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Is Twitter’s breakneck growth causing a backlash?

David Bill isn’t annoyed when Twitter gets so bogged down with traffic that he can’t post a message.

That’s because in the moment when frustration would hit, he’s greeted on the popular Web site by a cartoonish image he loves: a giant whale being lifted out of an ocean by a small flock of tweeting birds. The icon — which Twitter users call it the “fail whale” because the creature appears only when the site has failed to load — has gained a cult following as the social media site grows at breakneck pace. The conversational Web site, which lets users post 140-character microblogs, saw a 1,374 percent jump in unique visitors between February 2008 and February this year, up to 7 million from only 475,000, according to Nielsen NetView. By comparison, Facebook grew 228 percent, to 65.7 million users, during the same period. With all of those new Twitterers, fail whale sightings and site crashes seem more frequent. Bill (mr_bill on Twitter) and other fail-whale followers aren’t bothered, though. The 36-year-old San Franciscan has organized parties in honor of the whale. The most recent, held in California in February, was attended by more than 300 people, including Yiying Lu, the artist in Australia who created the image. Bill says the whale represents a contrarian philosophy.

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“It’s sort of an adorable whale but also this thing that represents the Herculean tasks that we sometimes go about from day to day,” he said. “We’re all trying to do a lot of things that seem pretty impossible,” Bill said. “It’s nice to identify something positive with those failures.” Not every Twitterer is sympathetic to the site’s troubles, though. Some users say Twitter has outgrown its core audience and is irrelevant to the technophiles who made it popular in the first place. Others are annoyed by the flood of spammers and profiteers who now use the site’s popularity to make a buck. Celebrities and members of Congress have been jumping onto the site in recent months, adding to the site’s mainstream popularity and, some users say, causing glitches in the system. “I keep getting the fail whale. Twitter got too popular too quickly. I blame Shaq,” wrote Jessica Roy, a 21-year-old New York University student who goes by suchamessica on Twitter. Basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, or THE_REAL_SHAQ, has more than 470,000 followers on the site. Nova Spivack, a blogger whose article “Can Twitter Survive What is About to Happen to It” has been passed around the site, said a rift is developing between Twitter’s original “in crowd” and its newer, more mainstream users. Early adopters find many of the new users annoying, he said. “A lot of people come in, and they take that ‘What are you doing’ question literally, and so they put very inane things on Twitter,” he said. iReport.com: How do you feel about tweets and status updates The site used to feel “insulated” from the mainstream, and now it doesn’t, he said. But for all the complaints, there seem to be just as many people who are almost excited about Twitter’s growing pains. It is inevitable that a Web site seeing Twitter-style growth would face some glitches and a backlash from early adopters, said Laura Fitton, a consultant and co-author of the book “Twitter for Dummies.” “There’s going to be all kinds of people using it all kinds of different ways,” she said. “The purists can go pound rocks.” Major news such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the Hudson River plane landing has broken over Twitter, and that’s added to the site’s popularity, she said. Amy Gahran, who writes on social media at contentious.com, said the backlash against Twitter stems from the fact that people are uncomfortable with change. Early users see new people coming to the site, and that creeps them out, but it shouldn’t, she said. “Change is freaking good,” she said. “Roll with it.” As the site gets filled with fresh users, people are creating pieces of software to help Twitterers sort through the noise, Gahran said. She said Twitter is popular because it mimics real-life conversation and because it’s easy to use. She also expects Twitter to expand, especially as people in developing countries use cell-phone text messages to communicate through the site. “People talk. That’s what we do,” she said. “We’re social creatures. We’re kind of wired for this.” Twitter says it is addressing breakdowns in that wired communication. “We have made amazing progress from a technical perspective as far as accommodating this rapid growth goes and will continue to improve system and subsystem performance moving forward,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a statement to CNN. Critter Gewlas of Cary, North Carolina, believes so much in the site’s ability to overcome adversity that he recently got a tattoo of the fail whale on his leg. “The site itself has suffered a few scrapes and bumps along the way, but for the most part, I definitely think it’s a good thing,” said the 36-year-old. The fail whale’s account on Twitter has more than 2,265 followers. A Facebook group dedicated to the whale has more than 4,400 members. The whale has spawned art and merchandise, from coffee mugs to baby clothes. A Current.com parody of the whale has spun around the Internet, too. Bill, whose fail whale parties have featured an aquamarine martini in honor of the icon’s color, said the whale’s popularity comes from the idea that failures are worth celebrating and learning from. Twitter will use that philosophy to continue to grow, he said. “Twitter is a powerful enough thing that it should succeed in a broad way, and I would like it to succeed in a broad way,” he said.

