LIBERIA, Costa Rica — Franklin Chang Diaz has great aspirations for his rocket: a mail-carrier for outer space, a garbage truck for orbital debris and, the ultimate goal, a shuttle to Mars. The Costa Rica-born physicist speaks nonchalantly about the day humankind will have moved entirely to outer space, while our precious Earth becomes "a protected park."

MADRID, Spain — No fangs, no shrieking boy-crazy teenagers, and not a drop of blood to spare. Opening day was overwhelmingly disappointing.

TORONTO, Canada — Few would describe Toronto as a beautiful city. Its most distinctive architectural feature — red brick Victorian townhouses and mansions — have for years been losing the battle against the wrecker's ball and green glass condo towers. Thankfully, however, Toronto has been blessed by nature. Rivers and wooded ravines snake through the city and down to Lake Ontario. They are havens for wildlife and people.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A new trail that traverses Lebanon may dodge minefields and Hezbollah bunkers, but it, and a budding ecotourism business, is getting Lebanese out of the city and into the woods. At least 12 ecotourism companies offer weekly or monthly hiking tours in a country that some have dubbed the "Switzerland of the Middle East" because of its topographical and cultural diversity.

PARIS, France — Beheadings and bad times aside, French rulers have basked in a protective glow emanating for 300 years from the Sun King, old Louis ("L'Etat, c'est moi") XIV. After Charles de Gaulle strode down a liberated Champs Elysees chest and nose first, and then designed the Fifth Republic, besmirching presidents amounted to lese majeste.

LONDON, United Kingdom — The grave of Neda Soltan, the Iranian demonstrator whose murder, captured on a cellphone video, became an international symbol for resistance to the Ahmadinejad regime, has been desecrated,  according to eyewitnesses in Tehran.

CARACAS, Venezuela — It has taken Venezuela by storm, but it seems that Facebook and other social networking sites also come with their perils. Police here revealed that a pair of students at a private university in Caracas had been robbing their virtual friends' homes using information they had compiled using Facebook.

SANAA, Yemen — It's wedding season in Yemen and traditionally, that's meant three things: music, dancing and joyously firing an array of pistols, assault rifles, rocket-launchers, anti-aircraft mortars and grenade launchers into the air to celebrate the occasion.

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Like on any other Monday morning, reporter Bladimir Antuna kissed his family goodbye and set off in his Ford SUV to work the crime beat at a local newspaper in Durango city.

IMOGIRI, Indonesia — Scattered on a forested hillside in this remote, almost pristine area of Central Java is the Ilmu Giri Pesantren, an Islamic boarding school that six years ago began offering a new kind of curriculum to a handful of local farmers.