Shawna Thomas is an NBC News producer on assignment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to cover a pre-trial military commission hearing for Omar Khadr.

Khadr is a Canadian citizen who is accused of murder and providing material support for terrorism along with other charges stemming from his alleged participation in a 2002 firefight with American troops in Afghanistan.

Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured in 2002 and is expected to stand trial at Guantanamo Bay in July of this year. His military trial would be the first governed by the 2009 Military Commissions Act that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Thomas is one of 37 print and television journalists from across the world covering Khadr's proceedings.

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA – Did Omar Khadr not show up in court today because he felt humiliated or because he was in pain?

The second day of Khadr's hearing was set to begin at 9 a.m. ET. It didn't start until 10 a.m. and Khadr was not in the seat he had occupied the day before.

A captain was called to the stand to testify about Khadr's whereabouts. She said he'd agreed to come to court but asked to see a doctor first because his eyes were causing him pain.

Khadr has shrapnel in both from the firefight that occurred before he was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan. He is blind in his left eye, and at times, he has severe pain in both eyes.

A doctor gave Khadr eye drops to help with the pain, but when he was returned to Camp 4 he refused to wear the "eyes and ears" for the ride to the courtroom, according to the captain.

She said he told her that he felt wearing the "eyes and ears" while in the windowless van ride to the court was humiliating.

The "eyes and ears" is shorthand for blacked-out ski goggles and noise-canceling earphones that prevent the detainee from knowing the route that's taken to the courthouse. Detainees who leave housing areas are forced to wear the gear.

In an email this morning, Navy Cmdr. Brad Fagan, director of public affairs for Joint Task Force Guantanamo said, "Khadr didn't attend court this morning because he's refusing to follow longstanding security transport procedures."

Now, Khadr doesn't have to come to court every day, but it could be detrimental to his case if he chooses not to attend, because he's not there to aid in his defense. There's a whole section in the very new Manual for Military Commissions that stresses the importance of the presence of the accused at the hearing and defines what a voluntary absence from court is.

The judge was going to consider this a voluntary absence and continue the proceedings without Khadr present. But after a short break, he told the court that he could find no record that Khadr ever was informed of his right to appear or to not appear and that Khadr had to be informed of his rights before the hearing could continue.

If the defense couldn't convince Khadr to come to court in the afternoon, the judge would order that Khadr be forced to appear.

When court was gaveled back into session at 2 p.m. ET, Khadr was in his seat with his head bowed and his hand covering his eyes. The judge informed Khadr of his rights and asked him if he understood. Khadr looked up, said a quiet "yes" and covered his eyes again. This Omar Khadr was a different person compared to the one that walked into the court with a smile on his face the first day of the commission.

Defense counsel Barry Coburn said the reason Khadr had refused to wear the blacked-out goggles is they made the pain in his eyes worse.

While I can't tell you if Khadr was physically in pain, his demeanor had definitely changed. No longer was he chatting with his lawyers periodically and scribbling and smiling. Today he just sat with head bowed and his hand over his eyes. Not even when the incriminating video of him allegedly helping to make and plant IEDs was played did he look up from the table. At times Khadr appeared to even be sobbing.

After today's hearing was over, Coburn said Khadr sobbed because he was in extreme pain. One of the defense's expert witnesses, a doctor, examined Khadr during the lunch recess and determined that in addition to the remaining shrapnel, he has conjunctivitis. While Coburn said he wouldn't second-guess base doctors, he questioned the fairness of proceedings taking place while Khadr was supposedly in severe pain.

While the defense has been very vocal in speaking to the media, today was the first time Fagan went in front of cameras. He said that after the hearing was over, Khadr was taken to a doctor and had another appointment scheduled with an optometrist afterward. Fagan reiterated that the "eyes and ears" is standard operating procedure and that he wasn't prepared to change that procedure for Khadr.

Can Khadr actively participate in his own defense if he is in severe pain? If a military doctor confirms he is in severe pain and he is absent from the proceedings, can that be considered a voluntary absence and can the commission proceed with his seat empty? And if Khadr didn't want to wear the goggles because of the pain they caused him, why did he say the "eyes and ears" humiliated him?

Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Shawna Thomas is an NBC News producer on assignment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to cover a pre-trial military commission hearing for Omar Khadr.

Khadr is a Canadian citizen who is accused of murder and providing material support for terrorism along with other charges stemming from his alleged participation in a 2002 firefight with American troops in Afghanistan.

Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured in 2002 and is expected to stand trial at Guantanamo Bay in July of this year. His military trial would be the first governed by the 2009 Military Commissions Act that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Thomas is one of 37 print and television journalists from across the world covering Khadr's proceedings. 

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA – At the end of Recreation Road in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are at least three detention facilities known as Camps 4, 5 and 6. The media is prohibited from visiting Camp 7, a maximum-security facility, and Camps 1, 2 and 3 are not in use.

Earlier this week, we were given a tour of Camp 4, where Omar Khadr is being held. We also got a tour of Camp 6.

SLIDESHOW: Life goes on in Guantanamo

Camp placement depends on the detainees' level of compliance. Detainees are neither bad nor good, but compliant and non-compliant. Camp 4 is for the most compliant detainees.

But no matter how compliant detainees are, the prevailing image is of the leg restraints, which are found in all of the empty classrooms and communal locations. A guard explained that the leg restraints are for the protection of the guards.

Games of backgammon, checkers and the coveted Nintendo DS units are some of the comfort items offered to the detainees, along with copies of USA Today and Arabic-language newspapers. 

The games and newspapers were laid out in the classroom for the media to see and shoot, but all of the cameras kept drifting to the ground where the restraints lay waiting to be used inside classrooms surrounded by razor wire.

But of course, the shot everybody wants is of the detainees. We inched our cameras as close as possible to a chain link fence that allowed us to view detainee comings and goings in the yard of Camp 4.

We recorded men in white robes walking by, talking to each other and at times staring at our cameras. But, every time someone turned around and looked directly at us – it became another shot that was going to have to be removed from our tapes and media cards at the end of the day. 

The media are restricted from photographing faces or distinguishing features of detainees because it could be a violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

In addition to requiring that prisoners of war "must at all times be treated humanely," Article 13 states prisoners must be protected against acts of violence and intimidation, but also "against insults and public curiosity."

LONDON – So after the live microphone captures Prime Minister Gordon Brown's blunder, the live cameras see him turn up at the lady's door to apologize only hours later.

He is, Brown told the massed media through an uncomfortable smile, a "penitent sinner."

He had misunderstood what she was saying. Sometimes, he said, you say things you don't mean.

Suzanne Plunkett / Reuters

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown leaves the home of Gillian Duffy in Rochdale, northwest England, on Wednesday after apologizing for calling her "a bigoted woman."Â

Damage limitation, or damage exploitation?

Making things better – or worse?

The opinion polls will tell us – in a matter of hours.

The betting is the voters will punish Brown for his gaffe, and that this could be the turning point in the election.

Brown's political future has been on a knife edge for weeks – but is his chance of staying in Downing Street now cut to pieces?

Brown's been accused before of being a "bully" and intimidating his staff. Calling a retiree a "bigoted woman" will only reinforce the doubts, and cast a shadow on his character. Pity, because those who know him say he is a decent man.

VIDEO: Caught on tape, British PM calls voter 'bigoted'

But in any closely-fought contest, everyone is on the lookout for that one big mistake.

In some cases it can be huge. A love child by a campaign videographer is certainly one to avoid.

And gaffes are not as rare as one might think. One of Brown's predecessors, former Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock ruined his own chances in the 1992 election by appearing at a party rally and seemingly turning it into a premature victory parade – before the votes had been cast. He lost.

And in 1979, Margaret Thatcher had to send an urgent handwritten apology by official car to a voter who'd been upset by an ill-judged letter written on her behalf that insulted her and hundreds of thousands living in public housing like her. The letter went on to figure prominently in Thatcher's opponents' campaign literature and cut her majority in Parliament (I remember it well as I broke the story).

