the predominately Sunni force who have banded together to fight Sunni Islamic extremists. The force, whose salaries are paid by the U.S. military, has been very successful and is credited with reducing levels of violence across the country. 

Mohammed said that he has been trying to convince his wife and kids to return to their house in Adamiya, but so far his efforts have been in vain. "They say, 'We like Karrada.' They keep telling me, 'Please father, sell our house and let us buy a new one in Karrada.' I am actually beginning to like the idea."

Wherever he ends up living, he is relieved to see that Baghdad and many of the other provinces seem stable now.

"Feeling safe and secure is like feeling alive," he said. "My friend, it is hard to live without hope."

Special coverage: Invasion Iraq: Six Years Later
Iraq by the numbers: Then and Now

Cuba's southern Isle of Youth was battered by two powerful hurricanes last summer, including Gustav, the worst storm to hit here in 50 years.  

Gustav, a Category 4 hurricane, packed 140 mph winds that turned 95 percent of the homes on the Isle of Youth into rubble and decimated the entire power grid.

A week later Hurricane Ike swept through and washed away the few buildings that had been left standing.

VIDEO: Get a rare glimpse below the surface near Cuba's Isle of Youth

The army chief on the ground accessing the damage, Maj. Gen. Alvaro Lopez, described the island as looking like the "remnants of a nuclear blast."

But in what seems to be nothing short of a miracle, the fast-moving storms only minimally impacted the coast and natural wildlife.  

While the hurricanes did cause some beach erosion, especially along the southern coast, the small island's protected coral reefs remain untouched and the wide range of underwater life continues to thrive.   

Underwater treasure trove
And now tourists are slowly returning to the island, drawn by its reputation as one of the best diving areas in the world.  

Some divers come looking for buried treasure. After all, this piece of land is said to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure novel "Treasure Island." There are a few dive sites that feature shipwrecks, but all the Spanish galleons were picked over years ago.  

The real underwater treasure lies in the beauty of the seascapes. Hidden in the shallow reefs, tunnels and caverns are schools of colorful Atlantic stingrays, spadefish, jacks, tuna, barracudas and dozens more species, visible only a few feet below the surface.  

Divers are especially enamored with the reef itself that stretches for almost 20 miles and includes the rare and protected black coral wall, reputed to be the tallest in the world. Last year some 25,000 international divers explored these waters and this year the number is expected to rise.  

The island offers 56 different diving sites concentrated along La Siguanea Inlet, also known as Cuba's Pirate Coast. This stretch of sand and water has been declared a Marine Reserve so diving is only permitted with a guide.  

This past weekend Cuban divers took cameras below and photographed the unique beauty of Cuba's underwater world. See the video link above to see a sample of what they saw.

By NBC News' Bo Gu

BEIJING – After eight days of house arrest in a dingy hotel room in Shanghai, Cui Fufang was released, just as the National People's Congress, the annual meeting of China's Communist Party leadership, ended in Beijing last week.

The detention, according to Cui, began when she, along with dozens of other aggrieved citizens from Shanghai, went to Beijing to apply for permission to protest against the corruption that often characterizes property disputes in China. 

Cui's story is similar to that of millions of other disadvantaged Chinese residents who lived on land that local governments wanted to use for large construction projects. When residents are unable to reach an agreement with developers – who are usually well connected with local governments – the houses are often torn down without consent from their owners.

Alfred Cheng Jin / Reuters

An unidentified woman cries as she is stopped by paramilitary policemen after protesting near the Great Hall of the People during the National People's Congress in Beijing on March 11.The woman was later taken into a police van and driven away.Â

Cui's house was demolished in August 2005 when the Pudong District Government told her the land had been requisitioned for the upcoming Shanghai World Exposition in 2010. Cui did not receive a penny, or any other form of compensation, when her house was torn down.

Her attempt to sue the local government was rebuffed by the Shanghai Intermediate People's Court.

As a final option, Cui – and 67 other Shanghai citizens who had similar experiences – decided to go to Beijing and apply for a permission to protest, a right that is enshrined in China's constitution.

Petitioning is a legal tradition that dates back hundreds of years to imperial times when ordinary citizens would travel to the capital, as a last resort, to submit petitions before the emperor or the Minister of Justice after failing to resolve their case through local channels. The practice was resurrected during the Mao era and still exists today, at least in principle.

However, within 45 minutes of Cui's group seeking permission to protest in Beijing, 10 officials from Shanghai's representative office in the city appeared on the scene, according to the petitioners. The protesters were filmed, pushed into three vans and taken back to Shanghai on the same night, locked in different locations and not allowed to talk to their families or friends.

Cui, 52, explained the circumstances of her captivity in a phone interview from Shanghai after her release.

She said she caught a fever while she was under house arrest, but that her captors refused to give her any medication other than a bottle of cough syrup. She said that the hygiene facilities were limited – there was no shower, she was only given a toothbrush and toothpaste after two days of detention and she wore the same clothes for eight days. Her cell phone and charger were confiscated so she couldn't contact anyone and two women watched her day and night in her room, in addition to three male guards who were posted outside her door. 

Cui said that many of the other petitioners had similar stories – eight days in a small hotel room, no showers, no communication with the outside world and no access to medical care.

The Beijing police said they could not respond to questions about the alleged house arrest without a formal written request and permission granted by the Beijing Public Security News Office. And the Shanghai police denied they put anyone under house arrest. (Although, according to Cui, she was interrogated and filmed at the Shanghai police station before being detained.)

A right rarely granted
While protesting is a legal right stipulated by the Chinese Constitution, it is only allowed after getting permission from the Public Security Bureau, the government department that handles policing, public security, and social order, as well as residence registration, immigration and travel visas for foreigners.

But in reality, protesting is a right that is rarely practiced.

