BERLIN – It is possibly the German capital’s most visible new tourist attraction, but the opening of the bright pink Barbie Dreamhouse Experience was picketed Thursday by women’s groups protesting the “cliché of the female role in society.”

Only a stone's throw from Berlin’s fashionable Alexanderplatz shopping district, a water fountain in the shape of a huge pink high-heeled shoe now welcomes Barbie fans into a whole world of glittery, cerise-colored fun.

But while the city’s toy stores are filled with Barbie merchandise adorned with the slogan “Pink Rocks”, the protest includes a campaign called “Pinkstinks” that objects to “marketing strategies that allocate a limited gender role to young girls.”

The epicenter of doll devotion - only the second of its kind worldwide, after a similar attraction opened earlier this month in Florida -- is an interactive experience for its (mostly) young customers.

Organizers describe it as a “seemingly endless walk-in closet”, a life-size replica of Barbie's fictional Malibu home.

“It provides a completely new insight into the living interior and lifestyle of the most famous doll in the world,” said Christoph Rahofer,  of marketing company EMS which obtained the rights to the attraction from US manufacturer Mattel.

Slideshow: Barbie's Dreamhouse

Jens Kalaene / EPA

A life-sized house offers visitors a chance to tour the famous doll's home and even try on Barbie's clothes in her walk-in closet.

Launch slideshow

Visitors are greeted first by a large painting of Barbie smiling next to her love interest, Ken, then taken on a tour of her home that includes a bedroom and a stylish bathroom where a pink dolphin pops out of the toilet bowl.

Equipped with an electronic bracelet, real-world princesses can bake virtual cupcakes in Barbie's kitchen and listen to "Barbie talk" at touchscreen monitors.

The house is also equipped with a walk-in refrigerator and a huge pink piano playing happy tunes.

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Protests said they were angry at materialist stereotypes of women.

It’s too much for the taste of some Berliners.

About a dozen activists - including a man in a pink dress and a wig and a sign around his neck that said "Do you like me now?" - gathered in front of the attraction Wednesday.

Other placards read "Barbie is not my baby," "I will free you from the horror house" and "pink stinks."

“This dream world suggests that women can’t be anything less than beautiful and slim,” said Franziska Sedlak from protest group Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse. “And life is not about being beautiful all the time.”

The movement began in March when members of a youth group affiliated to Germany’s far-left party, die Linke, created an Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse Facebook page.

“Our protest is not directed towards little girls and their dreams,” member Michael Koschitzki said. “But, for us, this so-called Dreamhouse symbolizes the beauty craze and the discrimination of women in modern day life. It presents a cliché of the female role in society.”

Demonstrators included  a woman with bare breasts holding a burning cross with "life in plastic is not fantastic" written on her body.

Despite the criticism, the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience is expected to attract up to 3,000 visitors a day.

For her part, Barbie will pack up her enormous shoe and dress collection at the end of August, taking her pink paradise on a tour of other European cities.

Related:

• Photoblog: 'Life in plastic is not fantastic': Germans protest Barbie Dreamhouse
• Barbie's Dreamhouse now life-size reality in Florida
• Full Germany coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 7:55 AM EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Six Americans were among at least 15 people killed when a suicide bomber targeted a convoy carrying foreign troops in Kabul on Thursday, NATO sources and local officials said.

The American victims included two soldiers and four civilian contractors, the NATO source added.

Two children were among the Afghan victims, Afghan officials said.

About 40 people were injured in the powerful blast, which took place at around 8 a.m. local time (11.30 p.m. ET Wednesday).

Kabul police spokesman Hashmatullah Stanikzai said the attacker detonated a Toyota Corolla.

"It was a powerful explosion and some of the dead civilians were badly burned and cannot be recognized," Kane Backlash, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Health Ministry, told Reuters.

Hizb-i-Islami,  an insurgent group which is allied with the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack. In September, the group said it had launched an attack near Kabul's airport that police said killed 12 people. 

Afghan officials said nine Afghan civilians were killed, including two children.

"Some of the dead civilians were badly burnt and cannot be recognized," Kaneshka Baktash, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, told Reuters.

Helicopters buzzed over Kabul's diplomatic area after the attack and sirens whined.

President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the "cowardly" attack. "Terrorists and enemies of Afghanistan's peace brutally targeted a residential area," Karzai said in a statement. 

