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We stopped our car along the main road that snakes from Kigali, Rwanda's capital, to the country's western region. We were heading to the volcanoes that soar along the northwest border for a story about mountain gorillas and what has happened to their habitat. But the light was good now, streaking through the rainy season's ever-present clouds, and the cameraman I was traveling with wanted to shoot.

A central feature of changes being brought about by President Hugo Chávez is the new, civilian branch of the Venezuelan military called the "territorial guard."

About 100,000 citizens, mainly from poor communities where support for Chávez burns hottest, have joined the guard during the past three years, according to members who participate in weekly training sessions at more than a dozen camps set up around the country.

When Nelson Mandela was released from jail in 1990 and during the subsequent 1994 independence and elections in South Africa, the United States displayed a dramatic commitment to the democratic movement in Africa that has not been in evidence since. That seemed to change, however, with the U.S.-sanctioned arrest of Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor, on March 29, 2006, for human rights violations in neighboring Sierra Leone.

Critics say there's no better example of Hugo Chávez's suave egomania than his weekly television talk show, in which he takes calls from viewers across the country.

But they can't argue with the show's popularity.

"Alo Presidente" — "Hello President" — appears on state television every Sunday and typically runs for as long as six hours.

The show is taped from a different location each week, usually at the site of one of the government's social welfare programs, where Chávez appears with a telephone to take calls from viewers.

While much of the world has been distracted by crises in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, a dangerous dispute over espionage, energy, and ethnicity has been growing between Russia and its diminutive neighbor Georgia.

The Mushangi area is nested high in eastern Congo's mountains, far from the capital, Kinshasa, on the border with Rwanda. The hills are barren, stripped of their lush vegetation both by erosion and by a seemingly never-ending conflict. While the rest of Congo prepares for the second round of presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 29, the people of Mushangi worry about one thing: survival.

Without Khartoum's agreement, even 200,000 NATO troops wouldn't be able to impose a political settlement in Darfur. While the force that could ease Darfur's situation—the African Union—is underfunded.

JUNEAU, ALASKA – Fueled by hasty mouthfuls of chocolate and leftover pork chops, we push our skis across the fresh snow of the Juneau Icefield. The late-afternoon snowstorm is thickening, and the shifting, growling crevasses of the Vaughan Lewis Icefall threaten to swallow us if we lose sight of our marked path.

JUNEAU, ALASKA – Professor Maynard Miller doesn't mince words. "This isn't a trip to Jamaica!" he growls. "This is an expedition!"  

(09-10) 04:00 PDT Ruhengeri, Rwanda -- The mud, at first, is brutal. It splashes your pants and sloshes down your socks and seems to fling itself at you from the thick bamboo forest. It suctions your boots as you strain up what shouldn't really be called a path, and mocks you for moving so slowly, especially compared to the Rwandan guides who seem to glide through the forest.

With the United States preoccupied by war, nuclear threats in the Middle East and an array of problems elsewhere, a quiet revolution is underway in East Asia as the region adjusts to the reemergence of a great power: China.