Lawmakers in Catalonia outlawed bullfighting Wednesday, after an impassioned debate that pitted the rights of animals against preserving a pillar of traditional culture.
By Chris Hampson, NBC News' director of international news
LONDON — I was a student of Spanish when I went to watch my first bullfight.
I sat in the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid one hot and sunny evening, and watched this most emblematic of Spanish spectacles unfold before a 25,000-strong crowd.
To my side sat an old man — a true 'aficionado' of the 'noble art' — who had loved it all his life. He had absorbed it into his very bones, and talked passionately to me about every move, every pass of the bull.
His knowledge and passion were extraordinary — even more so because he had lost his sight with old age. He was blind.
His teenage granddaughter had become his 'eyes,' describing what she saw with a passion all of her own. Through them I saw the artistry and breath-taking courage. But the brutality of what was happening was lost to me beneath the cover of the matador's cape.
It has long been engrained into their nationally identity, a symbol of their tradition and culture.
Some weeks after that first bullfight, I found myself at another, this time away from the capital. I traveled on a humid and rattling bus to a small town a couple of hours from Madrid, where they were holding a fiesta to celebrate their patron saint.
In the centre of the town, a makeshift bullring closed off the square and roads leading into it.
At the appointed hour, the young bulls were run through dusty streets to the arena, the young men of the town running with them, showing off and trying not to fall victim to their horns or feet.
And there, one by one, the bulls were dispatched by six aspiring bullfighters, hoping to become fully-fledged matadors. Some, for sure, knew what they were doing. But to me it looked less World Series — more Slaughterhouse Works League.
Trail of blood My most vivid memory is of a matador striving to kill an exhausted young bull. The man was as artless as he was nervous, and made several failed attempts with the sword.
As the crowd jeered and whistled, a stocky gray-haired man climbed over the railings from the public seating, grabbed the sword, and finished the kneeling, panting creature off.
As my friends and I left the square, we walked through the trail of blood to see the carcass lying in the street, its throat cut by a butcher.
It was indeed a spectacle, but it didn't look to me like sport, and I never again went to watch.
Those who love the bullfight — and there are many — say the Catalan vote will not affect the rest of Spain. This was politics as much as a protest against animal cruelty, they say, and they may be right.
But opponents are celebrating what they hope is the beginning of the end for a tradition they don't believe has any place in their image of a modern Spain.
Bullfighting may not be dead, but soon, they hope, it too will be on its knees.
But he wasn’t shocked by the information that was revealed in the leaked documents.
"The president was not surprised at the substance of the documents. I don’t think that anyone was surprised," said Omar. "Most of what was leaked are things that we have been talking about for years. Things like: civilian casualties, the protection of Afghan people, the role of a certain intelligence agency, and the destabilizing activities here in Afghanistan."
The "certain intelligence agency" he was referring to is Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
But, the response from Karzai and the rest of Kabul’s chattering political class to the WikiLeaks story seemed to reveal more about their long-term biases against their nuclear neighbor and rival Pakistan than any concerns over intelligence leaks or security. Kabul has long accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency of supporting Taliban insurgents.
Sukria Barakzai, an independent member of the Afghan parliament, said that many Afghans feel vindicated by what was revealed in the documents.　
"People are glad, not for the fact that there have been more civilian casualties in this war.　They are glad that proper documents show the real face of Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan," said Barakzai. "We have been suffering from their double policy – on the one hand being a good partner, and supporting the war on terror, and the other side supporting terrorists back on their safe land."
Haroun Mir, a political analyst and a candidate in upcoming parliamentary elections, said that the documents not only shed light on Pakistan’s role, but they also pointed out that it’s time the U.S. reviewed its own relationship with Pakistan.
"Pakistan’s support of the Taliban is not a secret… But despite knowing, and despite the evidence, this U.S. administration is not acting against Pakistan? This is a big question in Afghanistan. "
Even the Taliban had their say about the leaked documents. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told NBC News, "It’s good for people to know about the inhumane killing of civilians, and that these documents reveal that there have been more acts of ruthless killings of civilians by the international/U.S. forces than originally reported."
Karzai condemned the release of information that could endanger the lives of Afghan informants during a news conference on Thursday, calling it "extremely irresponsible and shocking."
"Because whether those individuals acted legitimately or illegitimately, by providing information to NATO forces, they are lives. And the lives are in danger now," he said.
The Pentagon has also said that informants whose names appear in the documents have reason to fear for their lives.
Kabulis, who are not involved in day-to-day politics, didn’t have the same reaction.
Engela Yalda, a student studying politics at the University of Kabul, looked puzzled when asked about the secret documents posted on WikiLeaks
"WikiLeaks…?" she asked. "I have never heard of WikiLeak…I have access to the Internet, but it’s exam time now and I only follow very important news. Can you spell that for me please?"　
Ditto from a shopkeeper and a few other students – none of them were aware of the military leaks. NBC News’ Iqbal Sapand contributed to this report.
ISLAMABAD – "I just heard it over the news and had to do something. I just wanted to help." That was the resounding refrain heard in the densely forested hills surrounding Islamabad where a plane crashed, killing all 152 passengers Wednesday.
Without thinking, people just went to the crash scene. Ordinary people, dressed in local garb, not rescue gear, rushed to the crash to see what they could do to help.　　
Photo by EPA/STRINGER
Pakistani Army soldiers and rescue workers begin their climb of the Margalla Hills near Islamabad on Wednesday following the plane crash that killed all 152 passengers aboard the flight from Karachi.
As our NBC News team reached the area, we saw these three doctors – two women and a man – coming down looking really muddy and very scruffy. I asked them if they were part of the rescue team.
"No, we’re not. We just came of our own accord. We heard there was a plane crash and wanted to try to get there to do what we can," one of them said.
But because the terrain was so rough, they could only reach a certain point. There were no trails to the crash site. The area is very dense forest and due to the rain, it was extremely muddy and slippery. They said they tripped and fell quite a bit, so they finally had to abandon their mission, turn around and come back.　
Their intentions were good, but they regretted that they weren’t dressed properly and that the weather wasn’t better. The terrain is so bad that it required real trekking gear and hiking boots, which no one seemed to be wearing.
Despite the difficult conditions, there was a real sense of spirit and camaraderie among ordinary people trying to help.
I saw another man dressed in local dress that was completely muddied and wet. I asked him what the red on his clothes was from and he said that it was the blood from all the passengers he had carried.　
He wasn’t part of the official rescue effort, either. He said he was just a student who works in a shop in Islamabad. He said that when he heard the news, he ran out and trekked two and a half hours to see what he could do to help the emergency services. "I just had to do something. I just wanted to help," he said.　
We even saw one man who works in the same office building as us and is a media executive. He just went straight to the scene in his fancy office clothes, which were completely covered in mud by the time I saw him. He also said he felt compelled to go to the crash scene to do what he could.
BEIJING –"Say no to Mandarin!" thousands chanted in Cantonese in a busy district of Guangzhou, capital of China’s southern Guangdong province, Sunday afternoon.　
But Sunday’s protest was unique – Guangzhou citizens were walking in the street to protect their native language:Cantonese.
It was sparked by an announcement earlier this month by the local China People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a political advisory body, encouraging the local government to promote Mandarin language content on Guangzhou’s prime time TV news programs.
With Cantonese serving as the primary language in Guangdong province, as well as Hong Kong and Macao, it’s spoken not just by millions locally, but also by millions of Chinese emigrants around the globe.
Dialect equals identity Mandarin, China’s official language, is based mainly on northern dialects, primarily, the Beijing dialect. It was not adopted as the country’s national language until the1950s, when the fledgling Communist government took power and began to enforce it as the standard language to be used in education, media and by the government.　
But in a country as large and geographically diverse as China, promoting one standard dialect has been no easy task. It’s not uncommon for villagers living just 30 miles away from each other to speak different dialects – particularly in the south where the mountainous terrain helped lead to linguistic differences.　
Many people living in southern China have been speaking local dialects for centuries – the only time they even hear Mandarin is when they watch TV or listen to radio (assuming they watch or listen to either). As a result, the central government has gone to great lengths to try to unify what people speak.
"When I was in elementary school 11 years ago, we were not allowed to speak any Cantonese," said a native Guangzhou girl who spoke to NBC News by phone and asked to be identified by her Internet chat room alias, Yinghuochong.　
"We were only allowed to speak Mandarin in the school, otherwise your daily achievement score would be deducted by teachers. They say it’s not civilized to speak Cantonese. I don’t understand. Why is it so civilized to speak Mandarin? What about English? Is it more civilized to speak English then?" said Yinghuochong.
Yinghuochong was not the only one angry about the CPPCC’s proposal. She joined thousands of other young people, mostly in their 20s, wearing white tee-shirts that said "I love Guangzhou" as they walked through the city’s streets to show their support for their dialect.
"Support Cantonese!" "Let’s speak Cantonese!" "Say no to Mandarin!" were a few of the slogans shouted out by the crowds.
The march reached a climax when a chorus of protesters sang "Glorious Time," a hit song by the former Hong Kong band Beyond, in Cantonese.　 　
"Among dozens of the TV channels we can receive, only five or six are Cantonese channels. They are for people like my mom, who doesn’t speak Mandarin at all. She doesn’t have many options when she watches TV," said Yinghuochong. "This is just not necessary at all."
Su Zhijia, the deputy mayor of Guangzhou, denied that Guangzhou TV was planning to switch from broadcasting in Cantonese to Mandarin. In an interview with a local media he stressed that "the government has never thought about doing anything to weaken Cantonese."
Su also argued that promoting Mandarin doesn’t necessarily mean Cantonese has to be eliminated. But his promises didn’t seem to calm the doubts and complaints from many Guangzhou citizens.
A form of ‘cultural deprivation’ Michael Anti, an active blogger and analyst, explained why he believes Cantonese is so symbolic in this region, which is one of just two places in China that is still permitted to broadcast television in its own dialect; the other is Shanghai.
"The official promotion of Mandarin is a sort of cultural deprivation," Anti said. "The majority of the protesters are young people, who cannot afford to buy any property in this weak economic environment. They already feel economically disadvantaged and now they are more afraid of losing what they are proud of."
