KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber struck a crowd of Shiite worshippers who packed a Kabul mosque Tuesday to mark a holy day, killing at least 56 people, and a second bombing in another city killed four more Shiites. They were the first major sectarian assaults since the fall of the Taliban a decade ago. 

A Pakistan-based militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attacker blew himself up in the midst of a crowd of men, women and children. The mosque had been packed with worshippers and many who could not fit inside were outside the building.

The blast came shortly after a bicycle bomb near a mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif killed at least four people and wounded 21. Another bomb in a motorcycle exploded in the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday afternoon, injuring six people, but police said that attack did not target Shiites.

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Afghanistan has a history of tension and violence between Sunnis and the Shiite minority, but while such attacks have become commonplace in neighboring Pakistan and parts of the Middle East such as Iraq, they have not occurred in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan has been at war for 30 years and terrible things have happened, but one of the things that Afghans have been spared generally has been what appears to be this kind of very targeted sectarian attack," Kate Clark, from the Afghanistan Analysts Network, told Reuters. "We don't know who planted the bomb yet and it is dangerous to jump to conclusions but if it was Taliban, it marks something really serious, and dangerous, and very troubling." 

Updated at 10:40 a.m. ET: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, a Pakistan-based militant organization, has claimed responsibility for the Kabul suicide attack. In a call to NBC News, someone who claimed to be a spokesman for the group said they had succeeded in their mission to attack Shiites. "It is the first time that someone outside of Afghanistan has claimed responsibility for a attack in the country," NBC News' Mushtaq Yusufzai said.

Updated at 8:50 a.m. ET:  The Ministry of Interior said 55 were killed in Kabul — including two women and four children. Sayed Kabir Amiri, who is in charge of Kabul hospitals, told the Associated Press that more than 160 were wounded in the blast. Police confirm that a second bomb was defused in Mazar-i-Sharif near the one that blew up.

Updated at 7:05 a.m. ET: A Taliban spokesman tells Reuters that the group did not carry out the Kabul or Mazar-i-Sharif attacks.

"People were killed by the enemy's un-Islamic and inhuman activity," Zabihullah Mujahid writes in an emailed statement. He adds that the Taliban "strongly condemns such a cruel, indiscriminate and un-Islamic attack."

Updated at 6:30 a.m. ET: Gareth Price, a senior research fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House, says the attacks may have come now because Afghan and Western forces aren't the easy targets they once were.

"Shia shrines are a softer target than foreign troops or the Afghan army," he tells msnbc.com.

However, discrimination against Shiites --  and in particular the largely Shiite Hazaras --  has deep roots in Afghan history. "All the groups pick on the Hazaras," Price says.

• PhotoBlog: Worshippers run for their lives following blast

Updated at 6:25 a.m. ET: Citing an official with Afghanistan's health ministry, NBC News reports that the Kabul shrine blast killed 54 people and injured 150 others.

Updated at 5:55 a.m. ET: Afghan officials tell The Associated Press that the death toll in Kabul suicide bombing has reached 48. Mohammed Zahir, chief of the Kabul Criminal Investigation Department, adds that more than 100 people were wounded.

Updated at 5:15 a.m. ET: "The shrine's loudspeaker continued to blast a recitation of the Quran as ambulances carried bodies and wounded away," The Associated Press reports. It adds that the Abul Fazl shrine is located close to the palace where President Hamid Karzai lives. Its blue minaret is one of Kabul's better known landmarks.  

S. Sabawoon / EPA

A body is covered at the scene of an attack near a shrine in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Updated at 4:55 a.m. ET: Britain's Telegraph newspaper reportsthat "Shiites were banned from marking Ashoura in public under the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan until 2001. This year, there are more Ashoura monuments around the city than usual including black shrines and flags."

Updated at 4:35 a.m. ET: Jonathan Boone (@jon_boone), a Kabul-based correspondent for The Guardian, tweetsquoting US General John Allen as describing the attack as "the latest example of the insurgents' blatant disregard for human life."

Updated at 4:25 a.m. ET:  Mohammad Bakir Shaikzada, the top Shiite cleric in Kabul, says that Shiites haven't been attacked in decades in Afghanistan. "This is a crime against Muslims during the holy day of Ashoura. We Muslims will never forget these attacks. It is the enemy of the Muslims who are carrying them out," he said. He says he does not know who could have carried out such an attack.

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Updated at 4:15 a.m. ET: Afghan President Hamid Karzai says it is first time that "terrorism" of this kind has occurred in the country on such a religious day, Reuters reports.

Updated at 4:10 a.m. ET: Ahmad Shuja (@ahmadshuja), director of Foundation for Afghanistan, tweets: "My hunch: Today's attacks WON'T, per se, touch off chain of sectarian violence. No Shiite group organized enough or duly experienced."

Updated at 4:00 a.m ET: NBC News cites a health official as saying that at least 50 people were injured in the Kabul blast.

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Updated at 3.55 a.m. ET: Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's Criminal Investigation Department, tells Reuters that he counted up to 20 bodies at a Kabul hospital, and expected the toll to rise following the explosion at a Shiite shrine in the Afghan capital. A second attack near the main mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif killed four people and injured 17 others.

Reuters journalists Mirwais Harooni and Emma Graham-Harrison point out that although "Afghanistan has a history of tension and violence between Sunnis and the Shiite minority ... since the fall of the Taliban the country had been spared the large-scale sectarian attacks that have troubled neighboring Pakistan. The noon bomb in a riverside shrine, in the heart of old Kabul, appears to set a grim new precedent."

Updated at 3:47 a.m. ET: At least 34 people were killed on Tuesday after blasts hit Shiite shrines in Afghanistan during the festival of Ashoura,Al Jazeera English reports citing local media reports and police.

Published at 3:30 a.m. ET: A blast at a shrine in Afghanistan's capital during the Shiite festival of Ashoura killed up to 24 people Tuesday, according to reports.

Meanwhile, four others were killed in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif when a bomb on bicycle exploded, Reuters said. The victims included a soldier.

