Foreign Populations

In three years of teaching English in South Korea, Tony Hellmann says he's seen discrimination both in and out of the classroom. He knows teachers, he says, who are harassed for having Korean girlfriends. He's met only three black instructors in his time. And he's been denied service in Korean bars. "I've been told to leave because I'm a foreigner," the 33-year-old Seattle native said.

The White House is considering whether to detain international terrorism suspects at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, senior U.S. officials said, an option that would lead to another prison with the same purpose as Guantanamo Bay, which it has promised to close. The idea, which would require approval by President Obama, already has drawn resistance from within the government. Army Gen. Stanley A. McCrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and other senior officials strongly oppose it, fearing that expansion of the U.S. detention facility at Bagram air base could make the job of stabilizing the country even tougher.

For years, on the anniversary of his wife's death in 2000, Peter Underwood sought the solace of the tiny hillside cemetery not far from this city's bustling downtown. He laid flowers at her grave site and paid his respects to four generations of his family who are buried here -- mostly Western missionaries who first arrived in Korea more than a century ago. There's even a plot for Underwood himself. But the 54-year-old consultant no longer visits this sanctuary. He says he feels harassed here -- shadowed by the new stewards of a cemetery that offers a hallowed history lesson in Korea's expatriate past.

The most heated controversy over the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down parts of the nation's campaign-funding laws has focused on whether the decision frees foreign corporations to pour money into American elections. President Obama raised this specter Wednesday in his State of the Union address, saying the ruling would "open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections." A day later, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.

Filipino exchange teacher Ferdinand Nakila landed in Los Angeles expecting "Pretty Woman" scenes of swank Beverly Hills boulevards and glittering celebrities. What he got was Inglewood, where he stayed for two weeks in temporary housing and encountered drunkards, beggars, trash-filled streets and nightly police sirens. It got worse.

Elena Rezneac's lavender eye shadow shimmered in the sun outside a crowded Internet cafe in Yemen's capital city. The 21-year-old Moldovan student giggled as she pushed her sunglasses up above her blond ponytail. "If you read about Yemen in the news lately, you think there are terrorists running around and bombs in all the streets," she said. "But when you are here, it's calm. I have to go online to remember there's a war going on." Others among the thousands of foreign aid workers and students of Arabic who live in this impoverished nation expressed a similar view.

Cao Thi Nguyen and her baby were marooned in a strange land without family or options. The young woman, who moved here from Vietnam two years ago to marry a South Korean man, had been kicked out of her home after a fight with her husband's family. Unable to speak Korean, the slight 29-year-old wandered the streets of Seoul for months until she found a refuge designed to help the growing number of foreign brides in the country -- nearly half of whom report suffering domestic abuse.

Among the many logo-bedecked television skyboxes visible from the floor of the Fleet Center in Boston, one name sticks out: Al Jazeera. "That says so much about where the world is now -- and about the interest in this election," marveled CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman. He saw the Arabic- language news channel's insignia the other day as he surveyed the Democratic National Convention hall in Boston.

The heavy wooden gate to the British Cemetery is kept locked. To get inside, the curious must bang their fists and shout their intentions over the sounds of boys yelling in the streets, the call to prayer from the local mosque and the roar of foreign military planes overhead. Hidden behind its tall wall are memorials to Englishmen, Europeans and even a few Americans -- all of whom came to this war-torn land in the service of their country and lost their lives. Afghanistan has long been called the "graveyard of empires," and nowhere is that somber designation more real than at this smallish cemetery, with its gravestones marking the fallen, some from forgotten battles that occurred more than a century past, others from deadly incidents that made headlines just weeks ago. Also known as the White Cemetery, the graveyard was originally a burial site for soldiers killed in Britain's ill-fated colonial adventures in Afghanistan: the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century.

The White House is considering whether to detain international terrorism suspects at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, senior U.S. officials said, an option that would lead to another prison with the same purpose as Guantanamo Bay, which it has promised to close. The idea, which would require approval by President Obama, already has drawn resistance from within the government. Army Gen. Stanley A. McCrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and other senior officials strongly oppose it, fearing that expansion of the U.S. detention facility at Bagram air base could make the job of stabilizing the country even tougher.

