Abu Simbel: Ancient and Modern Engineering at their Finest…Almost.

Salaam friends.  It has been quite a while since my last post due to my return to the States, work, and general laziness.  Since I last posted, I’ve left Egypt, spent a couple of weeks with my girlfriend in England/Sweden, and returned to the Land of the Free.  I’m back to the monotony of working in the construction business as I am scrambling to put money together to cover my tuition/living costs for the coming fall when I will be getting my masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

Although for the time being I am no longer living abroad, I have saved up several blog-worthy stories from my time in Egypt as well as some other previous travels so I plan on keeping the blog going.

With this post I am going to pick up where I left off with my trip to Aswan in the south of Egypt, focusing on my trip to Abu Simbel, which is one of the jewels of Egypt’s tourist attractions.

After awaking early and taking the 3 hour trip into the desert via armed convoy, my roommate and I arrived with hundreds of other tourists at Abu Simbel.  Abu Simbel is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is comprised of two massive pharaonic temples situated on Lake Nasser, which is the world’s largest man-made lake.

Upon paying the hundred-dollar entrance fee (an exorbitant amount of money for visiting a site in the Middle East) I entered the grounds to the sight of a huge mound or hill.  A path led the droves of tourists around the mound and toward Lake Nasser.  I continued around the path and closed in on the other side of the mound.  Finally I saw what I paid the big bucks to see as two massive statues carved into the face of the large limestone hill that I had been circumnavigating for several minutes came into view.  Pretty jaw dropping to be frank.  This was the entrance to the Great Temple.  A smaller, although no-less-grand, temple was located to the right of the Great Temple.

It was a pretty amazing scene.  Two massive temples carved into two massive hills with the deep blue waters of Lake Nasser at my back.  Aside from providing a nice backdrop to the temples, Lake Nasser plays an integral role in the interesting story surrounding Abu Simbel’s more modern history.

The temples date back to the 13th century BC but eventually fell into disuse and became lost to the sands of time.  Literally.  The ever shifting desert swallowed up these two beasts of worship.  However, in 1813 a Swiss explorer named Jean-Louis Burckhardt discover the top of the the Great Temple protruding out from beneath the sand.  He later shared his discovery with an Italian explorer named Giovanni Belzoni who had the site, which was eventually named for the guide “Abu Simbel” who led him there, excavated in 1817.

However, with the construction of the High Dam, which began in 1960 and controls the flow of the Nile River and is responsible for creating Lake Nasser, Abu Simbel was put into peril.  At the time, the site was located on land that is now submerged under the waters of the lake.  UNESCO quickly stepped in and implemented a 40 million dollar plan to save Abu Simbel.  From 1964 to 1968 engineers cut the temples into large blocks, disassembled the structures, and reassembled them on ground 65 meters higher and 200 meters back from the original location.  Pretty impressive.

Speaking of engineering marvels, the Great Temple was originally designed in such a way that sunlight entered the temple and cast itself on several sculptures along the back wall, all except for the face of Ptah, god of the Underworld, which remained in darkness.  This phenomenon occurred twice a year, on October 21st (61 days before the Winter Solstice) and February 21st (61 days after the Winter Solstice).  These two dates were also allegedly the birthday and coronation date of Rameses II, the pharaoh that the Temple pays homage to.  Although UNESCO attempted to preserve this incredible feat in engineering during the relocation process, it failed.  The phenomenon is now off by a day.  Good try modern technology.

Perhaps the best part of my visit was when my roommate and I found a path on the backside of the small temple leading up to the precipice of the temple, overlooking Lake Nasser and the Great Temple.  There is a picture of me from this location above.

Rules and regulations can be fickle things in places such as Egypt.  For example, taking pictures inside of the temples is 110 percent against the rules.  There was an army of guards accosting tourists and screaming at them to not take pictures, meanwhile tourists are free to scale a steep path, trample all over a UNESCO Heritage Site, and stand on ledge of a 100 foot drop with little difficulty.  C’est la vie in Egypt.

Pi Phi in Egypt

I was at a club last night in downtown Cairo with some friends and I had an experience that I thought was comical and worth sharing.  My friends and I were dancing to some shitty house music when I looked over and saw a chubby Egyptian guy leaning against the wall, clearly longing for some attention, clad in a Pi Beta Phi sweatshirt.

