As International Editor at NBC News' British partner ITV News, Bill Neely has covered the Libyan and Egyptian revolutions, the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is on his fourth trip in seven months to Syria, a country largely off-limits to Western journalists, where he and his team are covering the war. He spoke to msnbc.com's F. Brinley Bruton from Syria where he was witnesssing what he called "the battle for Damascus."

Q: Are you surprised by the level of violence you've seen on this trip?

A: Every day there are surprising things to be seen. On my last trip I was genuinely surprised by the level of destruction in the Baba Amr district of Homs where Marie Colvin (an American correspondent for Britain's Sunday Times) was killed. I think this time it has been really surprising to see three, four miles from the center of Damascus such sustained bombardment. Nobody in Damascus can be unaware of what's happening.

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I was surprised to see (the Free Syrian Army) operate quite openly. I mean, on Monday they drove us around for a long time through suburbs of Damascus. There wasn't a sign in sight of any army presence and they weren't hiding themselves, they were driving around with the guns out the window.

A few days ago (I was surprised by) the level of artillery and mortar fire going into Douma. It still has the capacity to shock you that an army will use that level of force to subdue a rebellion.

Q: How do you compare this to other conflicts you have covered in the past?

A: My immediate point of comparison would be [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi [shelling] of the town of Zawiya which was 30 miles from Tripoli. Again there was a staggering level of force used in the bombardment.

In Kosovo it was very clear that it was ethnic cleansing, that Orthodox Christian Serbs were ethnically cleansing Muslims, as they had done in Bosnia. It is different here. The suburbs I was in yesterday are Sunni and the regime is not Sunni, it's Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam, so there is a sectarian element to it. I think the Kosovo thing was even more, well, brutal.

Q: Have we reached a tipping point in the conflict?

A: My view was was that this was a civil war several months ago, and I think if there were any doubt [Syrian President Bashar] Assad answered that question a few days ago when he said this is a war on all fronts.

We don't like to call it a war in the West because we don't have a damn clue what to do about it. At the minute it seems to me it is in the interest of the great powers to almost play this down.

One interesting aspect of this is that the U.N. has now stopped giving casualty figures, it has kind of been stuck for quite a long time at around 10,000. Well, it is way way over that.

More about ITV News' Bill Neely

Activists appear to have some grounding in fact and are coming up with about 18,600 civilians and rebels killed. The deputy foreign minister told me in May that there were more than 6,000 pro-regime dead. That takes you straight away to 25,000. Hillary Clinton said a few days ago it was 700 in the past week. I just looked at the activists figures and it looks about 100 a day now.

This is now the longest of the Arab revolutions by a long way, it is bigger than Libya, Egypt and Tunisia put together.

And the U.N. keeps warning that if we're not careful this will become a catastrophe. I think if it's 100 a day -- you are talking war, you are talking catastrophe.

Photos: A glimpse at the escalating conflict in Syria

And you can talk about talks between the opposition and Assad and a transitional government by mutual consent, and frankly it sounds to the people here on both sides like so much "blah blah blah." In fact, it probably sounds like "blab blah blah" to the citizens of the U.S. and Britain and France as well. But it is it is a [Band-Aid] by embarrassed governments while in reality on the ground there are two sides who are gunning for each other quite literally.

Q: What can the West do?

A: I just came from the U.N. in Damascus and there are dozens of white U.N. Land Rovers lined up there. They are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

It does give a very bad impression of a world that is completely impotent, and secondly of a world that isn't even trying because the U.N. are just sitting in their hotel doing nothing.

UN suspends Syria monitoring due to rising violence

Q: What did you think of the recent Human Rights Watch report on widespread torture in Syria, were you surprised?

A: There was a large element of "duh!" when that report came out. You just thought, "Well, what do you expect, this has been a brutal regime for a very long time."

Yes, it's terrible but I don’t think it told us anything new. Obviously, Human Rights Watch are trying to get the U.N. to refer Syria to the [International Criminal Court], they're building the evidence up block by block.

Rights group: Syria's 20 torture methods

Q: Is the risk that Syria could implode?