FDA: Hang on to your pistachios

If you have a stash of pistachios in your house, pistachio ice cream in your freezer or trail mix in your backpack, don’t eat any of it.

Wait until an inquiry into possible salmonella contamination is further along, advises FDA Associate Commissioner David Acheson. Kraft Foods Inc. notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last Tuesday that it found salmonella in roasted pistachios during routine testing. The nuts were traced to Setton Farms in Terra Bella, California, about 75 miles south of Fresno. Setton announced a recall, Kraft removed its Back To Nature Trail Mix from store shelves, and Kroger — a grocery chain with stores in 31 states — recalled Private Selection shelled pistachios from its retail stores. “Ultimately, the question is what should consumers do, and our advice to consumers is that they avoid eating pistachio products and keep checking the FDA Web site for the latest information,” Acheson said. An investigation is under way into how the pistachios came to carry the bacteria. Salmonella can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Acheson stressed at a news conference Monday that the potential problems with pistachios were unrelated to this year’s recall of peanut products, including peanut butter. The pistachio investigation also involves the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. Setton Farms told the FDA that it anticipates recalling about 1 million pounds of products nationally in the next few days, which covers its crop output last year.

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Several people have told the FDA that they suffered gastrointestinal illnesses after eating pistachios, and the CDC was doing a genetic analysis, looking for any link between the people and salmonella strains, Acheson said. He said there could be some results by the end of the week. He said the FDA is “ahead of the curve” in the current investigation. “I want to emphasize that this recall was not triggered because of an outbreak, in contrast to some of the previous situations, for example, like the peanuts where people were getting sick and it was determined that peanuts, peanut butter was the likely cause,” Acheson said. “This is a situation that the recall is being triggered because of … action taken on the part of the food industry,” he added. “What we’re doing here is getting out ahead of the curve. It’s a proactive approach by the FDA and the California Department of Health.” Jeff Cronin, spokesman for the advocacy organization Center for Science in the Public Interest, had a mixed reaction to Acheson’s comments. “I think it’s partly the case,” Cronin said. “It’s good that the FDA is proactively issuing advice to consumers.” But “this still begets the question of ‘how did this contamination happen in the first place’ Is this an isolated problem, or are we going to be hearing the same kind of horror stories that we heard about … the company that produced the peanuts”

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He said he wondered when was the last time the FDA visited Setton Farms and whether it had known of problems there. In February, the Texas Department of State Health Services ordered the recall of all products shipped from the Peanut Corporation of America’s plant in Plainview, Texas, after discovering dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers in the plant. The company’s peanut butter and peanut paste products produced at its plant in Blakely, Georgia, were linked to a nationwide outbreak of salmonella poisoning that affected 600 people, nine of whom died. According to state health officials and many experts, the deadly outbreak of salmonella was fueled by poor oversight by food safety regulators and a slow response by federal agencies. The first problem is that almost nothing can stop companies from shipping contaminated food, William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner, told a U.S. Senate committee in February. He also said there are not enough federal inspections. Other critics said the FDA stepped in too late in the peanut case to prevent a bigger problem. Food safety experts say the underlying cause of the problem is that the century-old system of regulation is broken. In the peanut case, the experts say, the federal government failed to oversee the safety of products coming out of the Blakely plant and was slow to identify it as the source of the salmonella.

Clinton backs talks with moderate Taliban

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives Tuesday for a conference on Afghanistan at The Hague.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday endorsed Afghan plans to hold reconciliation talks with moderate Taliban members.