The Kabul explosion was caused by a suicide bomber, Al Jazeera reported. It put the death toll at 24.

However, Hashmatullah Stanekzai, a spokesman for Kabul police, told the Associated Press that it wasn't clear if the explosives were planted in the shrine or if a suicide bomber was behind the attack.

The AP reported that at least 15 had been killed in the attack on the shrine, where worshippers were gathering for Ashoura, the Shiite Muslim holiday marking the death of Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad.

NBC News, msnbc.com staff, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Handout / Reuters

Demonstrators protesting against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad gather during a march through the streets after Friday prayers in Adlb on Dec. 2, 2011. This image has been supplied by a third party. It is distributed, exactly as received by Reuters, as a service to clients

Activists inside Syria are being forced to leave the country as violence intensifies in the ninth month of anti-government protests.

Rima Flihan is an activist who left behind two children and her career after she received death threats following her release from a Syrian police station.

Flihan said she was near al-Hassan mosque in the al-Midan neighborhood of Damascus when she and nine other young female activists were detained in mid-July for protesting without permits.

“We laughed, we cried, and shared our fears and hopes together,” Flihan told NBC News in an email about her time in detention.
 
She said she remembered meeting one of the other detained women months earlier at a demonstration on Syria’s Independence Day, April 17. They were reunited when they were arrested and detained for four days in July.
 
Flihan said she met up with other activists on the day of her release and encouraged them to continue the fight. Part of her talk was recorded on this YouTube clip she shared with NBC News. She is the woman speaking with the white shirt and microphone.

The U.N.’s top human rights official said last week that her office estimates that more than 4,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March.

Flihan fled the country in September for Jordan after she said she was threatened by government security forces and left her children in the care of her family still there.
 
Even though Flihan is no longer in the country, she said she remains in touch with many of the activists she demonstrated with through social media daily, and encourages her friends she met at demonstrations inside the country to continue protesting.

Flihan said she hopes to return when she feels her life is no longer under threat.
 
“I dream to go on a trip with my activist friends to all of the troubled spots in Syria and light a candle and celebrate freedom, and build our country in a different way,” Flihan said in an email.
 
A familiar name to the theater community in Damascus, Flihan worked as a theater writer and wrote two Syrian dramas.

Two years ago, she created a popular Syrian television drama called “Qoloob Saghirah” or “Small Hearts” that uncovered what she called were injustices in the region to spark discussions and debate surrounding issues of organ trafficking, homelessness, and women’s rights.
 
It’s rare that we hear of the stories of Syrian female activists. Flihan, whose father was an army officer who was imprisoned for his political views against the civilian killings in the Syrian town of Hama in 1982, said she wanted to share her story with NBC News to highlight the women of the revolution.

You can follow Rima Abdelkader on Twitter at: twitter.com/rimakader

AP

Celebrated Chilean poet Pablo Neruda is shown at center during a luncheon at the Mexican foreign ministry on July 8, 1943.

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chile's Communist Party is asking a judge to order the exhumation of the remains of the late Nobel literature laureate Pablo Neruda due to allegations that he may have been poisoned.

Party member Juan Andres Lagos told The Associated Press on Monday that the request will be reviewed by Judge Mario Carroza, who is probing deaths allegedly caused by abuses during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990.

Manuel Araya, who was Neruda's chauffeur, has told reporters in recent months that he and Neruda's widow received a phone call from the poet on the day of his death from a hospital where he was being treated for late-stage prostate cancer.

Araya reported that Neruda said to "come quickly, because while I was asleep a doctor entered and gave me a shot."

The 69-year-old poet died that day, Sept. 23, 1973, in the Santa Maria Clinic.

The Communist Party, to which Neruda belonged, is asking that his remains be exhumed due to the account of the chauffeur, "who was someone very close to him," Lagos said.

The Pablo Neruda Foundation, which promotes the poet's artistic legacy and runs three museums, has discounted the theory raised by Araya. The foundation said in a statement in May that Araya has been "insisting without any proof other than his own belief."

Martin Meissner / AP

German chancellor Angela Merkel and Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai, center, with the foreign ministers and delegation members at the international Afghanistan conference in Bonn on Monday.

BONN, Germany -- Foreign governments pledged on Monday to support Afghanistan long after allied troops go home, with or without a political settlement with insurgents once seen as the best way to prevent a new civil war.

At a conference of more than 80 countries but boycotted by Pakistan, they said even after most foreign combat troops leave in 2014, the Afghan government will not be allowed to meet the fate of its Soviet-era predecessor, which collapsed in 1992.

"The United States intends to stay the course with our friends in Afghanistan," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. "We will be there with you as you make the hard decisions that are necessary for your future."

Hosts Germany sought to signal Western staying power in the country, where al-Qaida sheltered under Taliban protection before the Sept. 11 attacks, at the gathering in Bonn.

"We send a clear message to the people of Afghanistan: We will not leave you on your own. We will not leave you in the lurch," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

Ten years after a similar conference held to rebuild Afghanistan, the Afghan war is becoming increasingly unpopular in Western public opinion -- especially since U.S. forces found and killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 2 in a raid that removed a central pretext of the 2001 invasion.

Western countries are under pressure to spend money reviving flagging economies at home rather than propping up a government in Kabul widely criticized for being corrupt and ineffective.

And as expected, delegates at the Bonn conference steered clear of making specific pledges to make up a shortfall in funding for Afghanistan estimated by the World Bank at some $7 billion a year from the end of 2014.

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For now, nobody wants to show their hand too clearly in the hope that someone else -- from the United States to Europe, the Gulf to Asia -- will come forward to foot a share of the bill.

Brewing confrontations pitting Washington against Pakistan and Iran, two of Afghanistan's most influential neighbors, have also added to despondency over the outlook for the war.

Pakistan boycotted the meeting after NATO aircraft killed 24 of its soldiers on the border with Afghanistan in a Nov. 26 attack the alliance called a "tragic" accident.

But delegates from Russia to Iran to China, all uneasy about the U.S. military presence in their neighborhood, were nonetheless able to agree with Western powers "the main threat to Afghanistan's security and stability is terrorism."