Related: 12 killed, vehicles torn apart in Kabul suicide attack

Reuters contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 6:49 AM EDT

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh -- Cyclone Mahasen struck the southern coast of Bangladesh on Thursday, lashing remote fishing villages with heavy rain and fierce winds that flattened mud and straw huts and forced the evacuation of more than 1 million people.

The main section of the storm reached land Thursday and immediately began weakening, according to Mohammad Shah Alam, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. However, its forward movement was also slowing, meaning that towns in its path would have to weather the storm for longer, he said.

Even before the brunt of the storm hit, at least 18 deaths related to Mahasen were reported in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had said Wednesday that depending on its trajectory, the storm could bring life-threatening conditions to about 8.2 million people in Bangladesh, Myanmar and northeast India. But the storm appeared to spare at least some areas once thought to be at risk.

In the seafront resort town of Cox's Bazar, tens of thousands of people had fled shanty homes along the coast and packed into cyclone shelters, hotels, schools and government office buildings. But by Thursday afternoon, the sun was shining and local government administrator Ruhul Amin said he planned to close the shelters by that evening.

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

Bangladeshi pedestrians gather to watch the sea at a beach while Cyclone Mahasen heads toward landfall in Chittagong on Thursday.

"Thank God we have been spared this time," Amin said.

Mahasen hit land with maximum wind speeds of about 62 mph and quickly weakened to 56 mph, said Alam, the meteorological official.

Along Myanmar's western coast, danger was particularly high for tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya people living in plastic-roofed tents and huts made of reeds in dozens of refugee camps.

Gemunu Amarasinghe / AP

An internally displaced Rohingya man pushes a rickshaw with children and belongings leaving a camp for displaced Rohingya people in Sittwe, northwestern Rakhine State, in Myanmar on Thursday. Members of the displaced minority started moving to safer shelters ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Mahasen.

Driven from their homes by violence, some members of the Muslim minority group refused to follow evacuation orders. Many distrust officials in the majority-Buddhist country, where Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination.

U.N. officials, hoping they would inspire greater trust, fanned out across the area to encourage people to leave. They said Thursday that more than 35,000 people had been relocated.

In Bangladesh, river ferries and boat service were suspended, and scores of factories near the choppy Bay of Bengal were closed. The military said it was keeping 22 navy ships and 19 Air Force helicopters at the ready.

"We have seen such a disaster before," said Mohammad Abu Taleb, who shut down his convenience shop in Cox's Bazar, a city of 200,000. "It's better to stay home. I'm not taking any chance."

A 1991 cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh from the Bay of Bengal killed an estimated 139,000 people and left millions homeless. In 2008, Myanmar's southern delta was devastated Cyclone Nargis, which swept away entire farming villages and killed more than 130,000 people. Both those cyclones were much more powerful than Cyclone Mahasen, which is rated Category 1 — the weakest level.

Heavy rain and storm surge could prove deadlier than the wind. Bangladesh's meteorological office said the cyclone was moving so slowly it may take a whole day for it to pass the Bangladesh coast.

Manan Vatsyayana / AFP - Getty Images

Indian private security guards man the entrance to the Lok Nayak hospital in New Delhi on May 15, 2013. A defendant on trial over a fatal gang-rape in New Delhi last December is critically ill after being attacked in prison, his lawyer said Wednesday, weeks after the main accused died in the same jail.

One of the men on trial for the fatal gang rape of a student on a bus in India has been beaten and poisoned by prison inmates and is unconscious in the hospital, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

Prison authorities denied any mistreatment of Vinay Sharma, who has been at New Delhi's Tihar Jail since he was arrested on suspicion of attacking a woman in December. The attack stunned India and brought thousands of protesters onto the streets.

One of Sharma's co-accused, Ram Singh, the alleged ringleader, was found hanged from a ceiling grill inside his cell in March. Police described his death as suicide although a judicial inquiry is pending.

Sharma's lawyer, A.P. Singh, accused inmates of "beating him on the chest" and poisoning his food, and said he was admitted to Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital on Tuesday after being treated at another city hospital since Sunday.

"Vinay was beaten by four or five fellow inmates inside the jail premises," he told Reuters, adding he was in an unconscious state.

Sunil Gupta, a spokesman for Tihar Jail, said Sharma was being treated in a city hospital for a fever.

"There was no such beating of Vinay to my knowledge. All the allegations are false," he said.

Police arrested Sharma and Singh, along with three other adult men and a teenage boy, on charges of raping the 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a moving bus and fiercely beating her and her male friend on Dec. 16.