“We must support efforts by the government of Afghanistan to separate the extremists of al Qaeda and the Taliban from those who joined their ranks, not out of conviction but out of desperation,” Clinton said in an address laying out the new U.S. strategy for the region that President Obama announced last week. She added, “They should be offered an honorable form of reconciliation and reintegration into a peaceful society if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al Qaeda and support the constitution.” Clinton spoke at a conference aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan and jump-starting political support for the war-torn country. More than 80 countries and international organizations are attending. Last Friday, Obama unveiled his decision to send an additional 4,000 troops to Afghanistan to increase training for the Afghan army and police force. They will be joined by hundreds of civilian specialists such as agricultural experts, educators and engineers. The increase comes on top of an earlier announcement to send 17,000 additional troops to battle a resurgent Taliban insurgency. Clinton said the United States is sending $40 million toward securing a free and fair presidential election later this year, although she has insisted the United States would not support or endorse a candidate. Watch an Afghan’s outlook for stabilizing his country » On Sunday, Afghanistan’s supreme court ruled that President Hamid Karzai will remain in office until the election.

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Karzai’s term is up in May, but the independent commission that will oversee the election has set it for August 20. The court’s decision found that allowing Karzai to remain in power until that vote “is in the interest of the Afghan people and state, and it is also consistent with the spirit and interpretation of the constitution.” Karzai was named head of a provisional government after the U.S.-led invasion that dislodged the Taliban in 2001. Then he won an interim term in 2002 and a full term in 2004. He is seeking a new term in August. But his government has come under increasing criticism for corruption and inefficiency, and an earlier effort to move the elections up to April drew criticism from opposition groups and the United States. Clinton directed some not-so subtle criticism at Karzai’s regime, saying there must be a government that is “legitimate and respected” with no room for corruption “Corruption is a cancer — as dangerous to our long-term success as the Taliban or al Qaeda,” she said. “A government that cannot deliver for its people is a terrorist’s best recruiting tool.” Addressing the conference Tuesday, Karzai renewed a commitment to fight corruption, provide good governance and counter the country’s rampant drug trade. “There can be no doubt our commitment and resolve,” he said. Karzai praised the new U.S. strategy for his country and said he hoped Obama’s leadership will inspire more cooperation from Afghanistan’s allies. Meanwhile, a U.S. envoy spoke Tuesday to a senior Iranian official on the sidelines of the conference, the first direct contact between the two nations during the Obama administration, Clinton said. Richard Holbrooke, the administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, had “a brief and candid exchange” with the head of the Iranian delegation, and the two men agreed to stay in touch, Clinton said. Clinton said she has had no direct contact with the Iranians but had provided them with a letter in which she asked Tehran to release two Americans and to look for another, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, missing in Iran since March 2007. Earlier this month, Obama delivered a message to the Iranian people on their new year, calling for better relations. Senior U.S. officials have said cooperation on Afghanistan could provide such an opening. In his address to the conference, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Medhi Akhundzadeh said his country was “fully prepared” to cooperate on reconstruction and drug trafficking, but he warned the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan has not improved security. He urged the participants to focus on reconstruction and “refrain … from giving priority to political or military matters.” Clinton urged Tehran to play a positive role in helping stabilize its neighbor. “The fact that they accepted the invitation to come suggests that they believe there is a role for them to play, and we’re looking forward to hearing more about that,” she said Monday. Clinton noted Iran’s history of cooperating with the United States on Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion on issues such as border security and counter narcotics “Trafficking in narcotics, the spread of violent extremism, economic stagnation, water management, electrification and irrigation are regional challenges that will require regional solutions,” she told the audience. Clinton said the United States would seek to impose greater measures of accountability in the aid programs to “trace the investment and the payoff for the American taxpayers and for the people on the ground.” “We recognize we’re starting at a point where there is very little credibility for a lot of what’s already been invested,” she said. “There are good programs within governments and good programs within [nongovernmental organizations], but it is fair to say overall they have been a disappointment. And we know that, and we’re going to have to try to get that fixed.” The U.S. strategy also emphasizes the need to combat extremism in western Pakistan, a partnership Clinton called “critical.” “Together, we must give Pakistan the tools it needs to fight these extremists,” she said.