"In this regard, we recognize the regional dimensions of terrorism and extremism, including terrorist safe havens, and emphasize the need for sincere and result-oriented regional cooperation..." a conference statement.

Pakistan is accused by Washington and Kabul of providing "safe havens" to insurgents to use to counter the influence of rival India. Pakistan says it being used as a scapegoat for the U.S. failure to bring stability to Afghanistan.

Scaling back objectives
The mood at the Bonn conference was a far cry from the early days of the Afghan war when, fresh from toppling the Taliban, Western powers hoped to bring permanent peace to a country which has now been at war for more than three decades.

But with problems of insecurity, governance, corruption and narcotics inside Afghanistan, compounded by insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan, objectives have been scaled back.

By the time of a conference in London on Afghanistan in January 2010, Western governments had agreed insurgents could be brought into peace talks if they were willing to cut ties with al Qaeda, give up violence and respect the Afghan constitution.

But even that goal has proved elusive. Embroynic contacts with the Taliban have yielded little, and foreign governments have been preparing increasingly for a scenario in which there is no peace settlement with the Taliban even before the before most foreign combat troops leave in 2014.

The aim now is to leave behind a government which is just about good enough to survive, even if fighting persists in parts of the country and the Taliban insurgency remains active.

Some are still hoping Pakistan will use its influence to deliver the Afghan Taliban into a political settlement.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told reporters Pakistan had missed a good opportunity to discuss its own issues and the future of Afghanistan by not attending the Bonn conference. "But it will not stop us from cooperating together," he said.

Asked what he wanted Pakistan to do to help bring peace in Afghanistan, he said: "Close the sanctuaries, arrange a purposeful dialogue with those Taliban who are in Pakistan."

Clinton said she expected Pakistan to play a constructive role in Afghanistan, even as she voiced disappointment that Islamabad chose not to attend the conference.

But British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Afghanistan could still have a bright future even if the Taliban were not brought into a political settlement.

"It may take a longer time to bring about our objectives but we should not be deterred at all by Taliban reluctance to come to the table..." he told the BBC.

Foreign governments were also determined to try to dispel at least some of the pessimism seeping into the Afghan project.

Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, whose country became the first to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan -- much to the irritation of Pakistan -- pledged India would keep up its heavy investment in a country whose mineral wealth and trade routes made it "a land of opportunity."

In a rare positive development, Clinton said the United States would resume paying into a World Bank-administered Reconstruction Trust Fund for Afghanistan, a decision that U.S. officials said would allow for the disbursement of roughly $650 million to $700 million in suspended U.S. aid.

The United States and other big donors stopped paying into the fund in June, when the International Monetary Fund suspended its program with Afghanistan because of concerns about Afghanistan's troubled Kabul Bank. 

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MOSCOW -- Several thousand people protested Monday night against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his party, which won the largest share of a parliamentary election in voting that observers said was rigged.

It was perhaps the largest opposition rally in years and ended with police detaining some of the activists. A group of several hundred marched toward the Central Elections Commission near the Kremlin, but were stopped by riot police and taken away in buses.

The total number of those detained was not immediately available.

Estimates of the number of protesters at the rally ranged from 5,000 to 10,000. They chanted "Russia without Putin" and accused his United Russia party of stealing votes.

United Russia took about 50 percent of Sunday's vote, a result that opposition politicians and election monitors said was inflated because of ballot stuffing and other vote fraud. It was a significant drop from the last election, when the party took 64 percent.

Alexey Sazonov / AFP - Getty Images

Russian opposition supporters protest in central Moscow on Monday after legislative elections that handed victory to Vladimir Putin's ruling party. Thousands of angry citizens took to the streets in Russia's capital and in St. Petersburg.

In practice, the loss of seats in parliament appears to mean little; two of the three other parties winning seats have been reliable supporters of government legislation. But, it is a substantial symbolic blow to a party that had become virtually indistinguishable from the state itself.

It has also energized the opposition and poses a humbling challenge to the country's dominant figure in his drive to return to the presidency. Putin, who became prime minister in 2008 because of presidential term limits, will run for a third term in March and some opposition leaders saw the parliamentary election as a game-changer for what had been presumed to be Putin's easy stroll back to the Kremlin.

Also Monday, more than 400 Communist supporters gathered to express their indignation over the election, which some called the dirtiest in modern Russian history. The Communist Party finished second with about 20 percent of the vote.

"Even compared to the 2007 elections, violations by the authorities and the government bodies that actually control the work of all election organizations at all levels, from local to central, were so obvious and so brazen," said Yevgeny Dorovin, a member of the party's central committee.

Related story: Voters punish Putin; observers cite irregularities

Putin appeared subdued and glum even as he insisted at a Cabinet meeting Monday that the result "gives United Russia the possibility to work calmly and smoothly."

Although the sharp decline for United Russia could lead Putin and the party to try to portray the election as genuinely democratic, the wide reports of violations have undermined that attempt at spin.

Boris Nemtsov, a prominent figure among Russia's beleaguered liberal opposition, declared that the vote spelled the end of Putin's "honeymoon" with the nation and predicted that his rule will soon "collapse like a house of cards."

"He needs to hold an honest presidential election and allow opposition candidates to register for the race, if he doesn't want to be booed from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad," Nemtsov said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

Many Russians came to despise United Russia, seeing it as the engine of endemic corruption. The election showed voters that they have power despite what election monitors called a dishonest count.

"Yesterday, it was proven by these voters that not everything was fixed, that the result really matters," said Tiny Kox of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, part of an international election observer mission.

Other analysts suggested the vote was a wake-up call to Putin that he had lost touch with the country. In the early period of his presidency, Putin's appeal came largely from his man-of-the-people image: candid, decisive and without ostentatious tastes.

But, he seemed to lose some of the common touch, appearing in well-staged but increasingly preposterous heroic photo opportunities -- hunting a whale with a crossbow, fishing while bare-chested, and purportedly discovering ancient Greek artifacts while scuba-diving. And Russians grew angry at his apparent disregard -- and even encouragement -- of the country's corruption and massive income gap.