The woman died of her injuries in a Singapore hospital two weeks after the assault, which enraged Indians, who protested in the thousands for days to demand better law enforcement to fight gender crimes.

The city court where Sharma has stood trial since early this year asked jail authorities and doctors on Wednesday to file reports on his health on Thursday.

Sharma was falsely implicated in the case, his lawyer said at the start of the trial.

An al Qaeda-linked cell disrupted in Egypt was planning suicide attacks on the French and U.S. embassies, the state news agency MENA reported, according to Reuters.

In light of this news and last week’s stabbing of a U.S. citizen on the embassy’s perimeter, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo alerted U.S. citizens to exercise “elevated awareness.”

“The knife attack on the Embassy's perimeter, along with weekend media reports acknowledging that Egyptian authorities have disrupted a terror cell possibly targeting Egyptian and Western interests, serve as yet another reminder of the need to exercise good situational awareness,” read a statement from the embassy, which was obtained by NBC News. 

According to Reuters, authorities announced Saturday they had captured three Egyptians with al Qaeda links, saying they had been found in possession of 22 pounds of explosive materials.

"The investigations revealed that the suspects were intending to carry out terrorist bomb operations inside Egypt via suicide operations, penetrating the security cordon in front of the American and French embassies with a car bomb," MENA said, citing a source in the state security prosecutor's office, according to Reuters.

MENA said the suspects had escaped from prison in 2011, during the revolts that removed Hosni Mubarak from power.

Reuters contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 2:33 PM EDT

News analysis

LONDON -- The Justice Department's secret seizure of phone records from the Associated Press was prompted by a leak that put considerable strain on the relationship between American and British intelligence agencies.

The leak was the basis of an AP story in May 2012 about a CIA operation in Yemen that foiled an al Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed for the United States. 

There was anger in the British government over the leak and subsequent news reports that disclosed U.K. spies had been heavily involved in the operation.

The alleged details of the operation, which were never officially confirmed, were straight out of a John Le Carre novel. According to reports, a U.K. passport holder of Yemeni descent was recruited by British security officials and sent to Yemen to infiltrate an al Qaeda group.

The details of alleged U.K. involvement were attributed by many American media outlets to U.S. security sources. According to London's Times newspaper, the level of detail made public had left British officials "slack-jawed." 

"I understand there is an investigation under way, being led by the Americans. It is clearly a matter for the U.S. authorities,", the official spokesperson for Britain's prime minister said at the time. "Clearly, we think that sensitive information should be protected."

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, went even further and said leaks about operations could be "extremely harmful."

"It can prevent the effective involvement of intelligence officers or agencies in operations that are designed to save lives either in this country or other countries," he added. "Whether a leak arises in the U.S., the U.K. or elsewhere it is equally serious."

In the wake of the leak, it was claimed that the double agent had managed to smuggle out a bomb that would have been used to blow up an airliner. The bomb was described as even more sophisticated than the underwear bomb that attempted to bring down an jet landing in Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.

The British double agent was also said to have provided vital information about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and about its master bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri. Around the same time as the leak, a drone strike in Yemen killed a senior al Qaeda leader, Fahd al Quso, who had been involved in the USS Cole bombing. However, it not been confirmed that this killing was connected to the undercover operation.

The leaked news potentially did more than put the operation it at risk. It also threatened the life of the double agent and his family and had an impact on the prospects for similar operations in the future. After all, why would similar recruits co-operate with the British knowing that information about what they did would go public?

"The revelations about the British agent in al Qaeda remind us that Beltway leaking is a major security threat," said Nigel Inkster, a former assistant chief of the British intelligence agency MI6.

Raffaelllo Pantucci, senior research fellow at London-based think tank RUSI, added: "It, of course, undermines  the trust between the agencies. It’s a big problem."

The Saudis also substantially assisted in the operation, according to experts. Could their connections have been compromised? In 2010, Saudi intelligence had helped foil an attack out of Yemen involving bombs disguised as printer cartridges smuggled onto airplane cargo.

Did British disquiet help spur the U.S. investigation into the leak? British government sources would not say whether a complaint was lodged.

"It is a long standing policy of successive governments not to comment on intelligence matters," an official with the U.K.'s Foreign Office said Wednesday.

NBC News' Michele Neubert contributed to this report.