She reaffirmed the administration’s support for legislation authorizing “$1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years — resources that will build schools, roads and hospitals and strengthen the Pakistani government.” She urged participants to support Pakistan at a donors’ conference next month hosted by Japan.

Singapore sees India, China role growing

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants credible decisions from the G-20 summit.
The current global economic downturn will change the worldwide power structure, giving China and India a stronger role to play in the future, Singapore’s foreign minister said Tuesday.

“China and India will continue to grow and by the time this is all over, the global landscape will look quite different,” George Yeo told a group of visiting foreign journalists. “The U.S. will remain pre-eminent for a long time to come, but the U.S. will have to act with the full recognition that there are many poles (of power).” Singapore’s economy is expected to contract between 2 and 5 percent this year, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said last month. Right now, all countries affected by the downturn — including Singapore — are focused on the domestic impact, Yeo said. But the Singaporean foreign minister said he foresees the situation affecting the small city-state’s relationship with its various allies — particularly with China and India. “So however the world turns, we have deep links to the West, Japan, and old links to China and India that we’ll deepen,” Yeo said. Last month, Singapore’s ministry of trade said the country’s economy shrank by more than 4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Singapore’s economy grew just over 1 percent for the entire year compared to a robust growth of 7.8 percent a year earlier, the ministry added.

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“It’s a complex world … we’ve got to think through very carefully and ask ourselves what our strengths, what our weaknesses are, and how should we respond,” Yeo said. Yeo, who previously served as Singapore’s finance minister, said the downturn has frightened investors away from the current financial system. India, meanwhile, called on the G-20 leaders to take “credible decisions” to halt the global meltdown as they meet in London. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a statement before leaving for the UK to attend the summit, also opposed protectionism as a way to deal with the crisis. “It is important and necessary for the summit to take credible decisions which will help to halt and reverse the current slowdown and to instill a sense of confidence in the global economy,” he said. Singh also called for ensuring “adequate flow of finances” to the developing countries and for ensuring reform and restructuring of global financial institutions. “The time has come for the international economic and financial architecture to reflect contemporary economic strengths,” he remarked. The Indian leader insisted that the “fundamentals” of his country’s economy remained strong.

Polish navy training flight crashes

Police outside the Milton, Massachusetts, home where a 23-year-old killed two of his sisters Saturday.
A Polish navy aircraft on a training flight crashed Tuesday on Poland’s northeastern coast, and the four service members aboard are feared dead, navy spokesman Lt. Gregory Lyko told CNN.