During the 2008 Summer Olympics, in order to give the world an impression of open mindedness, the Beijing police opened three parks in the capital as "protest zones." But when two 70-year-old women tried to apply for a permission to protest against the illegal demolition of their houses, they were informed that they would be sent to labor camp for charges of "disturbing social order."

According to media reports, China received a total of 77 applications to stage protests during the Olympic Games, but none were approved.  

Every March is a particularly sensitive period in Beijing due to the annual National People's Congress. Many petitioners with grievances consider it a good time to go to the capital because they believe they'll have a chance to see the representatives although security forces clamp down more than ever during the same period.    

Cui says she'll go back to Beijing again to petition and apply to protest, as long as she's alive. Retired and divorced, pursing justice is her new job.

"This has basically destroyed my family and life, and I don't have anything to lose now. Once I get another opportunity, I'll go to Beijing again," she said.

By NBC News' Carol Grisanti and Fakhar Rehman in Islamabad

The Pakistan government bowed to the will of the people on Monday and agreed to reinstate the deposed chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, two years after he was dismissed by President Pervez Musharraf.

As news of the deal leaked out in Islamabad, the capital, jubliant crowds rushed to the popular Chaudhry's house clapping, cheering and chanting slogans of victory in what has come to symbolize the peoples' struggle for the rule of law in the country.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators joined lawyers, civil rights activists and party members of opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore on Sunday, determined to march to Islamabad and stage an indefinite sit-in until Chaudhry was restored.

Rahat Dar / EPA

Flames rise from a police bus that was set on fire Sunday by demonstrators in Lahore, Pakistan, during a rally calling for the restoration of deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The rally had briefly turned violent as police fired tear gas and used batons on the crowds but as their numbers swelled, the police pulled back to allow the procession to proceed.  The pictures of anti-government protesters clashing with police, broadcast continually on 24-hour news channels, has raised alarm in the United States about the stability of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, already under threat from a growing internal Islamic insurgency.

Sharif, who had been put under house arrest at his Lahore home to prevent him from joining the march, challenged the arrest order and came out to lead the procession. The Lahore police had defied the orders from the government in Islamabad to thwart the march.

"No one can stop us now," said Athar Minallah, a Supreme Court lawyer and spokesman for Pakistan's deposed Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who was dismissed by President Musharraf in 2007. "We have succeeded and now the ultimate goal is the supremacy of the constitution and the independence of the judiciary."

In 2007, President Pervez Musharraf, in a bid to remain in power, dismissed Chaudhry along with 60 judges who were intent on disqualifying him from seeking another term in office. The deposed chief justice became a rallying cry for Sharif - he used Chaudhry to stir emotions and gain street power which gave him enough political capital to extract a promise from Pakistan president Asif Zardari to restore Chaudhry to the bench. Zardari then broke that promise.

Opponents say Zardari feared Chaudhry would roll back an amnesty granted by President Musharraf, which was brokered by the United States and Britain, to re-open the corruption cases against him. All the corruption charges against Zardari and his wife, Benazir Bhutto, were dropped so they could return to Pakistan. Bhutto was later assassinated in December 2007. Chaudhry is on record in the Supreme Court as opposing that amnesty.

But the lawyers "long march" to Islamabad had turned into a political showdown between President Asif Ali Zardari and his main opposition rival, Nawaz Sharif, provoking a crisis that had paralyzed the government and grabbed the attention of most Pakistanis.

A former prime minister and Pakistan's most popular politician, Sharif had thrown his weight behind the lawyers' movement and called on the nation to join him in the march promising that it would break the status quo in the country and lay down the foundation for change.

K.M. Chaudary / AP Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif waves from inside his car during Sunday's anti-government demonstration in Lahore.

In response, Zardari's government banned rallies and arrested hundreds of lawyers, civil rights activists and opposition leaders ahead of Monday's sit-in at parliament to try to thwart the event.  Specifically, a ban was placed on any group of more than four people trying to assemble on the streets. Sharif has called the restriction illegal and told a local TV channel "the march was a prelude to a revolution."

"You have seen that the entire country has been turned into a police state," Sharif told reporters Sunday, in front of his Lahore home. "They have blocked all the roads, they have used all sorts of unlawful tactics.

Dr. Israr Shah, a senior member of  Zardari's party, known as the PPP or Pakistan Peoples Party, lost both his legs in a suicide attack when he attended a rally supporting the deposed chief justice early last year. Shah feels the present political controversy is aimed more at destabilizing Zardari's government than championing an independent judiciary.

"This entire issue can and should be resolved in Parliament not by long marches on the roads," he said. "Certain political parties are just trying to promote their own agenda and they have ulterior motives, which are not in the best interests of Pakistan."

Watching the chaos from behind the scenes is Pakistan's powerful army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. He tried to broker a deal between the warring politicians but the deal faltered over Zardari's reluctance to bring back Chaudhry.  Pakistan watchers and analysts fear that the present political-judicial crisis will cause irreparable damage to Pakistan's nascent democracy and lead to yet another take over by the army. The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 61-year history.

"The concerned authorities are extremely interested that matters be settled quickly and amicably," said Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, a former federal minister and president of the Awami Muslim League, a political party. Rashid was referring to the behind the scenes involvement of the Pakistan army.  "In my opinion, though, the time has run out for Asif Zardari," he said.

 TEHRAN, Iran – When you see an American flag in Iran, it's usually on fire.

But that wasn't the case during the Takhti Cup, a two-day freestyle wrestling tournament hosted by Iran. The United States competed against nine other nations – including Iran – and the Stars and Stripes waved proudly throughout the event.

"We love being in Iran. It's the greatest wrestling country in the world. It's a wonderful place to come and compete," said Zeke Jones, head coach of the U.S. team. "The Iranian wrestlers are serious competition for us and the fans treat us like rock stars, so this is a great place."

