BEIJING – Sixty-nine-year-old Zhou Xianqiang’s favorite hobby is recycling. A retired school teacher, Zhou makes her own handcrafts out of things usually dumped in trash cans – roses out of used red banners or hats out of milk cartons. Now she has a new toy: a crate full of thousands of earthworms in her little floral balcony.

Some people may not like having 2,000 smelly, slimy worms at home. But dozens of families in the Dongsi neighborhood, in the heart of Beijing, have taken them in as part of an environmental challenge from the non-governmental organization, “Global Village.”
Partially inspired by Mary Appelhof’s book “Worms Eat My Garbage” and with help from China Agricultural University, Global Village bought earthworms from a company in suburban Beijing and experimented with them for a few months before they delivered the little creatures to local residents.

Each family participating in the project was given one crate that contains about 2,000 earthworms. Once bedding (shredded newspaper, cardboard or leaf mold) was made inside the crate, another crate was put on top because the worms prefer it dark and quiet.

The top crate is also where food is placed, which could be cabbage slices, crunched egg shells or apples peels. Through holes on the bottom of the top crate, the toothless earthworms crawl up and grind the food with their gizzards by muscle action. In a few weeks owners can see the results: black manure-like compost that can serve as the perfect organic nutrients for flowers and plants.

“We hope by raising earthworms the community can have its own cycle chain. Our short-term goal is for the families to get rid of the kitchen wastes, and then use the droppings to grow plants or vegetables,” said Zhang Qiang, program coordinator from Global Village.

Since most modern families in Beijing live in apartment buildings and are busy leading fast paced lives running between home and work, Dongsi, the old courtyard area where you can still see hundred-year-old alleyways, seemed to be an ideal residence to start with the project.

The elderly who choose to stay in the old neighborhood have the time and patience to take part in something new and share their experiences.

Zhang and his colleagues hope to see a long-term project if things run smoothly. “We sure will encounter many problems, but we want to succeed. In the future, even if we pull out, I hope these local residents can spread the idea to other communities.”

It's been three months since floods devastated Pakistan, leaving 20 million people in need. Although much of the water has receded, the United Nations says the situation remains "critically difficult." NBC's Ian Williams has returned to Charsadda in the north, where aid has been slow, and survivors are bracing for winter.

By Marian Smith, msnbc.com

LONDON – Before he was elected to the White House, Barack Obama drew 200,000 ecstatic fans during a 2008 visit to Berlin. Analysts predicted he would have easily been elected France's president if he had been a candidate there. And the day after Obama's election triumph, practically every U.K. newspaper splashed his picture across their front pages.

Europe had fallen in love.

Two years later, Obama is struggling at home. With the midterms looming, the president's approval rating is at just 47 percent and most indicators suggest that the Democrats will take a hit on Tuesday.

Many Europeans don't get it.

"They're very confused as to how [Americans] could vote for Obama and then two years later turn around and vote for a completely different set of policies," Sarah Oates, professor of political communication the University of Glasgow, told msnbc.com.

When viewed from abroad, Obama's campaign promises of "hope" and "change" left Europeans expecting a fundamental shift in American politics.

"[People here] are just dismayed," Oates added. "There's a real feeling of ... disappointment that it didn't signal the change they thought it would."

Plummeting fortunes
Normally, congressional elections don't resonate much abroad.

But Europe's love affair with Obama – and interest in his plummeting fortunes – mean that midterms seem to be getting more coverage than usual in the U.K. and across the continent. In the wake of financial crisis, Europeans also wonder how the vote in America will affect the global economy.

French and British newspapers have been covering the run-up to the vote for weeks, with Tuesday's showdown already occasionally making the front page. In Germany, TV news channels are reporting regularly on U.S. politics and newspaper editorials have focused on the Tea Party movement and the perception that conservatism is growing in America.

On Thursday, the websites of the BBC and the London-based Guardian, Telegraph and Times newspapers all prominently featured stories about Obama's appearance on "The Daily Show."

'He's not Mr Miracle'
But with the economic crisis and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan casting a shadow over his presidency, Obama's reputation has also suffered abroad.

"He is no longer seen as an icon, but as a politician who is doing his very best," said Christian Malard, senior foreign analyst on France 3 TV. "He is paying the price for the crisis. He's not Mr Miracle, he's not a prophet."

However, Obama remains broadly well-liked and many Europeans think the disenchantment that many American voters have been expressing is unfair.