And the outrage over the Mandarin proposal is not limited to the activists marching last weekend. The CPPCC’s web site sponsored an online survey asking respondents if they should add more Mandarin TV programs. The survey received a resounding "No" from 80 percent of respondents. The overwhelmingly negative results quickly became a major point of discussion in the blogosphere and on Internet chat rooms. 　
"Shame on a city without dialect," said Feng Xincheng, an editor of a magazine based in Guangzhou. "Save Cantonese!" soon turned into the most used slogans on many microblogs.
Despite the outpouring, Yinghuochong is still worried. "The last time when 80 percent of people surveyed voted ‘No’ the CPPCC still said people needed to be guided. We only have one purpose: We don’t want them to crack down on Cantonese."
LONDON – As BP CEO Tony Hayward resigned under a cloud Tuesday, thousands of British motorists got an unexpected reminder of the oil spill that's wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico.
Protesters with the environmental group Greenpeace said they shut off fuel supplies at 46 BP gas stations across London just in time for the morning rush-hour. Small teams of activists used a standard shut-off switch to stop the flow of fuel oil at the targeted stations. The switches were then removed to prevent most BP outlets in the capital from opening.
Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
Demonstrators stand outside a BP petrol station, which they have barricaded with fences, in London on Tuesday.
And to ensure there was no chance of drivers buying gas, demonstrators in fluorescent vests and helmets locked green metal fences around some sites.
"What BP needs to do is not just change CEOs it needs to actually come up with a new strategy," Greenpeace U.K.’s chief executive John Sauven said at one of the shuttered stations in Camden, north London.
Sauven said BP must live up to its pledge to move "beyond petroleum" and stop focusing on squeezing oil from places like the Gulf of Mexico, Canada's tar sands and the fragile Arctic wilderness.
'Holding us to ransom' Anna Jones, who was one of the handful up at dawn to ensure gas stations were shuttered, took a harder line.
"Big companies like BP are holding us to ransom, chasing profits at the expense of us," the 29-year-old part-time dance teacher said. "The generation before us is largely responsible and the next generation coming up will have to deal with the consequences."
A BP spokesman described the group's protest as "an irresponsible and childish act which is interfering with safety systems." The firm claimed that only a handful of stations had been prevented from opening.
Londoners had mixed views on Greenpeace's actions.
Daniel Watson, a 41-year-old teacher and tuba player, said BP should recognize the problems of global warming and dependence on petroleum products.
"We are still living in the illusion that we can live on fossil fuels indefinitely," he added. "There is this kind of approach that it is somebody else’s problem."
Golden handshake Big firms also need to stop handing out big packages to disgraced executives, he said. Hayward's golden handshake included a $1.6 million payoff and pension pot valued at about $17 million.
"We need controls so that doing a bad job doesn’t get rewarded," Watson said.
Steve, who has driven a London cab for 37 years and only gave his first name, said he wanted to do something to "save the whales" but branded the protests targeting gas station as "stunts."
However, Hayward's payout and the behavior of many other executives left the cabbie annoyed.
"Some of cleverest guys can be the stupidest when it comes to the real world – I see that in my job all the time."
But not everyone thought Greenpeace was on the right track.
"Is everybody going to skip driving cars, heating our houses, flying? Get a grip,” said Kathy Wallace, a Canadian who was on her way home to Scotland. “The environment is going to hell anyway, we've already ruined it. All we can do is control the situation."
MOSCOW – If you want an air conditioner in Moscow, you’re too late.
Russia’s heat wave is almost one month old, and is showing no signs of letting up. Having lived extensively in New York and the Middle East, temperatures hovering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit are nothing strange for me, but it’s a different experience in Moscow.
The toughest part may be the scarcity of air-conditioning here, especially in residential homes. Maybe I should count myself lucky that the heat wave has coincided with the annual two-week hot water shut-off in my building (so that the utility company can do repairs on the pipes), as a freezing cold bath seems to be the only way to cool down at the end of the day.
Air conditioner suppliers caught by surprise by the high temperatures have run out of stock, and home appliance stores have back-orders of up to three weeks (two companies declined our request to film people looking for air-conditioners in their stores because they didn’t want us to show empty shelves).
Even though most of my friends back in the U.S. are knowledgeable enough not to ask me anymore if it snows in Moscow in the summer, the heat wave has still taken some tourists by surprise.
"We knew it was hot, but we didn’t expect it to be this miserably hot," said Doak Simpson, a 48-year-old Motorola employee from Miami visiting Moscow with his family. "We’re from the land of air-conditioning. You can get out of it, and here there’s just no escaping it."
Swimming – for better or worse Muscovites still do a pretty good job of escaping it, though. Any part of Moscow that has water – fountains, the river, even barge canals – has been full of people swimming and sunbathing.
But the Russian Emergency Ministry’s web site shows perhaps the harshest measure of the heat wave: the death toll. Over 2,000 people have drowned in Russia since June 1. And this past Monday broke an unfortunate record: 71 people drowned in a 24-hour period.
According to Vadim Seryogin, a ministry official, many of the cases are due to people swimming while drunk.
"Of course, it’s good to swim during such hot days," said Kseniya Kurus, a 19-year-old international law student, when told about the grim statistics. "But we shouldn’t drink alcohol during the summer. It’s dangerous."
EPA/Yuri Kochetkov
Young Muscovites find some relief from the sweltering heat in a fountain at the All-Russian Exhibition Center in Moscow, Russia, on Friday.
And there’s no relief in sight. Forecasts predict the coming week to potentially break Moscow’s record of 98 degrees Fahrenheit.
And the heat goes beyond Moscow – it has also slammed Russia’s farmland with a crippling drought. Twenty-three grain-producing regions have declared a state of emergency and the Russian Grain Union reported that the drought has destroyed over 22 million acres of crops. Some forecasts see agricultural and farming losses by year-end topping $1 billion.
Lying on a grassy bank after a swim in a canal, a group of students told me they’d had enough.
"It’s been good, but we don’t need a whole month of this," said 20-year-old Igor Alexeyev. "It would be better to have two weeks on, two weeks off. Or even just hot weather every other day."
TEL AVIV – In a New York bar, men and women might exaggerate their biographies in the pursuit of the opposite sex. But here in the Holy Land, deceiving your partner can have serious consequences.
The Jerusalem District Court ruled this week on the fine points of what a man must tell a woman before they engage in sexual relations, convicting an Arab man of "rape by deception" for lying to a Jewish woman to get her to sleep with him.
Two years ago, 30-year-old Sabbar Kashur met a woman in the city of Jerusalem and introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. Shortly after meeting the woman, the two had consensual sex.
But later, when the Jewish woman found out that Kashur was not a fellow Jew, she filed a police complaint alleging rape and indecent assault. (The misrepresentation went further – he was not a bachelor either, but rather a married father of two daughters).
On Monday, Kashur was convicted on the charge of rape by deception and sentenced to 18 months in prison by the Jerusalem District Court.
In the verdict, Judge Zvi Segal said that the consent for sex was obtained under false pretenses. "If she had not thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated," the judge wrote in his verdict.
The court rejected a request by Kashur’s lawyers that he perform community service in lieu of jail time, writing: "The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls."
But, Kashur believes the case is racially motivated because the woman went to police only after learning he was an Arab non-Jew. "If I were Jewish, I would have never been questioned," he told Haaretz newspaper.
In fact, given demographic concerns that are often top of mind for Israelis, sexual relations between Jews and Arabs are often discouraged. Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population, but intermarriage is still rare.
Elkana Laist, who works in the Public Defender’s Office in Jerusalem, criticized the verdict, telling Haaretz it "opens the door to a rape conviction every time a person lies regarding details of his identity. Every time the court thinks a reasonable woman would not have sex with a man based on that representation, the man will be charged with rape. That approach is not accepted around the world, either." 　 Still, some hailed the verdict as a victory for women.
"This is a brave and revolutionary verdict," said Nurit Tsur, Executive Director of the Israel Women’s Network.　She told NBC News that the verdict was important because it acknowledged that sexual consent is not only a physical matter, but an emotional one.
"A woman has the right to get the full picture of the person who stands in front of her," said Tsur.
Kashur’s lawyers say they are considering an appeal to the High Court of Justice. 　
Update: This post has been updated to clarify that the defendant was an Arab non-Jew.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talks at a ceremony at Pakistan National Council of Arts in Islamabad on Monday,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent trip to Islamabad was met with a range of reactions, mainly that of suspicion, despite the many gifts she brought with her.
The two-day trip was aimed at bettering U.S. relations with Islamabad and to further fortify Pakistan's cooperation in the war in Afghanistan. However, in an effort to show the relationship went beyond that, Clinton came with a number of humanitarian and economic offerings to help some of the country's problems. This included a promise of $500 million in economic aid for such projects such as clean drinking water and the building of hydroelectric dams and hospitals. The secretary of state also launched a trade agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan that has taken some 45 years to come into fruition.
She told the Pakistanis: "We know that there is some questioning, even suspicion, about what the United States is doing today and I can only respond by saying that very clearly we have a commitment that is much broader and deeper than it has ever been."
Her comments were bolstered by Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who said "…we are focusing all projects, all sectors that would make a qualitative difference in lives of ordinary Pakistanis, so they understand that this relationship is beyond security, this is a relationship that improves our purchasing power, our quality of life, and then the different message is understood."
On the ground, however, such acts of kindness were not appreciated. On the second day of Clinton's visit the front cover of Pakistan's The Nation had a piece that read: "We are told she has come with a $500 million aid package and apparently the aid will go into power, agriculture, health and dams also – but as we all know for the Americans there is no such thing as a 'free lunch' – and already our country is bleeding because of the alliance with the US so we are going to be bled some more with this aid package."
America had a great following here more than 50 years ago. The skepticism seen now is a result of past conflicts and changes in American foreign policy over the years. The bitterness is also, in part, a remnant from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when America discarded Pakistan after seeking its help to defeat the Russians. This has been fueled further since the start of the war in Afghanistan, when America was once again back, enjoying the support of Gen. Musharraf. Pakistanis feel that they are constantly used and then abandoned by the U.S.
Ibtassim Abassi, a journalism student, said Clinton "is here for her own problems, not for Pakistan, they use Pakistan to reduce their own problems." His contention was that the main objective of her trip was to win the war in Afghanistan.