Related: 

• AP, DOJ clash over seriousness of leak that prompted phone records seizure

A girl who died while vacationing in India was missing her internal organs when her body was returned to Britain, according to her parents who fear she may have been the victim of the illegal trade in human body parts.

But the hospital in India where her body was taken reportedly denied the girl's organs were harvested for sale, insisting they were removed for additional investigation as to the cause of death.

Gurkiren Kaur, 8, died moments after a doctor treating her for dehydration in India’s Punjab region gave her an injection two weeks ago, according to her family. 

BPM Media

Gurkiren Kaur, 8

A member of parliament in the girl’s home city of Birmingham, England, has demanded an international investigation into the case. Shabana Mahmood, the lawmaker, told ITV News she had raised the “deeply suspicious circumstances” of the case with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

The Birmingham Mail newspaper, which first reported the story, said the commercial trade of human organs remained big business in India, despite having been banned in 1994.

A local politician, who is a friend of the family, said there were "many unanswered questions" about Gurkiren's death and suggested it was "very possible" the girl was deliberately killed for her organs.

"It does happen in India, and since this case was first reported we have been contacted by other families who say their relatives have died and had organs removed without an explanation," Birmingham City Councillor Narinder Kooner said.

The state-owned hospital in Punjab where the girl’s first autopsy took place denied late Wednesday that her organs had been stolen, according to Indian media reports.

Vijay Sharda, Medical Superintendent of the Rajindra Hospital, told the Press Trust of India (PTI) that organs and tissue were sent for further examination, the English-language newspaper Deccan Herald reported.

He told the PTI that doctors attributed her death to a congenital heart defect for which she had already undergone surgery in the UK, according to the report.

Gurkiren was visiting India on her first overseas vacation when she became ill on April 2 with a mild case of dehydration, according to her family. After being given an injection at a clinic, her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she quickly became unresponsive, her parents said. 

BPM Media

Gurkiren Kaur is seen with brother Simram and parents Santokh Singh Loyal and Amrit Kaur as they set off for their holiday in India.

Her mother, Amrit, and father, Santokh, said they agreed to allow the India hospital's doctors to perform a biopsy in order to establish a cause of death - as required by Indian law.

When the girl's body arrived back in the U.K., a British coroner called Gurkiren's parents to say it was missing the organs needed to investigate her cause of death, the parents said. It is common practice in Britain for an autopsy to be carried out in U.K. on citizens who die overseas.

Gurkiren's parents say the Indian clinic's doctor refused to tell them what had been in the injection.

Her mother Amrit, who is a postal worker, told ITV News: "I said, ‘What is the injection for? She doesn't need an injection she just needs a saline drip for half an hour or 45 minutes.’ He didn't answer me at all he just gave me a blank look and totally ignored me and just inserted the needle into a syringe and as soon as he pushed it in her neck flipped backwards.

"Her eyes rolled over and she turned a grayish-whitish color. She just blinked twice and her mouth was left open."

The parents insist they have been unable to get information about that happened to their daughter or the whereabouts of her organs.

Speaking earlier, Kooner said the case raised many questions.

"Did the clinic doctor have her organs in mind when he gave her this injection?" she asked. "Or was she the victim of medical incompetence who then had the organs removed by somebody at the hospital? What has happened to these organs? We just don’t know."

Kooner conceded that it was possible the girl had been the victim of a series of individual acts of incompetence, but added: "Gurkiren was a happy, healthy girl who was laughing and joking until this injection. We will never be able to investigate the cause of her death until these organs are found."

Art Caplan, co-chairman of a 2009 United Nations task force on organ trafficking, said that the evidence in Gurkiren’s case doesn’t point to organ theft.

“I’m skeptical,” said Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center. “Whenever I see somebody say that somebody killed somebody for parts, I’m skeptical.”

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 106,000 organs were transplanted globally in 2010. That included about 10,000 kidneys that were illegally obtained, the agency said.

Organ transplant is actually a complex effort that involves precise coordination to be successful. Blood and tissue types of both donor and recipient must match, the size of the organs must be compatible and the organs must be preserved after death, Caplan notes. In this child’s case, the timeline doesn’t suggest that any of that would have happened.

“Was she on life support?” he said. “Do you have container to put the organs in? This girl is missing internal organs, but it doesn’t add up to that.”

In a statement, Britain’s Foreign Office said: "We can confirm the death of a British national in Punjab, India, on April 2. We are providing consular assistance in the case and cannot comment further."

A member of the Punjab Congress demanded an investigation into the case, according to the Hindustan Times.