I went up to him and asked him in Arabic if he spoke English.  He did.  I then asked where he got the sweatshirt.  In a pretty strong accent he replied, “In the United States.”  From his face I could tell that he had no idea what it was, except that it was American, and thus in his eyes, cool.  I asked him if he knew what the Greek letters on his sweatshirt meant/represented.  He didn’t.  I said, “It’s a sorority.”  He didn’t know what that was so I tried to explain over the loud music that it’s a “group of girls that…”    He looked concerned.  I saw that it was a futile effort to explain the concept so I slapped him on the back and said, ‘Nice sweatshirt.”

Aswan: The Gateway to Africa

Feluccas on the Nile.

Feluccas sailing beneath the West bank’s Pharaonic tombs.

A narrow alley in the Nubian village on Elephantine Island.

A door leading to the Nubian village’s banana trees.

Aswan is not lacking in the good picture department.

The ever-present obsession with Hitler. Chalk it up to being grossly uninformed.

A view from the dome seen in picture number two.

St. Simeon’s Monastery.

A Nubian house with a cafe that provides a great view of the Nile at sunset.

Our stoned camel guide.

Homes on the Nile.

A view inside the tombs on the West bank.

Throughout much of Egypt, especially the greater-Cario area, the Nile’s luster and magnificence of times past have long since been eroded away by urbanization, population increase, pollution, lack on environmental protection regulations, to name a few.  What remains is a pretty dirty body of water.  However, the further one travels from the urban sprawl of Cairo, the more aesthetically pleasing the river becomes.  Based on my travels throughout Egypt I think that the epitome of the Nile is in and around Aswan, a southern city located about 200 miles from the Sudanese border with a population of approximately 1.8 million, most of which is settled outside of the “city”.

I have lived in Egypt for 9 months over the course of 2 trips but I was yet to visit what Lonely Planet has dubbed, “the gateway to Africa”, until last week when my roommate and I hoped aboard an overnight train headed its way.  Thirteen hours later, after surviving extreme usage of the air-conditioning (I mean we’ve got the technology, better use it) and some intense, unending fluorescent lighting, as well as witnessing one argument that nearly came to blows and took five Egyptian men to defuse, we stepped out into the warm Aswany air.

As we began our day by wandering around the Corniche (the road that runs along the Nile) we quickly saw how Aswan was being affected by Egypt’s decline in tourism.  Aswan is normally a sure stop from any tourist group making the rounds of Egypt but with a majority of travel agencies canceling their Egyptian tours due to instability, it has become a relative ghost town for foreigners.  Felucca boat (the sailboats in the pictures above) captains, who normally found patrons with ease, now are all fighting among themselves for what little of their clientele remains.  This means hassling, hassling, and some more hassling.  The felucca captains were scattered along the Corniche in 10-15 yard intervals, all ready to give the same spiel as the last guy.  Here is how a typical hassling situation unfolds…

Capt:  Hello.  Like to ride felucca?  Good price.  Very good price.

Me:  No thank you.

Capt:  Oh you speak Arabic (still speaking English)?  Where are you from (as he is now walking with us).

Me:  America.

Capt:  I love America.

Me:  Me too.

Capt:  Come ride felucca.  Good price.

Me:  No thanks.

Capt:  Maybe later?

Me:  Maybe later.

Capt:  Promise?

Me:  No.

Capt:  Ok good.  I wait here for you.

You are then passed on like a baton in a relay race to the next captain trying to hock his services.

We did this routine several times as we found a place for lunch.  While at lunch our waitress set us up with the house felucca captain to take us out for an hour long sail.  As we finalized the transaction one the captains who had hassled us up on the street stormed into the Nile-side restaurant yelling and screaming at us for choosing someone else.  ”You promised!  You promised!” he yelled.  We calmly replied that we had not to which he replied, “We hate Americans.  No one wants to you here.  Leave.”  He was just being a bit of a sore loser as he ran into us the next day, didn’t recognize us, found out we were American, and exclaimed, “I love Americans.”