A: The distinction is that Libya imploded, and the problem with Syria is that it could explode. Someone once said the Middle East is like a series of detonators all strung together. When Syria goes off Lebanon will, Iraq might, Iran, Syria's closest, friend might. And Israel may get tempted.

Q: So you don't see much sign of the Assad government losing?

A: Not much sign of them stopping the bombardment of Homs and Douma because, if that’s what they feel they have to do to crush the revolution than that’s what they’ll do. They’ve made that absolutely clear. You read the official Syrian news agency and the word "crush" appears many many times. 

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Global overall confidence in and attitudes toward the United States have slipped since the beginning of President Barack Obama's presidency, a new survey of 21 countries by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project showed.

But while confidence in Obama -- and with it the United States -- fell, people in a large number of countries continued to say they were confident in the president's foreign policy leadership, according to the poll. This did not hold true among many in predominantly Muslim countries, among them key American allies. 

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In Europe, favorable attitudes toward the United States fell seven points from 2009 to 60 percent in 2012, and 10 points in Muslim countries, to 15 percent. 

Confidence in Obama himself in Europe declined six points during the same period to a still-robust 80 percent. But the study showed fewer than three-in-ten in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey and Jordan expressed confidence in Obama.

Confidence in Obama plummeted 24 points to 38 percent in China.

As United States and Western nations pull out, China seeks role in Afghanistan

Since Bush, a 'real improvement'
Opinions about the United States were not close to historic lows, however, according to Richard Wike, associate director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

"It is worth keeping in mind when talking about Obama and America's image, he is still considerably higher than during (the presidency of George W.) Bush," Wike said. "In 2009, we generally saw a real improvement in America's image (and) in general that pattern still holds."

Read the Pew report here

With Obama's presidency, the biggest improvements in the United States' image occurred among Europeans, with people in France, Spain, and Germany registering a positive view of the U.S. that is at least 20 percentage points higher than in 2008, the study showed.

Opinions about the United States also got a big boost in Japan, where 72 percent expressed a favorable opinion of the country, up from 50 percent four years ago. America's image in Japan improved dramatically in 2011, thanks in large part to relief efforts following the March earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of that country.

But a major sore point for many was the United States' ongoing drone-strikes policy. In 17 of 20 countries surveyed, more than half disapproved of American drone attacks targeting extremists in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Report: Obama embraces disputed definition of 'civilian' in drone wars

About a year after he ordered the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden, just seven percent of Pakistanis have a positive view of Obama, the same percentage that voiced confidence in President George W. Bush during the final year of his administration. 

"Obama's effect that we've seen on America's image in much of the world really hasn't happened in many of the predominantly Muslim countries that we survey," Wike said. 

Another shift in opinion came with the world's view of China in the economic balance of power. Among the 14 countries surveyed each year from 2008 to 2012, 45 percent said the U.S. was the world's top economic power in 2008, while just 22 percent said China. Today, only 36 percent said the U.S. was the leading economic power, while 42 percent said it was China.

The Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project surveyed 26,000 people in 21 countries from March 17 to April 20.

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Children were slaughtered, tortured, sexually attacked and used as human shields by pro-government Syrian forces, according to a damning United Nations report released late on Monday. 

"Children were victims of killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, by the Syrian Armed Forces, the intelligence forces, and the Shabbiha militia," the U.N.'s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy said in a release issued along with the report. 

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The shabiha are a pro-government militia that recruits largely from the Alawite community- the same Muslim sect as President Bashar Assad. Sunnis, who make up the majority of the rebels, are an estimated 74 percent of the population.

NYT: Assad's response to Syria unrest leaves his own sect divided 

In an interview with the BBC, Coomaraswamy said she had learned of "horrific" reports in Syria. She told the BBC:

"We are really quite shocked. Killing and maiming of children in cross-fire is something we come across in many conflicts but this torture of children in detention, children as young as 10, is something quite extraordinary, which we don't really see in other places."

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"We also had testimonies and saw children who had been tortured, and who carried the torture marks with them. We also heard of children being used -- this was recounted to us by some children -- of being put on tanks and being used as human shields so that the tanks would not be fired upon."

Coomaraswamy also criticized the rebellion's main armed group for its treatment of children.

