By Kate Snow, Deirdre Cohen, Sarah Koch, Nina Tyler
Rock Center

For Stephan Perez, attending the prestigious Columbia University was more than just a dream; it was a goal he set his sights on when he was only 13 years old and a goal he willed himself to achieve.

“I enrolled into all A.P. and honors classes.  And that was my vision.  I had only one goal.  I woke up in the morning, it was Columbia.  I went to sleep at night and it was Columbia,” said Perez in an interview set to air Thursday at 10pm/9c on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

The Georgia-bred teenager worked tirelessly over the next few years and even stopped playing sports in order to focus all of his attention on his academics.  His hard work finally paid off when he learned not only had he been accepted to his dream school, he received a Gates Millennium Scholarship that would pay for his tuition expenses.

But his inspirational rise to the top would end in a disastrous fall.  It’s a cautionary tale for driven students and their parents.

Perez entered Columbia and before long began to feel overwhelmed by the pace and workload. But just as he started to adjust, Perez suffered a big emotional blow. His grandmother died. One night after his grandmother’s funeral he was in the library with a friend, studying for midterms and struggling to concentrate.

“I tell him, you know, ‘I can't concentrate.  Like, I just can't do it.’  He said, ‘This is what you need’ and pulls out this pill,” Perez said.

By Ian Williams
NBC News Correspondent

One of the Sumatran orangutan’s richest habitats, an area of swampland containing the highest density of the red apes on the planet, is being illegally slashed and burned by palm oil companies to make way for palm oil plantations.

“If we can't stop them here, then there really is no hope,” said Ian Singleton as we stood on the edge of what had once been pristine forest, home to hundreds of orangutans, but now reduced to a charred wilderness as far as the eye could see. As he spoke we could hear the distant sound of a chain saw.

Singleton runs the Sumatra Orangutan Conservation Programme, an organization at the forefront of a battle to save what remains of the forest and the apes.

There are fewer than 7,000 of the critically endangered Sumatran orangutans left in the wild, according to a 2008 survey completed by Singleton and other scientists. The largest number live in a vast area of swampland and lowland forest close to the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

“Orangutan paradise,” Singleton calls the area – but it’s a paradise under threat.

Land cleared, drained and burned in the Tripa Peat Swamp Forest.

The key battleground for Singleton is the Tripa Peat Swamp Forest, much of which has already been converted to palm oil plantations. The relentless march of the palm oil business is the biggest threat facing the orangutans.

A cheap, edible oil, palm oil is found in almost half of all packaged supermarket products, from instant noodles, to cookies to ice cream, and Indonesia is the world's biggest supplier.

“Look, look,” said Singleton, handing me a pair of field glasses. In the distance a large male orangutan moved gracefully across the canopy of trees. We would soon see three more.

Rock Center

Three powerful words: "Made in Italy." They conjure up images of the great Italian designers: Dolce & Gabana, Prada, Valentino.
 
And as a brand, "Made in Italy" doesn't come cheap.
 
Customers pay 10, 20, or even 100 times more for a handbag or dress that's made in Italy, compared to one made in China.  "Made in Italy" fashion and design is a $30 billion annual export business.

Buyers expect luxury cloth produced on the best machines, monitored by fussy Italians, who know their stuff. But there is another side to products branded "Made in Italy."

Hidden Planet Week

Richard Engel heads to a land that time forgot. Raja Ampat, the four main islands off the West Papuan mainland in Indonesia surrounded by 1,500 smaller islands, spans 10 million acres of land and sea that explode with brilliant green forests and vibrant blue waters.

NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel takes a dive into these waters, known to many as an underwater Eden, that have the most biodiversity on the planet.

Click here for the entire Rock Center Hidden Planet series.

By Anna Schecter
Rock Center

The Chinese are playing dirty in the international spy game, according to current and former intelligence officials at the highest levels of government. 

“This is stealing American wealth.  It's stealing American jobs.  It's stealing American competitive advantage,” General Michael Hayden, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, said in an interview with NBC News.

Hayden’s comment was echoed by a House Intelligence Committee report released Monday warning that two Chinese telecommunications companies, Huawei and ZTE, could be funneling sensitive information back to Beijing, and cautioned American carriers to avoid doing business with them.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., told NBC News that the Chinese have targeted every sector of the American economy.