Jones, who originally visited Iran in 1998 and was one of the first Americans to compete in the country after a nearly 20-year freeze, said he hopes athletic events like this one will lead to warmer relations between the two countries.

"As for the politics, I think that any time wrestling can be a tool to bring countries together, it's a wonderful thing," he said.

Three decades ago, the United States cut off diplomatic ties with Iran after the protracted embassy hostage crisis. But since then, the two countries have occasionally put aside their differences for the sake of athletic competition. For example, this is the seventh time a U.S. team has competed in the Takhti Cup since 1998. Also an Iranian basketball team played in the United States last year.

But these events don't always go according to plan. In February, at the eleventh hour, Iran decided not to issue visas for a U.S. women's badminton team who had been invited to compete in the country – a move the Obama administration at the time called "unfortunate."

Star-struck fans
The wrestling tournament kicked-off Thursday, with athletes from Cuba, Iraq, Turkey, Russia, among others, competing in Azadi (Freedom) stadium. Against the United States, Iran quickly gained the upper hand, winning two straight matches and drawing loud cheers.

"They were cheering for Iran a little bit out there, but I think that's what it's about, you know. They cheer for their guys and appreciate good wrestling," said American Mike Tamillow, who lost to Iran's Rasoul Tavakoli. "It's great to be here, but I wish I had won."

The Iranians were excited to get to watch the Americans wrestle in person. They painted their faces, banged on drums, honked horns, blew whistles and waved Iranian flags, all in the spirit of friendly sporting competition.

"I am so happy the Americans are here, they are a great team. The only reason I came today was to see them," said Ali Galvani, an amateur wrestler and student. "I hope one day I can travel to America and watch them compete there." 

After we spoke, he asked if I could take him down to where the American athletes were sitting so he could see them up close. We introduced him to the team and he was star struck. Afterwards he thanked me profusely, telling me I had made his year.

Masoud Piran, a plumber, explained that what really mattered to him was the level of competition and that as long as the American's proved their athletic prowess, they'd win his respect. 

It's not important what country they are from, it's important that they are good wrestlers. If the Americans wrestle well, then we will support them, too," said Piran.

Hasan Sarbakhshian / AP

Iranian gold medalist Rasoul Tavakkoli, left, and bronze medalist U.S. freestyle wrestler Michael Tamillow, pose during a medal ceremony at Iran's Takhti Wrestling Cup on Thursday.Â

'The Iranians are serious competition'
In Friday's matches, team U.S.A. didn't fare much better against its hosts – but that didn't seem to affect the mutual respect both sides felt. (Over the two-day tournament, the U.S. wrestlers lost six and won five of their matches. And against the Iranians, they had five defeats and three wins.)

Majid Roudbari, a wrestler in the 60 kilogram class, sang the praises of his American opponent, Shaun Bunch – albeit after he defeated him.

"The American wrestlers are very well prepared – if you make one small mistake they will beat you. You know, we like the Americans a lot. Iranian people and American people become friends very easily," said Roudbari. "As for our government's positions, well, I can't comment on that, but I would love to compete in America."

While the American wrestlers were excited to be in Iran, some of their family members were less than thrilled to see them go.

"Friends and family back home [asked] me, 'Why are you going to Iran? Are you crazy?' They told us they were worried about us and they were praying for us – but I have never felt so safe in my life," said Brandon Slay, one of the coaches on Team USA.

Slay hoped the event would play at least a small  role in warming relations between old adversaries

"Americans don't hate Iranians and we know Iranians don't hate Americans. You can't make decision based on what a small sub-set of a population may think or feel. The majority of the people don't feel that way so don't stereotype them," Slay said. "If I can help my country bridge a gap with Iran well that's great."

WINNENDEN, Germany – Why? That is the predominant question for the shocked residents of the small southern German town of Winnenden and for TV stations and newspapers across the country this morning.

All night, forensic experts collected evidence in search of clues that could possibly explain why 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer went on a wild rampage at his former school and killed 15 people before taking his own life on Wednesday.

During a press conference on Thursday investigators revealed more clues that may explain Kretschmer's possible motive for the rampage.

SLIDESHOW: Germans mourn school massacre victims

At 2:45 a.m., just hours before the attack, officials said that Kretschmer warned of his plans on an Internet chatroom. He wrote that he was tired of his life, he felt everyone was laughing at him and that nobody recognized his potential.

He added that he would be visiting his former school and wrote, "Tomorrow you will hear from me, just remember the name of a place called Winnenden."

Police experts said that in the process of their investigation, they searched Kretschmer's computer, his music collection, his clothing and spoke to friends and relatives. They said they found a limited amount of pornographic material, horror films, and violent computer games such as "Counter-Strike."

Kretschmer had been receiving psychological treatment for depression, but according to the police, he had recently abandoned his therapy.

'Randomly shooting'
The young man was described as an unremarkable and introverted student with no criminal record. But, his shooting rampage painted a different picture.

Dressed in black, Kretschmer, a 2008 graduate of the school, entered three classrooms on Wednesday morning and shot several students at close range, firing mostly into the heads of his victims. Police officials said that only one male was among the 12 victims that were left dead at the school.

"Some of the dead children were still holding their pencils in their hands," said Erwin Hetger, the state interior minister, indicating that the shooting went very quickly and took the students by surprise.

After police intervention teams responded to the first emergency calls within two minutes, they briefly encountered the gunman inside the school before he fled on foot.  He then shot a by-passer near a psychiatric clinic before kidnapping a driver in his car. When their journey ended in a small town 20 miles away, Kretschmer shot a salesman and his customer at a local car dealership, "execution style" police say.

"At that point, the gunman was randomly shooting at almost everything that moved, severely injuring two undercover police officers, who had just arrived at the scene," said Hetger.

 Police said that Kretschmer had fired at least 112 shots and was in possession of more than 250 bullets.

VIDEO: German student kills 15, himself

But, how did the minor get access to the weapon and ammunition in a country that has strict weapons laws?

