11-year-old girl married to 40-year-old man

Before their wedding ceremony begins in rural Afghanistan, a 40-year-old man sits to be photographed with his 11-year-old bride. The girl tells the photographer that she is sad to be engaged because she had hoped to become a teacher. Her favorite class was Dari, the local language, before she had to leave her studies to get married.

She is one of the 51 million child brides around the world today. And it's not just Muslims; it happens across many cultures and regions.

Photographer Stephanie Sinclair has traveled the world taking pictures, like the one of the Afghan couple, to document the phenomenon. Christiane Amanpour spoke with Sinclair about a book which features her photographs called, "Questions without Answers: The World in Pictures by the Photographers of VII."

Faiz, 40, and Ghulam, 11, sit in her home prior to their wedding in rural Afghanistan in 2005.

Amanpour asked Sinclair if the 11-year-old Afghan girl married in 2005, and others like her, consummate their marriages at such an early age. Sinclair says while many Afghans told her the men would wait until puberty, women pulled her aside to tell her that indeed the men do have sex with the prepubescent brides.

Sinclair has been working on the project for nearly a decade. She goes into the areas with help from people in these communities who want the practice to stop, because they see the harmful repercussions.

"Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him," Tehani (in pink) recalls of the early days of her marriage to Majed, when she was 6 and he was 25. The young wife posed for this portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Yemen.

In Yemen, a similar picture. Tehani and Ghada are sisters-in-law photographed with their husbands, who are both members of the military. Like most of the girls, Tehani didn’t even know she was getting married, until the wedding night. She was six years old.

Tehani describes how she entered the marriage, “They were decorating my hands, but I didn’t know they were going to marry me off. Then my mother came in and said, ‘Come on my daughter.’ They were dressing me up and I was asking, ‘Where are you taking me?’”

Sinclair says, “This harmful, traditional practice of child marriage is just so embedded in some of these cultures that the families don't protect them as they should.”

The subjects do know they’re being photographed and Sinclair tells them the topic she is working on. She does tell them that there is teen pregnancy in places like the U.S., but for the societies she’s photographing it’s even worse that 13-year-old girls are pregnant and unmarried.

Nujoud Ali, two years after her divorce in Yemen – when she was only ten years old – from her husband, more than 20 years her senior.

Another one of the photographs Sinclair took is of a Yemeni girl named Nujood Ali. In a rare turn of events, Ali managed to get a divorce at age 10.

“A couple months after she was married, she went to the court and found a lawyer – a woman named Shada Nasser and asked her to help her get a divorce, and she was granted [it],” Sinclair says. “It's definitely rare and Nujood became kind of an international symbol of child marriage, because she was able to do this. And I think she's inspired a lot of other girls and other organizations to support these girls, to have a stronger voice.”

Leyualem, 14, is wisked away on a mule by her new groom and groomsmen in Ethiopia.

Sinclair has documented the practice outside of the Muslim world. In a Christian community in Ethiopia, she captured the image of a 14 year-old girl named Leyualem in a scene that looks like an abduction. Leyualem was whisked away on a mule with a sheet covering up her face. Sinclair asked the groomsmen why they covered her up; they said it was so she would not be able to find her way back home, if she wanted to escape the marriage.

Kaushal ,10, and Rajni, 5, participate in the marriage ceremony in Northern India.

Sinclair travelled to India and Nepal, and photographed child marriages among some Hindus.

A five-year-old Hindu girl named Rajni was married under cover of night: “Literally at four o'clock in the morning. And her two older sisters were married to two other boys,” Sinclair says. “Often you see these group marriages because the girl and the families can't afford to have three weddings.” In the five-year-old girl’s case, Rajni will continue to live with her own family for several years.

Rajni, 5, was woken up around 4 am to participate in the wedding ceremony. Here, she is carried by her uncle to her wedding in India.

Girls aren’t always the only ones forced into marriage. Sinclair wanted to photograph child marries in India and Nepal, because sometimes the boys entering a marriage are also young. “And often they're victims just as much of this harmful traditional practice,” she says.

Sinclair told Amanpour that she hopes her photographs would not only highlight the problems to westerners, but also show people in the areas where this takes place that  if the girls continue to be taken out of the population to forcibly work at home, that their communities suffer as a whole.

“It's a harmful traditional practice that is slowly changing. We just want to have it change even faster.”

Magnet experiment saves baby big surgery

 

In late 2009, doctors placed a magnet on either side of Patrick's intestinal blockage. Though the procedure was experimental, Dr. Eric Scaife was successful at removing the membrane without extensive surgery. 

The day after Nelly Divricean gave birth to twin sons Andrew and Patrick, doctors gave her terrible news: one of her tiny, premature babies was in serious trouble.

"Something's wrong," the doctors told her. "We think Patrick has a blockage. We need to move him to a different hospital."