But Mrs. T herself went on to an historic victory, becoming Britain's first female prime minister.

Mr. Brown, I suspect, will not be so fortunate.

By Ian Johnston, msnbc.com
LONDON - It's a politician's greatest fear: making the game-changing gaffe that can lose an election. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown may have done just that.

With his ruling Labour Party trailing in third place in the polls ahead of the May 6 election, Brown was caught on tape describing a grandmother as "bigoted" Wednesday after she confronted him on the economy and immigration during an election campaign walkabout in Rochdale, northern England.

Thinking he was safe in the privacy of his car, Brown complained to aides that the 65-year-old woman had been allowed to speak to him. Unfortunately for embattled premier, he was still wearing a television microphone.

"That was a disaster," Brown said. "[They] should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? … It's ridiculous."

Asked by an aide what the voter had said, he responded: "Everything, she's just sort of a bigoted woman."

Watch video of Gordon Brown's remarks; and check out our playlist of other famous gaffes

On discovering his remarks had been broadcast to the nation, Brown issued a swift reaction. "I do apologize if I've said anything that has been hurtful."

"I was dealing with a question that she raised about immigration and I wasn't given a chance to answer it," he complained.

Timing could hardly be worse
With the final of three televised leadership debates to be held Thursday night, the timing could hardly have been worse.

Brown, with an almost palpable sense of desperation, telephoned the woman in question. He told Gillian Duffy, who has previously voted Labour, that he was very sorry and, this time, described her as a "good woman."

But the damage was done.

"He is an educated person. Why is he using words like that?" Duffy said. "He is going to lead this country and he's calling an ordinary woman who has just come up and asked him questions that most people would ask him ... a bigot."

A "very upset" Duffy added that Brown's comments had cost him her vote.

Brown and his campaign chiefs must now fear that voters will, en masse, follow suit.

TEL AVIV – Psychological warfare is shaping up to be a vital component of Hamas fight against Israel.

In an effort to increase pressure on Israel to agree to a prisoner swap in return for the freedom of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who has been held by Hamas since his capture in 2006, the militant group released an animated video on Sunday.

The video depicts the aging of Noam Shalit, Gilad's father, as Israeli politicians continue to promise his son's return.

VIDEO: Hamas video shows family of captured soldier

In the three-minute video, Noam Shalit is shown mournfully holding a framed picture of his son as he walks down a deserted street lined with political billboards. One billboard shows an image of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with a caption saying, "I promise to find out the fate of Gilad Shalit."

Noam keeps walking while a soundtrack plays with his son's voice saying, "To my father, mother I send you from prison my warmest regards. I miss you all." He then passes by another poster showing a picture of the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a caption saying, "I promise to release Gilad Shalit."

He then stops and finds a newspaper in a trash can with a picture of his son on the front page along with another captured soldier, Ron Arad, who is widely believed to have died in captivity. The newspaper advertises a cash money reward for any information about the two missing soldiers.  At this point Noam's figure transforms into an old man walking with a cane.

Finally the father sits down at a bus stop, a van stops near him and begins unloading a coffin wrapped in an Israeli flag. He stands up and a chilling scream is heard. The video ends with Noam waking from this nightmare and a Hebrew caption saying, "There is still hope."

The goal of the video is clear – to mobilize the Israeli public to put pressure on their political leaders to make a prisoner swap deal with Hamas to ensure Gilad Shalit's release.

But, predictably, the video has received harsh criticism from Israelis – especially Noam Shalit.

"It's best if Hamas leaders would focus less on videos and presentations and would be more concerned about the interests of their prisoners and the public in Gaza," Noam Shalit told the popular Israeli Internet site Ynet.com.

Shimshon Liebman, the leader the campaign to free Gilad Shalit, criticized the video and said Hamas should, "Stop playing with people, be brave enough to do the right thing and you'll get hundreds of prisoners back."

Likewise, the Israeli government dismissed the video as offensive. "For months Hamas has refused to respond to the humanitarian proposals of the German mediator. With the release of this disgraceful video, designed to play on the pain of the Shalit family, Hamas is demonstrating before the entire world its terrorist and hateful character," said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

HAVANA -- Members of Cuba's 'Ladies in White,' a group primarily made up of wives, mothers and daughters of imprisoned dissidents, were shouted down and shoved by a group of government supporters after leaving mass in Havana Sunday. This was the third week in a row that their weekly march was blocked.

Watch the video link to see the sights and sounds from the confrontation.

VIDEO: Cuba's 'Ladies in White' march blocked again

The demonstrators protesting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may be dressed in purple, but they're seeing red. NBC News' Natascha Sachs reports from Rome.

VIDEO: Purple power movement challenges Berlusconi

COMBAT OUTPOST SPERA, Afghanistan -- Nestled about 7,000 feet high in the shoulder of the rugged peaks of Khost province along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, this tiny fortress of canvas tents and plywood buildings is a lone U.S. presence in Taliban territory. It's about half the size of a football field, lined with battlements of mud brick, stone and sandbags.

It's been on this site since soon after U.S. forces arrived in Afghanistan in 2001. With its commanding views of a dry riverbed and dirt road leading into Pakistan, the position disrupts what had been a key Taliban infiltration and supply route, according to military officials. The insurgents operating in the area are believed to be the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network.

Platoons of about two dozen men spend 10-week rotations here, patrolling the area by foot, engaging area villagers and training the Afghan National Army, which, if all goes to plan, will be doing the job themselves next year. The troops are from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne -- the fabled "Rakkasans" -- based at Fort Campbell, Ky.

Two or three times a week, Taliban fighters send rockets into the compound or attack with small arms, usually with little result. Since the beginning of the year, COP Spera has suffered just one casualty: a solider wounded by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade. He's expected to return to duty soon.

The soldiers can't pursue attackers into Pakistan -- though the border is unmarked and hard to define.

A different world
One of the biggest battles here came on March 29. A patrol was getting ready to head out at 3:30 a.m. But suspicions of an imminent attack -- there was an unusual amount of insurgent radio chatter -- prompted commanders to postpone the patrol. Within 20 minutes, the outpost was under attack from three sides with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. For two hours, U.S. troops fought back with rifles, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers until the insurgents faded away at dawn.

Access here is only by helicopter. The flight from Forward Operating Base Salerno, one of the biggest U.S. facilities in eastern Afghanistan, takes only 20 minutes -- but carries you into a different world.

At Salerno, the air-conditioned dining facility serves three meals a day (the lunch options the day we were there included hamburgers, cheeseburgers, Philly cheese steaks and chicken wings) beneath flat-screen TVs (troops were watching the NHL playoff game between the Washington Capitals and the Montreal Canadiens).

At Spera, a cook prepares two meals a day -- sometimes only one a day -- in wood-fired cookers. (Pausing by the wood pile, visiting Command Sgt. Maj. Michael T. Hall, the top enlisted man on commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal's staff, jokingly asked me: "Is this 1910 or 2010?") Power comes from a generator. Water is hauled up from a well below, making showers scarce. Urination tubes run through the fortified walls to the mountain slope. Human waste is burned daily.

'We're in the right place'
Nevertheless, the soldiers here told me there's no place they'd rather be. Not only are they "far from the flag" -- removed from lots of officers -- but they feel they're doing what they were trained to do and are making a real difference, hindering the Taliban.

As one told me: "The fact that they're attacking us so often means we're in the right place."

 
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The anti-government Red Shirts now occupy a huge swath of this city's luxury shopping and hotel district.

Five-star hotels have been emptied of guests. Empty malls, usually packed with the city's middle class, now sit in ghostly silence, most doors boarded or locked, the roads beside them a sea of red.