Later that day, as we were buying black market beer from a convenience store, we witnessed an unusual scene, although it seemed strangely normal to me after living in the Middle East for quite some time now.  A man on a bicycle and a hagga, or completer of the  pilgrimage, or haj, to Mecca (it is polite to assume that an elderly person has completed this sacred journey), both became embroiled in a rock-chucking war.  They took turns throwing not-so-small stones at each other in a civilized method of conflict resolution.  Seeing an old, veil-wearing woman get tagged by a rock, then proceed to return fire is weird, disturbing, and comical all at the same time.  As I watched the events unfold I said to the store clerk “ghreeb, sah?” meaning “weird, right?”  He responded with “la, da ‘aadi”, or “no, this is normal”.

Fritz and I spent the next few days exploring the archipelago scattered throughout Aswan’s section of the Nile.  There is Elephantine Island, which is allegedly named for the its rocks that resemble elephants (a resemblance we never quite saw), and home to an excavation site of a Pharonic temple, a Nubian village of about 5,000 people (Nubians are an ethnic group indigenous to Southern Egypt and the Sudan), and a branch of the Swiss-owned hotel chain, Movenpick.   We also visited Kitchner’s Island where the hadiqat an-nabatat, or botanical garden, is located.

One day we set sail from the east to the west bank of the Nile so we could visit a pair of Pharonic tombs dug into the limestone on the bank’s face and St. Simeon, a monastery dating back to the 7th century AD.  When we stepped foot on the West bank we did some negotiating with a guy, who was noticeably stoned, to take us from the tombs on the edge of the bank across a stretch of desert to St. Simeon.

After exploring the wonderfully preserved tombs of two members of the ancient Egyptian royalty we both shared camel and slowly made our way to the monastery.  The camel was definitely pissed that it had to carry two adult males but he finally got us there.  All of Aswan’s attractions are government run and close at 4PM during the winter.  Naturally we got to St. Simeon at approximately 3:57 so it appeared that we had wasted our time and money trekking out into the desert.  ”DO NO FEAR!” exclaimed our super high guide as he led us to a low point in the wall that had a mound of rubble serving as a ladder.  We hooked the guide up with some baksheesh, or tips, and climbed over the wall.  It was nice to have the place to ourselves, as well as free admittance.  Illegally entering a 7th century structure always adds a bit of excitement to one’s day.

Despite the incessant hassling, I had a wonderful trip in Aswan.  The best part about Aswan is not the sights but just being in Aswan, enjoying its clean air and Nubian culture.  Nubian culture is very welcoming and friendly, the likes of which I would compare to visiting the South in the US from a northern urban setting.  Aswanis even speak Arabic with a bit of a drawl.

+++We of course visited the infamous Abu Simbel but I am going to write about that in a separate blog entry later this week.+++

The Pyramids of Giza: The World’s Most Impressive Graves.

My girlfriend came to Cairo a couple of weeks ago for a short trip and provided me with an opportunity to go visit the numerous tourist attractions that expats living in Cairo often forget are so close by.  We began her tour of Cairo’s gems with the biggest of them all, the Pyramids of Giza.

This is my second tour of duty here in Cairo and I had only seen the Pyramids once during my four months here; while at a rooftop party in Giza in which the giant shadows of these limestone beasts loomed over the festivities.  My reason for not visiting otherwise was that I had done so four times before during my study-abroad semester at the American University in Cairo in 2009, one of which included a sweltering climb through the inner recesses of the Great Pyramid as I dragged my mother up the narrow chamber that leads to the final resting place of Khufu, an Egyptian pharaoh who had this not-so-subtle tomb constructed some 4,500 years ago.

Louise and I got an early start, hopped in a cab and headed out toward our destination.  Our cab driver, a stern faced but pleasant older man, showed us how it’s done on the roads in Cairo as he avoided several accidents and filled any gaps in the suffocating traffic with the upmost speed.

You can begin to see the Pyramids through gaps in the urban sprawl from quite a distance.  It serves as a nice appetizer so to speak for what is to come.  As we made our final approach to the main gate, we witnessed first hand the desperation that is felt by the tourism industry in Egypt, an industry that has been devastated since unrest broke out on January 25th of last lear (tourism normally comprises 11% of Egypt’s GDP).