A blockage somewhere inside Patrick's intestines was preventing him from moving his bowels. Doctors needed to fix it before his intestines ruptured and he died.

Weighing just 4 pounds, Patrick was too small for a major surgery that could solve the problem permanently, so doctors moved him from Salt Lake City's Intermountain Medical Center to nearby Primary Children's Medical Center, where a section of his intestines was temporarily diverted into a colostomy bag.

"Because he couldn't poop, they had to make a way," Divricean said.

A few months later, Divricean and her husband, Michael, brought Patrick back to his surgeon, Dr. Eric Scaife.

"OK, what do we do next?" she asked him.

Scaife took an X-ray and what he saw wasn't good. A thin, hard membrane was blocking a section of Patrick's intestines -- the result of a rare birth defect called rectal atresia that occurs in one out of every 5,000 babies.

"We need to remove it," the doctor told the couple.

Scaife described to Patrick's worried parents a long, technically difficult surgery. Patrick would be cut open through his abdomen and vertically along his tailbone. Once inside, Scaife would remove the membrane and then piece together two sections of intestines.

He had his concerns. It was a big operation on a little baby. The surgery might cause scarring, or it might injure nerves in Patrick's pelvis that could lead to incontinence.

If Patrick was Scaife's son, what would he do? Divricean asked the surgeon.

Scaife told her he'd think on it and give them an answer the next week.

"Hopefully, they'll come up with something that will save Patrick or will give us a better option at least," Divricean thought as she waited for the week to pass.

A better option

A week later, Scaife had an idea.

Instead of removing Patrick's blockage, he wanted to break through it -- with two powerful magnets.

In the hands of children, strong magnets have proven dangerous, even deadly. When swallowed, they've passed into the intestines, and their attraction to each other has forged a hole in tissues.

It occurred to Scaife that in the skilled hands of a surgeon, magnets might be a useful tool instead of a hazard. If he placed a magnet on either side of Patrick's blockage, their attraction might make a hole and destroy the membrane, allowing stool to pass.

Scaife's idea was untested and unproven -- but if it worked, Patrick wouldn't need surgery.

"A magnet's a wonderful thing," said Dr. R. Adam Noel, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Louisiana State University Heath Science Center in New Orleans. "They can be used in very clever medicine."

Surgeons have used magnets to bore drainage holes in intestinal tissue, lengthen the esophagus and straighten dips in chests.

For Scaife's idea to work, he would need to find the perfect magnets. They had to be strong enough not to slip off the membrane and sized just right to create the hole.

"I'm not quite sure how we get them," he told the couple.

So the Divriceans went shopping.

"We went to Toys R Us," Divricean said. "They just had some that were too big."

A few more toy stores later, not finding what they needed, they realized kiddie magnets weren't going to cut it. Divricean searched the Internet and bought industrial-strength magnets from an online company.

The couple then made an appointment for Patrick's procedure.

The procedure: 'It made sense'

At the hospital, Patrick went back under the X-ray machine. Scaife, along with a radiologist who was helping him, could see the blockage.

What they were about to do next was an experiment. The magnets they wanted to place inside Patrick weren't approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a medical device, and Scaife knew of no one who had performed the procedure.

"Innovation, even with simple magnets and a pretty simple kind of procedure, is not easy. It's tricky, so you have to proceed cautiously, even when the parents are saying, 'Yeah I'd like to do that. It sounds better,'" said Art Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University's School of Medicine.

"If you're doing unapproved experiments, or something novel, the risk is enormous, especially with a child."

Scaife had consulted his colleagues and determined that if the magnets slipped and somehow created a hole in Patrick's intestines, he would be forced to do the operation he was trying to avoid. Otherwise, he didn't see a downside to the procedure.

"This certainly did not go through, sort of, formal medical channels," Scaife said. "But there was very clearly, I think, an informed consent ... it made sense to them, it made sense to me, and I think with that kind of clear understanding we proceeded."

Scaife and the radiologist maneuvered the magnets into position.

"We just dropped the magnets in like coins into a slot, and they immediately clicked together," he said.

Over the next few days the force of the magnets applied pressure to both sides of the membrane, pinching it and draining it of blood until it weakened and broke.

The magnets had made the hole that Scaife was expecting. They were still connected a week later when Scaife took them out. Sandwiched between them was a wafer-thin disc of membrane tissue.

"We couldn't believe that that really worked," Divricean said. "It was just something really amazing."

After the procedure, Divricean took Patrick into her arms. Holding him, she knew he was spared a complicated, invasive surgery.

"It worked out well -- really well -- for him," Scaife said.

The procedure was covered by insurance, Divricean said.

In December 2009, nearly six months after Patrick was born, he had a bowel movement in a diaper for the first time.

"We took pictures of the diaper," Divricean said, laughing. "We thought we were crazy doing that, but we were so excited."