The NBC bureau is in a building within this "red zone," and to walk outside is to enter something resembling a country fair. Traditional northern Thai music, the upbeat rhythms of Isaan, blares from a large stage, relayed through a series of speakers and video screens around the zone.

The faces of the protesters in the heart of the zone are mostly those of craggy, middle-aged farmers, as they line up for pungent Isaan food. The road in front of our building is usually one of the most congested in the city. Now it's lined with tents and stalls, selling everything from food and drink to cellphone chargers, clothes and souvenirs, even flip-flop shoes with pictures of their nemesis, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Other stalls offer massage: tough, elderly ladies pounding the legs of weary protesters.

Watch Ian's video from the streets of Bangkok.

"The government is unfair. It's unfair. There are double standards," one man told me, a popular refrain among the protesters, who are demanding the immediate resignation of the government and new elections.

 There've been in Bangkok for six weeks now and have vowed to stay put until that happens.
The access roads have been barricaded with trucks, tires and sharpened bamboo sticks, manned by black-clad "security men." The biggest barricade faces a junction at the mouth of Silom Road, Bangkok's financial and entertainment district, home of Thailand's biggest banks, as well as the notorious Patpong bar area.

In spite of Thursday's deadly explosions in this area, that killed one person and injured scores more, Western tourists were out today, snapping photographs of riot police and Red Shirts. Heavily armed soldiers are camped in a walkway above the street, their sights trained on the Red Shirt camp across the junction.

Security talks
The government says five explosions were caused by grenades fired by "terrorists" inside the red zone. The Red Shirts deny that, blaming provocateurs, possibly within the army.

Today, the prime minister was engaged in a series of security meetings. The army has warned it will use lethal force to clear the red shirts from the center of the city, but there appeared to be little sign today of an imminent crackdown, and the anti-government protesters -- well entrenched and well organized -- have managed to stay a step ahead of the government.

Thai security forces on the streets of Bangkok. Photo by Ian Williams, NBC News

The government is encouraging a pro-government "no color movement," which held a big rally across town this evening to demand the end of the protest. There have already been clashes between the rival groups, with a real danger of further mob violence.

Thailand has always been the master of fudge, with an uncanny ability to muddle through. This time it's harder to see an easy way out.

Slideshow: More images from unrest in Thailand

HAVANA, Cuba -- Ten years ago today, the streets of Miami's Little Havana erupted in riots while Cubans toasted with rum just 90 miles away.

The spark for these contrasting reactions was a raid in the pre-dawn hours, when more than 100 armed federal agents stormed a small house in Miami and seized 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez from relatives who were refusing to send the boy back to Cuba to live with his father.

At the time, Elian had been making daily headlines around the world for over five months after two Florida fishermen found the small child floating alone in the ocean. He and his mother had been passengers on a makeshift boat that capsized a day after illegally leaving the Cuban coast for Florida.

From the moment the US Coast Guard released photographs of a shell-shocked Elian being air-lifted on a stretcher, he became an enormous political symbol that overshadowed his personal tragedy of having watched his mother drown at sea.

The boy was placed with relatives in Miami who stood firmly with South Florida's powerful and vocal Cuban exile community, which fought to honor the mother's memory by keeping Elian in the United States.

AP

Top: Elian Gonzalez is held in a closet by Donato Dalrymple, one of the two men who rescued the Cuban boy from the ocean, as government officials search the home of Lazaro Gonzalez for the boy in Miami on April 22, 2000. Bottom: Elian Gonzalez holds a Cuban flag during the Union of Young Communists congress in Havana Sunday April 4, 2010. (/Alan Diaz / AP File, Ismael Francisco / Prensa Latina via AP)

Back home, his father charged that the mother had essentially kidnapped Elian by violating their joint-custody agreement. As the father pleaded that his son be returned to his care, Cuban leader Fidel Castro mobilized a nation in that custody fight.

In Miami, Elian became an overnight celebrity. Dozens of TV satellite trucks and scores of reporters camped out in front of his house. The grieving child was showered with toys and adoration. Politicians had their picture taken with him as he was draped in the American flag. He even got a special tour of Disney World.

In Cuba, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in front of the American Mission every week, shouting for his return. Cuban TV aired every piece of footage gathered by news networks around the world. Political billboards with the child's face went up around the island and millions of people here wore "Free Elian" t-shirts.

With this political circus as a backdrop, lawyers for both sides of the family argued the custody case in various U.S. courts – even petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court. After the courts ruled on the side of the father, the Miami family defiantly refused to turn the boy over to his father, Juan Miguel González, who had traveled to the United States to re-claim his son.

Timeline: Key dates in the case

That's when then-Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the now-famous raid, and within hours Elian was reunited with his father. A short time later, father and son returned to Cuba, where they were given a hero's welcome.

Even today, Castro opponents in Miami continue to worry about Elian's future. When the boy first returned home, there was a lot of talk that Fidel Castro would not be able to resist making the boy his political puppet. It's a topic that's still discussed on all of Miami's Spanish-language TV and radio stations.

In the beginning, Juan Miguel did drag Elian to political rallies. Once, Fidel Castro even gave the father a medal and the son a birthday party where he helped the boy blow out his candles.

But after those early public celebrations, Juan Miguel fought hard to return his family to normal life and keep his son out of the limelight.

The González family still lives in their small home town of Cardenas, some 120 miles east of Havana. It is a humble fishing town where residents travel in horse-drawn carts and many houses stand in need of a good coat of paint.

Elian has attended his neighborhood schools and today the high school student is in a military boarding school, like thousands of other kids on the island. He sits on his student council and his father says he studies hard.

Elian may follow his grandfather's footsteps and become a policeman, but a few years back, his father said he toyed with the idea of becoming an actor or even an astronaut.

Whatever happens, it's likely the world will be watching.

LONDON – British general elections haven't been the stuff of high drama lately. Following domination by Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives and then Tony Blair's Labour, the prize -- the "key to Number 10 Downing Street" (more about that later) -- pretty much only excites the wonks around Westminster.

Britons have seen it all before. There's a widespread, rather world-weary view that all politicians are the same. One in three voters don't even bother to turn out on the day.

BEIJING - Forty years ago, a decade before China set on its path of economic reform and development, the three material necessities required before couples married were the bicycle, a sewing machine, and a wristwatch – symbolizing the family's wealth and status.
 
Ten years later, the three items became a black and white television, a refrigerator, and a motorcycle.
 
Another decade later, in the 1990s, those items were replaced by a color TV set, an air conditioner, and a cell phone.
 
This century, what was once known as the "san da jian" (in Mandarin, literally meaning the "three big things" a couple needed before they married) has become, well, just a long list of consumer goods – computers, wide-screen LCD televisions, camcorders, washing machines, cars, homes.
 
"When we decorated our home, we bought all the appliances at the time – air con [for] each room, a washing machine, a TV," said Tina Wang, a 32-year-old Beijing native who showed us her two-bedroom flat near the capital's Fifth Ring Road.
 
With all these new appliances plus a car, the Wang household exemplifies China's growing middle-class wealth – and its growing energy consumption, all a function of the country's accelerated industrialization and urbanization in the past three decades. 
 
This, of course, comes at a cost.

Surge in greenhouse gas emissions 
China's total greenhouse gas emissions have surged in the same time period.  From 1970 to 2007, the total amount grew over seven times, according to China and to report commissioned by the United Nations and a Beijing university, "Sustainable Future, Towards a Low Carbon Economy and Society." 

In 2007, China overtook the United States as the world's highest CO2 emitter – although crucially its per capita emissions remain far below that of developed countries. Moreover, just as with China's economic growth, most of its energy consumption still comes from heavy industry, not from the transportation or residential sectors.
 
"Maybe sixty, seventy percent of Chinese energy consumption is still in the industrial sector," said Deborah Seligsohn, principal adviser of the China Climate, Energy & Pollution Program at the World Resources Institute. "If you look at the amount of energy that Chinese households use per square meter of housing space, it's much lower than in the West."
 