"The death of Gurkiren Kaur… brings to the fore the crumbled and medieval-type healthcare system in Punjab," state Congress spokesman Sukhpal Singh Khaira told the newspaper, adding that the girl has been “subjected to inhuman autopsy at a government hospital."

In addition to the black market for organs, there is a legitimate global trade in human tissue taken from bodies - supposedly with the prior consent of the deceased.

A recent investigation found that, in the United States, an estimated two million products derived from human tissue are sold each year, a figure that has doubled over the past decade.

Mark Gough, reporter with NBC News' partner ITV News, contributed to this report.

Related: Body wranglers at work: Inside the global trade in human corpses

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 11:05 AM EDT

Yonhap via Reuters

Kenneth Bae, 44, was convicted of "hostile acts" against North Korea.

An American tour operator sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea has begun his sentence at a “special prison,” state media reported Wednesday.

Kenneth Bae, 44, stood trial last month accused of “hostile acts” against the repressive regime.

Bae, who is from Washington state, was convicted of an attempt to topple the government through “state subversion” according to a brief report on the Korean Central News Agency's website.

“Pae Jun Ho, an American citizen, started his life at a special prison on Tuesday,” the report said, referring to him by his Korean name.

He is one of at least three other U.S. citizens who are also devout Christians to have been detained by North Korea in recent years.

While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated.

Washington state Rep. Cindy Ryu told The Herald newspaper in December that Bae might have been doing missionary work in North Korea.

"Many of us are third- and fourth-generation Christians and many of our pastors are originally from North Korea," Ryu said. "We want to visit our home country, but in North Korea you cannot say you are a missionary."

A Facebook page has been set up titled “Remember Ken Bae, Detained in North Korea.”

Related:

• North Korea: Detained American tourist has 'admitted his crime'
• Detained American, Internet freedom on agenda as Google boss visits North Korea
• Full North Korea coverage from NBC News

LA SPEZIA, Italy -- If you’re under 70, you’ve probably never heard of the USS Williamsburg.

But at one time she was among the most famous ships on the planet -- the stuff of newsreels and bold headlines.  

Steel-hulled and built to look like a mini-Titanic, the 240-foot Williamsburg started out in the early 1930s as the Aras, a private yacht. She became a patrol gunboat during World War II.  But it was as President Harry S. Truman’s yacht that she gained acclaim as his "seagoing White House."

Truman loved to do business on the Williamsburg as much as he loved the ship itself.

Over his seven tumultuous years as president, discussions on board with leaders including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill – often over card games and long bourbons - led to decisions that still affect the world today: the launch of the Cold War, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the Korean War, and the creation of Israel, to name but a few.   

But, for the past 20 years, the USS Williamsburg has barely kept afloat in a quaint backwater in northern Italy. 

The vessel's Italian owners  – who run a shipyard – say that in four or five years it will likely sink from its own decay and will be cut up for scrap.  How did it come to this?  And what can be done to save it?

VIDEO: A glimpse inside the iconic USS Williamsburg

Ask Gianfranco Oddone, a man on a mission. Oddone is a retired ship repairman who once was a high school exchange student in Truman’s home town of Lamar, Mo. He will tell anyone who listens about the Williamsburg’s saga, as he seeks out a buyer who’ll sail this piece of Americana back to where Oddone believes it belongs -- in the U.S.

In the meantime, the grandest of America’s surviving presidential yachts increases its list – and rust – far from home.  

The men accused of killing Malcolm X’s grandson in a Mexican bar used a bat or stick in addition to punching and kicking him during the fatal beating, Mexico City’s prosecutor said Tuesday.

The Associated Press reports that prosecutor Rodolfo Rios said the weapon was used by two waiters arrested for the death of Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of the slain political activist. The waiters served Shabazz and a friend at a bar called The Palace Club, and a dispute over a tab of more than $1,200 resulted.

Mexican prosecutors on Monday said the waiters were “likely responsible” for Shabazz’s death. The 28-year-old was found severely beaten Thursday morning. An autopsy revealed he died from organ damage, head trauma and rib fractures.

Shabazz's friend, Miguel Suarez, told authorities that the two had drunk about 12 beers when the waiters demanded they pay a bill of 15,000 pesos, according to the Associated Press. They were lured into the bar by a woman who spoke to Shabazz in English, authorities said.

The bar is located on one of Mexico City’s busiest avenues, an area popular with tourists for its live music, dive bars and strip clubs.