"People want Putin to go back to what he was in his first term -- decisive, dynamic, tough on oligarchs and sensitive to the agenda formed by society," said Sergei Markov, a prominent United Russia Duma member.

The vote "was a normal reaction of the population to the worsening social situation," once Kremlin-connected political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Only seven parties were allowed to field candidates for parliament this year, while the most vocal opposition groups were barred from the race. International monitors said the election administration lacked independence, most media were biased and state authorities interfered unduly at different levels.

"To me, this election was like a game in which only some players are allowed to compete," Heidi Tagliavini, the head of the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said.

Tagliavini said that of the 150 polling stations where the counting was observed, "34 were assessed to be very bad."

Other than the Communist Party, the socialist Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party led by mercurial nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky are also expected to increase their representation in the Duma; both have generally voted with United Russia, and the Communists pose only token opposition.

Two liberal parties were in the running, but neither got the 7 percent of the national vote needed to win seats. Nemtsov's People's Freedom Party, one of the most prominent liberal parties, was denied participation for alleged violations in the required 45,000 signatures the party had submitted with its registration application.

About 60 percent of Russia's 110 million registered voters cast ballots, down from 64 percent four years ago.

Social media were flooded with messages reporting violations.

Many people reported seeing buses deliver groups of people to polling stations, with some of the buses carrying young men who looked like football fans, who often are associated with violent nationalism.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. has "serious concerns" about the elections.

Russia's only independent election monitoring group, Golos, which is funded by U.S. and European grants, has come under heavy official pressure in the past week. Golos' website was incapacitated by hackers on Sunday, and its director Lilya Shibanova and her deputy had their cell phone numbers, email and social media accounts hacked.

Also Monday, more than 400 Communist supporters gathered to express their indignation over the election, which some called the dirtiest in modern Russian history. The Communist Party finished second with about 20 percent of the vote.

"Even compared to the 2007 elections, violations by the authorities and the government bodies that actually control the work of all election organizations at all levels, from local to central, were so obvious and so brazen," said Yevgeny Dorovin, a member of the party's central committee.

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An American drone that crashed in Iran last Thursday was on a mission for the CIA, and is now in the hands of Iran’s military, NBC News has learned.

U.S. officials tell NBC that CIA operators were flying the unmanned drone when it veered out of control and headed deep into Iran. The drone eventually ran out of fuel and crashed in Iran's remote mountains.

The nature of the drone’s mission was secret and sources say it's still not clear whether the drone was operating in Iran or Afghanistan.

One major concern is that the Iranians could salvage highly sensitive technology used in the drone for cameras or sensors or even the stealth technology, and try to develop it for themselves.

Iranian media reported on Sunday that their country's military had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone in eastern Iran, but a U.S. official said there was no indication the aircraft had been shot down.

Iran has announced several times in the past that it shot down U.S., Israeli or British drones, in incidents that did not provoke high-profile responses.

"Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network on Sunday quoted a military source as saying.

"The spy drone, which has been downed with little damage, was seized by the Iranian armed forces," the source said. "The Iranian military's response to the American spy drone's violation of our airspace will not be limited to Iran's borders."

Iranian officials were not available to comment further.

The incident comes at a time when Tehran is trying to contain foreign outrage at the storming of the British embassy on Tuesday, after London announced sanctions on Iran's central bank in connection with Iran's nuclear enrichment program.

Reuters contributed to this report.

John Schults / Reuters

The future of the eurozone depends heavily on the efforts of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But despite their single nickname of "Merkozy," the Franco-German duo has yet to produce a master plan.

The latest plan to save the euro zone calls for the boldest moves yet since the crisis exploded on the Continent this year. Yet despite a looming threat of failure, Europe's leaders and citizens remain deeply split over the same issues that that have doomed a series of failed proposals over the past two years. 

The new plan calls for a treaty that would fix one of the most critical, longstanding flaws in Europe’s monetary union: the lack of centralized control over member countries' decisions about taxes and spending. The absence of those controls have allowed free-spending nations like Greece and Italy to run up massive national debts that larger countries, like France and Germany, have refused to backstop.

The new treaty, which would require approval of all 17 countries that use the euro, would include automatic sanctions for countries that fail to keep government deficits in check.

For now, the proposal has given European bankers and political leaders some breathing room, as investors gave the idea a vote of confidence. Following the announcement Monday, the euro rose against the dollar, stocks gained and yields on European government bonds dropped.

“The fiscal stick is being rewarded by the market carrot,” said Douglas Borthwick, a currency trader with Faros Trading. “We continue to expect this going forward. The market rewards fiscal responsibility.”

But markets have rallied before on hopeful pronouncements from the leaders of Europe's "core countries”  only to see proposals dead-ended by the complex political process of forging consensus among 17 countries. In general European  voters tend to be leery of ceding their national independence to a centralized spending authority in Brussels. European leaders are scheduled to consider the latest proposals at a summit in Brussels Friday.

After U.S. markets closed Monday, Standard & Poor's warned that it may carry out an unprecedented mass downgrade of eurozone countries if EU leaders fail to reach agreement at the summit. The ratings agency placed the ratings of 15 euro zone countries, including top-rated nations Germany and France, on credit watch negative -- a move that signals a possible downgrade in no later than three months.

As with past failed proposals, the latest announcement came from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the two strongest “core” economies that are struggling to stem the contagion from the weaker, heavily indebted peripheral economies of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.

Despite that common interest, the two countries remain divided over key elements of any bailout plan.

“There are still significant differences between Sarkozy and Merkel, so we're in for a volatile week,” said Patrice Perois, a trader at Kepler Capital Markets. “The risk is that any kind of disappointment could trigger a (market) pull-back."

France has long opposed efforts to dilute its national independence by turning over control of budgetary decisions to a central European agency with the power to veto spending decisions. Various enforcement mechanisms have been considered, including granting the European Court of Justice the power to punish governments that defy centrally imposed spending limits. Just months away from a presidential election, Sarkozy faces rivals warning voters that he is prepared to sacrifice French sovereignty to unelected EU officials.