Gun-holders have to fulfill criteria on age and weapons expertise to obtain a firearms license. And only licensed hunters or members of gun clubs have access to pistols and rifles.

Kretschmer's father is a gun club member who kept 14 weapons locked up, but had one handgun – the one used in the rampage – laying in his bedroom and ammunition accessible in the house, according to police.

Officials say Kretschmer regularly visited the gun club with his father and that he was believed to be an experienced shooter.

While critics are using the incident to argue for even stricter gun laws, the police stressed during Thursday's press conference that the attack should be a call for even more vigilance of teens' behavior in chat rooms, in schools, and with their families. 

"Nobody can understand it," said Roberto Seifert, who works near the school. "You can see it in the faces of the police too. Everyone is in shock. The mood's very subdued here."

Last night, the center of Winnenden resembled a ghost town. Many restaurants and bars remained closed. The biggest gathering of residents could be seen outside the high school, where many young students and their parents put down candles and flowers.

In small groups, teenagers were flocking to the crime scene, many crying, seeking the support of their friends and classmates.

"It is a shock that sits very, very deep. My daughter lost one of her teachers," the mother of one student, who did not want to be identified, said last night.

The Albertville high school in Winnenden remained closed Thursday. Students from the school were receiving counseling from psychologists and clergymen, while the terrifying incident left the town in shock and continued to be the talk of the day.

Meanwhile police say that they have received numerous phone calls in the last 24-hours threatening copy-cat attacks in other cities across Germany.

BEIJING – Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, which prompted the Dalai Lama to flee from his homeland into neighboring India.

The western half of China has been on high alert leading up to the anniversary as Chinese authorities stepped up their battle for hearts and minds.

NBC News' Adrienne Mong reports on the dual-prong approach intensifying propaganda across the country and security in the region.

VIDEO: Tension high for Tibet anniversary

For weeks, Chinese state-run media has also been awash with reports not marking the Dalai Lama's exile, but what Chinese officials declare was the emancipation of Tibet's serfs following his departure from the Himalayan kingdom.

Here are excerpts from a documentary produced by CCTV-9, the English language division of China Central Television, that recounts Tibet's history from China's perspective.

VIDEO: China state TV's version of the Tibetan uprising

More related links on China-Tibet relations:
Dalai Lama blasts 'brutal crackdown' in Tibet
Council on Foreign Relations: 50 years on, China-Tibet tensions persist
World Blog: In Tibet, it's just the facts, ma'am 

 

By Chemene Pelzer, NBC News producer

SOUNKALA, Mali – "To educate a girl is to educate a thousand people," says Maimouna Samaké, a mother of six (including five girls). "If you put one seed of millet in the ground and rain comes, it grows and gives many seeds."

And now Samaké, one of 2,000 residents in this small village in one of the world's poorest countries, has a chance to see this prediction come true thanks to buildOn, an American non-profit organization that is building a school in her community. 

Chemene Pelzer/ NBC News

Maimouna Samaké and her five daughters.Â

For 17 years, buildOn has been sending American high school students overseas to create schools in places where literacy and formal education are usually out of reach. The organization, which has built about 300 schools in Mali, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal, Nicaragua and Haiti, says its goal is to empower young Americans in mostly urban areas to get involved in their own communities while at the same time bringing literacy to children and adults in the developing world. 

And with only about 70 children enrolled in Sounkala's current make-shift school, where mud floors, inadequate lighting, few desks and an absence of books make for a less than ideal learning environment, they certainly could use buildOn's help.

As a producer for the Today Show, I went along to Sounkala to see how one of buildOn's projects comes together. 

Drums beat on arrival
The villagers in Sounkala were incredibly generous and hospitable to their American visitors. They opened up their doors to host 13 high school students from The Bronx, N.Y., immediately inviting the students to dance in a big celebration marking their arrival. They slaughtered cattle for meals, offered tea and offered their friendship.

VIDEO: Kids helping kids in Mali

Building the school was a cooperative effort between the students and the villagers. The day they broke ground to begin building the school, villagers gathered to sign a covenant, an agreement outlining the expectations of both buildOn and the community.

Since many men and women in the village cannot read and write – Mali's literacy rate is only 46 percent – most pressed a finger onto an ink pad and left their mark as a sign of their commitment to the project. They agreed to provide manual labor for the project, which amounts to about 30 workers a day for the 14 weeks it takes to build the school. They also agreed to send all of their daughters to the school, in equal numbers to the boys, once the school is complete. 

"Ceremonially, it's a very important day, but it's even more important that we get this right," said Jim Ziolkowski, buildOn's president and CEO, who was on hand for the ground breaking.

"Basic literacy is the first step for communities to rise out of extreme poverty. Healthcare improves, sanitation improves, agricultural productivity improves. Foundation is the most important thing we do," explained Ziolkowski.  "It's what the walls will rise up from. It's the base of the classroom, it's the base of education. So we're going to work together with the community."

Chemene Pelzer / NBC News

The future of Sounkala, Mali.

The Bronx students, unaccustomed to heavy lifting in 100 degree temperatures, were soon busy with pickaxes, shovels and wheelbarrows. And the village men began digging, making and laying down bricks, and cutting steel rods to reinforce the structure.

And while the constant sound of millet being pounded morning, noon and night  was evidence that women's work never ends in the village, they helped out on the work site, as well. Grandmothers, mothers and daughters all showed up carrying buckets of sand and water on their heads to help the project move along.

I asked Samaké if she had ever been to school. "No, I haven't, and today I feel the regret," she said. "I feel regret because today I'm like a person who looks like a blind person."

With her six children ranging in age from 23 to a three-year old, Samaké wants a better future for her five daughters, including Ramatou, 12, and Mariam, 10, both sixth graders.