Computer hacking for 8-year-olds

 

The hacker who goes by the pseudonym CyFi won't share her real name and declines to be photographed without her signature aviator sunglasses.

At the annual Def Con hacking conference here Friday, Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and head of the U.S. Cyber Command, brought CyFi on stage during his keynote address and called her "the most important person for our future."

CyFi is 11 years old.

For the second year in a row, Def Con organizers included a full schedule of Def Con Kids programs for beginner hackers ages 8 to 18. The children and teens, who must be accompanied by a parent, learned how to pick locks, competed to find the most bugs in mobile apps and learned about digital forensics by investigating a mock crime scene in a hotel room. Some skilled young hackers also taught classes and gave talks.

To kick off the conference, Def Con founder and veteran hacker Jeff Moss welcomed the kids with a talk on the ethics of hacking and rules for how to stay out of trouble with the law.

"I think it's harder for you guys now than it was for me," Moss told a room of kids and their parents.

Moss started the conference in 1992 because he wanted an open place for hackers to meet in person and share information. Twenty years later, the young attendees from Def Con's early years have grown up, established careers and started families.

Now they bring their own children to Def Con to soak up the knowledge and culture, but this new generation faces a different set of rules and a maze of new laws -- not to mention parents who are savvy enough to know what they're up to and keen on keeping their progeny out of trouble.

Navigating the law

"I just want to open it, but don't want to see what's on the other side," a young woman told and Moss and Lauren Gelman, an attorney who works in the field of Internet law and policy.

Many of Def Con Kids' school-age hackers are driven by the challenge of finding vulnerabilities in security systems and networks, not stealing information or money, or selling their knowledge to third parties. These "white-hat" hackers report any issues they find directly to the developers or relevant companies so they can be more secure.

But good intentions aren't always enough when it comes to staying out of legal trouble.

When Moss was starting out, computer technology wasn't widely understood by law enforcement, and laws weren't yet in place that classified his actions as illegal.

"Technically, I wasn't committing any crimes. I wasn't stealing any money, wasn't trying to break anything," said Moss. The U.S. and international governments have since drafted complicated laws that criminalize many aspects of hacking.

However, Gelman pointed out that in many cases, the rules are still not clear or current, and that current laws are far behind what Def Con attendees are doing. She recommended the kids avoid breaking laws by asking for permission before testing any systems, and if that's not possible, to find a situation where they can ask for approval.

"The lawyer perspective and mother perspective and ethics perspective is you can get in a lot of trouble if you don't ask for permission." Gelman is married to journalist and former hacker Kevin Poulsen and has two children.

Moss has his own test for deciding whether to hack something: "My rule of thumb is, do I completely own it? If yes, I can hack it."

If hackers are unsure whether they are breaking the law, Gelman suggests they check the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) site, which spells out rules for everyone from bloggers to coders. The 22-year-old organization also provides legal assistance for those who do get in trouble, taking on some cases itself or referring people to attorneys.

Building a reputation

Breaking the law isn't the only concern Moss, Gelman and parents have for the budding hackers -- true anonymity online is harder to come by and a bad reputation can follow these kids into adulthood.

Moss warned the kids that everything they do online now until they die will be backed up to the cloud. "That makes life more difficult for you guys, because if you get in trouble now, you're screwed."

Twenty years ago, hackers could operate in the shadows without leaving much of a trail. Chat logs weren't recorded for long and hackers' handles weren't easily traceable to their real-life identities. Now, most communications that take place online are stored permanently and some can be dug up by law enforcement and human-resources departments.

Moss was just a kid himself when he got started with computers.

At 13, his father brought home an IBM computer for the family. By 14, Moss was online creating a new identity for himself, conversing with adults who were oblivious to his real age and spoke to him like an equal.

"I couldn't drive a car, but I could have conversations about politics with people in Russia," he said.

In those days, if someone made a mistake or needed a fresh start, they could create a new online identity. Moss got a do-over at an early age and recreated himself online as Dark Tangent, which grew into a trusted and respected identity he still uses now.

Today, a fresh start is harder to come by and old communications can surface at any time. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg learned this the hard way when embarrassing instant-message conversations from his college days were made public years later.

"Your reputation is the most important thing you own," said Moss, urging the young hackers to behave ethically, not because it will make their parents happy, but because they are the ones who will have to live with the results.

Hacking for good

With so many dangers, why would parents encourage their children to hack at all? Def Con Kids organizers believe in the good that can come from hacking, including making the country more secure and helping encourage freedom of speech around the world.

"Technology can really change the world," said Gelman, citing the liberation-technology movement that encourages hackers to help people spread messages from countries where online communication is restricted.

The U.S. government sees the potential in these bright young minds as well.

