Kenya: The Online Tribal Wars
BY Edwin Okong'o

Kenyan journalist, Edwin Okong'o.

Editor's Note: Since we last covered the tribal violence that flared in Kenya after last December's disputed election, the two parties contesting the outcome have reached a powersharing agreement and the worst of the bloodshed is over. But as the following dispatch reveals, the tribal hatred that left around 1,500 dead and thousands more displaced, also erupted online. Our regular contributor, Edwin Okong'o, describes how he became an unwitting target in the online tribal wars, much of it fueled by normally rational well-educated Kenyans living in the U.S.

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Egypt: Eyewitness to an Uprising
BY James Buck

Length: 5:14

During the crackdown, a 15-year-old boy and two men were killed and more than 100 wounded.

Editor's Note: Freelance reporter James Buck was detained by Egyptian security forces on April 10 while photographing demonstrators outside a police station in the city of Mahalla, where food riots had broken out. A journalism student at the University of California at Berkeley, and a contributor to the FRONTLINE/World website, Buck had gone to Egypt on March 24 to complete a master's degree project and traveled to Mahalla on April 6 to report about a planned strike at the Middle East's largest textile factory.

Tibet's Moment
BY Alison Satake

Length: 7:07

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of the Students for a Free Tibet, rallies protesters in San Francisco.

It's the night before the highly anticipated Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, and I am watching a training session for protestors led by Students for a Free Tibet, the group who scaled the Golden Gate Bridge to unfurl two banners the day before. A stream of young Tibetans files into the back of a Berkeley church until the room is filled. Lhadon Tethong, the executive director of the organization, arrives with a caravan of weary protesters who had attended a candlelight vigil in San Francisco. Nobel Peace laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu had spoken there. So did actor and activist Richard Gere. Draped in Tibetan flags, with their face paint reading "Free Tibet," the protestors look like sports fans after a long tournament.

But the outcome of this event is still to be decided.

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Beijing's Blaze
BY Alison Satake

Length: 3:09

A protester in downtown San Francisco protests the imminent arrival of the Olympic Torch.

On Wednesday, the Beijing Olympic torch is scheduled to blaze through San Francisco, home to the second largest population of Chinese in America. But rather than celebratory cheers, cries of protest from China's critics have rung throughout the city. Today, Tibetan exiles scaled Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled a banner that read: "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet."

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Bosnia: The Man Who Greeted Hillary
BY Joe Rubin

ELECTION 2008

Hillary Clinton with former Bosnian president Ejup Ganic in 1996.

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Hillary Clinton in a prepared foreign policy speech at George Washington University
March 17, 2008

Who knew that memories of snipers in Bosnia would become an issue in the presidential campaign?

Hillary Clinton has spent the last two weeks retracting her recollection that she had to run for cover to avoid sniper fire when she arrived at an airport in Bosnia in 1996. Once the original news footage of the visit surfaced, her comment made for embarrassing YouTube viewing, where the original news clip and multiple spoof videos have been watched by millions. Embracing an 8-year-old on the tarmac and listening to a poem is hardly duck and cover.

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Burma: The Chinese Connection
BY Orlando de Guzman

Length: 3:29

Chinese military transport trucks on the China-Burma border awaiting delivery to the Burmese Army.

Watch a video interview with a Burmese prostitute forced to leave Rangoon after the military crackdown last September and find work in the boomtowns on the Chinese side of the border.

Here at the Chinese town of Jie Gao, on the Burmese border, a fleet of military trucks waits to cross into Burma. For many, the long lineup of vehicles is further evidence that China continues to undermine U.S.-backed sanctions against Burma's military junta. The approximately 100 drab green, light-transport vehicles are designed and built by the Chinese-owned Tongfeng Company. The vehicles -- in addition to more than 400 delivered last year -- are destined for Burmese army units across the country. Trucks from the 2007 delivery, according to Burmese bloggers, moved troops into Rangoon to crush a popular uprising led by Buddhist monks last September.

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End of the Road for Notorious Arms Dealer?
BY Matthew Brunwasser

Victor Bout was arrested March 6 during a U.S.-Thai sting operation in Bangkok. The U.S. has requested his extradition. (Photo: AP)

He is known as "the merchant of death" and he's been on the run for years from the U.S., the United Nations and Interpol. Now Bout sits behind bars in Bangkok, Thailand, following his March 6 arrest by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Thai police. Wanted for violating U.N. arms embargoes and fueling wars in Africa, Bout was caught in a DEA sting in which the Moscow-based arms dealer thought he was selling surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to representatives of Colombia's cocaine-dealing FARC guerillas.

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That Nice Little Italian Place
BY David Montero

David Montero reporting for FRONTLINE/World in Swat Valley.

Luna Caprese, an Italian restaurant in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, was one of the most popular "speakeasies" in a country where consuming alcohol is forbidden by law.

Sometime last Saturday evening, March 15, when the restaurant was full, someone apparently slipped into the garden, and placed a bomb under one of the tables. When it detonated at 8:40 pm, it killed a Turkish woman and wounded 12 people, including five Americans, four of them FBI agents. Two of the survivors that night are my good friends. One of them crawled his way out of the wreckage, collapsing in the street.

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The Man Who Saved John McCain
BY Nguyen Qui Duc

ELECTION 2008

Nguyen Dang Doanh claims he rescued John McCain from a lake near Hanoi after his plane went down.

I think about Senator John McCain every day, because every day I walk my dog, Moto, around Truc Bach, or Bamboo Island Lake, not far from my house. It's just a 10-minute ride from downtown Hanoi.

The lake is where Navy pilot McCain went down in October 1967, during the height of the war in Vietnam. He was then, like other pilots, both a hated enemy, and a prize for the Hanoi leaders as they contemplated negotiating with Washington, DC.

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The Cost of Nicaragua's Total Abortion Ban
BY Kate Seelye

Rosa Argentina with her grandson Lesker, now in her care since the death of her daughter.

Macbeth's witches flashed briefly through my mind as I followed an herbal healer into a thatched hut, high on a forested hill in northern Nicaragua. A lone candle cast shadows onto a wood-fed stove where a cauldron bubbled. On the dirt floor, a mangy dog settled near the fire.

Luna, who asked that I not use her full name, began to prepare a concoction. From her garden she had plucked a precise set of ingredients: seven coffee leaves and buds, seven leaves from a plant she called diacepan and five leaves from the tree of the prickly guanabana fruit. She crushed them together in a bowl, added chamomile and a few drops of essence, before tossing them into a boiling pot. When brewed together, Luna explained, they make a bitter potion "that induces contractions" in pregnant women.

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