In December 2006, Jeremiah S. Johnson, 25, began serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Rozdilna, Ukraine, a town near the border with Moldova. When he started, he was HIV negative. In January of this year, he had a midservice medical exam in Kiev and agreed to an HIV test. It came back positive. The Peace Corps told him to pack his bags and return to the United States.

Johnson says the Peace Corps director for Ukraine told him he had to go home because Ukraine doesn't allow HIV-positive foreigners to work there. (If so, this isn't unique. As blogger Andrew Sullivan has pointed out repeatedly, the United States has its own fair share of restrictions on HIV-positive immigrants and tourists.)

Back in Washington, Johnson had an end-of-service medical exam and received written notification that he was being "medically separated" from the Peace Corps. He contacted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the organization sent a demand letter to the Peace Corps saying that it is violating the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. (The State Department, by the way, changed its policies just this February to permit HIV-positive Americans, on a case-by-case basis, to work in the Foreign Service.)

Johnson doesn't have any physical symptoms of HIV. He and the ACLU say the Peace Corps did not assess him to determine if he could continue serving with reasonable accommodations. Additionally, his requests to be assigned to another country were denied.

What do you all think? A few questions come to mind:

• How easy would it be for Johnson to receive medical monitoring of his condition in a poor country (granted, the medical infrastructure in some Peace Corps countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, is probably stronger than in, say, Burkina Faso and Guinea)?
• What if living in an underdeveloped country aggravated his condition -- would there be liability issues?
• Does how he contracted HIV -- for example, if he was injecting recreational drugs -- make a difference (the manner in which he became HIV positive hasn't been disclosed)?

For more on controversies about the Peace Corps, check out "Think Again: Peace Corps" and some of the reactions the piece prompted.

In the United States, the Oreo cookie is a classic. Millions of American children have enjoyed dunking the sweet treat -- white cream sandwiched between two round, crisp, chocolate cookies -- in milk as an afternoon snack.

Kraft Foods, makers of the Oreo, introduced the cookie to China in 1996. But the Chinese didn't exactly take to them. So starting in 2005, the Wall Street Journal reports, Kraft engaged in a classic case of adapting a product to suit local tastes. The Chinese found the cookies too sweet, so Kraft reduced the sugar in them. China was developing a thirst for milk -- a product that traditionally hasn't been a Chinese dietary staple -- so Kraft launched a campaign, complete with Oreo ambassadors, to "educate" the Chinese on how to dunk the cookies in milk.

The most radical change was in the shape. Noticing that sales of wafer cookies were increasing faster than those of traditional biscuit-like cookies, a new version of the Oreo was created: a long, narrow, layered stack of crispy wafers and vanilla and chocolate cream, all coated with chocolate. Whoever said Oreos have to be round?

Of course, amid rising food prices and increased demand for chocolate (whose consumption in China has nearly doubled in the past five years), the success of the Chinese Oreo brings to mind the broader question of "Can the World Afford a Middle Class?," a topic recently addressed in FP and one that fans the flames of Chinese frustrations with the West.

(Meanwhile, Oreos have been trying to colonize British biscuit tins, the BBC reports.)

A poem that has been circulating on the Internet lately offers insight into the frustrations that many Chinese -- including those studying in the United States -- feel in reaction to criticisms that have been leveled against their country in recent times. An excerpt is below:

When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet.
When we tried limiting our numbers, you said it is human rights abuse.

When we were poor, you thought we were dogs.
When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts.

When we build our industries, you called us polluters.
When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.

When we buy oil, you call that exploitation and genocide.
When you fight for oil, you call that liberation and democracy.

The full poem, whose origins are unclear, is here. There's also a video version that uses historical images, magazine covers, and political cartoons to reinforce the point:

Here's some lunchtime fun for you.

YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images

Sumo wrestlers coaxed 80 babies, all less than a year old, to cry at last Sunday's annual baby-crying contest at Sensoji temple in Tokyo. The tiny winners are determined by who cries first and who wails the loudest. Participating Japanese parents apparently believe the sumo-induced cries are beneficial, with the babies crying out a wish for good health. At the very least, it probably exercises the lungs.

YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images

Some babies reportedly refused to cooperate and stayed silent or even dared to laugh in the wrestlers' faces. Or, at least, that was the case until the wrestlers resorted to slipping on their scary masks.

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

Ah, globalization at work: Workers at a factory in China's southern Guangdong province were making "Free Tibet" flags, naively unaware of what the colorful flags -- banned in China -- represented.

The owner of the factory said the orders for the flags had been placed from overseas.

Earlier this month, the documentary version of FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím's bestselling book Illicit aired on the TV channel PBS in the United States. The film and book documents how -- as the book's subtitle says -- "smugglers, traffickers, and copycats are hijacking the global economy."

Those copycats who profit off pirated DVDs had better be careful, though. The doggy duo of Lucky and Flo are out to get them. The black Labs are the first canines to have been trained to sniff out the polycarbonates found in DVDs and CDs. Although they can't differentiate between legit and pirated discs, their noses lead human investigators to discs that are hidden in cargo that has been declared as having other items, such as clothing. Lucky and Flo have been so successful that they've even received death threats from crime syndicates.

Check out a video of the furry crime fighters here:

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Due to skyrocketing rice prices, Liberians are switching to pasta and learning how to twirl spaghetti on a fork. In India, the government has restricted rice exports, and moms are choosing between eating and paying for their children's schooling. Meanwhile in the United States, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club warehouse stores are limiting the sale of 20-pound (9 kg) bags of jasmine, basmati, and long-grain white rice to four per customer.

In the developed world, food shortages might be overhyped. The head of the California Rice Commission told Reuters, "Bottom line, there is no rice shortage in the United States. We have supplies." Plus, how many Americans buy 80 pounds of rice per shopping trip? (Apparently, it's restaurant owners and small-business owners who typically buy in bulk.)

But for people in developing countries, outrageous food prices and shortages are a serious reality. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, which provides food aid to the needy, told FP in this week's Seven Questions, "This is a silent tsunami." Video, audio, and prepared remarks from her recent talk on global food insecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies is also available here.

By the way, if you want to help hungry people get rice, play the Free Rice vocabulary game.

Among popular baby names in Kenya at the moment: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. No word yet on any infant John McCains.

Where In the World Is Osama bin Laden?, a documentary by Morgan Spurlock -- the man who ate McDonald's cuisine for 30 days straight for Super Size Me -- took on the task of finding al Qaeda's leader. As Spurlock explained in a Seven Questions interview with FP last week, sometimes a comedic film can get an audience to pay attention to a serious topic.

This week, Harold and Kumar -- those two guys from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle -- take on the subject of Guantánamo Bay, though their purpose doesn't seem to have anything to do with prompting serious discussion about the controversial prison. In Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, debuting this Friday, the pair board a flight to Amsterdam with a bong. That gets them sent to Gitmo. The duo make a wild escape, of course. Politically incorrect humor is abundant.

Some reviews say the movie falls short of White Castle's charm, but it currently has a 78 percent on the tomatometer. So, if you need something to do this weekend, you have two choices: Gain a bit of enlightenment with Spurlock, or lose a few IQ points with Harold and Kumar.

The Mexican chapter of the anticorruption group Transparency International polled Mexicans on what percentage of their annual family income they spent on bribes.

Their answer? Nearly 8 percent. For more about corruption in Mexico, watch this National Geographic video below:

Language purists in France are fuming. The country's entry in the Eurovision music contest has English lyrics! (OK, two lines are in French.) Of the 43 countries participating, more than half -- 25 -- submitted songs in English. It sounds like there's a new linga franca.

If you have three minutes of your life to spare, check out France's entry, "Divine," by Sébastien Tellier, here.

David Silverman/Getty Images

For the first time ever, a female Muslim Arab soldier has joined an elite Israeli Air Force unit. Upon completing a medic training course with top honors, she became part of the Airborne Combat Search and Rescue Unit 669, a premier unit that extricates wounded soldiers from combat zones in sensitive and highly classified operations.

