By Yuka Tachibana, NBC News Producer

TOKYO – At Tsukiji, Tokyo’s main fish market, fishmonger Kazuya Yamamoto’s business has plummeted since the earthquake and tsunami struck northern Japan on March 11.

“Business has been slow. We used to have many customers from the north where the earthquake and tsunami struck, but obviously not now,” Yamamoto told NBC News.

Tsukiji is the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world. More than 400 different types of seafood are sold in the market daily – from cheap seaweed to massive 600 pound tunas.

The Tsukiji market was actually built after Tokyo’s main fresh produce market was wiped out in the devastating Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. The 7.9 magnitude earthquake, Japan’s deadliest on record, left nearly 150,000 people dead or missing and wiped out much of central Tokyo.

But it’s not just the lack of clientele from the north that worries Yamamoto. The radiation leak from the crippled nuclear power plant has left consumers jittery about what they eat and with news of sea water contamination, although minute according to Japanese authorities, Yamamoto says people are shying away from buying fish.
 
“All of us are worried about the radiation – it seems the government hasn’t been forthcoming with accurate information, and that makes us even more concerned,” said Yamamoto.

The Japanese government finally admitted Tuesday that the safeguards that had been in place to protect the nuclear plant against the earthquake and tsunami that severely damaged the facility and caused it to spew radiation were insufficient. The government vowed it would overhaul safety standards.

And with the news that highly radioactive water has been filling up in a concrete trench under reactor Number 2 at Fukushima plant, there is concern that if the situation is not contained, the radioactive water could find its way into the ocean.   

Yamamoto says if the situation is not brought under control, it will have a devastating effect on business.

“If the situation is not remedied, I am sure that radiation will have an effect on the sea water, and if that happens, we’re all going to be in serious trouble.”

By Paul Goldman, NBC News producer

JERUSALEM, Israel – Nassar and Ali Abu Alwa are devastated:  for the past 10 days they have had no income. The two Palestinian brothers live in East Jerusalem and for years have been a vital part of the tourist scene here.

If you have visited Jerusalem in the past 40 years, you probably have a picture of yourself posing with their pride and joy, known as “The Jerusalem Camel.”

Hundreds of tourists flock daily to the beautiful Mount of Olives observation point where the brothers work. It’s a perfect vantage point to gaze at the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock Mosque, the Mount of Olives ancient Jewish cemetery and it offers a great 180-degree panorama of the walled Old City of Jerusalem.

Tourists hurry to snap pictures, but the best picture is always the one taken sitting on the camel with the Biblical view in the background. The camel’s name is actually “Kojak” and has been in the business of hosting tourists on his back for pictures for the past 30 years.

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You can’t beat the startled smile on a visitor’s face when the huge camel stands up from a kneeling position – laughter is heard everywhere.

The joke goes that for the price of you can go up, but it costs to get off.

But 10 days ago, the Jerusalem municipality decided they had had enough and detained Kojak, leaving Nassar and Ali heartbroken.

The official reasons for the seizure: the camel needs vaccinations, the brothers have no business permit and, last but not least, the camel has no third-party insurance. (Now come on, how do you insure a camel?!)

But Nassar and Ali claim the main reason for seizing the animal was to put pressure on them to hand over names of people the municipality suspects of pick-pocketing at the Mount of Olives observation point. The brothers won’t comment on the case for the meantime.

Enter Hila Zisberg. She belongs to “Youth for Jerusalem,” an Israeli organization that aims to bring young people to heritage sites.

Zisberg frequently brings young people on field trips to the Mount of Olives observation point. Recently, she was astonished to see Nassar and Ali, but not their beloved camel. She was angry when told that the camel had been detained.

“Kojak is a cornerstone of Jerusalem and he will die there,” Ali Abu Alwa told Zisberg.

Zisberg decided to take on the Jerusalem municipality and demand the quick return of one of the city’s icons. She is now busy with the strange task of finding an insurance company willing to insure a camel; she said most of the agents just laugh at her request.

But she is confident the issue will be resolved quickly and that Nassar and Ali will be reunited with their camel – so tourists can snap the perfect picture again soon.

By Carol Grisanti, NBC News
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — It’s the game-playing that draws the attention: A group of young boys are acting out the last moments of a suicide bomber, for fun.

In a disturbing 84-second video, posted on YouTube, one boy, perhaps 12 years old, is dressed in black, his face covered by a black scarf. He is the one who gets to blow himself up.  Beforehand, he hugs the other kids in what appears to be his final farewell. Some of the younger children find the whole charade rather funny and giggle in the film.

All the children, some looking as young as 5 or 6, are dressed in baggy pants and long tunics, the traditional dress of Pakistanis and Afghans. Some are wearing brown, others white, possibly to represent the different roles they have to play.

The bomber walks over to the boy in white who could be acting in the role of a government official. That boy holds his hand in the air in a gesture that is meant to try and foil the alleged bomber’s movements. The bomber then lifts his shirt as if to show a vest laden with explosives.  He kicks up a cloud of dust to depict the bomb that he has set off. The three boys dressed in brown and the one wearing white — all appearing to be security or government officials — fall dead. 

The portrayal of a suicide bombing has sparked concern and outrage. While the video has been posted on YouTube since early January, there’s no information on who posted it, where the event took place, and what was the motivation behind the piece. It’s been viewed more than 500,000 times.

Why?
Abdullah Khoso from the Pakistani “Society for the Protection of Children” (SPARC) said the video should be pulled from the Internet.  “Why is this on YouTube,” he asked during an interview with NBC News. “Why does YouTube allow something like this that obviously exploits children and distorts the image of these children?  Who benefits from watching this?  The recruiting targets would be the kids and families from the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan but they would not see this video because they don’t have access to internet,” he said.

The Taliban militants have often recruited teenagers and trained them to be suicide bombers.  When the Taliban first occupied the Swat Valley two years ago, many teenagers were inspired by their ruthlessness in rooting out the local criminals and the armed gangs, who were terrorizing the local population.  They started to play street games emulating them, not that far-fetched in a tribal society and not that far removed from kids elsewhere who play games of cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. Later, many of those same kids joined the Taliban.

“Why aren’t there videos on YouTube of kids playing soldier games or paying violent internet games?” Khoso asked.  “Whose purpose is this video serving?”  Khoso thinks the video was put out for one of two purposes: either to show the West how evil kids from the border areas are, or to reinforce a picture of the Taliban as evil in recruiting children as future suicide bombers.

The music in the background is a Taliban jihadi song. The lyrics are in Pashto. “Throats are cut, bombs go off and then you can go to a nice place,” meaning heaven, although the word is not used.

The Pakistani Taliban denied making the video, saying it was Western propaganda aimed at defaming their image in the eyes of their countrymen.

“This video has nothing to do with us,” said Ihsanullah Ihsan, one of the group’s spokesmen. “We did not ask these children to copy us in their games but it is clear that they are impressed with our cause and now want to imitate our brave fighters.”

Khoso feels the wide circulation of the video is dangerous.  “If it is to recruit children, if it is to use children as a tool to motivate and inspire evil, then why does YouTube help facilitate this.”

Mushtaq Yusufzai in Peshawar contributed to this report.