“It’s hard to imagine kind of horror,” said Milton, Massachusetts, Police Chief Richard G. Wells Jr. Mere seconds passed before other officers arrived and rushed into the home in the tony Boston suburb of 25,000. Police had received a 911 call from another Revelus sibling, 17-year-old Samantha. Suffering from several deep cuts in her upper body, she was losing strength. “It was clear that she knew she was mortally wounded,” Wells said. Watch police chief discuss decapitation » Samantha managed to explain that her 23-year-old brother had attacked his sisters with a knife, police said. When she was no long able to keep talking, the injured teen handed her 9-year-old sister, Seraphina Revelus, the phone. All the while, the kids’ grandmother was doing laundry in the basement, apparently unaware of the savagery upstairs, police said. Mother Regina Revelus was at work, and father Vronze Revelus was not at home. As officers surrounded the home and rushed into every room, Kerby ran into a bedroom where Samantha was on the ground, dead. Seraphina was on the floor near her sister’s body, according to Wells. Kerby Revelus then began attacking Seraphina with the knife, Wells said, prompting police open fire and kill him. On Tuesday, the two slain siblings and their attacker were buried together. It was not the first time police have visited the home answering a domestic violence call, Wells said. In September 2004, Kerby was arrested for punching one of his sisters in the face as they fought about money, the chief said. The Boston Herald identified the sibling as Jessica Revelus, who was not in the home during Saturday’s attack. Jessica Revelus told officers at the time that “she was not in fear of her brother,” according to a police report from the incident, the Boston Herald reported. A charge of domestic assault and battery was dismissed because she refused to cooperate, Wells said. Kerby was then in his last year at Milton High School. But Kerby was in trouble a year later, in 2005, when he was charged with carrying a firearm without a license after he attempted to purchase alcohol at a Randolph, Massachusetts, liquor store. He was given a six-month sentence and was released in September 2008. CNN reached Jessica Revelus by phone Tuesday. She seemed distraught and said she had not been able to sleep. Her brother’s rampage came, she said, “out of the blue.” When asked whether he had a temper or had given any indication that he might want to hurt his sisters, she said, “I don’t know. I am not good right now. I am not good.” On Monday, Jessica Revelus told the Boston Herald that “I was never afraid of him. I called the police because he thought he was so big and bad.” Jessica Revelus told the newspaper that her sister Samantha “would get into arguments” with Kerby over “little stuff” and that Kerby and her father were not speaking. Police are unclear about what set the brother off Saturday, and Wells said he’s being careful not to speculate. Vronze and Regina Revelus said through a family spokesman that they had “no explanation” for their son’s savagery, according to the Boston Herald. “How much can you put on the shoulders of one family” Wells asked. Wells praised the first officer on the scene Saturday. “I don’t have words to articulate how this officer maintained his ability to do his job, ” he said. “To go in and witness that first thing, just as he opens the door and stay on his radio through the whole thing …”

He added that the horror of the day rippled through the force. “You can bet that our officers went home after this, and they hugged their wives and their children that much tighter. I hope that for this family and for my officers, that there can be a way to get through. “We are going to try to make them whole as soon as possible, even though the events of this past weekend will stay with them forever.”

Man decapitates 5-year-old sister in front of officer

Police outside the Milton, Massachusetts, home where a 23-year-old killed two of his sisters Saturday.
By the time the police officer kicked the door in, it was too late. Kerby Revelus was holding his 5-year-old sister, Bianca, and while the officer watched, he dragged a kitchen knife across her throat with such fury that he decapitated her.

Dalai Lama thanks India for 50 years in exile

The Dalai Lama says he is grateful for the care and support he has received from India.
Cloaked in a traditional flowing red and saffron Tibetan robe the Dalai Lama took a deep breath as he began to express his gratitude to the country that took him in as a refugee 50 years ago.

“I think in this country (there are) many other refugees,” the Dalai Lama reflected, sitting cross legged. “But we are I think (the) most fortunate and successful refugee community because of (the) government of India’s care and support.” His journey to India was a treacherous one. The year was 1959. Tibetans had staged an uprising against Chinese rule and the security forces reacted with force. The Dalai Lama’s followers, who consider him a living God — the latest reincarnation in a long lineage of revered monks — were worried about his fate under the Chinese. He was, after all, just 23 years old. On March 17 that year, the 14th Dalai Lama fled his homeland on horseback. A half century later, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people recounted to CNN that day and the subsequent journey to India. “Most fearful sort of moment is… (the) night of 17 March 1959,” he said. The Dalai Lama and some of his followers were about to cross a river on horseback when they suddenly realized they were within sight of a Chinese army camp. “Soldiers, yes, we can see,” the Dalai Lama said, learning forward, his eyes wide and voice strong. “We are very much afraid.” The fear, amplified by the harsh conditions. The bitter cold and thin air of the Himalayas assaulted their bodies as they slowly made the trek over the mountains. “(We had) practical sort of problem, difficulties. High mountain. If you try to walk then… breathing difficulties, but on horse too much cold,” the Dalai Lama said, laughing aloud. “Hand and foot become frozen.” But he made it, as have tens of thousands of his followers who came to India in a similar fashion. Watch why the Dalai Lama thinks China should spy on him more »