'Battle is in Damascus' as Syrian tanks fire in 12-hour exchange

"For the first time we heard of children being recruited by the Free Syrian Army mainly in medical and service orientated jobs but still on the front line," she told the BBC.

The U.N. says Syrian forces have killed more than 10,000 people in the crackdown on an uprising inspired by revolts which toppled four Arab leaders in 2011. Syrian authorities say foreign-backed militants have killed 2,600 soldiers and police. 

Activists say Syria's army and pro-Assad militia have committed two massacres in the last two weeks, in the Houla region and a farming hamlet called Mazraat al-Qubeir. Syrian authorities blamed the killings on "terrorists."

Report: Journalist says rebels tried to get him killed

The United States and other Western nations who have been critical of Assad's regime had little new to suggest to end Syria's 15-month long crisis, which has seen the United Nations Security Council deadlocked amid continued support for Assad by veto-holding Russia and China.

The use of civilians as human shields has been reported before.  On March 25, Human Rights Watch released a video purportedly showing how Syrians were forced to walk in front of armored personnel carriers: 

The international rights organization also quoted a resident of Kafr Nabl as saying:

"They took maybe 25 people, including me. There were also eight children, aged from 10 to 15, among us. They made us march in front and around the military vehicles to some houses where they were searching for wanted opposition activists. We marched for about 600 meters. They were insulting us the whole time. They arrested several people from the houses. Then they made us march back to their base, after which they released all of us, apart from the detained activists. The whole operation lasted for about two hours."

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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LONDON - The Horse and Groom pub is known as a drinking hole and dancing venue in the heart of London’s edgy Shoreditch.

It is not known as the place where Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was first performed more than 400 years ago -- that is, until archeologists discovered the remains of the Curtain theater, an early Elizabethan playhouse.

“It is cool,” said 26-year-old Sophie McKay, a writer and part-time bartender at the pub as she gazed at the patch of pebbled courtyard under which archeologists recently found remnants of the Curtain, built in 1577. “A friend sent me the link and asked, ‘Isn’t this where you work?’ And I said, ‘Yes it is!’”

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The Shakespeare fan -- her favorite character is Lady Macbeth -- heard that the entrance to the theater once stood near the Horse and Groom’s own front door. Pre-dating the more famous Globe, on the south bank of the river Thames, the Curtain first performed ‘Henry V’ and housed William Shakespeare’s company -- the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

Shakespeare's pre-Globe theater unearthed

The remains of the open-air playhouse -- which was covered up again after its discovery -- lies in what was once the home of tanneries, factories, slaughter houses and bombed-out buildings.

But today it is arguably London’s trendiest district, known for crowded bars, dance clubs, boutiques and experimental restaurants. It's an amalgam of graffiti-covered 1960s buildings, glass-fronted offices and converted Victorian factories, giving it a shabby-chic vibe.

That Shakespeare performed his tales of love, lust, ambition, betrayal and war in a place now inhabited by hipster creative-types makes sense to East London resident Trevor Howe, who was having a drink with photographer Amrita Chandradas, 24, at the Horse and Groom.

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“It’s vibrant, alive, exciting,” said the 41-year-old artist and photographer. “It’s always changing, it never stops, there is always something new.”

Howe and Chandradas agreed it was exciting that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was first performed where they stood -- and upon realizing the tragedy about young love was a favorite of both, they embraced giddily.

Best-preserved Elizabethan theater?
The discovery of the Curtain’s walls and a yard, which came during work on a major regeneration project, is equally exciting for the experts involved in the excavation.

In addition to being one of only a dozen such playhouses believed to have ever been built, the site may well be the best-preserved Elizabethan playhouse, said Heather Knight, a senior archeologist from the Museum of London Archeology who helped uncover the Curtain.

“They are very rare buildings so to find anything of one of these buildings is exciting, but to find a wall that stands to its complete height is unique,” she said.

The reason the Curtain, built in 1577, and other Elizabethan playhouses are so rare is that they were razed by the Puritans after the English civil war. 

Shakespeare in Jericho echoes year of Arab strife

“The most bitter and most effective attacks on Shakespeare’s and the other playwrights’ productions came from English Puritans,” leading Shakespearean scholar Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel said. “They thought the theater to be the root of evil.”