Rios said the attackers disabled all the security cameras inside the bar and closed it once the ambulance arrived and they realized the severity of the beating, the AP reports.

The bar’s owner has not yet talked to police, and prosecutors said the owner could be charged in connection with the crime.

Evoking the spy games of the Cold War, Russia said Tuesday that it had detained an American diplomat who was carrying cash, two wigs and technical equipment and was trying to recruit a Russian intelligence official to work for the CIA.

Russia ordered the expulsion of the American diplomat, whom it identified as Ryan Christopher Fogle, third secretary of the political division of the U.S. Embassy. The State Department said only that an officer at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had been detained and released.

American officials said they did not expect a rift in U.S.-Russian relations. U.S. officials are trying to improve those relations, and to persuade Russia to help resolve a civil war in Syria.

FSB via AP

Wigs and spy gadgets that the Russian Federal Security Service says were carried by American diplomat Ryan Fogle.

Russia used stronger language, calling the matter provocative and in the spirit of the Cold War.

A statement by the Russian Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, said that Fogle was taken to the service’s headquarters and then to the U.S. embassy after his arrest Monday night.

The security service, known as the FSB, released to Russian media photographs of the American’s arrest and what it said were items he had with him, including the wigs, a torch, a compass and a wad of 500-euro notes, each worth $650.

Russian television also displayed a letter it said was found on Fogle, printed in Russian and addressed “Dear friend.” The letter offered a $100,000 payment as “an advance from someone who has been highly impressed by your professionalism, and who would highly value your cooperation in the future.”

The statement from the security service said that the U.S. had “repeatedly attempted to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement bodies and special departments” recently.

The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, was participating in a question-and-answer session on Twitter when the detention was announced. He was summoned to Russia’s foreign ministry, The Associated Press reported.

Experts expressed surprise at the old-school nature of the alleged espionage, but they noted that intelligence-gathering had not stopped just because the Cold War ended more than two decades ago.

FSB via AP

In this photo provided by Russian Federal Security Service, a man claimed by the service to be Ryan Fogle is seen at the service's offices in Moscow.

“If anything, it has increased,” said James Nixey, head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the British think tank Chatham House. “The methods have changed — or so we thought — because it’s more about industrial espionage and corruption these days.”

Besides the diplomacy over Syria, there have been questions about whether Russia gave the United States enough information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the attack on the Boston Marathon.

Russian officials asked the U.S. for more information about Tsarnaev, who was born in what is now Russia and traveled to Russia early last year. Russia suspected that Tsarnaev was becoming radicalized, American officials have said.

The FBI interviewed him in 2011 and turned up nothing, and when the FBI asked Russia twice for more information about its concern, Russia failed to respond, the American officials said. Tsarnaev was killed April 19 in a shootout with police.

President Barack Obama later said Russia had cooperated since the attack but noted: “Old habits die hard. There are still suspicions sometimes between our intelligence and law enforcement agencies that date back 10, 20, 30 years, back to the Cold War.”

The incident would not be the only intelligence blunder in Russia. Britain admitted bugging a Moscow park in 2006 by disguising a recording device as a big rock. The FSB saw a British diplomat picking it up and walking away with it.

Related: 

Full Russia coverage from NBC News

Editor’s note: This story includes a correction.

This story was originally published on Tue May 14, 2013 7:59 PM EDT

Brazilian notaries public must register same-sex civil unions as marriages if the couple requests it, the country's National Council of Justice said Tuesday.

The council that oversees the country's judiciary said in a statement that notaries public cannot refuse to marry gay couples or convert a same-sex civil union into a marriage if that's what the pair wants.

The council based its decision on a 2011 Supreme Court ruling that recognized same-sex civil unions. The court said at the time that gay couples are entitled to same legal rights as heterosexual pairs when it comes to alimony, retirement benefits of a partner who dies and inheritances, among other issues.

Those opposed to the council's ruling can file an appeal with the Supreme Court.

Fourteen of Brazil's 27 states so far have legalized same-same marriages.

Efforts in Congress to approve a bill legalizing gay marriage across the nation have been thwarted by conservative evangelical legislators.

Gay rights movements cheered the council's decision.

"It is a major step that will ensure equality among heterosexual and homosexual couples," Carlos Magno Fonseca, president of the Brazilian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Association told reporters.

Last year, 1,277 same sex couples registered such civil unions with notaries public.