Syrian-American brothers in arms join Syria fight

Two Syrian-American brothers sneaked back into Syria to fight the Assad government. They ran into their father in the besieged city of Idlib, and he was not happy to see them.

Last week, a 20-year-old man called Abdul knocked on the door of a house outside Philadelphia.

He knew the apartment was packed with relatives waiting for him, and he was nervous.

When the door opened, two brothers, several cousins and uncles crowded around him and slapped him on the back. Abdul - a blue-eyed, muscular young man - fell into his mother's arms.

"It's enough, mum," he whispered to her in Arabic. "Stop crying. I'm here now."

It was a homecoming with a difference.

Missing

Abdul's mother and the rest of the family had not heard from him since mid-February.

He had told his parents he was going to Turkey, where his older brother Mo was helping Syrian refugees who had crossed the border from the fighting in northern Syria.

The two brothers, Abdul and Mo, disappeared soon afterwards. Abdul says the two sneaked into Syria itself and joined the rebel Free Syrian Army.

"I made my decision to fight," Abdul said in an interview at a travel agency office in downtown Antakya, Turkey, before he returned to the US.

The brothers were born in the US but moved to Syria as young children. In 2009, Abdul returned to the US to attend university in New Jersey.

When the Syrian uprising kicked off a year ago, Abdul became consumed by news of the struggle.

"I was on Facebook for one year - I didn't go out," he said. "I was like, with them [the opposition fighters] - but in a different country."

In early February, Abdul had had enough sitting on the sidelines.

He dropped out of university, paid off his credit card debts, and flew to Turkey, intent on joining the fight. (Some Syrian-American friends were supposed to join him, but backed out at the last minute.)

He landed in Istanbul, then caught a bus 18 hours to the Syrian border. There he and Mo spent five days looking for weapons - without success, he said.

The brothers sneaked over the border on 18 February and joined a small band of rebels.

After several days of training in a mountainous region inside Syria, they and a unit of about 35 fighters made their way on foot and by car to the brothers' hometown of Idlib, then an opposition stronghold in the north-west of Syria.

Hiding from Dad

Meanwhile, Abdul's mother and two younger brothers made the reverse trip, fleeing the violence in Idlib to take refuge in New Jersey.

The boys' father Michael remained behind in Idlib to tend to his drugstore.

By the time Abdul got to Idlib, he had not seen his father for more than two years. But he was keen not to let him know he had returned.

"We were in the same protest," he said, "but I was hiding behind people so he wouldn't see me."

Abdul feared his father would order him out of the country if he discovered him.

"He'd kick me out!"

Michael and his two sons were finally reunited the next day, as fighting broke out in the city.

"The tanks started at 05:00 exactly in the morning," Michael recalled in an interview in Turkey. "You could hear the bombing and shelling. The sound of bullets was like listening to rain."

The Syrian army stormed Idlib on 10 March. Michael says he was holed up in his apartment. Then his phone rang. His sister, also in Idlib, delivered a confusing message: "Come get your boys."

"I said: 'What boys?'" Michael said. He told his sister: "Thank God my boys are not here. They are outside the country!"

"No, no," she answered back. "Your boys are surrounded with tanks and they are at their uncle's house and they don't know what to do."

"My boys?"

"Yes."

Flight from Idlib

Abdul said he and his brother Mo fought with a rebel unit that day. The squad leader was injured, and realising their rusty Kalashnikovs could do nothing against the army's tanks and shells, the brothers retreated to their uncle's house nearby.

Michael jumped in his car and drove through the shelling to find his sons.

He did not give them a warm welcome.

"Of course I didn't say hello. I was cursing very, very strong words," he says. "I'm sorry to say that but I was very angry. I had been worried about myself. Now I was worrying about three people."

With the help of friends, Michael arranged for several opposition fighters to smuggle them out of Idlib.

Abdul said their flight was scary. A tank positioned about 70ft (21m) away turned its cannon toward them as they ran across the road surrounding Idlib. They managed to escape through an olive grove.