“Everything you can possibly imagine we have seen the Chinese make a concerted effort to steal that information and use it for their own economic advantage,” he said.

That includes blueprints for the next generation of auto parts, formulas for pesticides and pharmaceuticals, and other information that makes American companies competitive in the global marketplace.

Though the United States limits its espionage to national security interests, intelligence officials said, China has launched a well-organized campaign to steal American corporate secrets via the Internet.

“I know states steal secrets. Our states steal secrets. And we're actually pretty good at it.  But we self-limit.  We steal things that are valuable and useful for your security, for your liberty and for your safety,” Hayden said.

Hidden Planet Week

NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel travels to Jerusalem to visit the most consecrated and contested religious landmark, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Engel also takes cameras inside the Tomb of Christ's Burial.

Built by the mother of Emperor Constantine in 330 A.D., the Church of the Holy Sepulchre commemorates both the Hill of Crucifixion and the Tomb of Christ’s Burial. The church has historically been controlled by different denominations within the Christian faith including Catholics, Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Coptic and Ethiopian, each claiming ownership to part.

Muslim families have held on tightly to the key that opens the main door since 1187 and have traditionally sat in the entrance itself. While the doors are now open, the families still manage the church and mediate between the different denominations that lay claim to this holiest of sites.

Click here for the entire Rock Center Hidden Planet series.

Hidden Planet Week

In this installment of Rock Center's Hidden Planet series, originally published in February, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel travels to Mali, on the edge of the Sahara desert, to discover the city of Timbuktu.

In an unexpected departure from his usual beat of war-torn territories and areas of conflict, each month Engel sets off to find the most awe-inspiring, rarely seen locations around the globe.

Click here to view the entire Hidden Planet series.

Hidden Planet Week

Less than 20 miles south of modern-day Cairo lies the Saqqara plateau, Egypt's oldest pyramid complex.  In this installment of Hidden Planet, originally posted on Rock Center's iPad app in January, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel travels to Egypt, where he journeys through a network of underground tunnels beneath the Step Pyramid of Djoser.

In part two of this Hidden Planet series, Engel heads down into the hidden chambers and passageways of one of Egypt's most famous pyramids, the Pyramid of Giza, revealing secrets about the largest pyramid of the Giza Necropolis and the pharaoh it was constructed for.

The oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the pyramid's construction began in 2589 B.C., shortly after the 20-year-old Pharaoh Cheops ascended to the throne. Cheops' burial place turned out to be the biggest one in history.

Hidden Planet Week

In this installment of Rock Center's Hidden Planet series, originally released in February, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel travels to Tanzania, a land where mankind is believed to have begun.

Engel journeys through the land's volcanoes and valleys, visiting the Maasai and Hadza tribes.  The Maasai tribe lives at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  They live off the land and are one of a 120 tribes in the region. 

The Hadza tribe lives just 25 miles from where man's first footsteps were discovered.  Researchers believe the Hadza have lived in the region for 15,000 years, maintaining a hunter gatherer existence.

In an unexpected departure from his usual beat of war-torn territories and areas of conflict, each month Engel’s Hidden Planet sets off on journeys of discovery to find the most awe-inspiring, rarely seen locations around the globe. From the Lost City of Timbuktu to the tunnels beneath the Giza Pyramids, and everywhere in-between, this is a side of Engel - and the world - that viewers have never seen before.

The Hidden Planet series debuted earlier this month on the iPad app for Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Rock Center

Louis Loftus, the Army veteran whose struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was chronicled on Rock Center, said that he repaired his fractured relationship with his girlfriend by doing the same thing that made her fall in love with him while they were separated by war: writing love letters.

When Loftus returned from Afghanistan, his struggle with PTSD caused his relationship with Deidra Lopez, the mother of his son, to crumble.  While broken up, Lopez suggested that they start writing to one another again.

"I told him, emotions can be written down a lot better than being said sometimes," Lopez said.  "And it was easier to write it than to tell him to his face.  You know, it kind of eased me into it and eased him into doing the same thing."

Slowly, they began to mend their relationship.

"We've always loved each other," Loftus said. "We've taken a few small breaks, you know, but, we're really trying hard to work on it, you know, make things work."

Click here to watch Richard Engel's full report on Sgt. Loftus.