"What he inherited was so enormous that no American president could have fixed it," Manfred Gortemaker, professor of modern history at Germany's University of Potsdam, told msnbc.com.

Meanwhile, those who got caught up in the "Yes, we can" fever of 2008 simply want to know what will happen to their star.

"Obama is like a movie character," said Nicole Bacharan, a historian, political analyst and associate researcher at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. "There is something very romantic about him and his fate is something that people want to know. Why is this young, attractive, very smart president struggling?"

Tea Party rhetoric
Many Europeans are also wondering whether the Tea Party is simply a phenomenon born from the financial crisis, or whether its rise signals a broader, lasting, more radical conservative movement.

"In all the French newspapers and magazines, people are writing, trying to figure it out," Bacharan said.

While the economic downturn has sparked severe spending cuts from Ireland to Greece and renewed questions over European-style "big government", a Tea Party-like movement hasn't emerged on the continent.

But Europeans have noticed that some opponents of the Tea Party are being demonized as "socialist". That rhetoric has at times included references to far more sinister chapters in history. An editorial in Germany's Der Spiegel newspaper last week slammed the Tea Party’s references to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany when criticizing the Obama administration’s policies as being irresponsible, flippant and ignorant.

"The Holocaust was the result of murderous ideological fanaticism of the kind not to be found in leaders forced to face re-election every four years," the newspaper's editorial said. "It is hard to imagine even the most hard-bitten Tea Party activist sincerely believing that President Barack Obama wants to systematically murder over 6 million people like Adolf Hitler did. And that is necessarily the implication."

Obama's more liberal policies also resonated with many Europeans. With polls suggesting the Democrats could lose control of the House, Professor Oates said the idea that many of his plans could potentially never come into effect baffles some people.

"It's hard for them to understand the frailty of the American presidency," she said.

By NBC News’ Bo Gu

BEIJING – It’s a small museum in a quiet and grubby village, and few people pay attention to it. Yet, despite its low profile, any man who walks into the little exhibition hall will no doubt feel a chill down his spine: it’s a museum dedicated to China’s 2,000-year history of eunuchs.

Built in 1998 and recently refurbished, the museum sits next to a tomb for the high-ranking eunuch Tian Yi from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). In a space the size of a 2,000 square foot apartment, five exhibit rooms give visitors a brief but complete account of how the system of castrating men came into being, how the eunuchs' institution grew to become powerful political cliques and how the system finally ended with the death of the last eunuch in China, Sun Yaoting, in 1996.

Bo Gu/ NBC News

The museum dedicated to China's 2,000-year history of eunuchs displays a knife that was used in castration.

The etymology of “eunuch” is the Greek word for “bed keeper.” Young boys’ penises and testicles were castrated before they were sent to serve in royal and aristocratic families as slaves – the practice was meant to ensure there was no chance of them sleeping with female members of the household or concubines.

Records of eunuchs have been found in ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome, Turkey and Persia, but none of the other countries maintained the system for long. But the practice lasted for thousands of years in China.

It’s hard to trace when exactly the first eunuch appeared in China, but the museum shows a picture of an oracle bone inscribed with the hieroglyphic word that means "eunuch" – a penis-shaped character with a blade right next to it. Hieroglyphics evolved during the Shang and Zhou dynasties (17th century B.C.-256 B.C.), but it wasn’t until the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 A.D-220 A.D.) that only castrated men were allowed to serve in royal families.

The system of eunuchs reached its zenith in China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) when eunuchs became the de facto rulers who controlled the imperial power and founded their own political parties and secret police. In the late Ming-era court officials even had to bribe the sterilized men to get access to the emperor.

Zhu Youjian, the 16th and the last emperor of Ming Dynasty, had more than 100,000 eunuchs during his rule. The eunuch clique was so powerful, yet corrupt, that when Li Zicheng, the leader of an uprising during the late Ming dynasty, finally conquered the capital city, he kicked out all the eunuchs.

The museum lists all of the best-known eunuchs in one exhibit room, of which the most famous is probably Zheng He (1371-1433), the mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Africa. His travels were later remembered outside China as “Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean.” The list of luminary eunuchs also includes Cai Lun (60-121), who is revered in China as the inventor of paper.

Cruelest cut
The most chilling and vivid display room shows the actual process of castration. A life-size diorama shows a young boy lying on a bed with his limbs tied down while three other men – one holding a simple apparatus like a knife, the other holding the boy’s legs, and one performing the surgery – conduct the operation without any anesthesia.