To Abed Hussain, the aid was not enough and he felt that his government was being manipulated. "The help they are extending is very inadequate, very insufficient, that is not sufficient for us to remove poverty or unemployment… our leadership is not so courageous and not so brave … I don't think they are able to get the benefits of the visit of Hillary Clinton."
Sentiment on the street was similar among most of the people with whom we spoke: It was unrealistic to expect a change in public opinion so soon as a result of these new initiatives brought in by Clinton.
This new strategy may take a while to sink in; perhaps the motives of America may be convincing if the projects are demonstrated to be a success. The conflicts and differences of opinion over the last few decades still appear to be fresh in the Pakistanis' minds and overshadow any gesture offered.
BEIJING – The live music scene in Beijing is one of the great perks of living in the Chinese capital. As we reported a couple of years ago, a thriving community of independent musicians and artists can satisfy practically any music craving.
Experimental folk? Check.
Indie electronica? Check.
Rock with comic cross-talk? Check.
But if you crave big marquee names, better move to Tokyo.
In the past year, China has seen only two major-league performers come from overseas: Usher earlier this month, and Beyoncé last October.
Photo by Ed Flanagan/ NBC News
Usher's popularity in China is in part due to his wholesome image.
For a major international city with nearly 18 million permanent residents, that’s a pretty poor showing of global mainstream pop and rock acts.
One reason for the paucity is censorship.
Avoiding controversy Since Bjork’s controversial act of shouting "Tibet, Tibet" at the end of a song called Declare Independence during a concert in Shanghai in March 2008, China’s Ministry of Culture has maintained strict restrictions on foreign performers.
Since then, a handful of western artists have had to cancel gigs because of their perceived politics. In 2009, ministry officials revoked permits for Oasis to perform, calling the band "unsuitable."
Photo by Adrienne Mong/NBC News
Thousands of young Chinese fans turned out for Usher's concert last weekend.
Bob Dylan was due to perform in Beijing and Shanghai this year, but concert promoters said the Chinese Ministry of Culture denied him a permit, perhaps concerned about the legendary 68-year-old musician’s counter-culture origins.
But it’s not just about politics.
"Anything that talks about violence or things that are a little bit extreme, those tend not to be approved here," said Adam Wilkes, managing director of 8th Round, a live entertainment company in Beijing that organized this month’s Usher concert.
Usher’s mass appeal in China is in part due to his wholesome image as well as his talent, the accessibility of his music (R&B remains extremely popular amongst the young urban set here), and his fame in the west.
Chinese acts still reign Concert promoters face other challenges trying to bring overseas rock/pop acts here.
"Foreign mainstream artists are not particularly influential in China," said Jia Wei, a music critic.
"They are merely competitors in the local music scene."
Photo by Ed Flanagan/ NBC News
Chinese pop stars like Taiwanese-American Wang Leehom have no trouble holding concerts in China.
Usher drew a large audience at the spiffy Wukesong Stadium, which looked to be about 70-80 percent full. That’s not a bad turnout considering the cheapest tickets went for $41 in a city with a median monthly income of $550.
But that was nothing compared to the sell-out concerts by Mandopop stars like Jay Chou or Wang Leehom, who attract at least 35,000 people per show.　 (In fact, Wang made a special appearance at Usher’s concert and sang a duet in Mandarin with him, triggering screams of delight from the audience.)
The night of the Germany-Argentina World Cup quarterfinal, Chou staged a show at the Workers’ Stadium in Sanlitun, where expats and locals converged on a concentration of bars, restaurants, and clubs to watch the match.　And I’m pretty sure the traffic snarling up the roads in Sanlitun were because of Chou, not the soccer.
And when tickets were released this month for a series of comeback concerts in China by Faye Wong, a semi-retired Hong Kong pop singer, they were sold out within ten minutes.
But there’s also the fact China’s music industry is new and relatively undeveloped, with the concert industry really only five years old.
What little music recording infrastructure exists here revolves around local talent, said Wilkes, who’s spent almost a decade working in China.
"For the most part, the mainstream state-owned media does not focus their attention on Western popular culture," he said.　"So most of this information comes in organically through the Internet, so it’s available, but it’s not driven."
So for the foreseeable future, it seems Beijing will still only be attracting A-list music performers at the rate of one a year.
By Michele Neubert, NBC News Producer Reporter’s Notebook
GAZA STRIP – "Marhaba! Smell the jasmine and taste the olives," was the text message I had just received and dismissed – thinking it must be from a friend making a joke, knowing where I was heading on assignment.
But the follow-up "Welcome to Palestine" text was a dead giveaway. This was clearly my phone company provider’s warm welcome on a recent trip to Gaza.
But the 25-mile long, 6-mile wide Gaza Strip that greeted me didn’t exactly gel with the phone company's sales pitch.
As we exited through the sleek, spiked turnstile at the Erez Crossing from Israel, I quickly realized we’d entered another world.　
AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMS
Palestinian workers lay asphalt as a street is paved in Gaza City using funding from the ruling Hamas government on July 11, 2010.
Instead of the robotic scanners, conveyor belts and digital display boards on the Israeli side, we were now greeted by porters offering rickety wooden trolleys andbroken wheelchairs as luggage carts.
Warmed by the porters’ eager help, we lugged our cases of TV gear to a decidedly lower tech, makeshift border, administered by the Hamas-run authorities.
But the blockade has been widely criticized as a form of "collective punishment" that has created a humanitarian crisis by groups from the European Union to Amnesty International.
We went to Gaza to see for ourselves what life was like for people living under the austere conditions.
He emphasized the urgent need for cement, which is vital for important rebuilding projects. But the importation of cement-making materials have been banned by Israel because of its potential use for military purposes such as building weapon-smuggling tunnels.
But even with the U.N. spokesman’s warning, the scene was startling.　
There were several small groups of young men hacking away at the rubble remains of buildings, homes, businesses, shops, schools, restaurants – all destroyed during decades of conflict, with the most recent damage done by Israel’s 2008-2009 incursion.　
Primitively equipped, these crews loaded donkeys or horses and carts with sacks full of crushed pebbles. These bags of rubble, worth about $1 on the local market, would be used for makeshift repairs.
But as we progressed into the center of Gaza, I couldn’t help notice how clean everything looked despite the scars of some unfinished and destroyed buildings.
The area certainly seemed more spruced up than four or five years ago, when I last visited. Adding to the atmosphere was the intoxicating vegetation, lush orange-colored blossoms, roses, carnations.　
I was also taken in by the shop windows. Along with the usual hardware, food and repair shops, tucked in among the more traditional Arab fashion window displays were alluring party dresses and summery designs that could easily match some London boutiques.　
But I quickly snapped back to reality.　　 　　
Limited options There’s really not much evidence of glitz and allure on the streets. Since Hamas took over, they’ve imposed strict Islamic dress code. Most Gaza women cover at least their heads and some have adopted full burqa-like attire.
But not 22-year-old Berlanty Azzam.　　　 　 One of an estimated 5,000 Christians in Gaza, she managed to leave and study on the West Bank, only to have her travel permit later rejected by the Israelis. She's decided not to cover up and wanders around freely in jeans, short-sleeved tee-shirts and an uncovered head.
Freely might be an overstatement. She has to deal with being stared at and abused by males in the street, so as a result, she spends a lot of time at home or on the Internet. When she does venture out, it’s with her mother, Evette Azzam.
Evette told us that her main worry is for her daughter’s future, "There are so few Christian boys left; so who should she marry? What kind of future could she have?"
For Berlanty, the only future is escape. "Every day I’m trying to forget I'm in Gaza," she said. "But if they opened the border and it remains like it is now, I'd be out in a flash."
But the option of leaving is exactly what most Gazans, trapped by Israeli travel restrictions, don't have. Access to the outside world remains elusive for most since border crossings are mostly limited to humanitarian cases, students studying abroad, and foreign passport holders. Prospects for a future in the blockaded area just aren’t there for Muslims and Christians alike.
The future looks grim for even one of the more privileged teenagers we talked to, Baraa Abu Shawiesh, 14, who was lucky enough to visit the U.S. on an aid-backed program recently. She told us she has changed her dream for the future from becoming a doctor to working as translator, believing that could increase her chances of getting out of Gaza one day. Meantime, she struggles with the frustrations of day to day.
"I want to scream out in a very loud voice and tell them – the presidents and leaders and children from other countries – that we Palestinian children, we love peace, we hate wars and we are　actually very kind," Shawiesh said.
Born into a grim future As we approached Schiffer Hospital, one of Gaza’s finest hospitals even though it is still damaged from Israeli attacks, a different kind of screams were ringing out. 　 Gunness, the U.N. spokesman, had told us that the World Health Organization needs $20 million worth of urgent medical supplies to adequately operate in Gaza. He suggested we visit Schiffer Hospital’s prenatal ward to understand the situation better.
Gaza has more premature babies than anywhere in the world, according to Dr. Ashraf who showed us around.
"The causes for such high numbers of premature births may be myriad, but the consequence is that these babies, who just barely arrive into the world, must struggle for survival. We just don't have the special food and medical equipment that allows them to develop and thrive," he said.
During our visit, two babies – one just an hour old, looking frail and withering – were without incubators. 　 I asked how the woman who we had heard screaming on arrival was feeling. "Oh she’s just given birth to　premature quadruplets," Ashraf said. "And we don't have any incubators left for them."
For those children who do survive, and there are many of them – some 44 percent of the population is under 15 – it’s a tough future. An estimated 95 percent of them suffer from trauma and stress. 　　 Gaza Mental Health Community Director, Dr. Ahmed Abu Tawaheena, told us that the children here are reacting to the traumas of war and the blockade with an inability to concentrate and violent behavior against each other.
"But their biggest fear is that they will be abandoned by their parents, or that their parents won’t get their salary," he explained. 　 "The kids maybe traumatized, and yet I　end up treating many of their parents　for depression," said Tawaheena. "One father who has tried to commit suicide several times told me what his young son said to him.　After asking three times over a short period if the father could spare a shekel [about 25 cents] for his son’s pocket money, the boy said　‘If you don't even have that, why did you bring me into this world?’
MAINZ, Germany – Winning the World Cup means everything to soccer fans, a yearning that can lead to some strange behaviors.