No sign of rampaging Puritans in Shoreditch these days, however.

If anything, the current rough-and-tumble creative life in Shoreditch may owe something Shakespeare, said Tom Monaghan, manager of The Queen of Hoxton, a self-described bar, club and art collective near the site where the Curtain was found.

“To think I work right opposite from were Shakespeare used to try out his material,” the 30-year-old said. “Shakespeare could have put Macbeth through his paces over there.”

Monaghan, who interspersed the conversation with barked commands into a mic pinned to his t-shirt, stood amid people sipping European beer and wearing skinny jeans and lank hairstyles.

Then he asked: “Is it a coincidence that the area has become creative again?”

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The letter from the frontlines could have been written yesterday.

"Thank you for your sweet card. It made my miserable day a much better one but I don't think I will ever forget the bloody fight we are having," reads a handwritten note to Betty from Steve Flaherty of Columbia, S.C. "RPG rockets and machine guns really tore my rucksack."

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But this and other newly discovered letters written to "Betty," "Mother" and "Mrs. Wyatt" weren't sent from Afghanistan, or any other place where American servicemen are deployed now.  They were penned more than 40 years ago before the author, who was with the 101st Airborne, was killed in the northern section of South Vietnam.

The documents were given to the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during a landmark meeting in Vietnam on Monday. Panetta and Vietnam Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh exchanged long-held artifacts collected during the war -- including a small maroon diary belonging to a Vietnamese soldier.

Vietnam opens new sites for US MIA hunt

A letter to Flaherty's mother gives an unvarnished version of life on the battlefield. 

"Our platoon started off with 35 men but winded up with 19 men when it was over. We lost platoon leader and whole squad.” He added, “The NVA soldiers fought until they died and one even booby trapped himself and when we approached him, he blew himself up and took two of our men with him.”

Vietnam's 'napalm girl' comes to terms with iconic photo

Another letter to his mom reads: "We couldn't retrieve the bodies of our men or ruck sacks and when we brought air strikes, jets dropped napalm and explosives that destroyed everything that was there."

The letter adds: "If Dad calls, tell him I got too close to being dead but I'm O.K. I was real lucky. I'll write again soon."

Slain soldier’s Vietnam letters too later for his parents, but other relatives will cherish

A third letter to Mrs. Wyatt defends the war while spelling out the toll it was taking on the people fighting: "This is a dirty and cruel war but I’m sure people will understand the purpose of this war even though many of us might not agree."

According to U.S. defense officials, Vietnamese forces took Flaherty's letters after his death in March, 1969, and used them in broadcasts during the war.

Vietnamese Col. Nguyen Phu Dat kept the letters, but it was not until last August, when he mentioned them in an online publication, that they started to come to light.

Panetta visits Vietnam, exchanges soldiers effects

Early this year, Robert Destatte, a retired Defense Department employee who had worked for the POW/MIA office, noticed the online publication, and the Pentagon began to work to get the letters back to Flaherty's family.

The exchange of documents underscores how much the relationship between Vietnam and the United States has changed in 17 years since the normalization of diplomatic relations, George Little, acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, told military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

"It is a reflection of the priority the United States places on people-to-people ties with Vietnam," the newspaper quoted Little as saying. 

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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Saudi Arabia's plan to forge a closer military and political union with other Persian Gulf countries risks inflaming tensions with Iran, experts warn.

Bahrain, a tiny island kingdom which is home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, is intent on strengthening its ties to its powerful neighbor.

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The Saudi spear-headed plan envisions a unified military and foreign policy across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which also includes the Sunni monarchies Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The proposal is seen as a bulwark against the growing influence of Shiite Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival.

However, the United Arab Emirates has raised questions about whether closer cooperation would give too much power to Saudi Arabia and GCC leaders last month temporarily put the plan on hold. Negotiations are believed to be continuing behind the scenes.

Bahrain, which has been in turmoil since pro-democracy protests erupted last year, remains convinced for the need for some form of a union.  

"We are progressing from the (Gulf Cooperation Council) to a Gulf union," Sheikh Fahad Al-Khalifa, media counsellor to the Bahraini Embassy in London, told msnbc.com.