The patients would stay in bed for months after the surgery until they could finally move again, others simply died in pain.

Bo Gu, NBC News

The tomb for the high-ranking eunuch Tian Yi sits right next to the museum.

The penis and testicles, after being removed, were usually carefully wrapped up, put in a fine case and hung up on a roof beam in the boy’s house. They would eventually be buried together with the body when the man died, following the Chinese tradition of “dying a full-body death.”

Some of the other museum displays show nicely sculptured tombstones, silk outfits senior eunuchs used to wear and a mummy excavated from nearby.

One corner is devoted to Sun Yaoting, who served the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty and his concubines. Sun died at 94 years old in 1996; “The Last Eunuch of China” is a book about his life.

Losing a man’s most important organ was never easy, which may explain why so many eunuchs donated the bulk of their money to Buddhist or Taoist temples in order to secure a different – and complete – afterlife.

By Ali Arouzi, NBC News Correspondent

KABUL – A clearly irritated President Hamid Karzai responded to a barrage of questions from journalists Monday about a report that his government has been the recipient of large sums of cash from the Iranian government.

"The cash payments are done by various friendly countries to help the president's office and to help dispense assistance in various ways to the employees around here, to people outside,” a defensive Karzai said in English. He added, “This is transparent... This is nothing hidden and we are grateful to Iran for the help in this regard.”
Karzai was responding to questions about a New York Times report that his chief of staff and most trusted confidant, Umar Daudzai, had been given a large plastic bag full of money by the Iranian ambassador, Feda Hussein Maliki, while sitting on an airport tarmac in Iran.

He went on to say that he has received large bags full of money from the United States as well.

“The United States is doing the same thing. They’re providing cash to some of our offices. If you would like to have the details, we’ll give you that, too.”

In response to a follow-up question about the U.S., Karzai said, “It does give bags of money, yes. Yes, it does. Ma’am it’s all the same, so let’s not make this an issue.”

Karzai suggested that the report about the cash payments from Iran might have been an attempt to at a smear campaign against Daudzai, his chief of staff. “In countries like ours, poor countries, patriotism comes at a cost,” Karzai said. “Maybe it is his turn to suffer too for his country.”

Iran denies ‘bags of money’ claim
In a bizarre twist, a statement posted on the Press TV website, the Iranian government’s English language TV channel, denied the claims of cash being paid to Karzai’s chief of staff.

Iran's embassy in Kabul also dismissed the report by the New York Times claiming that it delivered “bags of money” to Karzai.

In a statement issued on Monday, the Iranian embassy rejected the "false, ridiculous and insulting" claim by The New York Times. It said certain Western media make up such unfounded rumors to stir up public opinion and damage growing relations between the two neighboring countries.

The statement emphasized that strong historical and cultural bonds between the Iranian and Afghan nations would not be affected by such propaganda and baseless rumors of Western media.

The latest allegations of Iranian interference come at a critical time for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's neighbors, in particular Iran and Pakistan are jockeying for position amid frequent reports of meetings between Afghan officials and insurgents, with increasing evidence that a reconciliation process has begun.

By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer

MOSCOW – For fans of espionage news, this week in Russia was a busy one.

It started Monday with Russian media reports that President Dmitry Medvedev granted awards to members of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. The president’s press secretary said that among them were the 10 Russian agents who were arrested in the U.S. and swapped this summer for four men accused of spying for the West.

Tuesday, though, brought even bigger news.

The Russian version of Maxim magazine announced that it had the first interview with the most (in)famous of the 10 Russian agents, Anna Chapman. The magazine said that the interview and a revealing photo shoot would be in its next issue, which would hit newsstands here Thursday. A teaser video went up on Maxim’s website, and a longer, more detailed video was promised for the day that the magazine came out.

Thursday morning came, but the magazine didn’t.

“People have been asking for it all morning,” said one of sellers at the nine newsstands I went to in search of the magazine.

Friday, though, the issue and the new video arrived.

However, if you were looking for some insight into the inner workings of the Russian intelligence community, or about what exactly the agents were hoping to achieve in America, Maxim’s interview is a disappointment – questions about any of those topics were off-limits.

Instead the interview focused on what Maxim knows best: flirting and seduction. But that doesn’t mean Chapman’s answers weren’t still cryptic and vague. For example:

Q: Have you ever been so in love, that it made you do foolish things?

A: I’ll answer like this: Even if I knew the world was ending tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today.

