BEIJING – Sixty-nine-year-old Zhou Xianqiang’s favorite hobby is recycling. A retired school teacher, Zhou makes her own handcrafts out of things usually dumped in trash cans – roses out of used red banners or hats out of milk cartons. Now she has a new toy: a crate full of thousands of earthworms in her little floral balcony.

Some people may not like having 2,000 smelly, slimy worms at home. But dozens of families in the Dongsi neighborhood, in the heart of Beijing, have taken them in as part of an environmental challenge from the non-governmental organization, “Global Village.”
Partially inspired by Mary Appelhof’s book “Worms Eat My Garbage” and with help from China Agricultural University, Global Village bought earthworms from a company in suburban Beijing and experimented with them for a few months before they delivered the little creatures to local residents.

Each family participating in the project was given one crate that contains about 2,000 earthworms. Once bedding (shredded newspaper, cardboard or leaf mold) was made inside the crate, another crate was put on top because the worms prefer it dark and quiet.

The top crate is also where food is placed, which could be cabbage slices, crunched egg shells or apples peels. Through holes on the bottom of the top crate, the toothless earthworms crawl up and grind the food with their gizzards by muscle action. In a few weeks owners can see the results: black manure-like compost that can serve as the perfect organic nutrients for flowers and plants.

“We hope by raising earthworms the community can have its own cycle chain. Our short-term goal is for the families to get rid of the kitchen wastes, and then use the droppings to grow plants or vegetables,” said Zhang Qiang, program coordinator from Global Village.

Since most modern families in Beijing live in apartment buildings and are busy leading fast paced lives running between home and work, Dongsi, the old courtyard area where you can still see hundred-year-old alleyways, seemed to be an ideal residence to start with the project.

The elderly who choose to stay in the old neighborhood have the time and patience to take part in something new and share their experiences.

Zhang and his colleagues hope to see a long-term project if things run smoothly. “We sure will encounter many problems, but we want to succeed. In the future, even if we pull out, I hope these local residents can spread the idea to other communities.”

It’s been three months since floods devastated Pakistan, leaving 20 million people in need. Although much of the water has receded, the United Nations says the situation remains “critically difficult.” NBC’s Ian Williams has returned to Charsadda in the north, where aid has been slow, and survivors are bracing for winter.

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images file

Barack Obama received a warm reception during this rally in Berlin, Germany, in July 2008. Despite his problems at home, Obama remains broadly well-liked across Europe.

By Marian Smith, msnbc.com

LONDON – Before he was elected to the White House, Barack Obama drew 200,000 ecstatic fans during a 2008 visit to Berlin. Analysts predicted he would have easily been elected France’s president if he had been a candidate there. And the day after Obama’s election triumph, practically every U.K. newspaper splashed his picture across their front pages.

Europe had fallen in love.

Two years later, Obama is struggling at home. With the midterms looming, the president’s approval rating is at just 47 percent and most indicators suggest that the Democrats will take a hit on Tuesday.

Many Europeans don’t get it.

“They’re very confused as to how [Americans] could vote for Obama and then two years later turn around and vote for a completely different set of policies,” Sarah Oates, professor of political communication the University of Glasgow, told msnbc.com.

When viewed from abroad, Obama’s campaign promises of “hope” and “change” left Europeans expecting a fundamental shift in American politics.

“[People here] are just dismayed,” Oates added. “There’s a real feeling of … disappointment that it didn’t signal the change they thought it would.”

Plummeting fortunes
Normally, congressional elections don’t resonate much abroad.

But Europe’s love affair with Obama – and interest in his plummeting fortunes – mean that midterms seem to be getting more coverage than usual in the U.K. and across the continent. In the wake of financial crisis, Europeans also wonder how the vote in America will affect the global economy.

French and British newspapers have been covering the run-up to the vote for weeks, with Tuesday’s showdown already occasionally making the front page. In Germany, TV news channels are reporting regularly on U.S. politics and newspaper editorials have focused on the Tea Party movement and the perception that conservatism is growing in America.

On Thursday, the websites of the BBC and the London-based Guardian, Telegraph and Times newspapers all prominently featured stories about Obama’s appearance on “The Daily Show.”

‘He’s not Mr Miracle’
But with the economic crisis and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan casting a shadow over his presidency, Obama’s reputation has also suffered abroad.

“He is no longer seen as an icon, but as a politician who is doing his very best,” said Christian Malard, senior foreign analyst on France 3 TV. “He is paying the price for the crisis. He’s not Mr Miracle, he’s not a prophet.”

However, Obama remains broadly well-liked and many Europeans think the disenchantment that many American voters have been expressing is unfair.

“What he inherited was so enormous that no American president could have fixed it,” Manfred Gortemaker, professor of modern history at Germany’s University of Potsdam, told msnbc.com.

Meanwhile, those who got caught up in the “Yes, we can” fever of 2008 simply want to know what will happen to their star.

“Obama is like a movie character,” said Nicole Bacharan, a historian, political analyst and associate researcher at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. “There is something very romantic about him and his fate is something that people want to know. Why is this young, attractive, very smart president struggling?”

Tea Party rhetoric
Many Europeans are also wondering whether the Tea Party is simply a phenomenon born from the financial crisis, or whether its rise signals a broader, lasting, more radical conservative movement.

“In all the French newspapers and magazines, people are writing, trying to figure it out,” Bacharan said.

While the economic downturn has sparked severe spending cuts from Ireland to Greece and renewed questions over European-style “big government”, a Tea Party-like movement hasn’t emerged on the continent.

But Europeans have noticed that some opponents of the Tea Party are being demonized as “socialist”. That rhetoric has at times included references to far more sinister chapters in history. An editorial in Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper last week slammed the Tea Party’s references to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany when criticizing the Obama administration’s policies as being irresponsible, flippant and ignorant.

“The Holocaust was the result of murderous ideological fanaticism of the kind not to be found in leaders forced to face re-election every four years,” the newspaper’s editorial said. “It is hard to imagine even the most hard-bitten Tea Party activist sincerely believing that President Barack Obama wants to systematically murder over 6 million people like Adolf Hitler did. And that is necessarily the implication.”

Obama’s more liberal policies also resonated with many Europeans. With polls suggesting the Democrats could lose control of the House, Professor Oates said the idea that many of his plans could potentially never come into effect baffles some people.

“It’s hard for them to understand the frailty of the American presidency,” she said.