But that's all bound to change as economists and social scientists expect nearly 400 million Chinese to migrate from the countryside into cities over the next 20 years, more than the entire population of the United States. No doubt all these folks will want to be able to buy air conditioners, computers, and cars, too, just like the Wangs.
 
For the time being, though, industrial energy efficiency remains a key focus for the Chinese government. That -- and energy security.
 
"China has an energy problem more severe than the rest of the world," said Li Junfeng, the deputy director general of the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission – also known as the NDRC, the Chinese government's main economic policymaking body. "The cost of energy was far lower when most developed countries industrialized in the 1970s. Now we face fewer energy sources and higher prices."
 
Having enough power to fuel its modernization, then, remains of paramount concern to officials in Beijing. "If you recall way back to when there was the Sino-Soviet split, the big thing for the Chinese was they lost their access to Soviet oil so trying to use domestic sources is very, very important to the Chinese and has been for many, many decades," Seligsohn said.
 
The Communist Party communicated this sense of urgency as early as 2005, when its Central Committee approved the 11th Five-Year Plan, which introduced energy-consumption related goals. More recently, officials have begun to focus on climate change as well.
 
The country, which relies mostly on coal right now for its power, has set ambitious targets for 2020, when it wants to generate at least 15 percent of its energy from alternative sources like wind, solar, nuclear, and water. 
 
In fact, China outspent the U.S. by almost twice the amount on clean energy investments last year. In 2009, the former sunk $34.6 billion in low-carbon energy development industries – compared to the $18.6 billion spent by the U.S.  
 
For more on how China's attempts to race ahead with the development of renewable energies – and the challenges that might keep it from winning, watch Adrienne Mong's report as part of "Beyond the Barrel: The Race to Fuel the Future" on CNBC Thursday night at 8pm Eastern.   

In the meantime, watch this clip to see the ambitions of one "green" visionary take shape in Dezhou, aka Solar City.

 

BEIJING -- Call me a Luddite, but sometimes I feel like destroying a piece of machinery.

We left Krakow, Poland, on Monday afternoon.

At the end of an eight-day assignment covering the death of Poland's president and many of its elite in a plane crash, the eruption of a volcano in Iceland resulted in what looked like an epic voyage home to England. Instead of a 150-minute flight, we embarked on a journey that was set to take us through five countries: Poland, Germany, Holland, Belgium and France.

 KABUL – The volcanic ash cloud that's disrupting air travel over northern Europe has forced a route change for medical evacuations from Afghanistan.

Normally, the first stop for injured troops from Afghanistan is Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where they are treated and rest for a couple of days before heading on to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Since flights over Europe were disrupted last week, three C-17s have flown 37 wounded warriors to the States and a fourth was in the air as of midday Tuesday, Afghanistan time, according to Roger Drinnon, a civilian spokesman for the Air Mobility Command, which operates medevac flights.

The flights re-fueled at either Naval Station Rota or Moron Air Base, both in southern Spain, which have become the destination for military flights carrying troops and supplies that would normally fly though Ramstein or Spangdahlem Air Bases in Germany. Flights at Moron have increased 10-fold; at Rota, traffic has doubled to about two dozen a day. Flying through Spain rather than Germany adds about eight hours to a flight between Afghanistan and the United States, according to Air Force officials.

After the volcano eruption but before flight restrictions, the military moved personnel to support flights from Ramstein to Moron and medical evacuation personnel, including a critical care physician, nurse and respiratory therapist, to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, to be within striking distance of Afghanistan.

More ripple effects
There have been other ripple effects. Troops heading home have been on hold waiting for flights to resume.

Video: NBC's John Yang interviews one military man whose trip home was delayed.

Today, some headed from Kabul to the U.S. military transit center at Manas, Kyrgyzstan, to wait for flights to the States. Also, some U.S. troops home on leave have been delayed returning to Afghanistan. Throughout Europe, about 900 Americans assigned to U.S. Air Force bases -- about 3 percent of the population -- were trying to back to their home stations.

In addition, the ash cloud coincides with the end of spring break at U.S military base schools across Europe. Hundreds of students and about 850 teachers and staff were missing when classes resumed Monday. A system spokesman said the schools had added a new category of absence for students: "Due to volcano."

Mail dropped at military post offices throughout Europe passes through Frankfurt Airport and so is likely to be delayed. Base commissaries in Europe have turned to local producers for items that are usually delivered by airlift, including bagged salad and lunch meat. Commissary officials say outlets in Egypt and Turkey could run short of frozen meat and dairy products if a weekly supply flight from Europe doesn't arrive this week.

Egypt's Ministry of Tourism is determined to keep the good times rolling for stranded visitors.  Although hotels are overbooked by 7 percent in the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada and well over 80 percent in Sharm El Sheikh, hotel owners have been ordered not to expel guests who have overstayed their reservations. 

Tour companies must continue to foot the bill for tour groups who overstay and if lodgers are traveling solo, hotels are obliged to offer them low rates. If travelers are in financial trouble, they have been advised to contact their embassies.

Stranded Europeans are taking full advantage.

"The travel agent, they pay all for us, room, food, drinks, everything," said Ulf Daahlbom of Gothenburg Sweden.  He took a five hour taxi ride from Hurghada to take in the sites in Cairo.  "It was beautiful here.  I have been at the Pyramids and the Egyptian museum." 

Two engineers from Ireland and Scotland couldn't conceal their smiles as they sat in the shade of a tree after a day in 100 degree heat at the Pyramids and Egyptian Museum.  They had been on their way back home from work in the Suez Canal zone when they were obliged to take an all-expense paid vacation. 

Charlotte Krum, a stewardess for Scandinavian Air, has nothing to go back for since her airline has been grounded.  She and her husband and four children were on a Red Sea get-away when spewing volcanic ash extended their stay.  "It's nice for us to have the opportunity to show them [the children] all the sites in Cairo," she said. "We just came from the Pyramids and now we go to the museum.  We are trying to make the best out of it."

Krum and her family came to Cairo to try and get a flight to Greece, but seemed in no hurry. Traveler's insurance covered the first four days of their stay.  "Everything has been working out quite well.  We have some nice rooms here."

Egypt jealously protects its biggest money earner: tourism.  About 12 million tourists, at least 65 percent of them from Europe, bring in about 11 billion dollars a year and 12.6 percent of the workforce lives off of tourism.  All guests are welcome, even those who overstay. 

While many hotels over overbooked, EgyptAir and other regional carriers sit idle on the tarmac.  They are suffering to the tune of 250 million dollars a day.  Before noon on Monday, more than 16 planes were grounded on Cairo's tarmacs.

But in Egypt's airports, you won't find hapless visitors trying to catch some sleep on makeshift bedrolls, or slumped in plastic chairs. Tour guides are under strict orders not to drop anyone off at the airport until they have confirmed their flights.

By Paul Nassar, NBC News Producer
MARSEILLES, France -- It's been a case of plane, trains and automobiles... minus the planes, of course.

Stephanie Gosk and I began our day in the wee hours of the morning at the St Pancras International Eurostar terminal.

We had no reservations, no tickets. Just a determination to get to Madrid, one of the few European airport hubs still functioning.

I was expecting St Pancras to be the very image of chaos. Surprisingly, it was calm; nothing betrayed the transportation nightmare that has gripped Northern Europe since last Thursday. Nothing, that is, until I noticed a man walking around with a small board, advertising, "I will drive you to Paris or anywhere in Europe. Just ask."

Rachid is a French taxi driver who had driven four people to London on Sunday and made a hefty little profit in the process. He was hoping to replicate that success on the return drive. Charging 500 euros, this Parisian cab driver had turned his work into an international business, overnight. It wasn't long before I saw Rachid shepherd four grateful travelers into his cab, its "Taxi Parisien" sign at odds with its British setting.

