beyondBeijing2008.com

By Mary Murray, NBC News Havana Bureau Chief
HAVANA – From the moment London’s Royal Ballet came to town, observers dubbed it a “diplomatic dance” and predicted the tour would generate the same ground-breaking excitement as the grand old cultural exchanges during the Cold War. This would be, after all, the first visit by an [...]

By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer
TEL AVIV – The arrest of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman accused of starving her 3-year-old son has sparked three days of violent clashes in Jerusalem between religious and secular Jews.
Authorities allege that the mentally ill woman has been starving her son for several years.
On Thursday, a photo on [...]

A devastating drought has left Iraq bone dry. Swaths of farm land have turned to baked dirt, drinking water supplies are threatened and to add to the misery, a massive dust storm has blanketed the country. All the dry land has opened up a treasure trove for archeologists, but they fear looters. NBC News’ Steve [...]

BANGKOK, Thailand – Like many students at the Setsatian School for the Deaf, 18-year-old Supawan Klaiyana has been hearing impaired from birth and cannot listen to music.
She enjoys watching pop singers dancing on TV and thought that was the maximum extent of music she could experience. But that changed completely last week when she [...]

By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
 URUMQI, China – Riot-torn Urumqi is hosting a beauty contest. The streets are still swamped by riot police, the city tense and littered with the debris of the worst unrest in decades, but the contestants for the 35th Miss International Beauty Pageant have come to town.
I bumped into them [...]