For their part, German voters are loathe to allow their taxes to be spent bailing out weaker, free-spending countries. Faced with German voters' deep-seated fears of a recurrence of 1920s hyperinflation that sank the Weimar Republic, Merkel has also staunchly opposed the idea of letting the European Central Bank print euros to underwrite massive bond purchases,  

The long-simmering crisis reached a boiling point in the past few weeks as investors became increasingly skeptical about a series of broken promises to get Europe’s fiscal house in order. Those investors have demand higher interest rates on European government debt to offset the risk they won’t get their money back.

Europe’s weaker countries, including Greece, Portugal and Spain, have been paying that premium for months as budget-balancing spending cuts sapped economic growth and cut into revenues, which forced deeper cuts in a downward economic spiral.  European leaders have assembled a collection of war chests to bail out those countries if they reach the end of their fiscal rope.

The crisis entered a new phase last month, when the rate on Italian bonds soared to 8 percent, a level widely acknowledged as unsustainable. With the third-largest pool of debt, behind the U.S. and Japan, Italy’s debt load is far too big to bail out. Various proposals to find bigger pools of bailout funding, including a proposal that the European Central Bank simply print more euros, have run into political, technical and legal roadblocks.

The latest round of proposals also includes a bid to raise Europe’s member country contributions to the International Monetary Fund, which would expand its financial firepower to backstop a debt default. The IMF so far has failed to attract larger contributions from countries outside Europe, including the U.S., China and Brazil.

AP

This Sunday photo shows leakage from a purification device at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

TOKYO -- Japan's crippled nuclear power plant leaked about 45 tons of highly radioactive water from a purification device over the weekend, its operator said, and some may have drained into the ocean.

The leak is a reminder of the difficulties facing Tokyo Electric Power Co. as it tries to meet its goal of bringing the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to a cold shutdown by year's end.

A pool of radioactive water was discovered midday Sunday around a decontamination device, TEPCO said in a statement on its website. After the equipment was turned off, the leak appeared to stop. Later, workers found a crack in a concrete barrier leaking the contaminated water into a gutter that leads to the ocean.

TEPCO estimated about 300 liters leaked out before the crack was blocked with sandbags.

Officials were checking whether any water had reached the nearby ocean.

The leakage of radioactive water from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean in the weeks after the March 11 accident caused widespread concern that seafood in the coastal waters would be contaminated.

• Japan bans rice grown near crippled Fukushima nuclear plant

The pooled water around the purification device was measured Sunday at 16,000 bequerels per liter of cesium-134, and 29,000 bequerels per liter of cesium-137, TEPCO said. That's 270 times and 322 times higher, respectively, than government safety limits, according to the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo.

Cesium-137 is dangerous because it can last for decades in the environment, releasing cancer-causing radiation. The half-life of cesium-134 is about two years, while the half-life of cesium-137 is about 30 years.

TEPCO is using the purification devices to decontaminate water that has been cooling the reactors. Three of the plant's reactor cores mostly melted down when the March 11 tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling system.

AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi-File

Miners dig for diamonds in Marange, eastern Zimbabwe, Nov. 1, 2006.

Campaign group Global Witness announced Monday that it was leaving a group set up to prevent the international trade of so-called "blood diamonds," saying people buying the precious stones still cannot tell "whether they are financing armed violence or abusive regimes."

The Kimberley Process -- set up in November 2002 by governments, the diamond industry and civil society organizations -- was designed to impose "extensive requirements on its members to enable them to certify shipments of rough diamonds as 'conflict-free' and prevent conflict diamonds from entering the legitimate trade," according to the body's website.

However, a statement issued Monday by Global Witness said that it had left the Kimberley Process because its "refusal to evolve and address the clear links between diamonds, violence and tyranny has rendered it increasingly outdated."

"Nearly nine years after the Kimberley Process was launched, the sad truth is that most consumers still cannot be sure where their diamonds come from, nor whether they are financing armed violence or abusive regimes," Global Witness's founding director, Charmian Gooch, said in the statement.

'Accomplice to diamond laundering'
"The scheme has failed three tests: It failed to deal with the trade in conflict diamonds from Côte d’Ivoire, was unwilling to take serious action in the face of blatant breaches of the rules over a number of years by Venezuela and has proved unwilling to stop diamonds fuelling corruption and violence in Zimbabwe. It has become an accomplice to diamond laundering -- whereby dirty diamonds are mixed in with clean gems," she added.

The statement said the Kimberley Process had recently authorized exports from two companies operating in Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields.

Describing this as a "shocking move," the statement said the Zimbabwean army had killed 200 miners when they took control of the area in 2008.

"Mining concessions were then granted in legally questionable circumstances to several companies, some of them associated with senior figures in [Zimbabwean President] Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party," the statement said.

"Over the last decade, elections in Zimbabwe have been associated with the brutal intimidation of voters. Orchestrating this kind of violence costs a lot of money. As the country approaches another election, there is a very high risk of Zanu-PF hardliners employing these tactics once more and using Marange diamonds to foot the bill. The Kimberley Process’s refusal to confront this reality is an outrage," Gooch added.

"Consumers should not buy Marange diamonds, and industry should not supply them," she said. "All existing contracts in the Marange fields should be cancelled and retendered with terms of reference which reflect international best practice on revenue sharing, transparency, oversight by and protection of the affected communities."

'Remarkable contribution' to world peace
According to the Kimberley Process's website, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme has "evolved into an effective mechanism for stemming the trade in conflict diamonds and is recognized as a unique conflict-prevention instrument to promote peace and security."

It says that combined action by governments, the industry and groups such as Global Witness had enabled the Kimberley Process "to curb successfully the flow of conflict diamonds in a very short period of time."

"Diamond experts estimate that conflict diamonds now represent a fraction of one percent of the international trade in diamonds, compared to estimates of up to 15% in the 1990s," the website says.

"That has been the KP's most remarkable contribution to a peaceful world, which should be measured not in terms of carats, but by the effects on people's lives," it adds.