Superstitious Germany supporters, like myself, turned to special rituals ahead of each game during the recent South Africa contest, hoping that previous victories could be repeated by doing things like wearing the same unwashed shirt or watching the match in exactly the same beach chair, with exactly the same group of people.
REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay
Octopus Paul, better known as the so-called "octopus oracle" swims in front of a soccer ball in his tank at the Sea Life Aquarium in the western German city of Oberhausen July 9, 2010.
Even our national team coach, Jogi Loew, after advancing to the knockout stage, admitted that he was wearing his light blue cashmere sweater over and over again in order to cast a good spell on his team's next game.
And then there was the fascination with Paul the octopus, who forecast the outcome for Germany’s matches from his fish tank at SeaLife Aquarium in Oberhausen.
From match to match, we attentively watched the eight-tentacle prophet predict the winner of the next game by choosing between two boxes, each containing a delicious mussel snack and decorated with the respective countries’ flags.
From frying pan threats to honorary citizenship At first, Paul was ridiculed as nothing more than a PR stunt. But then, after correctly predicting all seven of Germany's World Cup games – plus Spain's win over the Netherlands in Sunday's final – Paul left the soccer world, and even his harshest critics, stunned.
"We had World Cup-related events in all of our eight SeaLife aquariums," said Kerstin Kuehn, a spokeswoman for SeaLife in Germany, "with two other octopuses also predicting games and even cute little seahorses playing soccer. But Paul is a real oracle; he became the mega star."
On the sidelines of the World Cup, a media frenzy around Paul kicked in, including live coverage of Paul's predictions on Germany's N24 news channel.
Many supporters of the German team quickly turned into "octopus fans" when Paul predicted German victories over England and Argentina.
But summer love for the cephalopod immediately turned into antipathy after Germany's 1-0 loss to Spain in the semi-finals, which Paul had also correctly predicted.
"Suddenly a number of recipes for octopus dishes were prominently posted on the Internet," Kuehn said.
But Paul still had some notable international supporters, who quickly came to his defense.
"I am concerned for the octopus. I am thinking of sending him a protective team," joked Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero on Spain’s Radio Cadena Ser.
REUTERS/Radu Sigheti
A Dutch fan wears an octopus-shaped hat outside the Soccer City stadium before the FIFA World Cup 2010 final soccer match between Netherlands and Spain in Johannesburg, July 11.
And Spain celebrated "Pulpo Paul" (Paul the Octopus) as a hero after Sunday's World Cup final victory over the Netherlands. During a parade in Madrid on Monday, Spanish goalkeeper Iker Casillas raised a cardboard cutout of Paul in Spain's national colors. Meanwhile, the city council of Carballiño, a town in northwestern Spain, unanimously voted to name Paul an honorary citizen.
(An ambiguous honor for Paul, some might say, because the specialty of the region is spiced calamari in olive oil.)
International affairs Paul's World Cup duties ended last week, but the octopus is still the talk of the day.
During this week's Russian-German talks in Yekaterinburg, a top Russian official blamed Paul for Germany's painful semi-final defeat.
"I was supporting Germany," Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov told German Chancellor Angela Merkel during the meeting. "Of course, if it was not for Paul – you know who I am talking about, Paul the octopus – then everything would have been fine."
"We ate his brother in arms last night at the restaurant," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev quickly added.
Octopus retired? It seems that everybody wants a piece of Paul these days.
SeaLife in Oberhausen insists that Paul is going nowhere.
"We are definitely not going to sell Paul. He is now retired and will no longer be prognosticating anything," Kuehn said from her Hamburg office.
But whether or not Paul is ready to head into the golden years of retirement, his special talents are still very much in demand.
"We had a large number of strange requests, including women who wanted Paul to predict when they will get pregnant or others who asked if Paul could forecast the lucky lottery numbers," Kuehn said.
And the beat goes on.
A catchy song tribute to Paul is currently a big hit on YouTube and gotten almost half a million views. And a software firm in Brazil has created an "Ask the Octopus" app for Apple's iPhone, which gives users a 50-50 choice for an "oracle" answer.
BEIJING – For Chinese Internet users frustrated by the government blocking of Western social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, the best way to communicate has been on microblogging services via major Chinese Web portals like Sina,Sohu, NetEase and Tencent.
Microblogging – short, punchy, Twitter-like posts that can be as brief as a sentence – has become an increasingly popular way to communicate. That is, until now.
‘Sorry,’ no Internet today It started with the microblogging service on the Chinese site, Sohu.com, which suddenly became inaccessible last Friday night and recovered service early Monday morning.
On Tuesday, NetEase.com, another microblogging site, had a notice saying, "Sorry, we are currently undergoing maintenance."
NetEase restored its service Thursday afternoon with its official notice "We have finished upgrading the system." But users discovered that the site’s old search function had disappeared.
The microblogging services on two other popular portals, Sina.com and Tencent.com, were not shut down. But a "beta" logo is appearing on both of their microblogging front pages, which means they are testing the service.　　
The shutdowns come just as the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center released a report saying the number of Chinese Internet users reached 420 million at the end of June.
The speed at which Internet use is growing has made it more challenging for the government to monitor what people say and read online every day.
Early last year the Ministry of Industrial Information ordered that so-called "Green Dam" software be installed on all personal computers in China. The government said the software was meant to block websites considered inappropriate or harmful to users. But there was such an outcry from China’s netizens that the government was forced to abort the plan. And more recently, Google pulled out of China briefly due to a dispute over censorship of search results. The U.S. technology giant resumed business on the mainland this month after Beijing renewed its license.
None of these major portals’ spokesmen or editors has confirmed whether the government is behind the current spree of unexpected glitches.
The explanations given were either "system maintenance" or "upgrading," although the simultaneous timing is highly suspicious.
Bloggers still get word out Gaoming, a Chinese tweeter, wrote on Twitter.com about the shutdowns. "All major domestic microblogging services have stopped their URL link functions. You can’t find any links on theses websites anymore." (Sophisticated Internet users have been able to access Twitter and Facebook via proxy servers.)
Another tweeter and popular commentator, Wen Yunchao, wrote, "Internet control policy in China can be concluded in one sentence: Trying as hard as possible to stop the spread of information."
But, despite the turmoil, Lian Yue, one of China’s most popular bloggers and a microblogger on both Sina and Tencent, said he’s still optimistic about the future of microblogs in the country.
"The government will definitely tighten their control over microblogging, but I don’t think they’ll completely shut them down," said Lian. "It’s hard to dig out the real reason behind this temporary shutdown, but it could be related to the change of the way information spread. Microblogging speeded up the information flow, but information censorship has always been there."
NAKHON RATCHASIMA, Thailand – Mushrooms are working their magic in one of Thailand’s largest national parks.
Not the kind of magic sought after by some backpackers on their psychedelic beach trips; rather, one that lures poachers and illegal loggers to abandon the forests for mushroom barns, thus promoting nature conservation when law enforcement and penalties alone don’t work.
Having little education and few job skills, Wanchai used to roam the lush jungles of Thailand’s Khao Yai National Park, logging and poaching in response to the ever increasing demand for wildlife and wood.
"It was my only choice then," said 34-year-old Wanchai. "The economy was very bad and I couldn’t find any other job." And it was a convenient and lucrative business, he said.
His village borders Khao Yai National Park, a World Heritage site about 120 miles from Bangkok that spans almost 400 square miles and is a habitat to hundreds of animal species, including endangered tigers, Asian elephants, gibbons (small apes), deer, and wild boars.
But while parks like Khao Yai offer natural lovers a rare treat, they also offer a rich supply of illegal wildlife products to meet the growing demand from within Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Animals, dead or alive, as well as animal parts, such as bear paws or wild boar meat, are deemed a culinary treat and can fetch high prices at local and international markets. Wild animals are also used in traditional Asian medicine and offered as aphrodisiacs.
Illegal logging of scented rosewoods, used for furniture, is also highly profitable.
Due to its illicit nature, it is hard to know their exact numbers, but conservationists and park officials estimate that about 100 poachers sneak into the park every day.
From January to March this year alone, more than 5,600 live animals and 61,500 dead animals were recovered, worth about $4.5 million on the black market, according to ASEAN-Wildlife Enforcement Network.
Wanchai said he could earn up to $300 a week from logging and poaching, the equivalent of one month’s salary for an entry-level government official here.
Still, he knew he could not make a living like that forever.
"I was always cautious, always in constant fear of getting caught by park rangers," said Wanchai. "I was worried about my wife and kids if I were to be arrested." Mushrooms offer safer living That was until last year when Wanchai heard of a fungi farming project, an initiative launched by Thailand’s Freeland Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to fighting illegal poaching and logging.
"I think nobody wants to risk [their lives] poaching and logging in the forests," said Mukda Thongnaitham of Freeland. "They just don’t know what else to do. The mushroom farming project gives them an alternative livelihood – a solution to earn money without breaking the law."
Mushrooms were chosen, after several discussions and surveys with villagers, because the crop yields almost perennially and is highly marketable thanks to the high demand for Thai cuisine and the boom in organic vegetables.
In addition, growing mushrooms isn’t too complicated for villagers who don’t have a college diploma or a plot of land. Most of the farmers set up a small nursery barn at home or at the project center.
However, when Freeland first started the mushroom program only two families signed up.
"It was very challenging at first. The villagers thought we would conspire with park rangers and put them in jail," Mukda said.
But just a little over a year since it started, the project is gaining steady success. Several families have joined and are finding that mushroom farming is a way to generate steady income – enough to make poachers leave the forests for good.
From hunting to guiding Khao Yai National Park also initiated several other projects, including the "trek like real hunters" program that trains poachers and loggers to become jungle tour guides.
"At first they weren’t interested. They didn’t see the benefits of it and some of them still bore grudges about getting arrested by park rangers," said Narongsak Namtapee, the park’s deputy chief.
But the program has been giving the new guides steady incomes. The number of nature lovers who buy the tour packages has risen from zero to about 20,000 per year in the last few years.
Despite their best efforts to lure poachers and loggers away from their illicit trade with a steady paycheck, Narongsak said park rangers still patrol every day and arrest loggers on a weekly basis.
Sometimes park rangers are outnumbered, or outsmarted, by poachers playing hide and seek. That’s where the ex-poachers can contribute tremendous intelligence resources to park rangers.
"Our rangers move and transfer all the time, while villagers and community stay put. The bottom line is if the community and the park can coexist, both will survive."