Men’s mag fluff or hidden meaning? That’s for the reader to decide. Trying to pin down Chapman’s espionage credentials proved equally elusive:

Q: Which men are easiest to seduce? Russians, British or Americans?

A: Seduction, just like love and friendship, are the same everywhere. Most men can be divided into three categories: primitive – who need only sex. Smarter ones – who want to be loved. And the third group – those, who don’t only want to be loved, but who also want this love to be the biggest and most wonderful feeling in their life. With them it’s the most difficult, but it’s my favorite category.

As much as the other nine agents have stayed out of the limelight, Chapman seems to be launching a very public – and revealing (the cover and interview featured images of her in states of undress) – campaign to stay in it.

The Russian blogosphere is rife with speculation about her future. Will she become an actress and play herself in the story of the spies? Or will she become a politician with Putin’s dominant United Russia party?

Her website so far just says “Coming Soon” over an enigmatic drawing of her with cryptic numbers coming down like rain.

Like the Maxim interview, it’s long on promise but short on details as to what’s next for Russia’s most famous spy.

Three generations of Palestinian farmers clash with Jewish settlers as they attempt to harvest their most important crop. NBC's Paul Goldman reports from the West Bank.

By John W. Schoen, msnbc.com

BEIJING — On a sultry September morning, in a brightly lit, air-conditioned Wal-Mart at the New World Shopping Center in Beijing's Chaoyang district, the search is on for everyday low prices.

Shoppers stroll past bright red price signs adorned with large yellow numbers and the familiar six-point asterisk. The 1970s hit “Seasons in the Sun” wafts through speakers in the store. On the wall beyond the checkout lines, the faces of 16 Wal-Mart employees, their photos arranged in an inverted pyramid, smile down at paying customers.

“The managers are at the bottom of the pyramid, supporting and maintaining a balance for the rest of the pyramid,” a caption explains. “They listen to the associates, guide, support and encourage and provide opportunities for every associate to be successful. They are the servant leaders of Wal-Mart.”

China's own economic pyramid has become taller and steeper, forcing the government's “servant leaders” to scramble to keep a promise to China's 1.3 billion people that their society will remain in balance. If that balance is compromised, the result could be a wave of social upheaval not seen since the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests of 1989.

Over the past 30 years, China’s red-hot economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, reshaped the global economy and given rise to a new power on the global stage. But that breakneck growth has also created an expanding wealth gap, major environmental problems, widespread corruption, a growing imperative to innovate and popular pressure for political reforms.

This country's “experiment” with capitalism can safely be deemed a success. China's economy, which lay in ruins in the late 1970s after the failed Cultural Revolution, has developed faster than any in history. China has emerged as a growing economic, political and military power.

But as this phase of China's economic development draws to an end, a new phase has begun. Call it China 2.0.

China’s Communist Party recently wrapped up four days of meetings to develop the country's next 5-year development plan, set to begin next year. In a communiqué, the central committee pledged "major breakthroughs in economic restructuring" to "maintain stable and relatively fast economic growth,” according Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

But even China’s leaders worry about growing too fast. Premier Wen Jiabao said in March the expansion is "unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable." To address that, the next five-year plan incorporates reforms already under way and charts a roadmap designed to keep the economy from veering off the track.

Read more of John Shoen's report on the state of China's red hot economy and where its headed: West get ready, here comes China 2.0

AVIVIM, Israel – As Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke to a crowd of cheering Hezbollah supporters Thursday in a Lebanese village near Israel, a group of reporters gathered on this side of the border were calm, but alert.

From our long camera lens, we could see the Hezbollah forces looking straight at us with their binoculars. It was a peaceful scene, but the air felt like it could explode at any moment.

The press corps had gathered at the hillside village of Avivim, bordering the Lebanese town of Maroun Er Ras, Thursday to see how Ahmadinejad’s visit – which the U.S. and Israel called intentionally provocative – would play out.

Ahmadinejad was speaking at a stadium in Bint Jbei, Lebanon, just a couple of miles from the Israeli border. The location of the speech was significant because the village was among the hardest-hit areas during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, and oil-rich Iran invested heavily to help rebuild it.

The stadium, which we could not see from the border, was packed with thousands of cheering Hezbollah supporters waving Lebanese, Iranian and Hezbollah flags, according to the Associated Press.

ANWAR AMRO/AFP/Getty Images

Lebanese supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wave Lebanese and Iranian flags during a mass rally he attended Thursday in the southern Lebanese village of Qana.