Calls to four contact numbers listed on the Kimberley Process's website failed to connect Monday and there was no immediate response to an email sent by msnbc.com requesting comment.

By Jessica Hopper
Rock Center

Samba Diarra, 15, journeyed 200 miles to live in a plastic hut alone and work in an artisanal gold mine in Mali. The teen came to the mine to help support his five younger brothers and sisters.

“The main reason I left home is to help my parents and sending them money is my main goal,” Diarra said.

Diarra’s parents can’t afford  to send him to school because he has to support his younger siblings.  He is one of at least 20,000 children working in Mali’s artisanal mines.

Mali is Africa’s third largest gold producer. Artisanal mines rely on heavy human labor and little mechanization.  People throughout West Africa are flocking to work in the primitive pits. 

“Globally, we’ve seen an increase with the number of artisanal gold miners because of the rise of gold prices, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to better living conditions,” said Juliane Kippenberg who helped author a Human Rights Watch report on Mali’s mines. 

The skyrocketing price of gold has led to a rush on the precious metal in the United States and throughout the world, but some of the mining that’s helping feed the world’s craving involves child labor and a dangerous process involving mercury.

Approximately 100,000 to 200,000 people in Mali are working in artisanal mines, according to the Human Rights Watch report.  Kippenberg told NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel that 20 to 30 percent of the workforce in African artisanal mines is child labor.

The report entitled, “A Poisonous Mix: Child Labor, Mercury and Artisanal Gold Mining in Mali,” details abysmal working conditions.

 “There couldn’t be a bigger contrast between the situation of a 7-year-old or a 14, 15-year-old working day in and day out in the very harsh conditions of these mines and the beautiful world of jewelry somewhere in Switzerland or the U.S. or elsewhere,” Kippenberg said.

The children working in the mines, some as young as six years old, help dig shafts with pickaxes, lift and carry heavy bags of ore and pan the gold with an amalgamation process involving mercury. 

“Not only is it hard work and then you’re tired from it, but it is hard work that everyday gives you pain: headaches, back pain, joint aches and it will create long-term spinal injury for some of these children who are carrying very heavy loads and they are very small,” Kippenberg said.

Diarra spent his first day pulling up gold ore that was mined by men working deep underground.  At the end of his first day, he was paid with a bag of dirt.  Gold is currently trading at around $1742 an ounce.

“After I wash and refine it, I’ll get paid for the gold that might be inside,” he said.

Some children working in the mines never get paid. Those who do, get just a few dollars a week.

Diarra still has dreams of a life away from the mines.

“I would like to study if I have the opportunity, I would also like to be a footballer,” he said.

Kippenberg said that it will be hard for Diarra to leave the mines.

“The sad news is that he is not going to be able to realize his dreams.  In almost all of these situations where children come here to work by themselves, they are terribly exploited and will probably end up working in artisanal gold mines for the rest of their lives or for very long periods, making, eking, out a living,” Kippenberg said.

Malian law actually bans child labor in artisanal mines, but the law is not heavily enforced. One miner told Rock Center that he simply can’t afford the fees to send his children to school so instead they work with him.

Diata Lissoko, the traditional  leader of one of the mines said, “With this kind of physical labor, life is short.”

Lissoko said that just two days prior to Rock Center’s visit, a young man had suffocated deep in the mine.

“It was 30, 40 meters deep.  When you descend a mine that deep, there is no oxygen down there, so if you breathe in the gas, you are killed immediately,” Lissoko said.

Others are dying slowly from toxic mercury vapors.  To speed up the refining process, workers are mixing mercury with the crushed ore.  The mercury adheres to the gold flakes.  Then the mixture is burned. Those vapors are the most toxic.  Women and children often are in charge of panning the gold and often use the mercury in their backyards in the middle of their villages.

 “Working with mercury in a residential area is a particularly bad practice because it affects so many people,” said Kippenberg of Human Rights Watch.  “They will be exposed to mercury poisoning.  Just to give you an idea, it’s not something that happens very quickly, but people will begin to have coordination problems, memory problems in high doses. It can lead to kidney failure, heart problems and it can even kill people.”

Approximately 12 percent of the world’s gold is born from the grueling process of artisanal mining, Kippenberg said.

“It’s not the majority of the gold, but at the same time, it’s a significant proportion,” Kippenberg said.

The gold is sold to middlemen and eventually ends up in places like Dubai and Switzerland where it is melted  and mixed with gold from large scale mines before it’s turned into jewelry worn throughout the world.

“Even if it is a long, long supply train, at the end of the day, it is the gold from these artisanal mines in Mali and other parts of the world that is exported and then goes to the world’s markets and is turned into jewelry,” Kippenberg said.  “So, yes, there is a direct link between the people who wear the jewelry and buy it and the refiners, the big international companies who trade the gold globally and those who work in these mines, the depths of these shafts, who risk their lives in doing so.”

Enrique Castro-Mendivil / Reuters, file

Protesters hold a rally against Newmont Mining's Conga gold project near the Cortada lagoon in Peru's Cajamarca region on Nov. 24.

LIMA, Peru -- Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has declared a 60-day state of emergency to quell increasingly violent protests over the country's biggest investment -- a $4.8 billion gold mine -- by peasants who fear it will damage their water supply, according to reports Monday.

The state of emergency restricts civil liberties such as the right to assembly and allows arrests without warrants in four provinces of Cajamarca state.

That area has been paralyzed for 11 days by protests against the Conga gold-and-copper mining project. U.S.-based Newmont Mining Corp. is the project's majority owner.

Dozens have been injured in clashes between police and protesters, some of whom have vandalized Conga property. A general strike also shuttered schools and snarled transportation as protesters mounted roadblocks.

Humala said in a brief televised address late Sunday night that protest leaders had shown no interest "in reaching minimal agreements to permit a return of social peace" after a day of talks in Cajamarca with Cabinet chief Salmon Lerner, who had been accompanied by military and police chiefs and was guarded by hundreds of heavily armed police.