As for Wanchai, he and his wife wake up before dawn to collect newly sprung mushrooms in his barn and even have time to labor in cornfields during the harvest season.
"I feel so relieved that I don’t have to run away from park rangers anymore," he said with a grin. "I can make a living at home. It’s safe. Lives are saved."
TOKYO – "They're really popular with the customers, these EV cabs," said Yoshihiko Takahashi who has been driving taxis in Tokyo for 16 years. "The best part is that they're so quiet. People say they can now talk business in the back seat."
Nihon Kotsu Taxi is taking part in a three-month trial using remodeled electric cars with the world's first battery-exchange system for commercial vehicles. (The cabs are old Nissan Dualis which had their engines and transmissions removed and replaced by motors and batteries).
The system is being promoted by Better Place, a Silicon Valley start-up, which is preparing to launch a large commercial EV infrastructure program in Denmark and Israel by the end of next year.
Instead of recharging the vehicle, which can take up to eight hours using normal household electricity or 30 minutes using a fast-speed charger, the battery exchange station can load up a taxi with a fully charged battery in less than a minute.
"It's faster than pumping gasoline," said Takahashi. Each time he swaps in a new battery, he extends his mileage by another 55 miles. And since the average distance a cab drives daily is roughly 175 miles, he only needs to check into a battery station three times a day.
Takahashi acknowledged that the quick battery exchange enabled the EVs to compete with gasoline taxis. "From a business stand point," Takahashi pointed out. "Its' a real strength…You would be forced to limit your business somewhat if you had to recharge the car which at the very least takes 30 minutes."
The key is to keep track of how much power is left and being able to calculate how much longer he can drive. But that information – from acceleration and speed to battery life – are all monitored on a little iPod positioned next to the steering wheel.
And the same information, along with the GPS location of the vehicle, is also shared and monitored on a computer screen at the battery station in case there's a need to alert the driver that the power supply is diminishing.
As for the customers, they are not just getting a ride, but are also making a contribution to reducing the city's gas emission. According to calculations by Better Place, while taxis make up only 2 percent of total vehicles on the roads in Tokyo, they're responsible for 20 percent of vehicular emissions.
But most importantly, the fare may also be another reason for hailing an EV cab. Japan's Next Generation Vehicle's promotional material claims that the costs of driving an electric car one mile can be as little as a third or even one-seventh the cost of driving a traditional gas powered car – particularly if it's a compact car. The taxi company says they are hoping to pass those savings on to customers by charging lower fares.
The hurdle, however is the EV's price tag, currently priced at around $42,000. Even with government subsidies – which bring the price down to about $34,000 – it will undoubtedly be a heavy investment for taxi companies.
And there is also the concern of availability of electric vehicles.
Take for example, Nissan's new EV Leaf. As of June, the company has received 6,000 domestic pre-orders. Add that to the 14,000 vehicles on a waitlist in the United States and demand has already far surpassed the automaker's global production target of 10,000 vehicles.
In terms of infrastructure, with the current test run, one battery station is set up to service three cabs. But Takahashi says if this system is to take off in earnest, his company alone would probably need at least five stations strategically placed throughout Tokyo, in addition to the 97 charging stations already in the city for emergency recharges. And that presents another cost, since each swap station could cost an estimated $500,000.
Nihon Kotsu Taxi will need to review the data compiled from the trial run to determine the viability of this battery exchange system. But it may be one way of weaning away from our dependency on fossil fuel.
As Takahashi predicts, "If you think about the future, electric cars will definitely become a major mode of transportation."
Afghan-born Kamran Safi was 13 when the Taliban killed his father. To save his own life, Kamran was forced to travel thousands of miles alone, leaving behind his family, his home and everything he knew. Now 16, Kamran is traveling even further to share his story on the big screen. NBC News' Sarah Rosefeldt reports from New York.
While the suffering in Haiti continues, world attention has turned to new crises.
After his fourth trip to Port-au-Prince in the six months since the earthquake struck the orphanage supported by his church, Pastor Randy Landis was approached by a member of the congregation at Lifechurch in Allentown, Pa.
"I had one of our members just recently after one of our Sunday morning services say, 'How come we're not sending people down to clean up tar balls in Louisiana?'
"I tried to answer as politely as I could: BP caused the spill, and BP is going to clean it up. If we had the assets, we'd be part of that.
John Ramantanin
The Rescue Children Orphanage has reached out to its neighbors. These children in a tent city in the Santo 25 neighborhood of northeast Port-au-Prince received staple food and fresh fruit shared by the volunteers, staff and children from the orphanage, in nearby Santo 19.
"But in Haiti, there's a moral responsibility we have to the people in the Santo 19 district of Port-au-Prince. We live there. Our children are there. There is a responsibility placed upon us: to assist, to rebuild, to continue to inspire hope for a better Haiti. We're going to remain fully engaged."
Six months after the 7.0-magnitude quake severely damaged the church-supported Rescue Children Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, volunteers say the 11 children who live there are doing well. After a stay at a much larger orphanage, the children again have their own home, a comfortable, newly outfitted orphanage a few blocks from their old one. They are in private schools again. They've been to the beach and to worship services. Despite the scares of occasional tremors, they're starting to trust that the walls won't fall in.
"It took a little time to get the children adjusted into our new home, comfortable with sleeping inside under a roof again, and being reminded of our family rules," said volunteer Julie Berger. "The children were really excited to see school start and get back to a normal, daily routine. Now our days are full with learning new things at school, doing everyday chores, playing all types of sports and games, reaching out to the community, reading and growing up fast!"
David Harris
The 11 children at Rescue Children Orphanage, with one of the "house mommies," Regine.
Outside the orphanage walls, the orphanage staff and volunteers have been reaching out to the neighborhood: putting up tents, delivering food to other orphanages, opening Lifeclinic, a medical oasis that has delivered two dozen babies and treated nearly a thousand patients. People line up at 7 a.m. in the stifling heat to be treated for scabies, asthma, scurvy. Many have amputations needing follow-up treatment. Most of the patients are women and children, and the church hopes to build a playground.
The Rescue Children orphans have joined in "to help the poor people," handing out family food packs, gathering mangos to give to other children. The orphanage has hired many of their neighbors to work as bricklayers, electricians, translators. More than 50 volunteers from the church have made the journey to Port-au-Prince.
"This group has the faith, guts and commitment to work toward providing a sustainable model of care to Santo 19," said a volunteer at the orphanage, Dr. Paul Berger, a urologist and emergency medicine practitioner in Allentown.
'Discouraging' But this small faith-based group is seeing fewer Americans helping.
"This last flight down, on a commercial Boeing 757," Landis said, "I would say that only a handful of people were relief workers, medical professionals. Ninety-five percent of that plane were Haitian Americans going to visit family.
"One of the discouraging things has been, since the earthquake, no longer being in the news. Even when I return, there is no longer this, 'How is your trip? What took place?' It's almost as though people have moved on to the next crisis.
"You have a country, a capital that's been basically destroyed, 200,000 people lost their lives in seven seconds, and it affected millions of people. You have tens of thousands of people still living in tents. Tents as far as your eye could see. Even the best tents are not made to stand up to these conditions 24-7; the winds destroy them. They're brutally hot inside. People need houses. The reconstruction efforts are going extremely slowly."
Landis is a quiet, diplomatic leader of the Pennsylvania campus of the evangelical Lifechurch. But you can hear the dismay in his voice.
"Where are the bulldozers? Where are the cranes? Where are the backhoes?"
Lifechurch
Mackson, one of the children at Rescue Children Orphanage, celebrates after helping to build hundreds of tents for neighbors in Port-au-Prince.
The volunteers stumbled on a nearby orphanage where nuns were taking care of special-needs children. But they had barely any money or food, apparently cut off from any of their original support in the U.S.
Lifechurch's group arranged with the larger Love A Child orphanage to have food delivered, and a group of five special-needs educators accompanied a volunteer down to train the nuns to take care of the children. "You walk through the neighborhoods and behind these walls are orphanages with practically no support from someone back in the States," Landis said.
Even help sent to Haiti can take a long time to reach Haitians -- unless one uses the old system of bribery.
"One of the things that is frustrating," Landis said, "is the backlog of containers at the port. It can take up to six weeks to retrieve a container, easily. We've been told you can get it a little bit quicker if you do it the Haitian way. And that means paying someone to get it out for you. It's extremely sad. You're hopeful, but unless there's a change in the leadership, the government will repeat a lot of the mistakes they have made for generations." (In an op-ed piece published today in The New York Times, former president Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive of Haiti say that only 10 percent of the international commitments to Haiti have been paid.)
John Ramantanin
The girls in their Easter dresses in the garden at Rescue Children Orphanage. In front, left to right, are July (pronounced Julie) and Widlyne. In the rear, Marie-Victoire and Mafouna.
How to volunteer
Lifeclinic is seeking help from physicians, physician assistants, registered nurses, emergency medical technicians, occupational therapists, optometrists and dentists to go to Haiti. Send an e-mail to Judith Walker.
To volunteer at the Rescue Children Orphanage, send an e-mail.
How to donate
Lifechurch/Lifeclinic and Rescue Children Orphanage are separate nonprofit organizations.
Give to Rescue Children Orphanage through its blog. RCO is supported by Lifechurch, Hope Point Community Church, Rice Bowls, and many individuals. The mailing address for RCO is P.O. Box 1984, Allentown, PA 18105.
Lifechurch is at 1401 East Cedar St., Allentown, PA 18109.
Small stones outside the new Rescue Children Orphanage describe what the children are thankful for: house, food, friends, Haiti, prayer, health, RCO, family, Jesus, toys. Volunteer Mariana Melo of Hope Point Community Church in Spartanburg, S.C., led a devotional with the children on being thankful, and wrote what they named.
Previous msnbc.com coverage of the Haitian orphanage
HAVANA – When Raul Castro agreed to release 52 political prisoners, thought to be about a third of all the dissidents in Cuban jails, the news made headlines throughout the world.
Here in Cuba – even with the official press blackout – the news spread as quickly, but took quite a different spin.
Instead of making Raul Castro's decision to free the dissidents the center of the story, Cubans are talking much more about the man who brokered the deal – Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega.