VIDEO: For Europe travelers, it's man vs. nature

Stephanie and I then joined what was going to be the first of many many lines. We eventually got to the counter and asked if there was any chance we could grab the next train out. I half expected the guy to burst out laughing; instead he said he could not get us out before 5 p.m. that evening.

Then, out of the blue, he shot up in his seat. Two passengers just cancelled their seats on the next train. An hour later, Stephanie and I were on our way, having overcome the first and biggest hurdle, getting off the British Isles via the Chunnel and onto the European mainland.

Lines and lines in Paris
That success, however, was short lived. No sooner did we get to Paris' Gare du Nord than it became quite apparent that our onward trip would not be as smooth sailing. Our aim was to get to Marseilles from where we could board that rarest of transportation modes, an aeroplane, and fly to Madrid in an ash-free sky. No such luck. All trains to France's major port city were fully booked.

Stephanie and I looked at other options. Hiring a car was impossible, all rentals were taken. What about a cab, I thought? Too expensive. The buses have been fully booked for days. So Stephanie and I did what came natural to us -- we stood in line again in an effort to appeal to a human being and not some automated phone line or website that got us nowhere.

This was no ordinary line in Paris. It snaked its way back and forth several times. We spoke to fellow travelers and tried to glean information -- anything that could facilitate our trip to Madrid. This was no normal line though. It was epic -- think Soviet-era breadline.(Brezhnev would have been proud). It took an hour before we came face to face with Franck, one of the railway's sales reps.

"No. No trains to Marseilles today. All fully booked, but I will check again for you," he said.
Not two seconds later he looks up and smiled. "I have two cancellations on the 5 o'clock train. First class only."

So we are on our way. It will be too late to make it to Madrid tonight, but we are considerably closer than we were this morning. And to think, all this hassle because of a small volcano, with an unpronounceable name, more than 1000 miles away.

See spectacular images of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano

 TEL AVIV – Today marks the beginning of Remembrance Day here in Israel, a day that is followed by the Independence celebrations marking 62 years since Israel's establishment in 1948.

National Remembrance Day ceremonies are taking place all across Israel, but there is one alternative ceremony that took place in Tel Aviv that aims to see things in a different light.

Mano Loeb grew on a kibbutz where he was taught the importance of contributing to the country.  He was drafted in 1985 and ended up serving in Nablus during the first Intifada. This encounter with the occupation caused Loab to refuse to serve on moral grounds.

Today Loeb is helping bring Palestinians and Israelis together on a day that is seen by most Israelis as a sacred day that cannot be shared. "We believe the traditional way of remembering the dead contributes to the continuation of the violence and for the justification for violence on the Israeli side. We want to show that the pain and grievance is universal and belongs to both Israelis and Palestinians."

Having Palestinian speakers talk about their losses is unheard in the traditional ceremonies across Israel. Usually the ceremonies include reading out of the dead soldiers' names, listening to their personal heroic acts and performances by Israeli singers singing sad songs.

Here at the alternative ceremony run by 'Combatants for Peace' the Palestinian side is heard loud and clear. This organization was established in 2005 and brings both sides of the conflict together. From the Israeli side you can find people who served in the military and on the Palestinian side there are people who took part in the violent struggle against the Israeli Army.  Loab told me that both side found out it was time to break the cycle of violence and bloodshed.

Seeking 'true balance'
Loab noted: "Remembrance Day here is very one sided, it portraits Israelis as the side that sacrificed its most beloved in order for us to have a country and have a good life. Here we show both sides, also the Palestinian side in a human way with a true balance."

Wael Salamah is from the West Bank town of Anata, he belonged to the Fatah resistant movement and took part in violent acts against Israel. Salamah is here tonight with a message of peace and hope: "We need to learn from the past for a better future, time is running out and we can't afford more and more victims from both sides."

Parts of the alternative ceremony were translated to Arabic, performances were sung both in Hebrew and Arabic and personal stories were read out by both sides. Loab told me that he is hopeful, that when they started these alternative ceremonies Five years ago only 200 people showed up, tonight 1,000 people are already crowded in the small theater.

The peace process will not be a big cause for celebrations tonight during the Israeli Independence celebrations.  Peace here in the Middle East looks further away than ever, Israeli and Palestinian leaders are not talking to each other and there is still no understanding on how to restart the indirect talks that has been sought by the U.S. administration.

After nearly being counted out, today was the start of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's comeback.

Elections in March gave Maliki's main rival, the secular, Sunni-backed candidate Ayad Allawi, the smallest of victories.  Since the elections, Allawi has been trying to form a government and fight off attempts to revise the vote count, a challenge led by Prime Minister Maliki.

By Petra Cahill, msnbc.com

ROME -- The flower-strewn Spanish Steps have become the impromptu gathering place for stranded tourists in Rome.

Along with tens of thousands of travelers across world, visitors to the Italian capital have been grounded by the volcanic ash from Iceland, and most have no idea when they will get home.

"I'm freaking out," said Jennipher Koch, a mother of three from Portland, Ore. She had joined her husband, Aaron, for a week-long business trip in Rome. But with her return flight through London canceled, she now doesn't know when she will get home.

"They told us pretty much that if we are going through London at all, they can't help us. And we've got to wait for almost a week to get out of here," Jennipher said. 
 
The Koch's three children -- ages 8, 7, and 2 -- are staying with their grandparents, but she was worried about being away for so long. "Of course, they are in a safe, great place, but ... you just wanna be with your kids."

She has had a wonderful time in Rome since arriving last Monday, but now she is ready to go home. "I had an awesome time until I found out I couldn't get out. I like it, but I wanna leave! Until you realize you're trapped, it's not so fun."

Jennipher and Aaron Koch discuss their travel woes on Rome's Spanish Steps. Photo by Christina Cahill for msnbc.com

Planes, trains, automobiles - still no luck
A London family was in similar straits. Helena Wray and Jem Fitzgibbon had set off for a five-day vacation last Wednesday with their two children, Isabel, 17, and Louis, 14, who were on a break from school. Now they are stuck here until next Sunday.

"We came on Wednesday and were meant to go back today (Sunday), but as soon as Thursday morning, we started getting texts saying 'How are you going to get back?'" explained Wray. "We thought about hiring a car and driving all the way up, but Italian [rental companies] won't let you take them out of Italy," said Fitzgibbon.

"We tried to get a train to the border and hire a car in France to drive toward the ferries to England, and we couldn't do that," Wray added. "Then we looked at coaches (buses). … They offered us the 28th of April."

They spent almost an entire day on the Internet and the phone checking the news, flights and various other travel alternatives. Since their flight wasn't officially canceled until Sunday morning, they couldn't book anything else until then and now find themselves stranded.

After "dithering" over booking an alternate return flight for next Saturday -- thinking they could surely do better -- and then seeing the available seats vanish, they finally booked seats for next Sunday.

As frequent travelers, they said they have travel insurance, but given that the volcanic explosion is considered an "act of god" by the airlines and insurance companies, they don't expect to get reimbursed for their costs. Fitzgibbon said he had heard stories from friends who were stuck in the south of Spain and who have already spent 2,500 British pounds (about $3,800) to get to Paris, never mind London.

"OK fine, we'll just have to enjoy it," said Wray. "But it is a lot of money that adds up." They had rented an apartment for their original trip and had managed to extend their rental, but it was still going to add significantly to their overall costs.

When in Rome ..... Americans, from left to right, Krista Carlson, Mary Messina and Marilyn Limentato at the Spanish Steps.
Christina Cahill for msnbc.com

The general sentiment among many travelers was that they could be in worse places.

Marilyn Limentato, 36, flew out of Chicago on Saturday with her cousin Mary Messina, 40, and a friend, Krista Carlson, 31. They knew about the volcano disrupting travel in northern Europe but since they made their plans back in January and they were coming to celebrate Messina's 40th birthday, they decided to travel anyway.