Unlike Jewish young adults, most Arab Israelis are not required to serve in the military, but this soldier, from an Arab village in northern Israel, volunteered to serve. But Muslims and Arabs are prevented from serving in the elite Unit 669, which requires an extremely high security clearance, due to fears about conflicting loyalties should they have to serve in Palestinian areas or fight Muslim countries. So how did she get in? An investigation revealed that an error was made, although news reports have not described the nature of the error or who made it. (My hunch is that those details are confidential.)

Nonetheless, the unit's commander has been so impressed with the woman's exceptional ability that he is allowing her to stay. Although some on the Internet say she may end up betraying her unit, it may be that in this case an error ended up yielding the correct outcome -- letting in a talented, loyal soldier.

reuters.com

Harry's Bar, the famous Venice restaurant where writer Ernest Hemingway used to hang out and sip martinis, is now offering a discount to "poor" American tourists who must contend with a weakened dollar, one that has resulted in horror stories about $40 ice creams and $10 bottles of water. A sign at Harry's reads:

Harry's Bar of Venice in an effort to make the American victims of subprime loans happier, has decided to give them a special 20% discount on all the items of the menu during the short term of their recovery.

Harry's owner, Arrigo Cipriani, says the number of American customers has fallen between 5 and 10 percent since January. His concern highlights similar worries that European tourism operators have about the weakened dollar.

But how will Harry's tell who's American? Cipriani told Reuters:

We will judge by the accent and if we make a mistake, we will give a 20 percent discount to the English as well.

Now may be a good time to learn to fake an American accent!

MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/Getty Images

Training for the Olympics is tough, but dodging sniper bullets usually isn't part of a day's workout for most athletes. Unless you're Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussein Abdul-Razzaq. She and three other Iraqis so far have qualified for this summer's Olympics, and they are doggedly determined to keep training despite the lack of resources and security. Abdul-Razzaq doesn't have proper running shoes, and she trains on a pockmarked track that she isn't officially allowed to use. She and her coach regularly get caught up in sniper fire on the way to and from training.

Meanwhile, archer Ali Adnan, who was attacked by militants linked to al Qaeda in 2006, practices mainly in his backyard; it's too difficult to travel in and out of his neighborhood. These Iraqi athletes, as well the Afghan athletes featured in FP's recent photo essay, "The Olympians of Afghanistan," have definitely got the Olympic spirit.

For this week's Seven Questions, "Waiting for a Cyber Pearl Harbor," FP asked Richard A. Clarke, former U.S. counterterrorism chief and former special advisor to the president on cybersecurity, about what offensive capabilities the new U.S. Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) should have. He succinctly replied: "Highly classified ones."

Though Clarke isn't interested in mentioning specifics, someone else is. Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder of the U.S. 8th Air Force, under which AFCYBER will be housed once it's officially launched this fall, has revealed how the United States plans to "hit back" in cyberspace.

In an interview with ZDNet.co.uk, he said offensive capabilities that AFCYBER is working on include denial of service, confidential data loss, data manipulation, and system integrity loss. These "cyberpunches" will be paired with kinetic (physical) attacks. Elder said:

Offensive cyberattacks in network warfare make kinetic attacks more effective, [for example] if we take out an adversary's integrated defence systems or weapons systems. This is exploiting cyber to achieve our objectives.

Now that the U.S. military has put on its cyber boxing gloves, it looks like it'll be no holds barred in the online world.

CLAUS FISKER/AFP/Getty Images

At the current NATO summit, countries' troop contributions to the effort in Afghanistan has been a hot topic. Last week's FP List "Who's Left in Afghanistan?" listed the top five and bottom five countries in terms of the number of troops they had committed to Afghanistan. At the time, the top five were the United States (29,000 troops), Britain (7,800), Germany (3,210), Italy (2,880), and Canada (2,500), while the bottom five were Singapore (2 troops), Austria (2, sometimes 3), Ireland (7), Luxembourg (9), and Iceland (13*).

