When Taiwanese scholar Shih Cheng-feng was a boy, he was forced to speak a language that was not his own, and four decades later he still feels handicapped by his education.

Neither US Border Patrol agents nor drug traffickers deterred Mario Guerrero from attempting, with his pregnant wife and young son, to cross illegally from Mexico to Arizona, where a new immigration law also awaited them.

In China's coal-rich Shanxi province, the source of much of the fuel that powers the energy-hungry nation, there is an oft-repeated saying: ''To make money, all you have to do is dig a hole.''