Residents of southern Lebanon have reason to cheer Ahmadinejad – Iran has contributed an estimated $1 billion in aid to southern Lebanon since the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, according to officials close to Hezbollah.

From our perch, we could see a large physical example of Iran’s financial contribution to southern Lebanon. A copy of one of Islam’s holiest sites – the al-Aqsa mosque, considered to be Islam’s third holiest site that sits on the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem and is often a flashpoint of violent conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians – had been built, with Iranian funding, on the Lebanese border with Israel.

We could see the golden dome shining across the valley split by a barbed wire fence and a U.N. observation post.

Amid the media throng, some Israelis holding blue and white balloons symbolizing the Israeli flag had gathered. Ayoub Kara, a member of the Israeli Knesset, held a makeshift press conference and said, "We’re not afraid, we need peace.”

Then they released the balloons with the hope the wind would carry them across the border in a sign of peace. But the weather didn’t cooperate and an amused, but disappointed press corps only had pictures of the balloons flying back into Israel.
Two ultra-religious Jews held up posters on the border for Hezbollah fighters to see. The posters read “Ahmadinejad, we’re not an occupying force, we are occupied ourselves.”

Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon is seen by many here as an attempt to further Iran’s control over Lebanon and to signal to Israel that any attempt to hit Iran's nuclear plants would result in the unleashing of hundreds of missiles by the Iranian backed Hezbollah fighters who control southern Lebanon.

Israeli jets and choppers flew above the border around the time Ahmadinejad arrived at the stadium. A longtime local resident told me that military jets and chopper rarely fly overhead. He took it as an indication that the Israelis wanted the president to know they were up there watching him.

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent
Reporter’s Notebook

COPIAPO, Chile – I’ve been reporting the news for 28 years, and I have never been as personally wrapped up in a drama as I have been on this story.

I remember my mentor, NBC News’ veteran Jim Bennett, telling me: “As a reporter you are there to observe, and nothing more.”

But this story is different. I’m reporting on the 33 Chilean miners who have been trapped half a mile underground for over two months. We just learned today that rescue workers are hoping to start evacuating the miners at midnight local time Tuesday.

I know there are still dangerous moments to come, but I’m rooting for a happy ending.

I could be wrong, but I think that since we so rarely see a happy ending unfold in real time, everyone is anxiously awaiting some good news.

AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko

SLIDESHOW: Chilean mine collapse

Hard to contain excitement
It’s obvious my detached impartiality washed away here when the drilling team punched through the final few feet on Saturday morning.

I was live on NBC’s Today Show and, as the word spread of the success, I felt a rush of victory. I was caught up in a moment that put the rescue one major step closer to success.

If you watch the video below, it’s obvious that I couldn’t contain my excitement.


Waiting for the big moment
At this point, over 1,500 journalists have converged at the site of the sand-swept mine from all over the world. I’ve seen teams from China, Russia, England, but also from Finland, Poland, even the Czech Republic.

The San Jose Mine sits in the middle of the Atacama Desert. Were you to come here, you’d drive through a remarkable landscape where little thrives. A few dime-sized flowers cling to life in this, the driest desert on Earth.

And like those plants, there are the 33 miners: Men who beat the odds by surviving 17 days on what was designed to be two days worth of tuna and peaches. Those men have now survived a total of 68 days as teams on the surface fight to save their lives.

When they emerge, we’ve been told a Chilean TV station, TVN, will focus its camera on the hole.

One-by-one, the survivors will enter a different world. They won’t see the hundreds of cameras positioned just down the hill, but they may hear the expected cheers a half-mile away.

But it’s fair to say the whole world will be watching.

I can’t predict my reaction, but like the families who have held vigil here on the surface, I’m excited.

Isn’t it about time we all shared some good news?

Who are the Chilean miners? Click here to learn more about the miners

Beset by devastating floods, increased terror attacks, and political instability, Pakistan's precarious state is a matter of global concern. "Crisis Guide: Pakistan," the Council on Foreign Relations' (CFR) new interactive multimedia feature, examines the roots of the country's challenges.

The array of Pakistan's challenges include: an increasing number of terrorist groups; a growing nuclear arsenal that could become vulnerable to these groups; a long-standing rivalry with India and troubled border with conflict-ridden Afghanistan; and the ongoing power struggle between a strong military and a weak civilian government. The guide draws on expert analysis to demonstrate what these problems mean for the region and the world, and to explore potential directions for the country.

Click here to explore the CFR's informative Crisis Guide: Pakistan.