Photo by EPA/Alejandro Ernesto
Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega answers questions from the media about the prisoner release deal on Wednesday.
"It's as if the cardinal performed his own type of miracle," said Nuirka Morales, an agronomy professor at Havana's veterinary college. "Ortega accomplished in three short months what everyone else failed to do in seven long years."
After Cuba imprisoned 75 dissidents in March 2003, accusing them of working with Washington to topple the regime, condemnation rolled in from every corner of the globe. From presidents and prime ministers to international bodies like the European Union, both friends and enemies of the Castro government petitioned for their release, but Havana refused to budge.
Until now…
Castro's decision to release the remaining prisoners – some had already been freed on health grounds – was announced Wednesday, following a meeting he held with Ortega and Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos. But the real negotiations were launched months ago when the cardinal interceded on behalf of the Ladies in White, a group made up of the mothers and wives of the jailed activists.
Anger over aggressive muzzling For seven years the Ladies protested every Sunday in a silent march after attending mass. The government largely tolerated the protest and rarely interfered.
But in March, on the seventh anniversary of the jailing, the Ladies changed their tactics and took their protest into different Havana neighborhoods. The government acted quickly: To silence one march, state security agents surrounded the dozen or so women and wrestled them to the ground before forcibly removing them.
All of this was captured by international television cameras and sparked cries of indignation from Cuban exile communities in places such as Miami and Madrid.
Over the next month, the Ladies tried to return to their regular Sunday marches, but tensions with state security continued to escalate.
The third Sunday in April was particularly ugly. As six members of the group left Mass, they were stopped from marching, shoved across the street and cornered into a park adjacent to the church. For more than seven hours, the women were made to stand under a scorching sun as a pro-government mob shouted insults and obscenities.
The cardinal stepped in after that, meeting with officials from the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee and getting an agreement that the intimidation wouldstop. Once again, the official Cuban press never reported most of this, but many learned the details through the Internet and word of mouth.
Surprise deal
I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I first heard news of the prisoner release on my Blackberry while getting a manicure. I read the news release from the cardinal's press office to the other customers in the nail salon and before I had even finished, some women were already on the phone spreading the news.
Before the day ended, I must have been asked by at least 50 more people if the news was true. They included a man who sells fruit in my neighborhood, an acquaintance who runs a private day care center in her home, two college kids watching Spain beat Germany in the World Cup, a dentist buying pastries, and even a traffic cop and a customs agent at Havana's International Airport.
People also wondered how the Obama government would receive the news and if Washington would consider the prisoner release as a solid step forward.
When asked, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed the prisoner release as a "positive sign" but tempered her enthusiasm by saying the action was "overdue."
The latter part of Clinton's statement is what worries Nelson and Luis Molina. Like many Cubans, these twin brothers are hoping that the White House might reciprocate; they hope that more steps will be taken by both governments to improve relations between the two countries.
Nelson, an evangelical preacher from Kentucky who travels every month to Cuba to help his brother supply his own ministry in the working class Havana neighborhood of Lawton, argued that, "Obama needs to give credit where credit is due."
He thinks it's a fairly safe bet that "no one in the Cuban government came to this decision with ease."
Nodding his head, his brother suggests that Ortega may be the "true path" to bring other changes to the island. "We need changes that will open the economy and bring in jobs," said Luis Molina.
The role of negotiator may not seem like a good fit for the 73-year-old cardinal who has publicly opposed the Cuban system since he was first ordained as a priest in 1964. (He became the Archbishop of Havana in 1981 and was elevated to cardinal in 1994).
But who better, the Molina brothers ask, than someone with Ortega's background? As a young priest he opted against exile even though soon after returning to Cuba from his religious training in Canada, Ortega was imprisoned for more than a year in a work camp.
JOHANNESBURG – There was a dark mystique about the road to Rustenburg well before I even set foot on it.
It's treacherous, I was warned by friends in Johannesburg. Wild animals wander on it at will, and crime – car-jacking, in particular – is rife. Don’t even think about driving after dark, and if you do, don't stop!
Photo by EPA/KIM LUDBROOK
South African fans enjoy the FIFA Fan Fest in Sandton during their group match against France in Johannesburg on June 22.
A few days later, I was on that road in the middle of the night, after reporting on a late World Cup soccer match in Rustenburg. Hotels were full, and we had an early-morning appointment in Johannesburg, two to three hours away.
I was navigating a rental car down dark and largely deserted roads with the help of a GPS, half expecting its monotonous tone to kick in with: "At the sight of a wildebeest, swerve left." Or, "When the gunman steps out, hand over your cash and car keys."
Short on gas, I had to stop at a deserted garage. I could see the silhouettes of people moving inside the garage shop. I stepped nervously inside, and immediately felt like a complete fool.
There was a party atmosphere among the staff, as they argued among themselves – then with us – about the soccer match, while sorting through early editions of newspapers plastered with World Cup images. One of them blasted a vuvuzela.
It was four o'clock in the morning, and the World Cup party was still swinging on this lonely outpost on the Rustenburg road.
Of course we got back safely to Johannesburg, and with hindsight, the paranoia about crime, like most of the other concerns over South Africa's ability to host a successful World Cup were overblown.
Like most people who made the journey to South Africa, I'd heard about the country's horrendous crime and security problems, and had read predictions of open season on gullible soccer fans.
In reality, there has been some crime, of course, mostly petty. But for the most part, the massive World Cup crime wave was a bigger non-event than the performances of the English or French soccer teams.
Policing was beefed up, particularly in areas fans frequented, and special World Cup courts were set up to administer swift justice, though they've hardly been busy – less than 180 cases at the last count.
There were plenty of naysayers ahead of the tournament, doubting South Africa's readiness or ability to stage the event.
Instead it's been well run, a great party, with a very unique flavor and sound (those vuvuzelas!) of its own.
Photo by RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP/Getty Images
Supporters of Spain play the vuvuzela at the end of the World Cup semi-final football match Germany vs. Spain on July 7 in Durban. Spain defeated Germany 1-0.
And wither apartheid? I'd done plenty of homework before heading to South Africa, which left me wondering whether 16 years after the first multi-racial elections, the post-apartheid euphoria was wearing off? Racial inequality remains stark, corruption is rife, going to the heart of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). I wondered whether the dreams of the rainbow nation were beginning to fade.
But there too I found encouragement on the road to Rustenburg, the world's platinum capital. The fast-growing city sits on enormous riches, but is surrounded by townships, some with only the most basic facilities.
But close to the city's soccer stadium, on the outskirts of town, simple dwellings had been turned by their entrepreneurial owners into bars and cafes, packed with soccer fans, old young, black and white, some waiting for the game, others packed around television sets in crowded living rooms.
A young white South African couple told me it was the first time they'd been into a township and eaten "township food."
"The World Cup is really bringing South Africans together," they gushed.
You heard that so often, it almost became a cliché. But it also appears to be true.
One columnist in today's Mail & Guardian, a leading South African paper, said the World Club has brought a "social revolution." He said nobody expected the World Cup to trigger such "an outpouring of nationalistic fervor, or touch as many people from the country's many different race groups."
And that's certainly the way it felt as we were immersed in a noisy, friendly and multi-racial exuberance – from shops and taxis to bars, restaurants and the vast fan zones set up to view the games.
There was another lesson, too, on that Rustenburg road.
We'd spent an earlier night at a sprawling guest house, "just up the road." It turned out to be an hour and a half out of town, and was run by a white Afrikaner couple.
They were perfectly polite, but just off their dining room they had built what can best be described as a shrine to apartheid. It included the old apartheid-era flag and a big portrait of Hendrik Verwoerd, the man often described as the "architect of apartheid."
I was worried this would offend Gu Gu, our black South African coordinator, or our (black) driver Colin. Although I learned later that their biggest worry had been that it might offend me.
It wasn't that they didn't care, they just found it rather quaint – and ultimately irrelevant.
They were more amused than angry. They, and their South Africa, have moved on. And in their own way Gu Gu and Colin represented the confident new face of post-apartheid South Africa, that is increasingly asserting itself, proud that its children are growing up largely colorblind.
There's speculation that Nelson Mandela, credited with bringing the World Cup to South Africa, may attend Sunday’s final. He wasn't able to be at the opening game because the tragic death in a car accident of his great granddaughter.
For millions of South Africans, of all races, that would be a fairytale ending to a great World Cup.
Nobody I met is minimizing the challenges facing South Africa, but for all that, there is an enormous desire to make post-apartheid South Africa work. And hosting the biggest sports event on the planet has enabled South Africans of all races and backgrounds to proclaim that loudly to the world.
Although, that hasn't stopped the determination of teachers and students: Every day from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. 1,000 children crowd inside a cluster of tents – nine in all – that serve as makeshift classrooms.
Mounds of rubble, piles of bricks, concrete, dirt and dust – the remains of their school – are still there. It is the children's playground now.
No one from the Pakistan government or private sector has come to clean up the debris. No one in authority seems to care.
'Just imagine 1,000 kids without a toilet'
Situated in the center of Mingora, the largest town in Swat Valley, the school was a landmark, built by the ruling family in 1954 when Swat was still an independent kingdom.
It became a monument of sorts – the biggest, most famous elementary school in the Swat Valley that was alma mater to both the well-heeled and the downtrodden.
Mohammed Musa, the school's principal, was a graduate. A kindly, dignified man in his late 40s, he was, nevertheless, quick to show his anger and frustration at the bureaucratic red tape.　
"Just imagine 1,000 kids without a toilet," he told me on a recent visit to the school. I couldn't imagine it.
　
Musa said he was livid and frustrated with the government's excuses and foot-dragging, so much that he built a latrine for the kids with his own money.　
"Can you imagine 1,000 kids without clean drinking water?" he continued. Now I was becoming angry, too. 　
Photo by Carol Grisanti/ NBC News
A group of students at Swat Valley's Government School #1
"One of my teachers is a rich man and very generous," Musa explained. "He brought in and paid for a water tank and filtering system so the kids could have clean drinking water."
There was no end to his outrage. "It took the government months to even provide these tents," he told me. "For four months, in the dead of winter, the children had to sit in the open fields. They would cry," he said.　 "Now, they sit in these tents. They still cry. You can feel how hot it is in there."