A shab, or youth, jumped in front of our moving taxi with both hands out in front of him, giving the universal sign for “stop the damn car”.  We screeched to a halt.  In an instant a second shab stood behind the taxi, completing the two-man trap.  A third youth quickly jumped into the passenger seat of the taxi and began desperately repeating, “Must ride camel to Pyramid.  Good price.  Very good price.  Gate closed, no taxi.”  He was trying to con us into believing that it was a rule that you have to enter the grounds on camelback.  This is of course nonsense and seeing that we had negative interest in riding a camel in the first place, I sternly explained we didn’t want his services.  This was of course to no avail but our cab driver came to our rescue and yelled at the boy until he left the car and then basically called the kid standing from of the taxi’s bluff and drove right at him.  The guy scrambled away.  The driver later explained to me that we were his customers and that it was his duty to protect us (not super evident from his driving, but that can never be expected in Egypt).  I thanked him for his help and paid him well.

Upon entering the grounds, only someone without a pulse can help from being absolutely astonished at what lays before them.  It is quite difficult to explain how jaw-droppingly massive the Pyramids are with mere words and pictures.  They are big.  Really, really big.

The site is comprised of three pyramids; two seemingly equal in size giants and a significantly smaller one, as well as the infamous Great Sphinx.  The original of the three pyramids, known as the Great Pyramid of Giza, dates back to approximately 2500 BC and is 455 feet high (it was originally 480 feet high but erosion has taken its toll) and each base length spans 755 feet.  Khafu’s tomb is estimated to have taken 15-20 years to construct with tens of thousands of slaves doing the heavy lifting.  Its volume is 2.5 million cubic meters and is made up of 2.3 million limestone blocks weighing in at over 5.5 million tons.  There is an additional 8000 tons of granite that was mined and sailed up the Nile from Aswan, which is some 500 miles away in Upper Egypt (which is actually in the south of Egypt near the Sudan).  During one of my trips to the Pyramids in 2009 I overheard a tour guide telling her clients that the blocks from the Great Pyramid could encircle the entire country of France with a 3 meter-high wall.  This is unconfirmed but I like to repeat it to people anyway.  She may have also meant the blocks from all three pyramids put together.  Regardless, the nearly perfect precision of the Pyramids still baffles scientists and engineers today.

A few hundred yards away from the megastructures lays the Great Sphinx.  I have been told that it was constructed because Khafre, the pharaoh who commissioned the building of the Second Pyramid of Giza, was unhappy with a massive piece of limestone was blocking the view of his future tomb.  He ordered it to be destroyed.  This proved to be a bit easier said than done, so it was sculpted into the image of the sphinx that we see today.  In my opinion, after strolling around the Pyramids, the Sphinx is quite unimpressive.  To me, the neatest aspect of the cat-with-a-man’s-face statue is that you can still see chinks in it’s face from where Napoleon’s troops opened fire upon it.

Our adventure to the only remaining “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” appropriately concluded with two Egyptian guys in their early 20′s asking me to take a picture of them with my camera.  Only in the Middle East…

American Intervention

Here is a nice little anecdote from Cairo…

It is becoming clear that petty street crime is on the rise in Cairo and it is most likely due to increasingly desperate economic conditions that stem from a devastated tourism sector, corruption, and poor economic policies.

Earlier this evening I went my friend/tutor, Nabil, and an American buddy to Khan al-Khalili, a famous market here in Cairo.  Nabil needed to purchase something in the market.  After about an hour and a half of meandering through the market’s narrow streets and alleys, we made our way to a main street and began to walk to the nearest Metro (subway) station.  We had inadvertently formed a three-man line with me in the lead, navigating the many obstacles that a street in Cairo always contains.  A young leather-jacket clad guy walked past me and said “Give me a guinea (1 Egyptian pound valued at about 15 American cents)”.  I ignored him and carried on.

I soon realized that Nabil and my friend Michael were no longer keeping up with me so I turned around and saw the guy who had asked me for money giving my friend Nabil a hard time.  Nabil is quite small in stature so I confronted the guy messing with him and asked if there was a problem.  The guy turned around, shoved me with his arm, and began to walk off.  I quickly replied with an Arabic obscenity, shoved the guy pretty hard and sent him backpedalling.  He angrily walked away.

I assumed that he was carrying a knife as many Egyptians in their teens and twenties tend to do, so I kept my eyes on him as we once again pressed on toward the Metro station.  Nabil soon walked up to me and thanked me for helping him out.  He then told me that the guy had flashed a knife and to told him to empty everything from his pockets. What I had thought was an aggressive attempt at begging was in fact an attempted robbery.

