Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

Fifty-three years ago today, Rosa Parks greatly advanced the cause of civil rights with a single dignified act. She refused to stand.

The year was 1955 when the seamstress quietly explained to a Montgomery, Alabama bus driver, James Blake, that she would not give up her seat for a white passenger. It was the year my parents were married and I wasn’t born until nearly a decade later. But I always knew of Rosa Parks, the mother of the civil rights movement. Her story, and that of the Montgomery Bus Boycott that followed, was part of the context of my childhood.

Children today can only imagine that time when black people were forced to sit at the back of the bus, to drink from separate water fountains, to swim in separate pools and beaches and of course to attend separate schools. Segregationists insisted that such separation could be equal. But we all now know what the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1954. That separate can never be equal.

Keep reading

John Vause | BIO
CNN Beijing Correspondent

It just won’t go away.

The latest figures from China’s health ministry show that even now, more than two months after the melamine in the baby milk scandal broke, almost a thousand Chinese kids are still in hospital, and according to China’s health Ministry, almost 300 thousand were made ill and a total of six kids were killed.

It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that even these numbers, do not reflect the full extent of how many babies and infants were left sick and dying. Consider this: China is the same size geographically as the US, give or take, with four times the population, and once you leave the big cities and head west, you step back in time and about two worlds. Many in the small isolated rural areas probably had no idea their kids were drinking poison, no idea why their only precious child was screaming in pain from kidney stones. This scandal has been going on for years.

Keep reading

David M. Reisner
AC360° Digital Producer

Thanksgiving marks the busiest travel period of the year as people take planes, trains, and automobiles to visit loved ones on every corner of this nation.

Others take the shuttle…the space shuttle that is.

I present to you Thanksgiving 2008 - From Outer Space:

We have a seasonal medley of Smoked Turkey, green beans and mushrooms, candied yams, corn bread stuffing, a spot of tea, and cran-apple dish for desert! (that’s the stuff on the right)

For astronauts aboard the space shuttle ‘Endeavour’ this is the meal they will sit down to this evening… OK, well, they won’t be sitting – no fancy place-settings or designated seats here. Just a bunch of floating guests with trays VELCRO’ed to their clothing (I never liked assigned seats anyway).

It’s not every space-mission where you can experience Thanksgiving 220 miles above Earth. The last time this happened was six years ago!

I have to imagine there’s nothing like celebrating ‘Turkey Day’ eating Turkey while looking at Turkey… the country… all of it… from your window.

The seven astronauts and three crew members from the International Space Station will take a page from the very first Thanksgiving– sharing all that they have with each other… They’ll have to – Seems NASA only launched 6 Thanksgiving meals up into space this year…. So as the Indians first shared their feast with the Pilgrims – We hope our astronauts slice that freeze-dried turkey a little more thinly for that lonely Russian cosmonaut on board.

Speaking of freeze-dried turkey…

Feel bloated after Thanksgiving dinner? Have that urge to loosen the belt, unbutton your pants? No problem when there’s no gravity! Plus, if you’re counting calories tonight…compared to your family’s meal, its not too bad. Let’s break it down for you:

According to NASA the average Thanksgiving meal racks up 3,000 calories while their ‘out of this world’ meal only costs you 700 calories!

Reporters were privies to a taste test of the holiday dinner. One AP reporter noted:

“The smoked turkey was slightly stiffer than deli meat, like after it has been left in the refrigerator a week past its expiration date. The candied yams had a syrupy sweetness outside that dissolved into blandness in the middle. The green beans with mushrooms tasted like they have been frozen and then microwaved to an inch of their life.”

Despite the not-so-rave-review, I think our space crew has a lot to be thankful for up there (hello?!? No in-laws!). Astronauts aboard the Mercury program missions ate food-paste out of a tube for dinner!

So before you take issue with how Aunt Sally prepared the white-meat this year… Think of the meal happening miles and miles over your head…. Let you never complain the Turkey was too dry again…

Editor’s Note: CNN’s Andrew Stevens happened to be staying in one of the hotels attacked in Mumbai, India. Below is his report on AC360°. Click here for all AC360° reports on the attack on Mumbai.

Andrew Stevens | Bio
CNN International Anchor, World News Asia

Bombs, gunfire, chaos, carnage. Mumbai, popular with Americans and the commercial capital of India, erupted in a coordinated terror attack.

It began around 10:00 p.m. local time, armed with grenades, automatic weapons and explosives, an unknown number of extremists killed scores including the city’s anti-terrorism chief and wounded hundreds.

At least ten sites were targeted including two luxury hotels, cafes, a hospital for women and children, a movie theater, and a train station. At the historic Taj Mahal hotel where a large plume of smoke rose hours after the attacks began, witnesses say gunmen were looking for U.S. and British citizens. An untold number of people have been taken hostage.

The army has moved into the hotel and across the city. Several terrorists have been killed or arrested. Others remain on the loose.

Both President Bush and President-Elect Barack Obama issued statements, each strongly condemning the attack. Who’s behind this? Local reports say a group named the Deccan Mujahedeen claimed responsibility. Some officials say it bears all the hall marks of Al Qaeda. Mumbai is the mecca for western business men and women, many from America. It’s believed thousands of U.S. citizens own a city that is now under siege.

Keep reading

The American Citizen Services Unit provides emergency services to Americans in the event of death, arrest, illness, missing persons, destitution and other circumstances. However, the type of services provided are limited. For information on those services, please refer to the State Department’s website for travelers.