Taking in the scene from the Spanish Steps late on Sunday afternoon, Limentato was philosophical. "We're going to enjoy it for now," she said, "until we have to worry."

Msnbc.com's Petra Cahill is also stuck in Rome. She was on board an American Airlines flight for New York on Sunday when the pilot announced over the loudspeaker that "Spain has closed its airspace. This flight is now cancelled." The airline said she may be able to return on Friday.

Are you also stuck? If so, tell us how you are staying sane.

 

 HVOLSVOLLUR, ICELAND – For almost 24 hours after the cloud cover had lifted, I'd been watching with awe as the volcanic plume over Eyjafjallajokull grew. 

It was especially dramatic at night with bright white lightning strikes and bursts of energy glowing orange and red against the backdrop of that now enormous gray-black plume.

 But nothing prepared me for what it would be like to fly over the open mouth of the crater and watch a non-stop display of massive, heart-stopping eruptions.

As the helicopter ascended to 5,000, then 6,000 feet - hovering right against the side of these eruptions - the view was unlike anything I could ever have imagined.

The billowing mounds that appear largely benign from the ground; that seem to move only in shifting winds, were instead dramatically alive.  There were so many different kinds of eruptions – ferocious, riveting explosions – it was like watching multiple displays of Fourth of July fireworks at once, and at eye level. And they were so tantalizingly – and terrifyingly – close, I felt I could almost reach out and touch them.

The door of the helicopter was wide open with the legs of my phenomenal videographer, Carlos, hanging out the side.  And me, simultaneously mesmerized by the awesome display and protectively grasping the strap of his camera from the back. 

This is one time when I don't think if I sat at my computer for days the words would come to describe what many of you may have already seen on Nightly News or TODAY.

But suffice it to say that what a lens can't begin to adequately capture is the sheer size and unbelievable force of that volcanic ice mixing with superheated magma: a mountain belching out tons of molten rock is a mind-blowing spectacle.

VIDEO: Hovering over Hell

Soon, we were circling around the mouth of the volcano, only occasionally catching a glimpse down into the crater as yet another blast would momentarily light the opening in the Earth. From every angle and every changing direction, the scene dazzled. Unlike those Independence Day celebrations, there were no breaks in the action, and no SOUND to be heard over the roaring of the helicopter blades and what I felt, but surely couldn't actually hear:  the pounding of my heart.

Eight miles and a swift ride away we descended more closely above the blindingly sunlit Katla. Eyafjalla is the fifth largest volcano of the 35 in Iceland, Katla the biggest.  Geologically, there is no link between the two, though physically they are close enough that the visual contrast between the glistening glacier blanketing Katla and the exploding glacier that had capped Eyafjalla was enough to leave even our University of Cambridge volcanologist temporarily speechless. I knew from earlier interviews that small earthquakes were rumbling beneath Eyafjalla, shifting the flow of magma and opening new pathways for its movements. It is entirely possible – some experts believe even likely  - that one of those seismic shifts will travel across the eight miles and spark Katla to blow. She's about 40 years overdue, and if Katla goes, my new volcanologist friend finally told me, the force could be ONE HUNDRED TIMES what we're seeing now. Given what I had just witnessed, I cannot begin to fathom the enormity of that kind of brilliant, destructive power. 

After an hour in the air, astounded, shaken, and convinced that I would never see a display of Mother Nature quite like what I had just witnessed, we drove around the mountain through police roadblocks, cautiously aware of warnings about the unpredictable danger on the other side, and entered what I described in my story as hell. The wind had changed direction overnight, and the ever-growing cloud of ash was now blanketing farms along the southern edge of the volcano. At first, it looked like driving into a tornado. There were even small funnels of volcanic grit moving across open fields, like mini-twisters.  But again, the landscape would change in an instant and we went from daylight to darkness and back again in the course of 30 seconds. Our SUV was soon coated in fine ash and within moments of stepping out onto the desolate road, so were we.  I only had my mask off for a few minutes, but my throat and eyes were burning as I breathed in the miniscule shards of ice and rock blown apart by volcanic energy. A few cars, then trucks hauling horse trailers, rushed by - escaping the dark, enveloping cloud. I felt conflicted: wanting to escape myself from something so frightening and erratic, and yet completely captivated by those same forces. Wind gusts blew the camera over and nearly knocked me off my feet. A pair of birds, coated in ash, struggled with limited success to take flight. Then the clock made my stay-or-flee decision for me: we had to get back, write and edit, and set up for a liveshot. 

After being calmed and cleansed by a hot shower and the brief quiet of my hotel room, we were back in the filthy car driving up a gravel road to a house in the shadow of Eyjafjalla. The cattle farm needed no adornment to look like a movie set: a corrugated metal barn door, a bale of hay, and a trailer hitch aglow in sea of television lights. It's all so surreal I wonder for a fleeting moment if I really did see and experience so much in one day – or was it a creation for the cameras? In reality, no studio budget, however large, could concoct what unfolded before me or make me feel what it did.  I've been awed and alarmed by Mother Nature before – covering fires, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes  - but never, ever, quite like this.

 Finally, after weeks of international drama and some high-stakes diplomacy between nuclear-armed neighbors, all eyes were fixed … on the bride.

She was spectacular in a gold silk wedding gown, embellished with ornate red embroidery and more than $35,000 worth of Swarovski crystals. Her raven hair was covered by an 18-foot red veil enriched with gold needlework. The jewels – pearls and diamonds as well as lots of gold in rich adornments -- dazzled. Even the large golden nose ring she wore to signify the innocence of the bride, according to Muslim tradition, added high glamour to the entire ensemble.

The reason for the international tension and anticipation? The bride was Sania Mirza, 23, India's top tennis champion while the groom was Pakistani cricket star Shoaib Malik. The week of marriage celebrations culminated in a lavish reception at a posh hotel in Hyderabad, India, on Thursday night.

Vibrant colors, sumptuous foods
Such is the way at South Asian weddings, where less is not more and the festivities -- heady feasts of vibrant colors and sumptuous foods -- go on for at least a week. The marriage of Mirza and Malik, both Muslim and two of South Asia's most celebrated sports royalty, didn't disappoint.

Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik at their lavish wedding feast.

More than 1,200 guests, including Bollywood stars, sports personalities, artists and politicians, feasted on dozens of ethnic, traditional and European specialties, including 12 different kinds of desserts.

Not that the press was there to report on it -- Mirza's parents barred coverage of the event after sensational headlines over the couple's engagement set off a media frenzy that dominated the news in Pakistan and India for almost two weeks.

Sonia Gandhi, India's best-known politician and leader of the ruling Congress Party, congratulated the couple and wished them a lifetime of prosperity. "May all your dreams come true," she wrote.

Days of tradition
On Monday, at the official signing of a marriage document, called the nikah, Mirza wore the red sari that her mother wore 25 years ago for own nikah. Then on Tuesday, there was the mehendi, when the bride and 400 women, all family friends, had their hands, arms and feet painted in intricate patterns with henna, a vegetable dye, a centuries-old ritual, in preparation for the big reception.

A day later, it was the sangeet, an evening of traditional music and dance.

Srinivasan Kannan, the sports editor of the Indian Mail Today newspaper and a personal friend of Mirza, said the couple never took their eyes off one another. "They are besotted," he said. "They kept glancing at each other and you could see the love in their eyes. It was all so romantic."

Days of controversy
It may have been a picture of romantic harmony, but the days leading up to the wedding were steeped in controversy that threatened to derail the fragile diplomatic relations between Pakistan and India.

Another Indian woman, Ayesha Siddiqui, went to the police, claiming that Malik had married her in 2002 on the telephone after she sent him her picture -- and that therefore he could not marry Mirza. The Indians seized Malik's passport and opened a criminal investigation against him. Malik claimed he had been duped, that the girl in the photographs he had received was not the same girl he thought he was marrying. As emotions boiled over, South Asians were riveted.