But these numbers can be somewhat misleading when it comes to determining who is pulling their weight, given that, for example, the U.S. population is about 1,000 times that of Iceland. So, another measure would be troop contributions relative to military-age population (defined as those between 20 and 39 years old**). When expressed this way, using updated troop numbers, it's tiny Denmark that comes out on top!

The Top 5 (troops per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Denmark -- 0.55
2. Britain -- 0.47
3. Norway -- 0.43
4. Netherlands -- 0.39
5. United States -- 0.35***

The Bottom 5 (troops per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Ukraine -- 0.0002
2. Georgia -- 0.0008
3. Austria -- 0.0009
4. Singapore -- 0.0016
5. Ireland -- 0.0053

Yet another way to crunch the numbers would be to look at troop fatalities relative to the military-age population. (Just the top five, and not the bottom five, are listed here because there are several countries with zero fatalities.) Sadly for Denmark, it's at the top again:

The Top 5 (troop fatalities per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Denmark -- 0.0099
2. Canada -- 0.0090
3. Britain -- 0.0056 (includes Ministry of Defense civilians)
4. Estonia -- 0.0053
5. United States -- 0.0051 (includes fatalities in Pakistan and Uzbekistan)

The U.S. Air Force mistakenly sent Taiwan electrical fuses involved with triggering nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missles, the Pentagon just announced.

Seven months ago, the Air Force accidentally flew nuclear-armed cruise missiles across the United States.

As Britney Spears would put it: Oops, they did it again.

JAMAL ARURI/AFP/Getty Images

What's one of the latest products to be outsourced to China? The kaffiyeh, the black-and-white checkered scarf popularized as a symbol of Palestinian identity and unity by late leader Yasir Arafat. In the last eight years, two thirds of Hebron's textile factories have shut down, in part due to cheap imports from the Middle Kingdom. Even Arafat's Fatah party now gets some of its kaffiyehs from China.

Last month, pro-Palestinians, who hope Jerusalem will be the capital of a future Palestinian state, were angered when the board game Monopoly listed "Jerusalem, Israel," as a candidate city for its world edition. Recently, though, the controversy went the other way around at Facebook, the social-networking site.

Jewish settlers living in the occupied West Bank, in places such as Maale Adumin and Ariel, were angered when Facebook automatically listed their hometowns as being located in Palestine. Facebook heard their outcry, however, and now residents in Israeli West Bank settlements can choose between with Israel and Palestine.

Of course, opposing Facebook groups are now looking for members. The group "ITS [sic] NOT 'PALESTINE'- IT'S 'ISRAEL'" has nearly 14,000 members, while the group "If Palestine is removed from Facebook... Im [sic] closing my account." has around 4,600 members.

It all goes to show that on the Web, nobody has a monopoly on outrage.

Graeme Robertson/Getty Images

Forget Paris and Niagara Falls. The next hot honeymoon spot just might be Anbar province. Habbaniyah Tourist Village, built in 1979 on the shores of Lake Habbaniyah near Fallujah in Iraq's Anbar province, used to be a top wedding and honeymoon destination. In the 1980s, it even won an award for best Middle Eastern tourist resort. Many Iraqis have sweet memories of the place.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, though, Anbar province found itself engulfed with a Sunni insurgency. The chalets of Habbaniyah Tourist Village filled with refugees, not lovers. Verdant gardens turned into scrub.

The resort could be making a comeback, however. Violence in Anbar has decreased since local leaders started turning against al Qaeda and after more U.S. troops arrived on the scene last year. U.S. officials are trying to rehabilitate Habbaniyah Tourist Village, as a conference center initially, at a cost of $80 million. So far, though, the cash hasn't been rolling in. The resort's manager, quoted by Reuters, made the following plea at a council meeting in Fallujah:

Iraq is a country for tourism. It has pilgrimage sites, lakes, forests, mountains and history. It must take advantage of this. If you ignore tourism, you cut half of Iraq's humanity.