"When a woman attends school, she will teach what she learns," said Ramatou, who wants to become a doctor.  "She knows how to take better care of her family."

Chemene Pelzer/ NBC News

Maimouna Samaké's two daughters Ramatou and Mariam.

After this school year, the girls must transfer to a school in a neighboring village. Their mother says this would be a burden on her family, but she would make the necessary adjustments..

"I want them to make money, and help their parents and siblings, anyone who relies on them," she said.

BuildOn initially helps build schools for first to third graders. If things prove to go well for three years, they return to help build another school for fourth to sixth grade, and set up evening adult literacy classes.

Ramatou and Mariam will not learn inside the walls of the highly anticipated buildOn school since they are already in sixth grade. But Samaké still recognizes that the new building will help strengthen her community. And she hopes that her youngest will attend.

Aline Dakauo, our Malian translator who is also the buildOn trek coordinator, was a source of inspiration for Samaké. "I will support all my daughters to get an education and be like you are," she told Dakauo. "I pray to God for that."

The school is expected to be completed in April, and students should begin classes as soon as May.

Until then, the building continues.

For more information about buildOn, please visit their website: buildOn.org

By Andrea Mitchell, NBC News

The United States is engaging Syria again — if tentatively.

A senior American diplomat, briefing reporters by phone from Damascus today, said that his talks with Syrian officials were constructive, comprehensive and lengthy — but that this is only the beginning of engagement. As for specific achievements, the U.S. official — Jeffrey Feltman, acting assistant secretary of state — said, "Let's keep our expectations in check here." He said that no subjects were taboo, but that this was just the start of a process.

Feltman and Dan Shapiro of the National Security Council held talks with Syria's foreign minister and two other officials — but did not see Syria's President Bashar Assad and did not say what the next steps would be.

Today's meetings were the first high-level diplomatic contacts between the U.S. and Syria since the Bush administration cut off relations four years ago in response to the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Feltman said they discussed a broad range of issues — regional and international — as well as bilateral issues and how to move forward. "It is our view that Syria can play an important, constructive role in the region," he said.

Asked about any concrete achievement — and whether the U.S. government is any closer to returning a U.S. ambassador to Damascus or more interested now in supporting the indirect Israeli-Syrian peace talks that the previous administration opposed — Feltman said only that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talked about engagement as a way to achieve goals — but "this is part of a process. We'll see how this develops ... the Syrians have concerns about us as well — I'm sure the Syrians will be looking at decisions we make just as we will be looking at decisions they make."

In another departure from Bush policy, he indicated support for eventual resumption of Israeli-Syrian talks: "We want a comprehensve Israeli-Arab peace. We do want to see forward momentum on the Israeli-Syrian tract when the two parties are ready for this." Those talks were being brokered through Turkey (where Hillary Clinton is today) but broke off during the resumption of hostilities between Hamas and Israel over Gaza.

Asked about Syria's role in the future of Iraq, Feltman said: "There are areas like this — a stable, unified Iraq —where our interests coincide. This is the kind of subject we can explore. Let's see where our interests intersect."

He also indicated that the U.S. side brought up the subject of North Korea's export of nuclear technology to Syria (a suspected nuclear facility in Syria was leveled in a secret Israeli airstrike two years ago). Specifically, when asked if nonproliferation and nuclear issues involving North Korea were discussed with the Syrians, he said: "We're not going to get into a lot of detail. We're looking to the IAEA for their examination, but our talks were comprehensive."

When asked if they had any plans to meet with Assad — and whether the Syrians want to have a U.S. ambassador back in Damascus before that takes place — Feltman said: "We asked for meetings with the Syrian officials ... We stated we want to come to Damascus. We didn't try to dictate to Damascus who our interlocutors would be."

Asked if there would be any change in the U.S. inclusion of Syria on its list of terrorism-supporting states — and any change in Syria's support for Hezbollah — he said: "Let's keep our expectations in check here.We had a good meeting today — but the differences between our two countries will require more work through conversations. We found a lot of common ground today, there were no subjects that were taboo, but it is unrealistic to expect particuar results out of this meeting."

In terms of Hezbollah, Syria has backed the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the hostilities in the July-August 2006 war, Feltman said that can be the basis of further discussions.

The call was cut off by State Department officials in Washington before he could be asked about Syria's support for Hamas leaders in Gaza — or today's announcement of the planned resignation of a top Palestinian Authority leader, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, whom the U.S. has long hoped would eventually lead a Palestinian unity government.

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer 

BEIJING – It's rare that those of us at the NBC News Beijing bureau ever envy Chinese politicians. But around this time of the year, some of us wouldn't mind trading places with members of China's legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC). 

Being subject to a 13-hour time difference with our head office in New York during the winter – translating to a deadline of 7:30 a.m. (or 6:30 p.m. in New York – when the Nightly News with Brian Williams airs), we watch the annual NPC proceedings with a certain amount of, well, sleep-deprived longing.

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

Catching some zzz's in the Forbidden City.

Every year, bountiful Chinese media coverage results in hours of video footage and web photo postings of the days-long session (this year the NPC runs for nine days), featuring sleepers amongst the 3,000-odd delegates.

Napping isn't limited to lawmakers. Journalists following the 2007 Chinese Communist Party Congress (which takes place every five years) took turns "naming that dozing vice premier."

Gatherings for the NPC give way to the sport of online nap commentary. It might have been instructive to chart how many delegates earlier this week snoozed through a debate over a proposal to shorten the work week to 4.5 days.  (Four more hours a week to nap!)

But the best nap site making the rounds has to be this one – SleepingChinese.com. 

Best of all, it's got no commentary and no politics.

Let's just hope we never get caught on camera here.

By NBC News' Fakhar Rehman

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- "Most countries were already too frightened to come to Pakistan," Abbas Ali, a 14-year-old high school student in Islamabad said when asked about this week's ambush on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore. "Now after this incident I doubt there will ever be another international sporting event here," Ali said. "It was very bad."