Richard Engel, NBC News Correspondent

SOCOTRA ISLAND, Yemen - In our shrinking and discovered world, there remain at least a few undiscovered places that still seem truly lost. The small Arabian island of Socotra is tinged with romance and spirit of exploration.

Perhaps it's the exotic trees or flocks of yellow faced vultures, or the beaches, undisturbed by greasy sunbathers.
Socotra is 250 miles south of the Arabian Peninsula, technically, part of Yemen, but 30 million years of isolation have made the island unique.

The relaxed pace of life is completely dominated by nature, so much the people on the island use their own calendar with 24 months, each month marking a small seasonal change. There is a month for when it rains, a month for when the wind blows and even a month for when crabs cover the beaches. Socotra has more than 800 endemic species of plants and animals. Only Hawaii and the Galapagos have more.

Photo NBC News' Mohamed Muslemany

A deserted beach on the island of Socotra.

About 50,000 people live on the island - most are fishermen. There is a small tourism industry, but only 140 Americans came here last year.

“This is about as crowded as it gets,” said David Stanton, an American environmentalist who has been studying Socotra for years. I asked him why it is still so untouched by tourism?

Photo NBC News' Mohamed Muslemany

Some of Socotra's 5,000 dragon trees.

“It has a lot to do with the perception of Yemen as being a dangerous place,” said Stanton.

“Is safe for people to come here?” I asked.

“Of course, absolutely, 100 percent.”

Watch Richard Engel’s video above to learn more about the untouched island of Socotra.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Jan Mohammed led me across the muddy yard packed with burned and still smoldering fuel tankers.

"If we don't have any security, how can we go up there?” he asked. “Nobody will drive and take fuel to NATO. It's impossible."

He was referring to the Khyber Pass in Pakistan's northwest, a key route for supplies heading to the war in Afghanistan.

Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

Pakistani drivers sit on a burnt out NATO supply oil tanker Monday morning after an attack on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Three charred shells of former oil tanker trucks belonged to him. "First they burned the tires," he said, and then flayed his arms around to illustrate the inferno that followed.

His drivers had been sleeping in their cabs, but ran to safety when they heard the first shots fired by about a dozen gunmen, who arrived on motorcycles during the pre-dawn attack on Monday.

Others were not so luckily. At least four died in the attack, and many more were injured. Yet few of them seemed surprised by what had happed.

Sitting ducks
"No security," said one driver, shaking his head, his arm bandaged from when he had fallen while escaping. That sentiment was echoed by several others who were victimized by the attack. One truck driver had salvaged two small mango plants from the shell of his cab, which he picked up along the route and planned to take home with him.

There were 55 tankers lined up in the group, some 20 of which were damaged in Monday’s attack. They had parked just outside Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, forced to wait – like sitting ducks, in hindsight – because of the closure of the border by the Pakistani authorities.

One driver pointed with disdain at a housing complex across the road, one of several large areas here reserved for military officers. "Maybe they came from there," he said. Apparently it’s not only the Americans who sometimes wonder where the Pakistani military stands on the ongoing conflict.

The Pakistan authorities say they don't have the manpower to secure the convoys, which are not their responsibility anyway. The Pakistan authorities say it is up to the contractors to sort out their own security.

Dangerous supply route
Pakistan is the main route for non-lethal supplies for U.S and allied forces fighting in Afghanistan. It can take days for supply vehicles to travel up from the port in Karachi, across Pakistan, and into Afghanistan. There are two main border crossing points, one to the south, in Baluchistan, and the other at the end of the Khyber Pass in Pakistan's northwest.

It is this second crossing that was closed by Pakistan late last week, in an apparent response to a border incursion by NATO helicopter gunships, which killed three Pakistani border guards. On Monday, NATO expressed regret for last week’s helicopter attack, saying the casualties were “unintended.”

Attacks on convoys are not uncommon, but it seems to have become open season since the border closure backed up hundreds of tankers and trucks. There have been at least five attacks on the supply convoys since the border was closed. The latest attack happened on Tuesday when a small bomb damaged a truck that was parked alongside about 100 other trucks waiting to cross into Afghanistan. However, the bomb failed to ignite the fuel, and there were no casualties.

 

Ian Williams/ NBC News

The tankers attacked just outside Islamabad Monday.

The Pakistan government says the border will be open "soon," but has given no firm date. Meantime, the supply route to Afghanistan remains dangerously exposed.

It also comes at a time when drone attacks in the tribal areas are running at record levels. These are not popular among Pakistanis, though the government has been willing to turn a blind eye.