Last week, Bahrain's prime minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa reiterated the call for military, economic and political unity while welcoming a Kuwaiti delegation to the capital Manama.

Iran dropped long-standing claims to Bahrain in 1970 after a United Nations poll that showed a majority of the population wanted to be independent. 

NYT: Obama accelerated cyberattacks against Iran

"There is something very dangerous going on here because Iran gave up its claim on Bahrain because the Bahraini people wanted an independent state," said Jane Kinninmont, senior research fellow for the Middle East and North Africa at London-based think tank Chatham House.  "If that is unilaterally abrogated and Bahrain is absorbed into Saudi Arabia then you can see that it would give Iran some political grounds that that deal is over."

Kinninmont added that there would be no legal grounds for Iran's claim to Bahrain.

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Bahraini activists, who complain of systematic discrimination against the Shiite majority, call the move a blatant power grab by Sunni Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia sent around 1,500 Gulf troops into its tiny neighbor to quell protests during which dozens died and hundreds were detained, tortured and received unfair trials, according to human rights organizations such as Amnesty International. 

"The only people completely desperate for it in the Gulf are the (Bahraini royal family)," prominent opposition activist and economist Ala’a Shehabi, 31, told msnbc.com. "We know that the Bahraini ruling family are already puppets –- now they will be confirmed as puppets." 

PhotoBlog: Bahrain protesters clash with police after funeral

While Bahrain's King Hamad bin Issa Al-Khalifa has pledged to implement the recommendations of a report the government commissioned in the wake of last year’s violence, many in the opposition complain that there very little has been done to address their concerns.  The government has also rejected calls for an elected government.

'Bahrain is not for sale'
Shehabi isn't alone in dismissing the proposed union with Saudi Arabia.  Tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting "Bahrain is not for sale" jammed a major highway on May 18 to protest the plans.

The turnout -- The Associated Press reported that crowds stretched for more than three miles -- underscored the backlash.

In Bahrain, Twitter tells the story of police, protesters and Formula One race

While Bahraini officials contend that Iran is directing the protest movement, it has not offered evidence of these claims.  The government-commissioned report also did not find evidence of such control. 

Whatever its involvement in Bahrain protests, Iran has ratcheted up its rhetoric.

On May 18, during a government-backed march in Tehran, cleric Kazem Sedighi called the Saudi-Bahraini pact an "ominous conspiracy" aimed at the "annexation" of Bahrain by Saudi Arabia.

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Further inflaming tensions, a member of Iran’s parliament, Hussein Ali Shahriari, referred to Bahrain as Iran’s "14th province".

The war of words between Iran and the rulers of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia leave opposition activists such as Shehabi feeling trapped.

"We really feel here that we have been a battleground for regional proxy Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and we've lost our legitimate cause because of those colliding interests," she said.

Bahrain to citizens abroad: Spy on countrymen

Others with no ties to the opposition movement have also have misgivings about a closer union between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

"Even if it were not the case, a union would be perceived by many as an annexation," said longtime Bahrain watcher Douglas Hansen-Luke, a former CEO of Robeco Middle East and managing partner of HLD Partners, a firm advising institutions on investment in sustainable development. "Bahrain has two choices – one choice is to continue its path towards moderate reform.  The other is to retreat into a policy of no change – something which would likely force the opposition into more extreme measures."

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Al-Qaida and its allies remain entrenched in parts of Yemen despite a stepped-up campaign of drone strikes and a U.S.-backed offensive to remove the Islamist militants from the country, according to a new documentary. 

PBS' Frontline aired 'Al-Qaida in Yemen' on Tuesday night. It showed the militants' black flag flying over Yemeni towns that appeared to be under complete control of Ansar al-Sharia, a local branch of the terror group that formed in 2011.

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Al-Qaida minders escorted journalists through the Ansar al-Sharia's strongholds of Jaar and Azzan, showing them poor and war-torn but seemingly functioning towns. 

Report: Obama backs disputed definition of 'civilian' in drone wars

"Now we are in a city, it is a natural city, people are living in the city, having the normal life," journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad said in Jaar. "Yet at the same time this is al-Qaida. And they just control a whole city."