Thirteen-year-old Irtiza Abbas agreed. "This was a shameful act," he said. "We were all waiting for the 2011 World Cup to take place in Pakistan, now I don't know what will happen." Abbas said he was praying his country would still be able to host it. "I would rather play cricket than eat," he added, sadly.

Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images

People gather as police officer Rana Abid, right, shows photographs of his best friend, Tanveer Iqbaal, who was killed in the terror attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, during a tribute to the victims in Lahore on March 4. Six Pakistani police guards were killed in the attack.

Pakistan is scheduled to co-host the World Cup along with India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, but the International Cricket Council (ICC) could strip Pakistan of hosting rights following the attacks. The ICC said it would give the country more time before making a decision, but many in Pakistan fear the worst.

"This was a major shock," former Pakistan cricket captain Wasim Akram said. "I'm sure this will end the game for us for the next couple of years. There is no way they will allow us to host the World Cup now," he said.

Cricket is a national obsession in Pakistan. Young boys and old men play the game in parks and fields, on roads and narrow streets, in parking lots and even on rooftops all across the country. The bat and ball unites the rich and the poor, bridges the political divides and transcends geographical boundaries. Even the Taliban play cricket.

NBC News/ Fakhar Rehman

Pakistani kids pick-up a game of cricket wherever they can – here on a footpath near one of Islamabad's big markets.

In 1987 it was cricket that pulled India and Pakistan back from the brink of another war over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. The Pakistani president, Zia ul Haq, decided to travel to India to watch a cricket match between the two countries. His presence at the games resulted in a detente between the two countries and the term "cricket diplomacy" was coined. By contrast, Tuesday's attack has made the game a target of terrorism and a rallying cry for highlighting political extremism and destroying national morale.

When a dozen gunmen, armed with Kalashnikovs, hand grenades and rocket launchers, ambushed the Sri Lankan team on their way to the Qaddafi Stadium in the center of Lahore on Tuesday, the widely held view of Pakistan as a state on the brink of collapse became international headlines. The shoot-out lasted about half an hour -- at the end of it, nine members of the team were injured and six Pakistani policemen were dead. The attackers fled on foot and are still at large. 

VIDEO: Terrorist attack on camera

'Goodwill and peace' lost to terrorism
"Sports are the only activity that can create goodwill and peace across borders," said 14-year-old Muhammed Yasir Awan. "Now the terrorists have destroyed even that."

Almost immediately, the Champions Trophy scheduled for September was taken away from Pakistan and postponed. Meantime, the captain of the national team, Younis Khan pleaded with the world cricket board to keep the treasured sport alive in his country despite the gunbattle.

"I have appealed to all of the bosses and to the ICC not to let cricket die in Pakistan," Khan said. "It will be very easy for the ICC to say there will be no more games in Pakistan. The future for cricket and for Pakistan will not be good if they take cricket away from us."

Related links:
VIDEO: Pakistan attack victim: 'We were there, sitting ducks'
SLIDESHOW: Athletes attacked in Pakistan

Every Olympic host suffers some variation of post-Games hangover, but Beijing's seems more acute in the wake of the global economic downturn.

NBC News' Adrienne Mong takes a look at how the Chinese capital is coping after an unprecedented building boom leading up to last year's Summer Olympics.

VIDEO: Beijing goes bust after Olympics

After the shocking detainee abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. military took a hard look at how they were running detention facilities and programs in Iraq. NBC News' Sarah Ford reports on what's changed.

VIDEO: Inside Camp Cropper, the U.S. detention facility outside Baghdad

HAVANA – Cuba's President Raul Castro sure knows how to get the nation to sit up and listen.

While most people were at school or work and far away from their TV sets on Monday, a news announcer read a typed sheet of paper announcing the reshuffling of 10 Cabinet positions and the collapse of four key ministries into two. But by the end of the day, the shake-up was all people were talking about.

The Cuban public seemed most surprised by the removal of two men closely aligned with Raul's predecessor, Fidel Castro, and pegged as the frontrunners of the next generation of leaders.

Javier Galeano / AP File

President Raul Castro, right, stands with then-Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque during a session of the National Assembly of Popular Power in Havana on June 29, 2007. Â

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque was replaced by his own deputy, Bruno Rodriguez. And Dr. Carlos Lage lost his job as Cabinet Secretary to Brig. Gen. Jose Amado Ricardo Guerra, but Lage remains one of the Council of State's vice presidents.

Both men are popular leaders, especially with the island's younger generations.

Possible successors no more
Prior to being named foreign minister, Perez Roque, 43, was Fidel Castro's chief of staff  – he was just fresh out of engineering college when he landed that job. At his appointment in 1999, he became the youngest member of the Cabinet and the only one born after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

The nation watched him grow from a shy figure in Fidel's shadow into a self-assured politician who adroitly managed Cuba's complex foreign relations with more than 140 countries. For the moment, Perez Roque remains a senior member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.

Lage, 57, is a pediatrician by training who has been active in Communist Party politics since his student days. He rose to prominence during the turbulent years that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, which had been the island's financial lifeline. Lage become known as Cuba's economic czar, credited with designing the financial reforms that allowed the island to survive the crisis that began in the early nineties.

Lage remains an extremely popular figure here. People remember him as the young politician who, like millions of workers, rode a Chinese bicycle to the office when the country had no cash to import oil. He was often spotted jogging along Havana's public streets without bodyguards or fancy running shoes. In the summer of 2006 when Fidel Castro required surgery, Lage was one of the select group given provisional powers to rule in Fidel's absence. He has widely been considered one of the successors to the Castro brothers' rule.

Over the past year as Raul steered Cuba along his own course, Lage and others in Fidel's inner circle seemed to have lost influcence. Today there is no clear successor to 77-year-old Raul, except for his hand-picked vice president, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who is actually a year older than the younger Castro brother.