Indeed, when I visited on a recent summer morning, the temperatures rose above 110 degrees.　The kids, between 5 and 12 years old, squeezed into the tents, side-by-side, cross-legged and barefoot on hard dirt floors in the sweltering heat. They rocked forward and back and forward again – reciting by rote – English, math and the Koran, struggling to learn in desperate conditions.
There are no desks, nor chairs and very few notebooks and pens.
The teachers say these kids spend most of their time outside in the rubble- pushing and shoving one another for water. Often, they have no water at all because there is no electricity to bring water into the tank.
In the fifth grade tent, 70 kids were trying hard to learn English.
"Salam Alaikum" ("Peace be with you"), I said as I made my way to the front of the tent. "Alaikum as Salam" ("Peace be to you, too") they answered back.
And then I tested their English. "Hello," I said.　There was no answer. "How are you?" I continued.
Silence.
The kids seemed unable to understand; or perhaps they were just shy in front of an American woman.
"Sangay" ("How are you?") I tested my Pashto (the local language). "Kha Yum," ("I am fine,") they shouted, smiling.
Photo by Carol Grisanti/ NBC News
Students sit in their classroom - one of nine tents - at Swat Valley's Government School #1
Students hope for more than tents The children can't concentrate and their grades are falling now. All of them are below average students, their teachers say, dropouts in the making.　
But the kids say they would do better if only they had a building, desks and chairs, instead of these tents.
Farhan Ullah Khan, 12, insisted that he loves school; he just doesn't want to go to this school.
"I cried and cried when I saw what happened to our school," he said. "I was worried because there was nowhere to study for four months and I was afraid I would not get an education. Now we have these tents," he said as he wrinkled his nose. "But it's so awful in here."
Naeem Akhtar, the spokesman for the civilian administration in Swat, told me in a recent interview that Government School #1 is a top priority.
"The school is functional," he insisted. "We have provided some of the tents for the children, but this is a heavy project and we are short of funds."　
Akhtar told me that he, too, was an alumnus of the school. Then he shifted blame from his government.　
"The international community is not fulfilling your obligations to us, you are not providing us with any funds," he scolded. Akhtar said that the Taliban had destroyed or damaged 401 schools in the Swat Valley and the government had already repaired 204 of the damaged buildings.　　
Parents who can afford it have pulled their kids out of Government School #1 and placed them in newly rebuilt private schools.　But the 1,000 students who remain are mostly from poor homes; their families toil just to make a living and sometimes there's not enough money to put food on the table. Most parents certainly can't help with their lessons.
Soft spoken and serious, 11-year-old Mohammed Abu Zar said he wants to be a teacher when he grows up. "My parents want me to get an education and they told me I had to keep studying even under these awful conditions," he said. "I don't understand why the government won't give us a building. It's too hard to study in these tents."
Perhaps, Khan, the 12- year-old, said it best:　"I want to become a scientist. So I need to have a quality education in a clean building. This way I can study."　
Tall orders coming from small voices.
NBC's Mushatq Yusufzai and Shahid Qazi contributed to this report.
Armed police search a vehicle leaving the village of Rothbury, northern England, but the hunt for Raoul Moat continues. (Getty Images)
By Heather Lacy and Chris Hampson, NBC News
LONDON — Imagine, if you can, a quiet, small part of the United States where guns are seldom seen, most cops don't carry weapons, and manhunts just don't happen.
Then picture that same place swarming with heavily-armed police and frightened people.
Where families are locked indoors, and police with MP5 carbines patrol the school-yards.
Where 1 in 10 of the country's police marksman, backed up by crack special forces, are in pursuit of just one elusive and dangerous man.
Welcome to the North of England.
For the past week, a 37-year-old body builder has transformed himself from an unknown bully, a nobody, into Britain's most wanted man.
Declaration of war Raoul Moat left his prison cell 7 days ago and declared war on Britain's cops. He shot one in the face after wounding his ex-lover and shooting to death her new partner.
Photo by Reuters
On the run: Murder suspect Raoul Moat.
He's been on the run ever since, always just one small step ahead of his pursuers, leaving long, chilling notes explaining why he is angry, why he wants revenge.
This desperate and anxious pursuit is leading every newscast, and consuming the British public.
Only last month, in another quiet and picturesque part of England — as the crow flies less than 100 miles away — another shooting spree by a deranged taxi driver left 12 people dead and 25 people injured, before he turned the gun on himself.
Guns may still be a rarity in the UK. But when they make an appearance, they do so with terrible effect.
So here we go again.
Until now, Moat was a minor criminal prone to violent outbursts. He'd been arrested on more than a dozen occasions and was serving an 18-week prison sentence for beating someone up.
He'd also been violent to his girlfriend, and so she dumped him. It was then this otherwise unremarkable man flipped.
He armed himself with a shotgun, went back to his old home territory, and effectively challenged the cops to come get him.
'No stone will be left unturned' And come they have: 160 firearms officers including marksmen with high velocity rifles and telescopic sights; 38 specialists from the Metropolitan Police in London; 20 armored Mitsubishi Shoguns brought in from Northern Ireland; helicopters with heat-seeking image-sensors.
The senior police officer leading the pursuit has promised: "No stone will be left unturned in the search for Mr Moat."
His own mother, who has barely seen her son since he was 18, says he's not the kid she raised.
"If I could speak to him now," she said, "I'd tell him he's better off dead."
Unless her son pays heed to her appeal and gives himself up, the odds are she'll be proved right.
Barrier walls, roadblocks and uncertainty continue to be part of Ramallah's landscape, but nightlife is returning. Rock music is being played for the first time, and thousands of young people have made it a destination. See NBC News' Karl Bostic's report below.
DAMDORYN, South Africa – The most common question David Jones gets asked is: "Are you completely mad?"
It's not hard to understand why, since the 44-year-old British carpenter is currently trying to break a world record by sharing a room for four months with 40 of the world's most venomous snakes.
"It's a challenge," he told me. "People die all the time when they climb Mount Everest. But that doesn't put them off. This, if you like, is my Mount Everest. I've always wanted to come and sit here with snakes."
We'd come across Jones while traveling back from Rustenburg to Johannesburg, after watching Ghana defeat the U.S. in the World Cup. You couldn't miss the signs by the roadside: "World Record Attempt in Progress!"
Jones's sparsely-furnished room was at the back of a snake farm, part of the Chameleon Cultural Village.
We found him sitting in front of a laptop computer, updating his website (www.snakeman.co.za) and contemplating making a cup of tea, though that would require some care, since a cobra had taken up residence in the cupboard with his tea bags.
"I had a cobra try to strike at me the other day, while I was making a cup of tea."
He has a bed and small bathroom. The room has windows on three sides to afford a better view to visitors.
What intrigued me most, though, was the television, tuned in to World Cup soccer. Two snakes were lying on top of the satellite and another on top of the TV appeared to be watching the game.
"They seem to watch the movement," Jones said. "But snakes are deaf, so they can't hear the vuvuzelas, which is just as well. I wouldn't want the snakes driven insane by that constant sound."
Photo by Ian Williams/NBC News
David Jones takes a photo of one of his venomous roommates.
Jones has to contain his own excitement, since any sudden movement would attract his housemates.
He’s been a snake enthusiast since he was a boy. "I do remember finding my first snake when I was ten, and taking it to my house. I was delighted. I kept that snake until it died three or four years later."
He says he has to be extra careful of the puff adders. "They move around slowly on the floor. The real danger is treading on them. It's a nasty, nasty venom…They do like my shoes. It’s a nice dark hole."
The current snake-room sharing record is held by South African Martin Smith, also known as Mad Martin, who spent 113 days sharing a room with snakes. Another attempt to break the record failed last year; the challenger was hospitalized twice after being bitten by a puff adder and them a cobra.
Jones does have a nighttime "minder" who sits in the room and keeps the snakes away from his bed while he sleeps.
"Providing I keep my wits about me, providing I do the basics, move around slowly and do look before I move my feet, there's no reason in the world why anything should happen to me," he said.
Assuming he makes it through to August, the target, his wife and young son will travel to Johannesburg for the final days.
A cheer went up from the television, nearly a goal. A long green snake was looking intently at the screen. Jones resisted any attempt to applaud. "I'm not such a soccer man, really." Which is probably a good thing given the circumstances.
BEIJING – We were watching a group of men and women kneading and preparing loaves of bread when my colleague Gu Bo suddenly asked, "There are six patients baking and one instructor, is that right?"
"Yes," replied Yang Yun, a petite Beijing native showing us around.
"So the one holding the knife is the instructor, right?" asked Bo.
Bo's polite but firm persistence was understandable.
This was no ordinary kitchen. It was in the Beijing Chaoyang District Mental Health Service Center , a privately-run mental institution started up in 1999.
Yang, a veteran nurse, was the center’s director.
And the people baking were all patients diagnosed with serious mental illness.
"Most of our patients have gone through treatment at hospitals," said Yang. "But they still have mental problems, and their families can’t take care of them."
So they ended up at the center, which Yang said enables them to recuperate in a quiet and peaceful environment without any pressure. Families pay on average about $180 a month for the patient to live on the premises (not cheap given that the typical monthly income in Beijing is about $550).
Three doctors and some 40 caretakers look after the 190 patients. Virtually all are from Beijing and were brought to the center by relatives. "About 130 to 140 are men," said Yang. They range in age from 18 to 70.
The morning we visited, clusters of people sat in the garden, shaded by trees and grapevines, trying to beat the heat. A handful of patients watched television indoors. Some walked back and forth, quietly and purposefully, with a faraway look in their eyes.
But in the kitchen far off to the corner, there was a hubbub of activity.
Photo by Adrienne Mong/NBC News
The bakers wait for their challah loaves to cool.
‘Crazy bake’ The bakery was born five years ago when Natascha Prigge and Yvonne Gerig came to the center as volunteers.
"I think we as foreigners here in Beijing … have a pretty privileged life," said Prigge, who hails from Munster, Germany. She has been living in Beijing for nearly eight years and said that volunteering at the center is her way of helping her adopted country. "We can’t really change anything, but it’s a small thing I can do to give something back."
After starting an organic farm project at the center, she and Gerig, a Swiss native who studied psychology in college, came up with the idea of a bakery.
"We were thinking of something that we can teach to the patients, and we were looking for [an] occupation that they can do all year long," said Prigge, who studied business when she was in college. "And baking is something that is easy to learn, easy to handle, and when we started five years ago there were not so many bakeries around."