• PhotoBlog: Peru's highlanders protest mine project

Humala said the government "has exhausted all paths to establish dialogue as a point of departure to resolve the conflict democratically" and blamed "the intransigence of a sector of local and regional leaders."

Cajamarca state's governor, Gregorio Santos, who has been leading the protests, called Humala's announcement an unnecessary provocation.

'Bloodbath' fear
He said protest leaders had been planning to end the strike and had asked government officials for 12 hours to consult with protesters.

"I think what's being sought is for this to end in a bloodbath," Santos told The Associated Press by telephone. Police have already used tear gas and bullets against protesters.

"We will continue with our fight," Santos added, without specifying how.

• Digging for gold, children paid with bags of dirt

A local environmental group, regional mayors, and the president of the region of Cajamarca say the Conga mine would displace a string of alpine lakes with reservoirs and hurt farmers.

Other protesters worry about not getting what they say is their share of direct economic benefits from the mine.

Newmont announced last week that it was suspending work at Conga until order could be restored.

Its chief executive, Richard O'Brien, said in a statement then that if Newmont was unable to continue with Conga, "the scale and diversity of Newmont's global portfolio" would allow the Denver-based company to "reprioritize and reallocate capital" to "alternatives in Nevada, Canada, Ghana, Indonesia and Suriname."

Newmont has said its environment plan for the mine, which was approved a year ago by the government, meets the highest standards in the mining industry.

$15 billion in gold deposits
It also runs extensive community outreach programs out of its nearby Yanacocha gold mine, some of which were developed after a mercury spill in 2000 that angered local residents.

One protest leader in Cajamarca, Milton Sanchez, told the AP on Sunday night that "this government that has put itself on the side of mining companies and distanced itself from its electoral promises."

"We are not radical," he added. "It's just that the Conga project has not legitimacy in the eyes of the people."

The Conga project, which Newmont owns with Peruvian precious metals miner Buenaventura, would produce 580,000 to 680,000 ounces of gold a year and open in 2014.

It has gold deposits worth about $15 billion at current prices and sits 13,800 feet high in the Andes, about 600 miles north of Lima.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Peter De Jong / Pool via EPA

Laurent Gbagbo, center, is accused of crimes against humanity in the aftermath of Ivory Coast's disputed presidential elections in November 2010.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Ivory Coast's ex-president appeared at the International Criminal Court Monday, becoming the first former head of state to face judges at the world's first permanent war crimes court. Laurent Gbagbo vowed to fight the charges against him.

Gbagbo, 66, was calm and smiled at supporters in the public gallery as the 25-minute hearing opened. He told judges he did not need them to read the charges.

Gbagbo was extradited to the Netherlands last week to face charges including murder and rape committed by supporters as he attempted to cling to power.

Prosecutors say about 3,000 people died in violence by both sides after Gbagbo refused to concede electoral defeat.

A four-month war that displaced more than a million people erupted when when he refused to accept the results of the November 2010 election.

President Alassane Ouattara took power in April with the help of French and U.N. forces.

The former president, speaking in French, said he wanted to see the evidence against him.

"I will challenge that evidence and then you hand down your judgment," he told the three-judge panel.

Gbagbo also complained about his arrest by opposition forces backed by French troops in April, saying he saw his son beaten and his interior minister killed in the fighting.

"I was the president of the republic and the residence of the president of the republic was shelled," he said.

'Deceived'
He also complained about his transfer to The Hague last week from the north of Ivory Coast where he was under house arrest.

"We were deceived," he said. "Things could have been done in a more regular manner."

Monday's brief hearing was scheduled to confirm Gbagbo's identity and ensure he understood his rights and the charges.

Presiding judge Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi of Argentina scheduled a hearing for June 18 next year at which prosecutors will have to present a summary of their evidence and judges will decide whether it is strong enough to merit committing Gbagbo for trial.

Hundreds of people were kidnapped and killed in a crackdown by Gbagbo's forces following last year's contested election, sparking a war that only ended when Ouattara's French-backed rebel forces captured Gbagbo in April.

But Ouattara's forces were also behind some of the atrocities, including rapes and executions, as they swept toward the coast from their northern stronghold.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Martin Meissner / AP

German chancellor Angela Merkel and Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai, center, pose with the foreign ministers and delegation members for a group photo at the international Afghanistan conference in Bonn, Germany, Monday.

World leaders were meeting in Germany Monday in the hope of creating a "peaceful Afghanistan that will never again become a safe haven for international terrorism," according to German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

But, according to a report by the news service Bloomberg, this could mean a commitment to the country lasting nearly 20 years.

The conference in Bonn is focused on the transfer of security responsibilities, long-term prospects for international aid and, ten years after U.S.-backed forces toppled the Taliban, a possible political settlement with the insurgent group. 

Afghanistan is planning to ask the world for economic aid to last until 2025 and for help paying for the country's security forces until 2030, Bloomberg said.

It added that the World Bank has estimated that Afghanistan will need about $70 billion over the next 10 years and that unless the country's budget gap was met "the good work of the past ten years will come undone."

"I'm hopeful but dubious," Robert Hathaway, director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center in Washington, told Bloomberg about Afghanistan's future prospects. "Even if Pakistan were fully participating, I think the idea of a regional cooperation toward a settlement is going to be very difficult."

Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan is a central player in regional efforts to improve trade and strengthen historically weak economies in what is a strategically important part of the world. But its boycott has cast a pall over the session, because it points out that nation's influence in Afghanistan and its ability to play the spoiler.

U.S.-Pakistan relations, a new 'all-time low'?

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged ongoing support for Afghanistan, telling the conference that "the United States is prepared to stand with the Afghan people for the long haul.

The international community has "much to lose if the country again becomes a source of terrorism and instability," she added.
In addition to a financial cost, there were fears that achieving peace in the war-torn country could come at the cost of human rights.
Leading activist Selay Ghaffar told The Guardian newspaper that she is worried that improvements in women's rights could be short-lived if the international community goes into closed-door peace talks with insurgent groups such as the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.