Finally, Muslim clerics worked out a compromise. Malik sent the woman divorce papers so the marriage to Mirza could go ahead.

Government gifts
After the quickie divorce brought calm, officials from both countries embraced the union. Firdous Awan, Pakistan's federal minister for Population and Welfare, attended the events and presented a gold crown to Mirza on behalf of the people of Sialkot, Malik's home town. She also brought gifts from government of Pakistan.

"I am confident this marriage will better the peace process between our two countries," she said. "Pakistanis will welcome Sania as one of their own."

The celebrity couple now head for Pakistan where another round of marriage celebrations will begin on April 22.

The fairy tale continues.

NBC's Fakhar Rehman in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Note from reporter Carol Grisanti about nose rings:

Arnie Matos Lifechurch volunteer Jose Rey holds a baby boy he helped deliver, and who was named for him.

By Bill Dedman, msnbc.com

Here's an update on the dozen Haitian orphans under the protection of a church group from Allentown, Pennsylvania, whose stories msnbc.com chronicled in January, shortly after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake damaged their home in Port-au-Prince.

As some aid organizations are pulling out of Haiti, the volunteers from Lifechurch have reached out to the neighborhood around their orphanage in Port-au-Prince, demonstrating the difference that small organizations and individuals can make.

The volunteers from Pennsylvania have delivered 20 babies at their medical clinic, put up hundreds of tents and shared food and medical care with thousands of their Haitian neighbors.

News coverage of Haiti relief efforts has sometimes suggested that there are only two ways to contribute in a crisis, one sensible and one foolish: Either stay home and give your money to one of the well-known international relief organizations (this is the standard advice of the experts, who tend to work for well-known international relief organizations), or rush off in an ill-prepared effort that wastes resources and is likely to cause more harm than good.

Three months after the earthquake struck, the volunteers from the evangelical Lifechurch have found a middle ground: With wave after wave of volunteers in small groups, and through alliances with groups of all faiths, they have made a difference in one neighborhood in the devastated Haitian capital.

Once they found a temporary home for their orphans -- first at the larger Love A Child orphanage in the hills, now in a freshly painted home back in their old Santos 19 neighborhood in Port-au-Prince -- the Lifechurch volunteers set up a medical clinic in the courtyard of their original orphanage. They treated and fed more than 3,000 people, vaccinated more than 1,000. At times they had more than 200 people waiting outside the gates.

Their medical team, which included a pediatrician from Allentown, Dr. Scott Rice, joined forces with doctors from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Word spread. Pregnant women started arriving.

But not all the babies were born at the clinic.

One woman arrived at the last minute in a tap-tap, the multicolored taxi truck that dominates traffic in Port-au-Prince. And in the tap-tap the baby was born, a boy named Scott.

On a trip outside the neighborhood, one baby arrived so quickly that mission director Ramon Crespo and volunteer Jose Rey had little more than a cardboard box to serve as a delivery table. Now they too have a namesake in Haiti, Jose Ramon Rey Crespo.

The children from the church-sponsored Rescue Children Orphanage have gone on missions themselves, delivering food and clean underwear to a nearby home for children with special needs, where some children were going weeks without clean diapers and clothes.

Arnie Matos Lifechurch volunteer Luciano Martinez with three of the Rescue Orphanage kids, from left, Stevenson, Francois and Ja-nelson.

But such efforts can only help a tiny fraction of those in need, and Lifechurch leaders say too little help is coming to Haiti.

"On my last flight, there were only about six relief workers," Lifechurch Pastor Randy Landis said this week by phone from Port-au-Prince, where he was visiting for the fourth time since the earthquake. "The amount of people coming in has really dwindled down. A lot of institutions are leaving. A lot of those that are staying are smaller, faith-based organizations like ourselves.

"We met a woman last night from Long Island. She and her husband have opened up an orphanage with nine children that she and her husband found on the street. She's been here for a month now. I just met a group of Sikhs from Cincinnati, working to set up a camp of 200 tents.

"There's a need for the larger organizations. But what I see is the smaller organizations, many of them faith based. At night you get e-mails from different people, sharing what their need is, we've got additional supplies today we can help you. There's this really cool tapestry playing out here."

After long days of 100-degree heat, the rains have now arrived, so the Lifechurch clinic is moving indoors, to a house the group has rented next door to the old orphanage. Much of the construction and repair work is being done by Haitian men.

"There's a great need to create jobs," Landis said. "We set up about 200 shelters on this trip. We're paying ten dollars a day with meals -- the average wage in the country is about two dollars a day. We know that the work elevates their spirits. I'm talking about the men. You get them out there working, they're hard workers, they're diligent at what they do. There's just no jobs here."

The children of Rescue Children Orphanage, whose schooling was interrupted from January until April by the quake, are back in school now, except for the two youngest. And they are thrilled to be there.

The adults say that despite the many transitions they've been through -- four homes in less than a year, many changes in caregivers – and the tremors that still occasionally rock their world, they seem pretty secure and well adjusted.

Arnie Matos The outside of the new home for the Lifechurch children, as furnishings were being moved in.

Their new home has a large central room with a piano, comfortable bunkrooms, and comforts that many Haitians still do not have: food and electricity. But even this home is temporary. They'll stay there for a year, while volunteers plan and build a new home for them in the countryside. Volunteer Jeffrey Sneller, a structural engineer from Bainbridge Island, Washington, is designing an orphanage with a series of Quonset-style buildings around a courtyard, resistant to both hurricanes and earthquakes.

The first night in their new home, a tremor at 3 a.m. woke up mission leaders Luz and Ramon Crespo. "They ran through the house along with the team members waking up all the children and rushing them outside," mission coordinator Carmen Rendon wrote in an update for the church. "Some of the children did not want to go back inside the house, so they had a slumber party outside and some of the team members and mommies slept outside with them."

Each time a volunteer group rotates back to the States, adjustments are difficult.

"The children got very sad and said the Americans are leaving, and we keep hearing rumors that more earthquakes are coming, and we are very scared," Rendon wrote of one parting. "So of course everyone comforted them and loved on them and reassured them that they are safe and that God is watching over them."

On Easter Sunday, the children dressed up for church. The younger girls wore white dresses that the older girls had made for them.

They've learned to play street hockey with foam sticks and pucks that volunteer Dave Harris made for them. They've learned to make S'mores, roasting marshmallows over charcoal. And they've been to the beach, burying each other up to the waist in sand, fishing, listening to shells.

Several times they have spent the evenings in song. "They had a powerful time of singing and worshipping with the team," Rendon wrote. "The beautiful Haitian people, they sang in English, French and Creole." Luz Crespo, a mission leader, "said it was simply amazing, and definitely lifted spirits and heavy burdens they are carrying."

The group has suffered one loss. Triplets born at the clinic were weak, and one was severely dehydrated. The group scrambled to get them to a hospital run by the University of Miami, but one of the week-old triplets died there.

Ramon Crespo, the feisty mission leader from Puerto Rico by way of Pennsylvania, has kept order at the clinic and the orphanage.

"Ramon also shared that there was day when they were doing distribution with about 150 people or so and things got crazy and men were pushing mothers, women and children," Rendon wrote. "He got very upset and began to rebuke the people in love, and he told them that this was their sister that they were pushing, their mother, and that if they continued in their wicked behavior they would receive nothing. He also told them that it is time for them to repent and turn from their Godless ways of their country and acknowledge God. I am sure much more was said, but after he was done speaking the crowd calmed down and they all started clapping. They have even sought Ramon out to handle their disputes. I joked and told Ramon, 'Now you're a Haiti sheriff.'"

