Reporters on the Job
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Always Listening: Correspondent Sarah Gauch says the atmosphere in El-Arish, Egypt, where Islamic radicalism is growing, was grim (see story). "Every time I left the hotel, a security person ran after me, wanting to know where I was going. People didn't want to talk on phones to me," she says.
As she tried to pass through a checkpoint, Sarah got a clearer glimpse of this. "The security police held us there for about 45 minutes, checking and rechecking our passports. When they finally told us we could not go through, they said it was because of what my friends had said the day before about a certain suspect in the Dahab bombings. These colleagues had been at an opposition party headquarters and had brought up this suspect's name. That means the security forces had either bugged the room or listened from the outside," she says.
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Two Sides: Correspondent Sarah Wildman lives in a heavily Turkish neighborhood in Vienna (see story). "You could think you were living in Turkey," says Sarah. "Everyone around me is in
hijab (head covering), and the community is religious."
Sarah says she sometimes wonders how her neighbors view the discourse about immigration in Vienna. "It's not a subtext. I see letters to the editor and anti-immigrant posters. Austrians talk about the 'Turkish invasion,' a reference to past history when Turks laid siege to Vienna. They talk of the 'invasion from within' of a high birthrate."
But she also notes that there's a certain cachet to things Turkish. A favorite food market, the Naschmarkt, she says, is surrounded by hip eateries - all of which serve Turkish breakfast. "People also love to eat Turkish bread, cheese, salad there - made by a Turkish cook. You have all this rhetoric but then you have this other presence, too," she says.
Amelia Newcomb
Deputy world editor
Cultural snapshot
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THAT 70S SHOW:
Japanese Takao Arayama became the oldest person to scale Mount Everest May 17 - though he beat the previous record holder by just three days in age. Three climbers died in separate expeditions over the past week.
REUTERS
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