Reporters on the Job

from the July 3, 2008 edition

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• Not Quite Club Med: For today's story, correspondent Sam Dagher spent a night with members of the 1st Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment (1-64) in an old Baghdad shopping center now used as a US combat outpost.

"When they moved in last year, they said that rats roamed freely through the dim four-story building. There was no heat during the coldest winter in Iraq's history. And they all complained about the 'Iraq crud' – the dust that got into everything," says Sam.

Now that the soldiers are heading home, the place is being spruced up for the next group of US soldiers. A kitchen and dining room are being installed. The gym is being expanded. "The 1-64 soldiers joked that the unit that's taking over from them wants to turn the outpost into a 'Club Med in Baghdad.'

• Curfew? Not for Me: Reporter Mian Ridge says that Indian officials had imposed a curfew in Kashmir's main city of Srinagar. That made it a bit tricky to get to Srinagar's main mosque to cover the huge protest there.

"It's was an unofficial curfew whereby no one was supposed to be out on the streets – and cars were banned from the roads all around the mosque," she says. But Mian managed to avoid the police by taking an hour-long, circuitous walk, using twisting bylanes. "I accepted an offer of a lift on a scooter on the way, but on the way back I walked," she says.

–David Clark Scott

World editor

Cultural snapshot

A CELEBRITY SURVIVOR : This one-year-old pig survived under the rubble for 36 days following China’s May 12 earthquake. He has been renamed “Zhu Jianqiang” which means “Strong Pig.” Simple, but accurate. His owner, no longer able to afford to feed it, has sold it to the Jianchuan Museum, where he has a room of his own and has become a featured attraction.