"The biggest fear we have right now is reconcilliation with the Taliban," Ghaffar told the U.K. paper. "Will women play a role in these discussions? Will women's rights be part of the negotiations?"

Ming Yeung / Getty Images, file

Police patrol the streets on Aug. 8 in London, England.

Hatred of the police has been identified as a major reason behind the widespread outbreak of rioting in the U.K. in August.

The Guardian newspaper, in association with the London School of Economics, carried out a major investigation into why disorder broke out on such a wide scale.

They spoke to 270 people who rioted in the cities of London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Manchester and Salford, gathering more than 1.3 million words of first-person accounts.

"Rioters identified a range of political grievances, but at the heart of their complaints was a pervasive sense of injustice," the newspaper said. "For some this was economic: the lack of money, jobs or opportunity. For others it was more broadly social: how they felt they were treated compared with others. Many mentioned the increase in student tuition fees and the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance.

"Although rioters expressed a mix of opinions about the disorder, many of those involved said they felt like they were participating in explicitly anti-police riots. They cited 'policing' as the most significant cause of the riots," it added.

The Guardian published a timeline of interviews with those involved, showing how the rioting spread from a protest about the fatal shooting of a man, Mark Duggan, by police in Tottenham, north London, to a nationwide problem.

One rioter, involved in the Tottenham riot on Aug. 6, told how he decided to join in when he saw a police car being burned.

"It was the police car – I know what they stand for," he told The Guardian. "For the record: yeah, I do hate the f****** police ... I was caught up in the situation. And it was like: let's cause f****** chaos – let's cause a riot."

'We're bigger than the police'
Others then went to see what was happening and got caught up in the general feeling that the police were unable to stop the rioters.

"I think the looting came about because it was linked to police," another rioter, a 19-year-old student, told the paper. "We're showing them that, yeah, we're bigger than the police, we are actually bigger than the police. Fair enough, we are breaking the law and everything, but there's more of us than there are of you. So if we want to do this, we can do this. And you won't do anything to stop us."

Messages circulated on Blackberry phones in particular, saying where the next riots would be.

Gangs put aside rivalries to allow the rioting and looting to take place, some told The Guardian.

By Aug. 8, the rioting had spread outside London with the worst trouble happening in Birmingham.

"Firstly, it was just running into shops, pulling clothes off the hangers and running out again," a 16-year-old told The Guardian. "We seen some windows being smashed in. We just thought, everyone else is doing it. It just seemed like a good idea really."

He complained that the police "call us little s**** and little b******* and everything," he said. "They're not what you see on the TV and that – acting all good and that."

The teenager said he had stolen Nike track pants so he could feel like "people with money, good families." He said they looked down on him.

"I hate feeling like people are judging me," he told The Guardian. "They don't know about me and then they just look at you and I hate it, I absolutely hate it."

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By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

BEIJING — If there were one place that is living proof that global carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 jumped the largest amount on record, it’s got to be the Middle Kingdom.

Emissions leapt 5.9 per cent last year, according to the Global Carbon Project.

And the world’s biggest emitter —yes, China — was a big contributor.  It pumped 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the air, compared to the 1.5 billion tons of carbon by the U.S.

On days like Monday — and there have been way too many this year — it feels like Beijing is the receptacle.

'Hazardous' days
We’ve already written about it, but this time returning to the Chinese capital after a break, I found my hardy NBC News colleagues ordering air filter machines for their homes and air filter masks for cycling (to get around the traffic).

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

The NBC News Beijing bureau invests in air filter masks to combat the pollution.

Monday, while the @BeijingAir index — which comes from an air quality monitor housed atop the U.S. embassy in Beijing — tweeted hourly “hazardous” readings all day, we took a peek at readings back home to see how levels of air pollution were faring across the Pacific.

Across a map of the United States, it was a depressing monochromatic “green” color signifying “good” quality air — with only a few slashes of “yellow,” meaning “moderate.” 

Bear in mind, according to the chart developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “hazardous” is the highest alert level, which would trigger “health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected,” according to the site.

There were no readings from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau’s (EPB) own air monitor until mid-afternoon Monday, when it acknowledged “slight pollution.” 

Last month, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection suggested it was finally heeding growing concerns among Beijing residents’ about air pollution.

The ministry said it would begin publishing measurements for the smallest particulate matter or PM2.5, also considered the most dangerous to human health because they’re tiny enough to enter the lungs and cause damage to the respiratory system.

Courtesy of Daxian/Weibo

"I thought I was looking at a mirage!" said a Weibo user by the name of Daxian after posting a photo from Beijing Monday morning.

On Thursday, however, the Beijing EPB emphatically announced PM2.5 readings for the city would not be made public.

A 'mirage'
To add insult to health injury, officials have been quoted in local newspapers as saying they will set up a new air monitoring system for Beijing in … Tianjin — a metropolis 80 miles away from the capital.

Mind you, photos posted on the Shanghaiist blogsite suggest we in Beijing are not the only ones suffering.

(There’s been plenty of supporting visual evidence coming out of Beijing all day.  One user of Weibo, the popular Chinese microblog, posted a photo of high-rises apparently floating above a cloud of pollution, calling it a “mirage.”  And YouKu, a Chinese version of YouTube, posted a video of this morning’s commute.)

Soho property mogul Pan Shiyi, who led an online petition to get PM2.5 readings published by the EPB, has begun posting on his Weibo account screen shots from an iPhone app that compiles the U.S. embassy’s BeijingAir index.   

In the meantime, Chinese authorities are still determined to call the smog by any other name.

Flight after flight on the Beijing Capital International airport website was shown to be cancelled — owing to “fog.” A Xinhua news agency report described it as “heavy fog.”

But an AFP report called it “smog,” tallying the airport casualties: 213 domestic and 15 international cancelled flights.

See Shanghaiist for more photos of the smog in Beijing and China

Update: Since this posting, a state-run newspaper, The Global Times, quoted meteorological officials as saying the “dense fog” enveloping Beijing and parts of the northeast will persist until Friday. One official described it as a “normal climate condition in Beijing.” Good thing we got our masks.