Reporters on the Job

from the March 6, 2008 edition

• Another Mozambique: Correspondent Stephanie Hanes describes central Mozambique as "one of the friendliest places" she's ever worked. "I can't count the number of times people there have saved and welcomed me – helping me with flat tires, offering me food, insisting on carrying my gear as I trudge somewhere for a story under the blistering sun."

That's what made the reports of vigilante justice there, so startling to her. "It didn't fit my image of this beautiful country."

When she went to Chimoio on a Sunday afternoon to investigate, she saw people strolling in the market, heard radios playing the lilting, sunny Mozambican music. "Except for a few rocks in the middle of some roads, everything seemed in order. People told me that the violence was finished," she says (see story).

But there were more lynchings over the next week. "It was a reminder of how much is going on beneath the surface here. And how little I still know - even after living in the region for more than three years," she says.

– David Clark Scott

World editor

Delegates from China's minority groups assembled before taking their places at the opening of China's parliament Wednesday in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Claro Cortes IV/Reuters More cultural snapshots

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