But analysts say the Pakistanis want to send a message to Washington – they can't be taken for granted and won't tolerate flagrant border violations.

Meantime, though, Jan Mohammed surveyed the charred remains of what had been a lucrative business.

"Afghanistan's at war," he said, "but our tankers are safer on that side of the border."

Related link: New York Times: 'U.S. military orders less dependence on fossile fuels'

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent

COPIAPO, Chile – The 33 miners who are trapped in a Chilean gold and copper mine marked off Day 60 on Monday as their families keep an anxious vigil on the surface.

One of them, Alfonso Avalos, says he’s feeling useless. The 52-year-old miner wants to dig, he wants to help his trapped sons – but all he can do is wait around, a half mile above the collapsed mine.
Alfonso and his family sit idle in the Atacama Desert. They occasionally smile when they share stories about Florenzio Avalos, 31, and Renan Avalos, 29.

To better understand what the miners face in their daily jobs, Alfonso and his brother, Wilson, 37, invited me to visit the nearby Clara Mine, which was closed about a year ago when the gold yield was considered too limited to support an expensive digging operation.

They led me through the cave entrance and in less than 10 minutes, I could no longer see any light from the surface. The only light came from our head-lamps.

The tunnel down was tall enough for a truck to drive down and wide enough for two vehicles to pass. We carefully walked down a 30-degree slope, and while the path was relatively clear, there were a lot of rocks that would be easy to trip over. High above us, perhaps as tall as the second story of a house, I could see thin stalactites dripping droplets of mineral water.

A photo of Florenzio Avalos, 31, one of the trapped miners. His father Alfonso Avalos is praying for his safety and hopes he does not return to work in the mines if he survives.

As we walked down about a mile, Alfonso told me that it was the first time in his career that he felt nervous being inside a mine. And he’s worried about his sons, once they are again above ground.

“I don’t want them to ever go back into a mine,” he said.

Miners live by a code: Do not talk about the dangers of the job because that could bring bad luck. But with this disaster, that code has now been broken.

Alfonso said among the family, his sons used to would quietly complain to him that the mine was unsafe. He added, “They would tell me they tell their bosses but no one listens.”

And the reason they kept working? “Ah, the money! These are good paying jobs and without an education, there’s not much else we can do.”

A race to reach the miners
Meantime, the drilling efforts have moved closer to the trapped men as three engineering teams use three different approaches.
Team A includes engineers from South Africa; Team B has some Americans; and Team C has Canadians.

The South African team is closest, a mere 396 feet away as of Monday.

But the operation is now on hold until Wednesday as the drill bit has dulled, and the replacement part won’t be ready until mid-week.

Photo by Jim Craven/ NBC News

An inside look at the Clara Mine, a former gold mine that is near the San Jose Mine where 33 miners have been trapped for 60 days.

That leaves the Americans most likely to punch a 28-inch wide shaft to the men first. They’re now 465 feet away.

Unlike the other two teams, the U.S. already has a so-called pilot hole down to the men. First they drilled a 5 inch-wide shaft. Then it was opened to 12 inches. Now the engineers are creating a 28-inch-wide-hole which will be just big enough for the escape capsules to navigate.
As the U.S. team drills down, upwards of 20 tons of rock is falling in on the trapped miners. They’re working in three 11-man shifts to clear that debris, in effect working to save their own lives.

One question yet to be answered: Will the hole that is ultimately used require a sleeve? The initial thoughts were to link a pipe down the hole, and as the pipe went in, grease the inside for the capsules trips up and down.

But now some say that will delay the rescue by as much as 11days. And since the drilled holes are not direct, some pipes will have to be fashioned in unique shapes to accommodate the curves.

And then there’s the whispered political pressure to get the job done. Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera has an important meeting in Europe in mid-October, and rescue crews here say they’ve been told the president wants to personally witness the rescue before he leaves.

No one would be happier if the rescue happens sooner than later than the families of waiting to come to the surface.

BY Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer

LONDON – Pledging to bring change to Pakistan’s widely discredited political establishment, the country’s former army strongman has vowed to run for president in the 2013 general election.

“I want to be elected through a democratic process,” General Pervez Musharraf, who swept away a democratically elected but corruption-riddled civilian government in a 1999 coup, told a couple hundred cheering supporters at a posh private club in London on Friday.

While few Pakistanis ever believed that their former president would do what old generals are supposed to do and “just fade away,” Musharraf has seized a moment of intense political turmoil to launch his political comeback from exile.