Cao Thi Nguyen and her baby were marooned in a strange land without family or options. The young woman, who moved here from Vietnam two years ago to marry a South Korean man, had been kicked out of her home after a fight with her husband's family. Unable to speak Korean, the slight 29-year-old wandered the streets of Seoul for months until she found a refuge designed to help the growing number of foreign brides in the country -- nearly half of whom report suffering domestic abuse.

The heavy wooden gate to the British Cemetery is kept locked. To get inside, the curious must bang their fists and shout their intentions over the sounds of boys yelling in the streets, the call to prayer from the local mosque and the roar of foreign military planes overhead. Hidden behind its tall wall are memorials to Englishmen, Europeans and even a few Americans -- all of whom came to this war-torn land in the service of their country and lost their lives. Afghanistan has long been called the "graveyard of empires," and nowhere is that somber designation more real than at this smallish cemetery, with its gravestones marking the fallen, some from forgotten battles that occurred more than a century past, others from deadly incidents that made headlines just weeks ago. Also known as the White Cemetery, the graveyard was originally a burial site for soldiers killed in Britain's ill-fated colonial adventures in Afghanistan: the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century.

Elena Rezneac's lavender eye shadow shimmered in the sun outside a crowded Internet cafe in Yemen's capital city. The 21-year-old Moldovan student giggled as she pushed her sunglasses up above her blond ponytail. "If you read about Yemen in the news lately, you think there are terrorists running around and bombs in all the streets," she said. "But when you are here, it's calm. I have to go online to remember there's a war going on." Others among the thousands of foreign aid workers and students of Arabic who live in this impoverished nation expressed a similar view.

For years, on the anniversary of his wife's death in 2000, Peter Underwood sought the solace of the tiny hillside cemetery not far from this city's bustling downtown. He laid flowers at her grave site and paid his respects to four generations of his family who are buried here -- mostly Western missionaries who first arrived in Korea more than a century ago. There's even a plot for Underwood himself. But the 54-year-old consultant no longer visits this sanctuary. He says he feels harassed here -- shadowed by the new stewards of a cemetery that offers a hallowed history lesson in Korea's expatriate past.

Filipino exchange teacher Ferdinand Nakila landed in Los Angeles expecting "Pretty Woman" scenes of swank Beverly Hills boulevards and glittering celebrities. What he got was Inglewood, where he stayed for two weeks in temporary housing and encountered drunkards, beggars, trash-filled streets and nightly police sirens. It got worse.

In three years of teaching English in South Korea, Tony Hellmann says he's seen discrimination both in and out of the classroom. He knows teachers, he says, who are harassed for having Korean girlfriends. He's met only three black instructors in his time. And he's been denied service in Korean bars. "I've been told to leave because I'm a foreigner," the 33-year-old Seattle native said.

Children adopted from abroad often have difficulties adjusting to their new families and to life in this country, exhibiting poor social skills, problems bonding with new family members and reticence in dealing with strangers. Those difficulties are generally traced back to emotional deprivation in large orphanages, where infants often outnumber staff by 40 to 1, and caregivers do little more than feed and change the infants.

World leaders impatient for a new direction for America greeted President Obama's arrival with exuberance Tuesday but sent telltale warnings of the challenges about to envelop the new chief executive and his administration. The White House was flooded with leaders' best wishes, including those of Pope Benedict XVI, who urged Obama to be "the promoter of peace and cooperation between nations."

The international phone line connecting a downtown Los Angeles courtroom to a cellphone 1,500 miles away in Texcoco, Mexico, was repeatedly disconnected and difficult to hear at times. But on that line hung the constitutional rights of Candido Ortiz, accused of drunkenly stabbing a man with a broken beer bottle and charged with attempted murder. Ortiz, 20, spoke only a variant of Mixe, a language used by about 7,000 people in the mountains of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

World leaders impatient for a new direction for America greeted President Obama's arrival with exuberance Tuesday but sent telltale warnings of the challenges about to envelop the new chief executive and his administration. The White House was flooded with leaders' best wishes, including those of Pope Benedict XVI, who urged Obama to be "the promoter of peace and cooperation between nations."