I later joked with Nabil, who is from Yemen, that American intervention isn’t always a bad thing.

79 Dead at Egyptian Soccer Match: WTF Happened?

Egypt is back on the front page of the news again after last wednesday’s tragedy/riot/massacre at a soccer match in Port Said, in which 79 were killed and hundreds injured.  Violence erupted as “fans” of the Port Said-based team,  Al-Masry,  attacked the fans of the visiting team, Cairo-based Al-Ahly.

The shocking death toll and suspicions of government complicity have unleashed a wave of public outrage and has sent thousands of pissed off Cairenes back to their favorite place, Tahrir Square.  Five people have been killed and nearly 1,400 injured on the square’s side streets.  Security forces are using good ole American-made teargas and birdshot shells to disperse the protesters and protect the nearby Ministry of the Interior.

I woke up this morning to the chants of protesters marching to Tahrir Square, followed by news from my roommate that one of our friends was shot in the eye with birdshot pellets last night.  We visited him in the hospital today.  He had surgery last night but there is a strong concern that he may end up losing his eye.  Pretty sad fate for a young man fighting for his political freedoms, although many others in Tahrir have been less fortunate.

I learned about the tragedy in Port Said while at the gym.  I was half-watching the game as I took rest between sets of inclined dumbbell presses when all of a sudden “Five people killed in the stands” flashed up on the screen.  I asked a gym employee what was going on and he said that there had been a fight and that locals from Port Said were preventing ambulances from entering the grounds and evacuating the injured.  Before I could ask “why” he added that there is a bit of ‘awnsuuriyya or “racism” between Cairenes and Port Saidians  (I am unsure if this is the correct demonym for those who reside in Port Said.  Just took a guess.)

On my way home from the gym I stopped in a convenience store to make a few purchases and a girl came running up to the cashier and said “Did you hear that 25 people were killed in a match in Port Said?”  I was startled to hear that the number had risen from 5 to 25 in 20 minutes or so.

Upon arriving home some 15 minutes later, I informed my roommate about the breaking news and quickly got on my computer to see what was being reported.  The death toll was then at 73.  I apologize in advance for my strong language but the only thing I could think was: “What the fuck?”

I’m sure this is what many of you were thinking as you saw that nearly 80 people died at a soccer game in Egypt.  Despite the astounding death toll, I think for many of us that are following the situation in Egypt closely, it isn’t really all the surprising.  As you can imagine, speculation about what went down is on everyone’s mind, as they create their own theory as to what happened. The one thing that seems to be agreed upon is that the military government, on some level, was complicit in the events in Port Said.

To understand why a government would want to inflict such a grotesque massacre on its own people, one must be familiar with the current state of affairs in Egypt.  Here is a quick Idiot’s Guide to Egyptian politics of the last year.

In January and February 2011 Egyptians revolted against their former president, Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.  The military, under the moniker “Supreme Council of the Armed Forces” (SCAF) was designated to serve as an interim government until a parliament and new constitution were formed and a new president elected.  SCAF has been responsible for imprisoning thousands of Egyptian “dissidents” of the regime and has subjected them to military trials versus civilian legal proceedings.  In November, SCAF attempted to pass the bill, known as the “Selmy Communique”, which would award supra-constitutional powers and in essence allow the council to stay in power.  It was the “Selmy Communique” that led to mass protests and violence throughout the country at the end of November (I have several blog posts about this should you be interested).  The bill was removed from the table.  Since that time, Egypt has elected a parliament via several rounds of elections throughout the country.  Despite vehement calls by protesters for SCAF’s immediate abdication of power, the military council has assured the population that it will willingly give up power when, and only when, a president has been elected.  Presidential elections are scheduled for June of this year.

Now we must go back to the original question at hand, “Why would SCAF be behind the events at Port Said?”

Over the course of the last year, SCAF has displayed several indicators that it doesn’t truly plan on giving up power, such as the Selmy Communique.  After all, power is addictive.  SCAF is now trying to justify its importance and existence by showing the widespread “unrest and instability” throughout the country.  In other words, SCAF wants Egypt to seem like an unstable place that is dependent on a military regime such as itself.  In support of this claim, there have been several bank robberies in Cairo-metropolitan area over the past week, a very rare occurrence in Arab countries.  This, coupled with what happened in Port Said certainly has raised a few eyebrows.