The Department of Defense ran the digital forensics program at Def Con Kids, hoping to encourage more education and interest in the field. And Alexander met with three of the children before going on stage to give his keynote address.

"This is our future," Alexander said of the kids. "What you're doing here to help train those folks is absolutely superb, and you should be proud."

Meet the man who started #NBCFail

Steven Marx wasn't that mad. And with only 17 Twitter followers, the 48-year-old certainly wasn't popular when he reportedly created the #NBCFail hashtag.

But that online conversation would become one of the dominant storylines of the London Olympics, particularly among people who like to mock NBC's sportscasters and in the United States where viewers were upset with the network for delaying its broadcasts of the games to show them in prime time.

Marx, a Web designer in Peoria, Illinois, is credited by the blog Mashable with creating that conversation in reference to the London Games. "Interesting how NBC never mentions you need a cable/satellite subscription w/MSNBC/CNBC to view any coverage online. We're screwed. #NBCFail," Marx wrote on his Twitter account on July 26, the day before the Opening Ceremonies in London.

He was surprised by the heated and hilarious conversation that followed.

"I don't know to what extent I can take credit," he told CNN by phone on Tuesday. "I don't know how it works, if people saw my hashtag and used it or if other people came up with it on their own and added to it.

"It's kind of fun for me. I've been working in the field of technology for 20 years now and it's finally fun for me to get my 15 minutes of Internet fame."

Marx was on vacation in New Mexico when someone sent him a message on Twitter telling him that bloggers were crediting him with starting the #NBCFail topic.

He found it amusing in part because he wasn't all that mad at NBC, just annoyed that he couldn't watch Olympic programming live and online for free. It sounds as though he almost feels bad about playing a small role in unleashing the fury of the Internet on the U.S. broadcast network.

"In some ways it's showing some of the worst sides of what this instant media can do," he said, adding: "It's sort of that mob mentality that Twitter encourages. I think in this sense it's showing the bad. But in the Occupy (Wall Street) movement, it showed the good that Twitter can do for organizing. Even though it's made me slightly famous, I'm not necessarily thrilled with what's happened. I'm not terribly impressed with NBC, but that's not new this year."

Some online writers have said that watching the #NBCFail hashtag has become more fun that watching the actual Olympics.

And plenty of others have taken up the torch of teasing NBC, too. A feed called @NBCDelayed posts constant "breaking" updates about old news, making fun of the fact that the Olympics are shown on a several-hour delay in the United States.

"BREAKING: Underdog Jamaican bobsleigh team loses control and crashes," that feed wrote on Tuesday night in reference to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta.

CHECK OUT SNAKE WITH 3 HEADS IN INDIA

Cuban Man '24' Proud Of His 4 Extra Fingers, Toes

They call him "Twenty-Four." Yoandri Hernandez Garrido's nickname comes from the six perfectly formed fingers on each of his hands and the six impeccable toes on each foot.

Hernandez is proud of his extra digits and calls them a blessing, saying they set him apart and enable him to make a living by scrambling up palm trees to cut coconuts and posing for photographs in this eastern Cuban city popular with tourists. One traveler paid $10 for a picture with him, Hernandez said, a bonanza in a country with an average salary of just $20 a month.

"It's thanks to my 24 digits that I'm able to make a living, because I have no fixed job," Hernandez said.

Known as polydactyly, Hernandez's condition is relatively common, but it's rare for the extra digits to be so perfect. Anyone who glanced quickly at his hands would be hard-pressed to notice anything different unless they paused and started counting.

Hernandez said that as a boy he was visited by a prominent Cuban orthopedist who is also one of Fidel Castro's doctors, and he declared that in all his years of travel he had never seen such a case of well-formed polydactyly.

"He was very impressed when he saw my fingers," said Hernandez, who is the only one in his family to be born with extra digits.

In a part of the world where people's physical traits are often the basis for nicknames – even unflattering ones like "fatty" or "shorty" – "veinticuatro" ("twenty-four" in English) is not an insult but rather a term of endearment, and Hernandez, now 37, said his uniqueness has made him a popular guy. He has a 10-year-old son with a woman who now lives in Havana, and his current girlfriend is expecting his second child.

"Since I was young, I understood that it was a privilege to have 24 digits. Nobody has ever discriminated against me for that," he said. "On the contrary, people admire me and I am very proud. I have a million friends, I live well."

Nevertheless, it occasionally caused confusion growing up.

"One day when I was in primary school, a teacher asked me how much was five plus five?" Hernandez recalled. "I was very young, kind of shy, and I didn't say anything. She told me to count how many fingers I had, so I answered, "12!"

"The teacher was a little upset, but it was the truth," he said.

Hernandez said he hopes he can be an example to children with polydactyly that there's nothing wrong with them.

"I think it's what God commanded," he said. "They shouldn't feel bad about anything, because I think it's one of the greatest blessings and they'll be happy in life."