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The Indian government took in the refugees and helped resettle them. One of the biggest Tibetan towns is Dharamsala, in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh. The town has become the headquarters for the Tibetan government in exile. And that’s where things begin to get sticky for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community. When India took in the exiles, it told the Tibetans to refrain from political activity, certainly of the anti-China kind. But the status of Tibet has created its own dynamic: the Dalai Lama’s own followers and activists around the world look to the spiritual leader to keep pushing the Tibetan cause. China has long accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating political maneuvers against China from his post in India. They blame him for inciting violence in the most recent uprising in the Tibetan region in March 2008. The Dalai Lama fervently denies the allegations and says he is interested only in exploring wider autonomy for Tibetans in China. His envoys have held talks with Chinese representatives, but the status of their homeland remains in dispute. The Dalai Lama and his followers walk a fine line between religion and politics in India, which is also home away from home.

On the 50th anniversary of his stay here, the Dalai Lama traveled to eight places of worship around New Delhi, paying tribute to the religious diversity of his host country and the welcome he’s been given by the Indian government and people. “Naturally, sometimes (a) little disagreement may come but (it) doesn’t matter because there is basic trust,” the Dalai Lama said. “And spiritually we consider Indians our guru, our teacher, because we are Buddhists. Buddhism comes from India. So therefore spiritually we are very close to this country. ”

New Israeli PM says ‘extremist Islam’ trying to destroy his country

Benjamin Netanyahu, top left, presents his government in the Israeli parliament Tuesday in Jerusalem.
Incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tuesday that "extremist Islam is trying to bring us down through terrorism from north and south" as his Cabinet prepared to take office.

He offered an olive branch of sorts to Palestinians, but did not hold out the promise of their own state. “In order for there to be peace, our Palestinian allies and partners also have to fight terrorism,” he said. “They must bring up their children in the spirit of tolerance and peace. In the last two decades, six heads of government in Israel have failed to achieve a peace settlement, but they were not at fault. I say to the leaders of the Palestinian Authority: If you really want peace, then peace can be achieved. “We don’t want to control another people,” Netanyahu said of Israel’s military control of Palestinian territory, which dates back to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. “We don’t want to control the Palestinians. In a final a settlement, the Palestinians will have all the rights to rule themselves except those which threaten Israel’s ability to protect itself,” he said. A senior Palestinian official immediately responded that Israel must end its “occupation” of Palestinian land if it wants peace. “I hope that Mr. Netanyahu will openly accept the two-state solution, negotiation on all core issues without exception, and stop the settlement activity, including natural growth, so we can have a partner in peace-making,” said Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu described Israel’s neighbors as “moderate,” but, like Israel, threatened by radical Islam.

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“Israel strives to achieve full peace with the Arab and Islamic world, and this is entirely the case today as the Arab and Islamic world — which is moderate — faces extremist Islam,” he said. Netanyahu, leader of the center-right Likud Party, will lead a mostly right-leaning coalition that includes the hardline Yisrael Beytenu Party and the center-left Labor Party. His Cabinet is the largest in Israeli history, with 30 ministers and deputy ministers. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni ridiculed the size of the government. “The Israeli public is a skinny person who today has had the swollen, overweight government placed on its head. It has ministers for nothing with all sorts of ridiculous titles,” said Livni, the Kadima Party leader and former foreign minister who refused to join the Netanyahu coalition. The Cabinet was to formally take office later Tuesday.

Awaiting ruling, Madonna meets with adopted son’s dad

Madonna holds her adopted Malawian son, David Banda, in 2007.
Pop star Madonna and her adopted son met with the young boy’s biological father in Malawi as the singer awaited a court decision on whether she could adopt a girl from the same country, her publicist said Tuesday.

Liz Rosenberg said in a statement that Madonna and her son David met Monday with David’s birth father, Yohanne Banda, for the first time since the young boy was adopted in 2006. “Madonna is committed to maintaining an ongoing relationship with David’s Malawian roots,” Rosenberg said. The publicist also confirmed, in the first public acknowledgment of what has been reported for weeks, that Madonna has filed an application “to adopt Mercy James, a 3-year-old girl Madonna met two years ago in an orphanage that she visited.” A spokeswoman for Malawi’s attorney general told CNN that the singer appeared Monday in court in that country, one of the poorest nations in the world, for a hearing on whether she would be allowed to adopt the girl.