'Puppet' and 'Stooge': al-Qaida chief al-Zawahiri issues message on Yemen

The journalists also interviewed refugees who had fled fighting between militants and the army. 

One woman who left her home with her family because of the clashes, wiped away tears and said: "The army and security forces made it worse instead of protecting us."

Al-Qaida-linked militants seized large swathes of territory in southern Yemen last year as then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh grappled with protesters demanding his overthrow. Saleh quit last November in favor of his deputy, Abd-Rabbu Hadi Mansour. 

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The United States and its Gulf Arab allies have watched with mounting alarm as security deteriorates in Yemen, home to al-Qaida's Arabian Peninsula wing (AQAP), which Washington views as a serious threat. 

"We consider that al-Qaida  presents a very significant challenge," U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein told Frontline.

"For the first time we see al-Qaida trying to hold territory," which is a departure from what the militant group had done in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Horn of Africa, he added.

More than 30 Yemeni troops killed in militant attack

American and Yemeni pressure may be having an impact, however. The Yemeni army said on Monday it had made some progress in the fight against the militants, according to the Yemen Times.  The newspaper also said that the military had rejected a ceasefire offer from Ansar al-Sharia. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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LONDON -- An American teenager collapsed and died after going swimming at a Scottish beach, officials said.

Evan Dube, a first-year student at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, was working at an archaeological research project in the Shetland Islands, police said.

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Dube, from Plaistow, N.H., was with a group of 10 students from Bates College who went to a beach in Lerwick for a barbecue on Saturday night, police said in a statement.  

 

 

"Shortly afterwards Evan went into the water and after coming ashore appears to have collapsed," police said.

Dube, 19, was airlifted to the local hospital, but attempts to revive him were unsuccessful, according to police. 

While there did not appear to be any suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, an autopsy was planned for Monday, a police spokeswoman told msnbc.com.

Dube's family had been informed of his death, police said. 

"Bates College has been shaken and deeply saddened to learn that first-year student Evan Dube died," the liberal arts college said in a statement. "At this time we have no other information about the incident to offer -- simply that we have lost a member of our Bates community long before his time. Evan's fellow students in Scotland are receiving grief counseling and will return to Boston on Tuesday."

A memorial service was held at Bates on Sunday. A spokesman for the college was not immediately available for comment. 

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Europe's naval force patrolling off the coast East Africa said on Tuesday it had attacked Somali pirate installations on land, the first time it had conducted such an action since extending its remit from strictly to sea-based operations. 

Initial reports indicated that there were no casualties during the operation, which happened earlier on Tuesday, according to the European Union Naval Force (Somalia) Operation Atalanta's website.

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"We believe this action by the EU Naval Force (NAVFOR) will further increase the pressure on, and disrupt pirates' efforts to get out to sea to attack merchant shipping and dhows," the commander of the EU Naval Force, Rear Admiral Duncan Potts, said in a statement. "The local Somali people ... many of whom have suffered so much because of piracy in the region, can be reassured that our focus was on known pirate supplies and will remain so in the future."

The action was conducted from the air and "at no point did EU Naval Force 'boots' go ashore," the statement said.

Arms race? Somali pirates, tankers up their game

The European force, which is trying to stamp out piracy off the coasts of lawless Somalia, is made up of around 1,400 military personnel, nine warships and five maritime surveillance aircraft, according to NAVFOR's website. 

Despite successful efforts to quell attacks in the Gulf of Aden, international navies have struggled to contain piracy in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea owing to the vast distances involved.

Fighting Somali pirates with science

Seaborne gangs have raked in an estimated $150 million in ransoms in what has become a highly organized, international criminal enterprise, security analysts say. Somali pirates in the failed state have carried out more than 800 attacks on ships, from private yachts to oil supertankers since 2008, Bloomberg reported. 

Interactive: Global piracy 

On March 23 the EU Council decided to allow its forces in the region to take "disruption action against known pirate supplies on the (Somali) shore."

"Putting pressure on their business model by destroying their boats and eliminating their fuel dumps will make life more difficult for the sponsors of piracy and the pirates themselves," the Council said in a statement. 