Their father Michael sneaked out of Idlib the same night, and the three were reunited the next day in southern Turkey.

No promises

Michael said he finally kissed his sons then, but he still had harsh words.

"It was stupid what they did. Very stupid," he said. "People were paying a lot of money to get out, and they couldn't get out. They [my sons] came by themselves. They went into a death trap."

But Abdul defended his and Mo's acts.

"When you see dead bodies and your friends getting killed," he said, "you're not going to be afraid of anything."

He says the government's crackdown has only hardened his resolve.

"Don't do this again," were his father Michael's last words to him when the two kissed goodbye in Turkey. Mo and Michael remained in Turkey.

But Abdul said he could not promise his father anything.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over.

His against-all-odds achievements are all the more remarkable considering he was forced to quit school aged 14 because his family could no longer afford the $80-a-year (£50) fees.

When he returned to his parents' small plot of farmland in the central Malawian village of Masitala, his future seemed limited.

But this was not another tale of African potential thwarted by poverty.

Defence against hunger

The teenager had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village.

And he was not prepared to wait for politicians or aid groups to do it for him.

The need for action was even greater in 2002 following one of Malawi's worst droughts, which killed thousands of people and left his family on the brink of starvation.

Unable to attend school, he kept up his education by using a local library.

Fascinated by science, his life changed one day when he picked up a tattered textbook and saw a picture of a windmill.

Mr Kamkwamba told the BBC News website: "I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water.

"I thought: 'That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself'."

When not helping his family farm maize, he plugged away at his prototype, working by the light of a paraffin lamp in the evenings.

But his ingenious project met blank looks in his community of about 200 people.

"Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy," he recalls. "They had never seen a windmill before."

Shocks

Neighbours were further perplexed at the youngster spending so much time scouring rubbish tips.

"People thought I was smoking marijuana," he said. "So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].' Then they said: 'Ah, I see.'"

Mr Kamkwamba, who is now 22 years old, knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire.

"I got a few electric shocks climbing that [windmill]," says Mr Kamkwamba, ruefully recalling his months of painstaking work.

The finished product - a 5-m (16-ft) tall blue-gum-tree wood tower, swaying in the breeze over Masitala - seemed little more than a quixotic tinkerer's folly.

But his neighbours' mirth turned to amazement when Mr Kamkwamba scrambled up the windmill and hooked a car light bulb to the turbine.

As the blades began to spin in the breeze, the bulb flickered to life and a crowd of astonished onlookers went wild.

Soon the whiz kid's 12-watt wonder was pumping power into his family's mud brick compound.

'Electric wind'

Out went the paraffin lanterns and in came light bulbs and a circuit breaker, made from nails and magnets off an old stereo speaker, and a light switch cobbled together from bicycle spokes and flip-flop rubber.

Before long, locals were queuing up to charge their mobile phones.

Mr Kamkwamba's story was sent hurtling through the blogosphere when a reporter from the Daily Times newspaper in Blantyre wrote an article about him in November 2006.

Meanwhile, he installed a solar-powered mechanical pump, donated by well-wishers, above a borehole, adding water storage tanks and bringing the first potable water source to the entire region around his village.

He upgraded his original windmill to 48-volts and anchored it in concrete after its wooden base was chewed away by termites.

Then he built a new windmill, dubbed the Green Machine, which turned a water pump to irrigate his family's field.

Before long, visitors were traipsing from miles around to gawp at the boy prodigy's magetsi a mphepo - "electric wind".

As the fame of his renewable energy projects grew, he was invited in mid-2007 to the prestigious Technology Entertainment Design conference in Arusha, Tanzania.

Cheetah generation

He recalls his excitement using a computer for the first time at the event.

"I had never seen the internet, it was amazing," he says. "I Googled about windmills and found so much information."

Onstage, the native Chichewa speaker recounted his story in halting English, moving hard-bitten venture capitalists and receiving a standing ovation.

A glowing front-page portrait of him followed in the Wall Street Journal.