In addition to the shuffling of some 10 Cabinet positions, Raul also took a stab at reducing the socialist government's enormous bureaucracy.

Under Monday's measures, the food and fishing ministries collapsed into one entity, as did the ministries of foreign trade and foreign cooperation. As with any reduction in public spending, these moves are expected to leave hundreds of state workers without jobs.

Still dominated by 'historic generation'
Monday's announcements could well add to grievances from younger people who complain that their generation holds little influence and power in today's Cuba. Kids routinely grumble that the island is run and dominated by what's known here as the "historic generation," the men who fought with Fidel Castro and seized power half a century ago.

Jesus Montoya, 23, said he heard the announcement in a packed university commons room. "It did not go over well. Some kids even started booing."

Personally, Montoya says he is reserving judgment since he backs any and all actions to reduce the government's size. "I hope this will naturally lead to a larger private sector. People need to stop relying on the state and the state needs to allow people to rely on their own abilities to make a living."

He wants Raul to allow Cubans to open up their own businesses. That however does not seem to be a priority for Raul's administration, although he has allowed more private taxis on Havana's streets. Instead, he seems focused on trying to tackle the colossal issue of government waste.

'A matter of survival'
Since officially taking office on Feb. 24, 2008, Raul has hammered away at the idea of Cuba needing to save money and resources by becoming more efficient. "It's a matter of survival," he has said on more than one occasion.

Over the past year in office, Raul has spearheaded drives to reform state-run companies, open up the agricultural sector and to downsize government. Under his mandate, the younger Castro has even supported economic incentives, almost a treasonous idea to the elder Fidel Castro who organized Cuban society around the ideas of equality and egalitarianism.

With the Cuban state controlling over 90 percent of the economy, Raul's push for economic reform has had an across-the-board effect.

His government has adopted modern management and accounting practices with local managers being granted more day-to-day decision-making power.

Both state and private farmers can now legally charge higher prices for their products after meeting state quotas. And, in some industries, Cuba has abolished nationally set wage ceilings so that salaries are tied to both an individual's performance and that of the collective.

Raul also has allowed Cubans to buy computers, own mobile telephones, rent cars and spend nights in hotels previously only accessible to foreigners. While most cannot afford such luxuries on their low wages, people generally applauded the end to the discriminatory practices in the Cuban market.

But Raul was forced to curtail his economic and social reform drive after three devastating hurricanes swept the island last season and caused some $10 billion in damages, equal to 10 percent of Cuba's Gross Domestic Product.

During the 2008 closing session of parliament, Raul revealed that recovery could easily take up to six years but that "this did not mean reforms have been shelved."

At that meeting he turned the spotlight on government deficiencies, calling the lack of accountability and waste in government spending one of the "fundamental problems" of Cuba's socialist system. He revealed plans to set up a watchdog agency on government spending, eliminate some $60 million a year in state-run company bonuses and cut in half all travel perks for Communist Party and business leaders while promising to raise wages and create jobs.

"We have to eliminate improper gratuities and bloated subsidies, otherwise the bills won't add up. Two plus two always makes four – not five," Raul said.

Updated at 2:30 p.m.: Just 24 hours after the Cuban Cabinet shake-up, convalescing Fidel Castro wrote a column supporting the purge of the two younger leaders.

In his blog published on CubaDebate.cu, Castro revealed that he was consulted beforehand on the decision and justified it by charging that Perez Roque and Lage were seduced by the "honey of power."

Castro also seemed to be sending a message to Washington not to look for alternatives to the current regime. "The external enemy was full of illusions for them," wrote Castro, referring to the United States as the enemy and Perez Roque and Lage as "them."

BEIJING – As the government here tries in vain to control its burgeoning and unruly blogosphere, the term "duo maomao" or "eluding the cat" has been added to the ever-growing list of buzzwords in Chinese 'Netizens' vernacular.

Eluding the cat is a children's game, similar to hide and seek. In this case, though, it refers to an incident far beyond  a lighthearted children's game: the authorities' convoluted explanation of the death of Li Qiaoming, a prisoner in a Jinning county prison in China's southeastern Yunnan province.

Twenty-four-year-old Li was arrested in January when he allegedly was caught illegally logging. His death due to severe head trauma less than a month after he was jailed was ruled an accident by the Puning County Public Security Bureau. They declared in their official report that Li had "run into a wall" while playing hide and seek.

A local government newspaper, the Yunnan Information Times, later offered more details, describing a fight that supposedly erupted during the game:

"The police disclosed on the evening of February 12 the latest development in their investigation: 'The deceased caught the fellow prisoner named Pu during the 'elude the cat' game. Pu was unhappy and the two men had a dispute.  During the argument, Pu kicked the deceased once and then punched him on the head once.  The deceased lost his balance and fell backwards, whereupon his head hit the sharp corner formed by the wall and the door.  This was how the deceased got injured."

The explanation of the circumstances behind prisoner Li's death instantly caused an uproar in the Chinese blogosphere.

On Sina.com, a popular Web portal in China, the incident's discussion thread generated over 54,000 comments expressing outrage – and a good deal of mordant humor – over the official report.

Similar incident caused mass protests
This is not the first time that tortuous official explanations have led to public outcry.

Last June, the drowning death of Li Shufen, a 15-year-old girl from Guizhou province, erupted into an Internet firestorm.

The girl's parents claimed that police ignored their calls for a thorough investigation when their daughter, whose body was found in a river, appeared to have been raped and possibly murdered. 

The parents' anger rose when it emerged that the son of a senior local official may have been involved in the girl's killing. The boy's story went that he and two other youths were with Li Shufen, but that she had committed suicide while one of the boys was doing pushups on a nearby bridge. The story and the seeming immunity of the boy due to his government connections sparked massive riots involving an estimated 30,000 people.