‘Human beings make mistakes’
Musharraf, relaxed and sartorially elegant in finely cut gray wool suit, admitted to errors during his rule, especially in his ninth and last year as the country’s military dictator. (He fired the chief justice of the Supreme Court, suspended the constitution and declared a state of emergency, among other things.)

“Human beings make mistakes,” the 67-year-old said. “I take this opportunity to apologize.”

It was a powerful moment. This was the first Pakistani leader ever to admit faults in his leadership and then tell the nation he was sorry.

Playing to the one million Pakistanis living in Britain and the even more millions listening back home, Musharraf said he learned his lessons and was ready to lead again.

He vowed to bring Pakistan away from its feudal culture, referring to the beleaguered government of Asif Ali Zardari, the current president and widower of assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He also promised that his new political party, The All Pakistan Muslim League, would unite all Pakistanis regardless of sect, religion or tribe.

Now may be the right time for Musharraf’s re-emergence.

His charisma complimented by his innate military bearing may help convince many of his fellow Pakistanis that he is the man to bring change. Many are unhappy with a spiralling Islamic insurgency, a collapsing economy, and the government’s handling of the worst floods in the country’s history.

“Musharraf is trying to capture the present mindset among Pakistanis, especially among the younger people,” said Humayun Gauhar, a prominent political and military analyst. “The younger generation craves a new political system, they want to break away from the feudal class and the ruling elite who behave like they own the county.”

Popular on Facebook
The former general does have a narrow base of political support back in Pakistan and is popular on Facebook, where many of his hundreds of thousands of followers are under 30 years old. Still, an election win would be difficult.

During his party’s official debut, Musharraf spoke in Urdu for an hour and then for another hour in English. He warned of the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor in his country and said Pakistanis are also frustrated by the country’s rapid economic decline.

But many Pakistanis blame Musharraf for the countless problems the country faces today.

An overwhelming majority in the country are anti-American and accuse him of selling out to president George W. Bush after the Sept 11 attacks in 2001, when he allied Pakistan with the U.S. war on terror.

That alliance propelled the fiercely independent Pashtun tribes in the northwest of the country to join forces with the Taliban and al-Qaida to fight the U.S. and the Pakistani government. The tribes felt betrayed – they still regard the Afghan war along their borders as America’s war against the Pashtuns.

In London, the former commando defended his stance against the militants and insisted that unless Pakistan remained part of the war against extremism “that fight cannot succeed.” In his party’s manifesto, he declared a “zero tolerance for terrorism.”

But Musharraf’s critics accuse him of playing a double game while in power – banning some militant groups while turning a blind eye toward those who served the army’s interests against archrival India.

‘Chance to fill a vacuum’
Pakistani author and journalist, Zahid Hussain, said he had been skeptical about Musharraf’s political launch until he heard him speak.

“I think he could have a chance to fill a vacuum in the country,” Hussain said. “He might be able to mobilize a large section of the population, including the business community, who are completely fed up with the present system. I am not saying he can do it, I’m saying he might have a chance to do it.”

If some were contemplating that perhaps times weren’t so bad after all under Musharraf, back home TV channels devoted hours of airtime to leaders of opposition parties and pundits who gave him no chance at all.

Not that many are giving the present government much of a chance of finishing its full 5-year term, either. In fact, most Pakistanis feel things have never been worse, but few know how to fix the country’s entrenched problems.

Requesting anonymity, a close aide of Pakistan’s military chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said his boss has definitely ruled out a military coup. The main opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, does not have the numbers in parliament to call for a vote of no confidence against the government.

That leaves the Supreme Court.

The judges are angling for a showdown with President Zardari, perhaps this month, to remove the immunity he enjoys as the country’s president and restore old corruption cases against him. In that case, Zardari is expected to dig in his heels and fight back.

In the more than 60 years since the British partitioned the Indian subcontinent and Pakistan became a separate state, the contenders for the country’s top job – always recycled among a Bhutto, a Sharif or an army general – have thrived on the urgency and the uproar of the moment to rise phoenix-like from the ashes.

If Musharraf does attempt a return, he too would risk arrest for treason or deportation – reminiscent of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif when they tried to re-launch their political comebacks from London.

Then there are the dangers of assassination from the militants he tried to eliminate when he was in office. Musharraf said he is not deterred.

“I am not afraid,” he declared.

Such is the way of Pakistani politics.

NBC’s Fakhar Rehman contributed reporting from Islamabad.