Reporting

By: Nadia Sussman

This is an area that, someday, must accommodate thousands of tourists a year if it is to realize its potential as an economic engine for the Peten region.

We've been in Guatemala City for four days, running around nonstop. I slept for 45 minutes after our red-eye Tuesday night and managed to motor through the following day. We spent Wednesday through Friday interviewing a variety of experts and government officials. During that time, we managed to hook up with a group of archaeologists traveling to El Mirador starting on Monday. So tomorrow we board a minibus bound for Flores, Petén, and Monday we start walking north.

In a small shack made of iron sheets and pieces of clothing in the slums of Addis Ababa live the Alemu family - Abiy, Marasit Bishaw, and the couple's three-year-old son and 25-day-old baby daughter Yanit.

And just a few metres from their one-room home is a mass of sewage and garbage, mixed with the carcasses of dead chickens and cow and goat skulls.

The Alemus live near the gully where the Kabena river used to meander gracefully through the Ethiopian capital.

But the river is now full of the city's waste, and a stench of sewage is the first thing that hits.

As day breaks over the rusty tin roofs and makeshift homes of the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, the water sellers are already at their water tanks, waiting for their first customers.

Selling water in one of the world's largest slums is a good business. On most days the vendors charge 5 cents for five gallons, 100 times the cost of piped water provided by the city. But the city does not send water to the residents of Kibera--at any price.

For journalists operating in Nigeria, among other countries, adhering to the journalist code of ethics laid out by the Society of Professional Journalists is extremely difficult and may even cost them their lives. It is relatively easy for journalists covering a story in the US to be truthful, fair and comprehensive. There is the freedom awarded the press, general open access and laws requiring most information be made available.

Abousfian Abdelrazik takes the picture frame into his hands. His eyes open wide. "Kouteyba," he says, gently, longingly, as he looks at the picture of the son he hasn't seen in five years. "He's a big boy now." He puts the frame aside; then he picks it up again. "He's a big boy now," he repeats, shaking his head ...

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(06-30) 04:00 PDT Chitwan, Nepal — Four years ago, a science student who goes by the nom de guerre Hardik dropped out of a Kathmandu university to join Maoist insurgents. Today, the 25-year-old rebel idles in a U.N.-monitored camp, studying English grammar or playing the flute between training drills.

Vast ethnic diversity, geography and under-development have bred dozens of separatist movements in India's far-eastern Assam state. But these same factors that gave rise to spasms of violence throughout the region over the last 20 years have also had a containing effect: Militant groups have run up against each other, in addition to the Indian military.

Caught between India, Pakistan and a homegrown desire for independence, Kashmir has been hostage to conflict for more than fifty years. Today violence is in decline, a trend that is attributed to fatigue, a bilateral peace process with traction, and Pakistan's preoccupation with radical Islamic militants in the tribal areas along its Western border.

William H. Freivogel, director of the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a professor at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, returned to East Africa this month. The following is the last of his five posts from the field.

Kenya was the brightest spot on my first trip to Africa a year ago when our State Department-sponsored group traveled from Uganda to Kenya to Ethiopia. Kenya's economy was booming, the middle class growing and a robust election campaign was underway. The press was freer in Kenya than anywhere we went.