After raising a few thousand dollars, Prigge and Gerig bought equipment and refurbished a room in the center for the bakery to launch "Crazy Bake." ("Some people think the name is very direct," acknowledged Prigge, who canvassed opinions from native English speakers before deciding on the name. "But the patients are fine with it.")
Since then, every Friday, the group of six patients don their chef’s hats and aprons to work in their fully outfitted kitchen. Even during this slow season – most of their customers are expatriates who go away for the summer holidays – they churn out around 60 loaves of farmer’s bread and challah bread (each sell for about $3), in addition to bags of bagels.
"[The patients] do everything," said Prigge. "The only thing we do is distribution now." Each Friday, after the loaves are made, she or Gerig make the trip to downtown Beijing – occasionally with one or two of the patients – to deliver the bread to homes, schools, and embassies.
The bakery program was initially intended to give the patients something to do and to provide structure to their days. It’s also allowed them to re-engage with the wider world. A patient at the center since 2001, Jeff, who would only give his first name, loves making deliveries. "I like being outside, and I like seeing other people," he said.
"They have fun baking and gain confidence," said Yang. "They can also make some money out of it, some of which has been used to buy facilities for the center, and that makes them feel respected and valued. So it’s a great thing for them both mentally and physically."
Photo by Adrienne Mong/NBC News
Patients at the Beijing Chaoyang District Mental Health Service Center enjoy the quiet shade on a hot summer day.
'This needs our whole society’s attention' Attitudes at the center seem a far cry from how the mentally ill are typically viewed in China.
"I personally don’t think we have much support from society, which discriminates against the mentally ill," said Yang. "Chinese society doesn’t know very much about mentally ill patients. They think of them as lunatics or weirdos."
Her remarks underscore perceptions that surfaced after a series of random school attacks last spring across the country, in which several men injured or killed several dozens of young students.
Although still very little is known about the perpetrators or their motives, commentators in the media were quick to note commonalities: some of the men were social misfits or nursing a host of grudges. Many Chinese sociologists and psychology experts spoke out about the need for a better social safety net to catch those unable to cope with modern-day challenges.
"Our society is changing and developing rapidly," said Yang. "We discover that many young people, although they are not sick, they do have a mental disorder. You never know when they may act extremely…. This needs our whole society’s attention."
But that attention appears to be sorely lacking.
"There aren’t a lot of psychological doctors and clinics like we have in the West," said Prigge. "I think it’s difficult to get the proper treatment."
Health experts here have estimated China has at least 100 million mentally ill people (out of 1.3 billion), but that fewer than half of the general public have any awareness of mental health.
Moreover, by the end of 2005, there were just under 600 mental institutes, some 16,000 registered psychologists, and only 133,000 psychiatric hospital beds in the entire country. Crunch the numbers, and it looks worse: One hospital bed for every 10,000 Chinese and one psychologist for every 100,000 Chinese.
(We could only rely on statistics from 2005. In response to our requests for more up-to-date information, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention refused, and the Chinese Ministry of Health stonewalled us.)
The World Health Organization confirmed that mental illness ranks as the second largest burden on Chinese health care, just lagging behind heart disease, but exceeding cancer. Factoring in neurological disorders such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, etc., neuropsychiatric diseases top the list.
Which makes the Beijing Chaoyang District Mental Health Service Center and the "Crazy Bake" program all the more remarkable. Since the program’s inception, the participating patients have shown marked progress, said Yang. The six bakers are now housed in assisted living a short distance away from the centre.
"I feel more freedom than here," said Jeff, one of the two bakers who speaks fluent English that he learned in university.
Jeff, who worked in engineering, marketing and even ran his own business before he was brought to the center by his family, exudes a friendly directness that hints at none of his troubled past, yet promises a hopeful future. "I feel happy, I feel [active]. I feel good," he said.
LONDON – Wild animals don't often venture into bustling, noisy and grimy London. But there is one country creature that has made its home in this city of almost 8 million: the fox.
Foxes slink down side streets at dawn and dusk. Amorous foxes shrieking outside my bedroom window occasionally wake me. One critter is fond of the compost heap in my backyard. While there are thought be around 10,000 urban foxes in the capital, the average Londoners' attitude toward them has traditionally been benign.
Metropolitan Police via Reuters
A fox is seen outside a rear door at a house where two baby girls were attacked in Hackney, in this Metropolitan Police handout image released in London June 9, 2010.
That changed last month after a fox mauled 9-month-old twin sisters in their bedroom in the city's Hackney neighborhood. "It's a living nightmare," the twins' mother Pauline Koupparis told a local radio station.
She described the scene to the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "I went into the room and I saw some blood on Isabella's cot. I thought she'd had a nosebleed. I put on the light and I saw a fox, and it wasn't even scared of me, it just looked me straight in the eye."
The girls were seriously injured and one may need specialist medical care into her late teens.
In another recent incident, on June 19, a toddler in the coastal city of Brighton was hospitalized after being scratched or bitten by a fox at his pre-school.
The attacks dominated Britain's media for days. Newspapers ran grainy pictures of foxes lurking in doorways and paths.
The Sun, the country's biggest-selling daily newspaper, ran a picture of a fox perched on the windowsill of a pregnant woman's bedroom under the headline: "Prowler fox shows no fear."
"It is pathetic," said John Bryant, a pest-control consultant who specializes in urban foxes. "A lot of the people who are ringing up now are saying 'I can't let my grandchildren play in the garden because there are foxes out there.' This is the same generation that stood against the Nazi hordes, and now everyone is terrified of fox cubs."
Media reports don't point out that fox attacks are very rare and never fatal, unlike dog maulings, he said.
"What all the pro-conservative media about is to make sure that everybody hates or denigrates or is frightened of foxes so that (Prime Minister) David Cameron brings back fox hunting," he said.
So the issue is once again on the political agenda: whether or not foxes pose a widespread danger.
Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images
Members of the Bicester and Whaddon Chase Hunt depart for their Boxing Day hunt near Bicester, England in this December 2007 file photo.
Political debate or class issue? Fox hunting with dogs was banned by Prime Minister Tony Blair's left-leaning Labour government in 2005 but analysts say there is now a real possibility that the law will be reversed.
How the population responds to the recent maulings, and whether the new Conservative-dominated government is able to overturn the ban, will have as much to do with politics and class as with animal rights and wildlife management.
The law only covered hunting with dogs; it is still legal to shoot, snare and even use an eagle to kill foxes.
The incidents in London threw into stark relief an issue that has "become so totemic in modern politics," said Tim Bonner, spokesman for the Countryside Alliance, which opposes the ban and openly works to undermine it. "It is all about class and identity – the red-coated fox hunter becomes associated with old Conservative politics," Bonner says.
Fox hunting with hounds is a ritualized practice often involving entire communities, from the riders and horses bounding across field and dale to so-called terrier men who pursue the foxes when they've gone to ground. Many supporters say hunting keeps fox numbers down, thus helping local farmers and controlling a pest that spreads disease.
Now, a cross-party proposal spearheaded by the Countryside Alliance, led by Labour peer Lord Donoughue and counting on the support of Conservatives and Labour legislators could see the ban being overturned.
The proposal to create a new regulator to monitor hunts and prevent unnecessary cruelty to animals has momentum, according to the Countryside Alliance and media reports.
But while some argue that the fox hunting ban must be rolled back because it violates a basic freedom, others say it is simply a way for people to revel in the death of a defenseless animal and is a reminder of Britain's enduring class system.
Predictably animal rights activists would be dismayed if the ban was overturned.
"The evidence shows that fox hunting does not have a significant effect on the fox population," said the League Against Cruel Sports, a leading campaign group that fights so-called blood sports. "The evidence also shows that the hunted fox suffers unnecessarily both during the chase and at the kill."
And far from using fox hunts to cull pests, the organization says that many supporters actually raise and feed foxes to make sure there are enough animals to hunt.
So the recent events in the Koupparis household worry those like Libby Anderson, policy director of Advocates for Animals, who works to stop fox hunting altogether.
"This is a matter of great concern particularly at this time when we might be facing a vote repealing the hunting," she says. "Not to dismiss an incident that was very serious and very distressing for these poor wee girls, we remain concerned that any other incident will be magnified."
Whether or not the Countryside Alliance-supported compromise passes is uncertain, as most Liberal Democrats and Labour politicians are opposed to the vote.
"We have argued that it would be a waste of government time," Liberal Democrat spokesman Mark Haslam said.
But a bugle call for change is echoing across Britain, both in the countryside and the city, and supporters of fox hunting reluctantly admit the Koupparis twins' maulings was a gift to their cause.
As the Countryside Alliance's Bonner said: "It merely reminds people that foxes are predators and not cute and cuddly animals."
LONDON – The CIA may be wondering why its phones aren’t ringing as much as they used to. The U.S. military is increasingly gathering its own intelligence.
The goal is to disrupt and destroy growing militant groups in countries such as Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Somalia.
“To do their job military commanders need bespoke intelligence so that they can understand for themselves what the big picture is,” said David Livingston, an international security expert with London-based Chatham House think tank. “It’s a classic special forces role, operating in advance of other military units without needing to incorporate other agencies. But they must be very careful. The decision to go in must come from the very highest political level, as the potential for political embarrassment is so high.”
Military officials confirmed that U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) forces are currently conducting “more than 110 missions in around 60 countries.”
'Go in and get out' While some commentators have expressed concern about the impact Petraeus’ order could have on already fragile political relationships, one special forces soldier said intelligence gathering was in many ways a “stereotypical” mission.
“The ultimate aim of all special forces missions is to go in and get out without anyone ever knowing about it,” he told msnbc.com on condition of anonymity.
USASOC forces have been operating in Philippines for many years in a bid to combat the growing number of fundamentalist cells in the region. In 2009, two U.S. soldiers were killed there when their Humvee hit a roadside bomb. In Somalia, U.S. spy drones are already flying circles over Mogadishu, keeping track of insurgents being trained there.
As the cost of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq grows daily, experts say that gathering intelligence on prospective threats could save lives and dollars in the future.
“By going in early and preventing things from happening you stop the very expensive outcome, both in blood and treasure, of a military intervention later on,” Livingston added.
E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