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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Mexico is struggling to contain a drugs war that has claimed more than 50,000 lives in less than six years. Msnbc.com's F. Brinley Bruton spoke to NBC News contributor Jorge Castañeda, who is a former Mexican foreign minister and a New York University professor, about the problems he sees with the ongoing efforts to stamp out the illicit trade and possible ways out of the violence.

Q: An estimated 50,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, the country is one of the most dangerous in which to be a journalist, and kidnapping and extortion are rife. Is Mexico teetering over into chaos?

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A: It is not true, but it's less inaccurate that it was three or four years ago. It’s not teetering on the verge of chaos because violence remains concentrated in a few places. But those places have been changing over the past five years. The violence and killings move from one state or one region to another depending on where the army is, where the national police is, what the economic circumstances are in in a given region.

Another factor is that violence now seems to be stabilizing at very high levels.  It has pretty much leveled off at about 1,000 drug-linked executions a month –- about 12,000 per year. All very high levels, but it is no longer growing.

The problem is that this has been going on for almost six years. It is much more difficult to claim now that this is a temporary problem that will soon be resolved once the cartels are destroyed or weakened or thrown out or whatever.

At six years on, it is beginning to look more difficult to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel.

Nearly 50 bodies found dumped on Mexico highway

Q: What is the alternative to the war on drugs?

A: I’m against the war. I thought it was a mistake from the very beginning. That said, I can see how many well-intentioned people would for one year, for two years, for three years believe that with a little more time the violence would begin to decline, supply routes of drugs from Mexico to the United States would begin to shut down, the kingpins would be caught and all of this would sort of go away.

None of these things have happened. 

A few kingpins have been caught, but many others, the biggest ones, have not. There is no indication that there has been any decrease in overall drug consumption in the U.S. The Americans point to some decline in powder cocaine but an increase in marijuana, methamphetamines, etc. Those come from Mexico also.

If you put it all together, you see very meager results given the exorbitant costs for Mexico.

18 beheaded bodies found near popular Mexico tourist site

Q: What are the costs to Mexico of fighting this war?

A: I mean 50,000 dead, about 50 billion in expenditures ...  kidnappings, extortions, etc. Plus the terrible deterioration of Mexico’s image in the world, and for a country that thrives on tourism, that’s a big problem. And the human-rights violations that have increased exponentially over the past six years.

Q: So what are the realistic solutions? Deal with the cartels? Legalization? More military involvement? Just live with it?

A: I think it’s a combination of all of those. More military involvement -- we don’t have, we just don’t have the troops, we don’t have the money, we don’t have the equipment.  We don’t have any of the things that are necessary to significantly increase the military involvement.

Q: A lot of American troops are coming back from Afghanistan …

A: Yes, well, they could be sent to Mexico, or they could be sent to the U.S. and the United States could do this job from its side of the border. The point being that  ... there is a reasonable case to be made for dramatically increasing the size of the national police force, from 25,000 to 30,000 now to 100,000 or 150,000.  That would be the minimum that would be necessary given that ... there is a great consensus in Mexico that municipal and state police are useless.

Mexico leader's message to US: 'No more weapons!'

Q: Indeed, Mexican states have had to fire their entire police forces.

A: Exactly, just redo the whole thing. So there’s a good case to be made for increasing the number of national police troops to 100,000 or 150,000. The National Action Party (known by its Spanish acronym PAN) candidate for president has said 150,000 troops. That makes sense, but that takes time, and that costs a lot of money. Now you still are not ever going to ever have enough police to really patrol the whole country.  So then the question is, since you’re going to have scarce resources, where do you want to concentrate those scarce resources and on what do you want to concentrate them?

And that is where the real disagreement exists between the government and people like myself. The government has basically concentrated all its resources these past five-and-a-half years on fighting drug trafficking. I think those resources should be concentrated on fighting the effects of violence and crime that hurt people –- kidnapping, extortion, holdups, automobile thefts, etc. –- and basically not concentrated on drug trafficking

You don’t have to make a deal with the cartels, you don’t sit down and talk with them, you don’t shake hands with them. You just concentrate your resources on what matters to you; you don’t concentrate them on what matters to the U.S.

Cross-border methamphetamine trade booms amid Mexico's 'war on drugs'

Q: But in terms of lobbying, isn’t legalization a bit of a radioactive subject in the United States? Politicians hardly mention it in public.