A U.S. citizen who wishes to request emergency assistance can call the American Citizen Services Unit 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at (91-22) 2363-3611. Outside business hours, the person should call the Embassy switchboard at (91-22) 2363-3611, dial “0” and request to speak with the “Duty Officer.” When calling from the United States, begin by dialing 011-91-22-. When calling from within India but outside Mumbai, please dial 022-2363-3611.

For more information, click here.

Atia Abawi
Afghanistan Correspondent

In many countries, it is considered a right, not a privilege, to attend school. But in Afghanistan, it’s risky business.

During the Taliban’s brutal five-year regime, girls here were forbidden from becoming educated. If they attempted schooling, they could be subject to a beating by the religious police, or worse.

Since the fall of the Taliban following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, one of the few achievements of the government has been offering access to education. Approximately 6 million children attend schools throughout the country, 2 million of which are girls.

But an incident last week highlights the dangers these girls once again face as a resurgent Taliban inches for control in the war-ravaged nation.

Like most kids around the world, 16-year-old Atifa and 19-year-old Shamsia were rushing to school hoping to make it on time.

“We saw two men up ahead staring at us. One was standing off and the other one was on their motorcycle. I wanted to go but there was a black object in his hand and he took it out,” Atifa told us.

The object was a water pistol, filled with battery acid that the men threw on the girls. It burned through their clothes and their skin.

Keep reading

David Ignatius
Washington Post

Let’s try for a moment to read the mind of an al-Qaeda operative in the remote mountains of Waziristan as he listens to the news on the radio. His worldview has been roiled recently by two events — one confounding his image of the West and the other confirming it.

The upsetting news for our imaginary jihadist is the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. This wasn’t supposed to happen, in al-Qaeda’s playbook. Its aim was to draw the “far enemy” (meaning America) ever deeper onto the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead, the jihadists must cope with a president-elect who promises to get out of Iraq and whose advisers are talking about negotiating with the Taliban. And to top it off, the guy’s middle name is Hussein.

Before the election, the radical Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradhawi even issued a fatwa supporting John McCain: “Personally, I would prefer for the Republican candidate, McCain, to be elected. This is because I prefer the obvious enemy who does not hypocritically [conceal] his hostility toward you . . . to the enemy who wears a mask [of friendliness].”

Read more…

Editor’s Note: Andre Heller worked as a logistics coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in the North Kivu region of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He returned from the DRC in October, after working there for 14 months. Andre reflects here on his time in the DRC on the occasion of the launch of Condition: Critical, a multimedia project produced by Doctors Without Borders that shares testimonies of people whose lives are filled with violence, displacement, and hopes for the future.
______________________________________

Andre Heller
Doctors Without Borders

It took about 24 hours for me to realize I was going to stay quite a while longer than the three months I originally signed up for. I would have stayed longer than 14 were I not so tired. I’d never seen a place with such beautiful terrain, fertile ground, and lively people. One of the most breathtaking places I’ve ever been in my life. The sad reality of North Kivu is that constant fighting, displacement, and human suffering are as much a part of the landscape as the volcanoes around you. An area this war torn doesn’t leave one wondering if people are OK or not. You know there’s something wrong. It got under my skin and I didn’t want to leave.

When you watch this multimedia feature (Condition: Critical), imagine that for each person that gives their personal testimony, there are 125,000 you have not yet heard.

Keep reading

This undated picture made at an unknown location shows the MV Sirius Star a Saudi oil supertanker which has been hijacked by Somali pirates.

Jamie McIntyre | BIO
Senior Pentagon Correspondent

As the pirates seemingly pillage with impunity off the Horn of Africa, the U.S. Navy has some advice: the best defense is … well, a better defense!

The problem is once the pirates get on board commercial ships, and take the crews hostages, the options are limited, and most countries or companies just pay the ransom, which only emboldens the pirates to pull off even more high-profile hijackings.

While the U.S. Navy patrols the Gulf of Aden as part of a multi-national force patrolling the waters off the coast of Somalia and Kenya, it can’t be everywhere at once.

The best, simplest answer is better shipboard defenses and smarter protective procedures, one U.S. Navy spokesman tells CNN.

“It like protecting a warehouse on land”, he says “You wouldn’t leave a warehouse full of valuable merchandise unguarded.”

And shipboard defenses don’t necessarily have to involve heavy weapons.

Attacks have been repelled by the use of fire hoses.

Keep reading

Gary Tuchman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Ever since I began reporting from Ground Zero on September 11th, 2001, I have never wavered in my conviction that the merry band of Al Qaeda terrorists are among the most cowardly human beings on earth. You have sunk as low as you can go when you kill innocent human beings and claim there is justification for it. That goes for the terrorists who flew on the planes, and the terrorists who ordered them to do so. And that brings me to Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

The number two Al Qaeda leader is at the very least tied for number one in cowardice, and his latest action is symbolic of his style. Today, he came out with his first post American election statement in which he uses an extremely disparaging racial term to describe Barack Obama. What’s notable are the similarities between Al-Zawahiri’s methods and America’s own Ku Klux Klan. For generations, Klan members have used the cloak of their hoods to hide their identities as they spewed their hatred.

And now, Al-Zawahiri is echoing some of the Klan’s own racist sentiment and doing it with his own cloak; an audiotape, which is used because he and his minions are way too afraid to give away clues about their lairs. Haters come in different packages, but they share the characteristic of diabolical rationalization, and utter lack of courage.