He is now on a scholarship at the elite African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Mr Kamkwamba - who has been flown to conferences around the globe to recount his life-story - has the world at his feet, but is determined to return home after his studies.

The home-grown hero aims to finish bringing power, not just to the rest of his village, but to all Malawians, only 2% of whom have electricity.

"I want to help my country and apply the knowledge I've learned," he says. "I feel there's lots of work to be done."

Former Associated Press news agency reporter Bryan Mealer had been reporting on conflict across Africa for five years when he heard Mr Kamkwamba's story.

The incredible tale was the kind of positive story Mealer, from New York, had long hoped to cover.

The author spent a year with Mr Kamkwamba writing The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which has just been published in the US.

Mealer says Mr Kamkwamba represents Africa's new "cheetah generation", young people, energetic and technology-hungry, who are taking control of their own destiny.

"Spending a year with William writing this book reminded me why I fell in love with Africa in the first place," says Mr Mealer, 34.

"It's the kind of tale that resonates with every human being and reminds us of our own potential."

Can it be long before the film rights to the triumph-over-adversity story are snapped up, and William Kamkwamba, the boy who dared to dream, finds himself on the big screen?

Bolivian boy in search of mother ends up in Chile

A 10-year-old boy who fled his Bolivian home to find his mother has mistakenly ended up in Chile, travelling 1,000km (621 miles) by truck.

Franklin Villca Huanaco attempted to reach his mother in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where she had been serving a prison sentence, authorities said.

He made the two-day journey concealed in a metal container in a truck he believed to be on the way to the city.

The driver, who was bound for Iquique, Chile, was unaware of the stowaway.

The boy hid in a container roughly the length of his body, attached to the underside of the truck, reports say.

Authorities said he had been lucky to survive without food and water and the low night-time temperatures in Bolivia's highlands.

Franklin was found wandering the streets near Iquique and has been taken in by a local family.

He had been living with his father and siblings in Oruro, Bolivia, following his mother's imprisonment for transporting chemicals used to make cocaine, authorities say.

Zenobia Huanaco was recently released from prison and is now working in the countryside outside Cochabamba.

Mother and son have been able to communicate through a network link, broadcast by the Bolivian television station, ATB.

"Franklin my child, I'm here crying for you. Where have you gone, little one? I love you. You know that I was in prison and then in the fields and you told me 'I am content with my papa','' she told her son.

"Hurry, come pick me up mummy," Franklin said.

The boy told police and Chilean state television he had been mistreated by his 14-year-old brother in Oruro, the AP news agency reports.

Dewey Bozella

Man wrongly convicted of murder makes boxing debut

A man who spent 26 years in jail for a murder he did not commit has fulfilled his dream by making his professional boxing debut and winning.

Dewey Bozella, now 52, became a prison boxing champion while in New York state's Sing Sing jail.

He was freed in 2009 after his conviction for the the murder of 92-year-old Emma Crapser was overturned.

"I used to lay in my cell and dream about this happening...It was my dream come true," he said after the fight.

Bozella made his debut on the undercard of a world title fight between world light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson in Los Angeles.

Obama phone call

On Thursday President Barack Obama called to wish him luck in his fight with 30-year-old Larry Hopkins, no relation to the champion.

In 1983 Bozella was sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder.

While inside he not only honed his skills as a boxer but also earned two college degrees.

His case was finally taken up by two young New York lawyers, who discovered evidence that several witnesses had lied at his original trial and another man had confessed to the murder.

After being released Bozella said he dreamed of getting the chance to fight just one time as a professional boxer.

Golden Boy Promotions, run by former champion Oscar De La Hoya, agreed to put his bout with Hopkins on the undercard at the 20,000 capacity Staples Center.

When the judges announced he had won a unanimous decision the crowd stood and cheered.

Bozella plans to head back to the town of Newburgh, 60 miles (90km) from New York, and set up a boxing gym.

"I'd like to see kids who are on the street have something productive to do. No more fighting for me," he said.

In the main event Hopkins, himself no spring chicken at 46, lost his title after injuring his shoulder in the second round.