A: Yes and no.  Just this past weekend a state legislature in Connecticut approved medical marijuana, which for all practical purposes is legalization. This is the 17^th state, together with the District of Columbia, and it is moving forward on the ballot in two states for full legalization in November.

So politicians don’t touch it, but there’s a real movement in American society, which is being reflected in medical marijuana, which is being reflected in a decline in incarceration rates, which is being reflected in more money being spent on prevention and less on punitive policies now in Obama’s budgets.  You have a lot of changes that are going on, (but) people don’t want to talk about them. But there’s nothing wrong with hypocrisy. Honesty is overrated in these matters.

Q: “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States” has been a popular saying in Mexico.  Do you think most people feel that way?

A: Perhaps it summed up what many Mexicans believed until the 1980s and ‘90s. But I think that from 1982 onwards it became clear that were it not for recurrent American bailouts and were it not for closer economic ties with the U.S., whether it was tourism or immigration then NAFTA, then investment ... that all of this is an opportunity, it is not a misfortune. 

Now most Mexicans believe that by being close to the United States geographically and close economically, socially, etc., is not a misfortune but rather an opportunity.

One killed every half hour in Mexico drug-related violence

Q: On the subject of the war on drugs, what can Mexico legitimately ask of the U.S.?

A: It can ask what President Felipe Calderon has been asking and what every president has been asking for the past 40 years, which is, stop consuming so many drugs and repeal the Second Amendment -- stop allowing people to buy guns in the United States and then export them to Mexico.

The usefulness and effectiveness of asking those two things is very much open to question in my mind. I don’t see what we gain by whining about this when we know it’s not going to happen. It is very similar to how the Americans whine, “Why don’t the Mexicans get their house in order, stop sending all these people to the U.S.?”

It’s not going to happen.  All the whining in the world is not going to stop Mexicans from going to the U.S. They’ve been doing it for over a century.  And all the Mexican whining in the world is not going to stop Americans from smoking pot.

Q: Do you feel optimistic about the future of Mexico?

A: I’m very optimistic. I think if Mexico gets three or four things straight over the next year or two, it can finally take off and become a middle class, poor-rich country within 10-15 years.

And I think it will. We have to put this war behind us. It just can’t go on. We have to change some fundamental policies, mainly on the ant-trust fron. We have to find a way to distribute the fruits of growth better, but in a rational, modern, effective way. And we have to improve the educational system rather dramatically and soon.

But these are not impossible to do.

 

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Juggling parenting with a high-powered career and hectic social life is a challenge anywhere in the world. One daycare center in India has stepped in to help with at least one part of that equation: a 24-hour nursery for the children of the super busy.

Care Plus World in India's capital New Delhi bills itself as the place to go for "children of parents who are too busy to put them to bed," according to Britain's Times newspaper (which operates behind a paywall).  

"At 'Care Plus World' we recognize, in this busy world, that not everyone has the luxury of being at home with their children, therefore we strive to give children a 'home from home' environment in their most important early years," the nursery says on its website.  

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Parents are "invited to leave their children with us for a considerable period of leave from one week to one year in case of any emergency such as hospitalization, business trips etc."

'We don't want it to be a chore'
Capitalizing on the demand a booming economy has on the blossoming professional class, Care Plus World offers surveillance cameras monitoring each room and text-message alerts for parents, alongside with dance and music classes.

Daycare on demand: round-the-clock childcare services on the rise

Yogesh and Charu Gupta, who the Times described as the embodiment of a successful middle-class couple, said they happily leave their 13-month-old daughter, Yatie, at the nursery overnight.  

"Both our parents live in Delhi but the truth is they'd rather not look after her and we'd rather not ask," Yogesh Gupta told the newspaper. "We don't want it to be a chore."

But this ultimate outsourcing service in the outsourcing capital of the world does cause unease among some of the clientele.

Priyanka Tyagi, a 31-year-old teacher, turns to the nursery when her husband has to entertain clients and she needs to go to work the next day, according the newspaper. 

"Of course I don't always feel great about it but I know he'll be safe," she says of Anany, aged two, the Times reported.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

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