Previous coverage of the Haiti orphage:

• World Blog posts
• Video: Looking toward a new beginning
• Meet the children interactive
• Slideshow

On his trips to tent camps, Pastor Landis said, he sees a desperate situation. "There is still a need for tents, still people living under sheets and blankets and tarps. I'm looking at 500 little makeshift tarps and blankets right now, about 1,300 people, in an area outside Port-au-Prince. Down in to Port-au-Prince, the city electric is turned off. It's raining almost every night. There's hopelessness. I walked into a camp two days ago, about 2,500 people in an area the size of a football field; there had not been a food drop there for at least three weeks. It was easily 100 degrees in each little dwelling of tents and blankets. The desperation on people's faces was just heart-wrenching.

"I hope people won't forget the people of Haiti."

Ways to keep up with the Rescue Children Orphanage:

•  Blog with info on donations and updates
•  On Twitter 
•  Facebook fan page 

By Ed Flanagan, NBC Researcher

The sudden reappearance 2 weeks ago of long missing Chinese human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, near his hometown in Shaanxi province brought an end to the rampant speculation here over his well being and status in China. However, Gao's unwillingness or inability to provide independent media with details of his detention at the hands of Chinese state security raises continued questions over China's rights record and is yet another dark capstone in what has been so far, a very bad year for human rights in China.

It was just 14 months ago when Gao, a prominent human rights lawyer, was escorted out of his Beijing house by state security agents and completely off the grid by which outsiders can track political prisoners in China.

Gao, a longtime critic of the Chinese government and frequent champion of social issues deemed sensitive by the Chinese government such as Falun Gong, underground Christian churches and forced evictions of farmers, had been detained multiple times prior to last year and had in fact been given a 3 year jail sentence in December 2006 for subversion that was eventually suspended.

However, Gao's vocal criticisms of the government only earned him repeated brushes with China's Public Security Bureau (PSB). Increasingly, confrontations between Gao and the PSB became more violent as security agents resorted to brutal torture sessions and beatings which he wrote about in detail 2 years ago while in home detention under tight government surveillance.

In his writing, Gao described going in for a "re-education talk" only to find himself subjected to hours of torture that involved severe beatings, electric shocks to his genitals and cigarettes being put out on his face.

It was with this previous experience in mind that many feared the worst after his February 2009 disappearance. What made Gao's plight so irregular though was the government's unwillingness to provide even basic details about his location and status over such a prolonged period of time.

Asked in January this year about Gao's whereabouts, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, would only say that, "he is where he should be." Meanwhile, Chinese embassy staff in the United States insisted that Gao was alive and well in Xinjiang.

Gao's sudden reappearance late last month then begged the question: where had Gao been and why was he released? Answers to these critical questions are understandably not coming from the government, but surprisingly, have been equally unforthcoming from Gao himself.

In an interview earlier this week – likely to be his last, due to his sensitive status and conditions set out in his parole – Gao appeared "subdued" and unwilling to provide details of his 14 month ordeal. Though he reported his health was fine, he appeared thinner and concerned primarily with reuniting with his wife and daughter, who had fled China just prior to his disappearance and now live in asylum in the United States.

"I completely lost control of my emotions," said Gao tearfully, upon returning to his Beijing home and seeing his families shoes still lined up near the door, "because to me these are the three dearest people in the world and now, we're like a kite with a broken string."

"I don't have the capacity to persevere. On the one hand, it's my past experiences. It's also that these experiences greatly hurt my loved ones. This ultimate choice of mine, after a process of deep and careful thought, is to seek the goal of peace and calm."

A bad year for human rights
Gao's odyssey is merely an act in what has proven to be a hard year for political activists in China so far. The February upholding of a conviction and 11 year jail sentence for prominent human rights advocate, Liu Xiaobo, was another grim reminder of the effectiveness of China's "subversion laws" in batting down political and social dissent.
 
Liu, 54, is a Beijing academic who was deeply involved in the creation of "Charter 08," a political manifesto published online on December 10th, 2008 which outlined steps that its signees hoped would bring about reform and greater democratization of China's political and judicial systems.

Also in February, down in Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu, Tan Zuoren, 56, was convicted and given 5 years jail under the ubiquitous charge of "subversion of state power."

Officially, the charges stemmed from tracts written by Tan in 2007 which discussed the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident and a blood drive he organized in 2008 to commemorate those demonstrations. However, human rights groups believe that the stiff sentence is rooted in Tan's investigation into the collapse of scores of schools in the region following the Sichuan earthquake of 2008 that buried and killed thousands of children.

"China has no dissidents"
While severe jail sentences and broad use of subversion laws is not new to China, what makes these cases standout is the way in which foreign intervention has appeared to fail. Dating back to when China's "most favored nation" trade status was tied to a yearly congressional review of China's human rights record, the United States and other countries were sometimes able to use their trading power to push for leniency or a quiet release of politically sensitive prisoners.

Even following China's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization, there has long been a behind the scenes dialogue between China and the western world over human rights issues.

However, in recent months this relationship seems to have deteriorated. When a delegation of diplomatic officials representing 17 western countries attempted to enter the courtroom to witness Liu Xiaobo's petition ruling, they were turned away, leading to a curt, prepared statement from US Ambassador to China, John Huntsman Jr, being read outside Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court.

The China's response to the foreign delegation was equally terse. Speaking to reporters later that week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu declared, "China brooks no interference in its internal judicial affairs… China has no dissidents."

New light for old rules
With its international economic influence rapidly growing, China's government has grown increasingly bold not just in its methods, but also in the way it publically frames its national strategy for solidifying power at home.

Blistering op-ed pieces in the state newspaper chastising western media for being "employed as tools for national strategy," and an astounding interview by a remote county government official boasting he employed more than 12,000 spies to police a county of just 400,000 people. Both of these demonstrate how the paradigm has shifted and reflect a new political and social atmosphere here in China that the government is no longer hiding from international view. 

Though the Obama administration has begun to talk tougher on China's human rights issues, it is clear that with America's current economic woes and its continued interdependence on China, traditional forms of engagement may no longer be sufficient for dealing with a country that no longer feels the need to always follow the proverbial economic carrot.

By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel, 65 years after and the Israeli state is bowing its head in memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and their accomplishers.

My 11-year-old daughter has been practicing for weeks her role at her school memorial ceremony, which took place today. She was very excited and nervous for she had to memorize a few sentences by heart and perform a short dance. Parents were invited this morning to the school gym and the ceremony started with us all standing while one of her classmates spoke about the importance of remembering the dead. Six candles were placed on a small table and were lighted up one after another, each signifying one million people killed.

The kids, all wearing black cloths, read out loud text they learned by heart, text that talked about a million and a half kids who where slaughtered, kids who will never go to school like this one and kids who will never have the same dreams and aspiration like these kids.

The educational system here in Israel is very clear and adamant about the way the Holocaust should be taught in schools. From grade one all the way to the last day of high school the narrative is clear and emphasizes the memory and the personal stories of the survivors but also recognizes the resistance and recovery in the shape of the Israeli state, which will celebrate its 62 years of independence next week. Throughout the year high school kids are taken all the way to concentration camps in Germany and Poland to stand right in the gas chambers that burned Jews. Students are always accompanied by survivors who tell them their own heroic story of survival and also try to explain why Jews were slaughtered like sheep.

Here in my daughter's school the ceremony was almost over. I was admiring and looking at her thinking to myself what in the world is my daughter thinking about while she was hearing all of the terrible atrocities, how will this shape her as a grown up. Her part went by perfectly, all the kids read out loud with a somber voice and there was a perfect silence all around from the rest of the school kids. The ceremony ended with everyone singing out the national anthem, sadness mixed with hope and a realization that the Jews' existence here symbolizes not a defeat but a victory.

I left the ceremony and was driving to work while the one-minute siren started. This siren is heard throughout Israel and everybody stands for a minute of silence. The siren caught me on the main highway to Tel Aviv and I was a bit worried about stopping in the middle of the highway. At 10 o'clock the siren blared out loud and clear and, like the rest of the drivers, I stopped my car in the middle of the highway and got out.