The incident also sparked the term, "fu wo cheng," or "doing pushups" – an ironic label for the boy's seeming indifference to his friend as she allegedly committed suicide.

Perhaps wary of another flare-up like the Li Shufen incident – and prompted by the central government, which recently held a meeting of 3,000 public security directors in Beijing to discuss how to diffuse protests before they turn into so-called "mass incidents" – the Yunnan government quickly announced that they would permit an independent investigation of the prisoner Li's death.

What shocked everybody the most was the government's decision on who would make up the investigative unit: 'Netizens.

In a web forum dedicated to the discussion of the eluding the cat story, a regular poster on the forum described how she was surprised to be selected to head the investigation committee after she gave her personal information to the Yunnan publicity department over the phone. "I saw the investigator list on the Yunnan net and surprisingly, I became the head of the netizen committee."
 
Public opinion was quickly torn between those who thought that the government was making an earnest attempt to connect to its citizens and skeptics, especially after it became clear that the initiative was established not by the Yunnan Public Security Bureau but by the provincial public relations department.

The skeptics' view turned out to be correct. The netizens who were chosen for the panel soon found themselves at a carefully scripted press event and lecture from the local police. In addition, they were blocked from any serious inquiry beyond questions directly posed to the county's chief justice and were not allowed to view CCTV footage of the incident, review physical evidence, interview the prisoner Li allegedly fought with, or see the site of the incident.

From a public relations/crisis management point of view, however, the Yunnan provincial government was able to successfully divert a potentially volatile section of Chinese society and defuse the situation before it turned into another "mass incident," of which tens of thousands occur each year.

In other words, they eluded the cat.

According to the web site ESWN, the Yunnan Public Security Bureau held a press conference on Friday where they announced that prisoner Li Qiaoming had been murdered by his fellow inmates and that the "elude the cat" story had been concocted by the suspected prisoners in order to mask their responsibility for Li's death.

It was also noted that though the netizen investigation team had been told that the surveillance video of the incident was considered a "state secret," the real reason why they weren't allowed to view the footage was because it didn't exist. The prison's closed-circuit TV system had broken down six months before.

The prison warden has since been dismissed.

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer 

MAWU VILLAGE, Beijing –   For more than 20 years, Wu Yu Lu's wife and neighbors wondered why he wasn't a better farmer.

"Everyone else could produce 800 pounds of crop," said Dong Su Yen, his beleaguered wife.  "But he would produce just 200 pounds."

In fact, the 48-year-old Wu had better things to do with his time – like tinkering with machines.

VIDEO: Chinese farmer turned robot-maker

"I've always hated farming," said Wu, who comes from a long line of peasants on the impoverished outskirts of Beijing. "I just didn't want to farm."

"Oh, he was always spending money on these bits and pieces," said Dong. "You know, back then we really had no money, none at all, but any little bit he would spend on a machine part."  

Those "bits and pieces" – scraps of recycled metal, wire, screws, nails, and secondhand batteries – enabled Wu to build moveable parts. That led to miniature robots.  And those in turn led to life-size machines like the rickshaw man – or simply "Number 32" – a tin robot that pulls a two-wheeled cart and recites in Mandarin, "Hello everybody, Wu Yulu is my dad, I take him around town."

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

A prototype for the Rickshaw Robot.Â

A love for mechanical parts
Wu remembered being fascinated by motion and the mechanics of motion when he was just 10 years old. "I didn't like to study, didn't like going to school," said the farmer, whose formal education ended after third grade.  But he loved playing with machines.

He first started building mechanical parts in the 1980s and has since completed 33 working robots, most of which are littered around his dusty courtyard house. They're an eclectic-looking bunch, sort of Tim Burton meets Wallace and Gromit. 

One of the earlier models is a simple-looking box that, when turned on, waves a hand fan back and forth. It turns out it was a love letter of sorts to Dong.

"We had known each other for six months, but she wasn't that interested in me or my machines," said Wu. "When I built that for her, to help keep her cool when she was resting, she seemed to reconsider her opinion of me."

But it took Dong a long time to truly accept her husband's eccentric habits. Particularly after their home burned down due to a faulty transformer he'd picked up somewhere.

"I was so angry, I took the two sons and left, saying to him, how can I live like this?" recalled his long-suffering wife, who now laughs when she tells the story. "After all these years all you have are these few poor houses, but then you burned them down!"

Dong only softened when a very contrite Wu promised to stop building his robots. But after months without so much as looking at a loose screw – Wu became depressed. So his wife relented and told him to do as he wished. "It's just who he is," she said.

An overjoyed Wu immediately set out to build her a robot maid that could help with domestic chores. In fact, the robot not only could pour tea and light cigarettes, it could write and play the erhu, a traditional Chinese two-stringed instrument. 

His wife was bowled over. So was a buyer, who offered a few thousand yuan to buy the robot.  Li was still heavily in debt after the fire that burned down his home – he owed 90,000 yuan ($13,150).  So he gave in, but he still misses the robot. 

VIDEO: Chinsese tinkerer shows off his toys

A lifelong obsession
"I am closer to these robots than I am to my children," admitted Wu, who has two sons – the younger of which is the first in their family to go to college, where he is studying engineering.  "Because I spend so much time thinking about making the robots. They're in my head all the time."

Wu, whose robots earned him nationwide fame when he was voted China's smartest inventor farmer in 2004 on a local television station in Hunan province, has begun making some money off his creations and appears to be juggling three or four projects at any given time.  They include a top-secret health venture for a company and the odd commission by a well-off businessman looking for a quirky gadget (he recently sold another robot to a factory boss for $1,400).

But the erstwhile farmer said he wants to prosper one day with his robots. His hope is "to work with my second son to make intelligent robots," he said. "Then maybe we can really make something that will take off."

In the meantime, Wu will make do with taking off in his robot rickshaw.