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Madonna is to return to court Friday to hear the judge’s decision in the matter, spokeswoman Zione Ntaba said. The child’s family will have to give their permission for the adoption to proceed, according to Martin Geissler, a reporter for the ITN television network who is in Malawi. Madonna has been involved with Malawi for several years. She made a documentary, “I Am Because We Are,” which highlighted poverty, AIDS and other diseases devastating that country’s children. She also helps run a nonprofit, Raising Malawi, which implements initiatives to help the needy in the southeastern African nation.

Dumping on Dubai: Have Hard Times Hit the Emirates?

Over the last few months, Dubai’s glittering skyscrapers have been diminished by the alarms about the emirate’s economic woes. The news has not been easy to take for the showpiece city-state, the most populous among the seven sheikdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates. Indeed, even as the rest of the world spiraled into crisis, the UAE insisted that its brand-name city would not be drawn in by the downturn. In fact, the UAE established a “no news is good news” policy of sorts. In January, the government announced that fines ranging from $13,600 to $272,500 would be levied against any media outlet for publishing news that damages the “country’s reputation or its economy.”

But sometimes, the bad news has to be admitted from on high. The UAE’s Minister of Economy Sultan bin Saeed al-Mansouri last week admitted that the economy of the world’s fifth largest oil exporter is expected to shrink in 2009. He refused to give an indication as to the extent of the contraction, saying simply that the UAE would escape recession. The International Monetary Fund had previously said it expected the UAE economy to grow by only 3% this year after expanding by 7.4% in 2007 and an estimated 6.9% in 2008.

The towers of Dubai have been hardest hit. The large foreign banks that had been financing Dubai’s real estate boom have pulled out, leaving behind a significant burden on local banks, who have turned to the UAE government for help to shore up their liquidity. To date, approximately $15 billion of federal money has been pumped into local banks. Company buyouts financed by Abu Dhabi — the capital of the UAE and the only emirate with petroleum wealth — are believed to be forthcoming, though no officials will discuss details. “Any bailout from Abu Dhabi will come very privately,” says Christopher Davidson, author of Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success. “Abu Dhabi doesn’t want the Dubai brand to suffer even if Dubai has disgraced itself with its economic planning.”

“The bubble has finally burst,” says one American expat. Some people point to mixed blessings of the financial downturn. Rents, which were at unbearable highs last summer, have now plummeted by at least 25% and property prices are down by as much as 50% since August of last year. But while there is some respite from the dawn-to-dusk hammering and drilling that came with Dubai’s construction boom, some $8 billion in projects have now either been scrapped or put on hold. The city’s notoriously brutal traffic jams have eased somewhat in recent weeks with a reported exodus of thousands of expatriates, who make up more than 85% of Dubai’s population. The departures, however, can also be a sign of job loss: foreigners are generally not permitted to live in Dubai without a work visa.

But the city-state has its defenders. “Dubai bashing is in fashion right now,” says Hassan Jarrar, head of wholesale banking for Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai. “Like most governments, the UAE wants to limit the fears of not just the people inside but also external investors. Are they understating the problem I don’t think so.” He insists that “the difference between Dubai and Singapore or Shanghai is in Dubai, when cranes leave site here they leave when construction is finished.” A trip down Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai’s main thruway named after the UAE’s founder and first president, reveals thousands of cranes still operating and the first line of the city’s metro on track to open this summer.

A new billboard has gone up just below Dubai’s World Trade Center. It features images of Dubai’s more recognizable landmarks, like the sail-shaped Burj al Arab hotel and Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building. They are all adornments for the subject of the billboard: Dubai’s leader Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. The Sheik has been rumored to have suffered significant health problems due to the strain brought on by the emirate’s economic woes. The billboard is meant to belie those rumors and shows the Sheik, 59, looking sharp, vibrant and healthier than ever. Behind his picture is a simple caption in Arabic: “We don’t wait for things to happen, we make them happen.” And if you want to say otherwise, Dubai doesn’t want to hear it.

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