Returning to the incident itself, it is clear that this wasn’t just a case of sport-driven violence.  It is being reported that the gates to the Al-Ahly fans’ backs (their potential escape route) were locked while the gates that allowed Al-Masry ”fans” to flood into the stadium were unlocked.  The stadium was also full of riot police who did nothing as violence broke out.  The lights of the stadium also coincidentally went off during the riot.  Medical assistance was nowhere to be found for a couple of hours following the explosion of violence, as fans laid dying in the Al-Ahly locker room.  All of these factors clearly indicate that some sort of planning was involved that likely supersedes a soccer rivalry.  I believe that SCAF, at the very least, approved the planning of the massacre.

Whoever is responsible targeted the Al-Ahly team and its fans for a reason.

Al-Ahly is easily Egypt’s most popular soccer team and club of Egypt’s most famous soccer star, Mohammed Abou Trika.  Al-Ahly’s fans, the “Ultras”, are estimated to be nearly 60 million strong worldwide and are known to be a highly politicized group within Egypt.  In other words, many of those who have been at the forefront of Egypt’s year-old revolution, are also Al-Ahly supporters.  If anything would stir up shit here in Egypt, which is exactly what SCAF wants, it would definitely be an attack against Al-Ahly and the Ultras.

In all likelihood nothing will come of this most recent wave of unrest but you never know.  In my opinion, nothing will truly come about until June’s presidential elections when SCAF will be forced to renege on its vow to step down from power.

More to come as events unfold…

+++The situation here is tricky and I hope I summarized it in a clear manner.  Please don’t hesitate to submit comments, opinions, and questions on the blog if you have further queries.  Also please pass the blog on to anyone that you think might be interested.+++

The Egyptian Revolution: A Year Later

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of Egypt’s revolution against the former Hosni Mubarak regime.  Today has been declared a national holiday so Egyptians were free to gather in Tahrir Square to show their support for the revolution and their continued distaste for the ruling military council.

I went down to Tahrir this afternoon to check it out and it was easily the most crowded I’ve seen the square to date.  Several podiums were erected and various parties and movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, galvanized their supporters via microphones and shitty amplifiers.

While trying to cross the square to watch the Brotherhood speak, my friends and I got stuck mass of people so thick that movement was close to impossible.  Add the vigor and lack of patience of the Egyptian youth (and adults for that matter) and it was a pretty uncomfortable situation.  Just put your arms down, make like a worm, and just be pushed along with the current of the people.  I didn’t stay more than an hour as my patience for being a human pinball weren’t that good today.  Nevertheless, it was good to see the Egyptian people keeping their revolution alive and moving, albeit at a slow pace.

There was zero police/military presence and security checkpoints entering the square were organized and run by the people, probably with some coordination by the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations.  The lack of police/military is likely why the celebration/protest in Tahrir remained peaceful.

However, if violence were to breakout it wouldn’t be during the day.  It will occur late tonight or early tomorrow morning as the military tries to clear out the square.  The military council’s patience for extended demonstrations are short and they will likely resort to some barbaric tactic when the demonstrators refuse to exit Tahrir.  Time will tell.

Egypt has come a long way over the course of the past 365 days.  Hosni Mubarak, a man who ruled for over 30 years, was deposed and several rounds of elections have been conducted in a relatively fair manner (although I have heard pretty bad stories of voting boxes full of votes onboard military vehicles, ect.)

Despite this progress, Egypt still has a long way to go until to reaches the democracy that it is seeking.  It has a military council, which despite its public statements, certainly has intentions of maintaining power.  How it will try to do this and if it will be successful remains to be seen.  If its members were smart, which is certainly debatable, they will create some sort of deal with the Muslim Brotherhood and run the show from behind the scenes.

It will be interesting to see what the near and distant future holds in store for Egypt and its people but I foresee more turbulence on the horizon.

++I have some cool video footage from today but can’t upload it onto the blog because I am budget and have not yet upgraded to the “Pro” edition.  It can be found on an iReport that I submitted to CNN.  Here is the link:  www.ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-736737