The United States became the 23rd of 26 NATO countries to allow military service by openly gay people last week. An estimated 66,000 lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are serving in the US military, according to a recent study by UCLA’s Williams Institute. Many are still afraid to come out. I visited a gay military family to hear the story they are now able to tell.

A week ago, Luz Bautista, 30, and her fiancée Alejandra Schwartz, 24, both Navy petty officers, were celebrating the end of the U.S. ban on openly gay service members.

This week, they’re being forced to live apart.

Bautista headed to Illinois Monday, away from Schwartz and their daughter Destiny, 6, for a three year posting that could be extended.

“The emotional toll. You can’t even describe it. It has been tearing us apart for the last couple of months,” says Bautista.

While the repeal of the 18-year-old “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy marked a major advancement for gay rights, it doesn’t address many of the practical effects it has for gay troops, and exposes the challenges remaining for the military to accommodate couples.

Bautista, a petty officer 1st Class and Schwartz, petty officer 2nd class, who has served as an Arabic translator in Iraq, are good examples of the inequities that exist for gay service members.

Same-sex couples do not have the same spousal benefits or protection from being stationed separately that heterosexual married couples in the military have.

Coming out to her colleagues — and on national television — last week was one of Bautista’s proudest moments. While it ended an era of having to live in secrecy, it does little to change the situation she’s in with a committed partner who is also committed to a Navy career.

The timing of the change almost seems cruel in light of how difficult her life is getting. In addition to having to leave Schwartz, she’s pregnant with a second child.

“It’s going to be difficult for me,” says Bautista. “I’m going to be by myself for the first time in 12 years. … I’m scared.”

Even if the couple could travel to one of the few US states where gay marriage is legal, the marriage would not be acknowledged by the military or by the state of California. Under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the term “spouse” only refers to opposite-sex married couples.

“As a result, a service member in a same-sex relationship with another service member is not eligible for co-location consideration,” says Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith. “Gay, lesbian or bisexual service members in a committed same-sex relationship like their unmarried heterosexual counterparts can make individual hardship-based requests for accommodation in assignment.”

Bautista did make a hardship claim, but at the time she couldn’t reveal that she had a partner. Instead, she relied on the other struggles she faced: as a pregnant, single mom, caring for her own disabled mother and having to raise a child and pay a mortgage and bills on a house she owns in San Diego.

It was not hardship enough.

“Unfortunately I got orders right before the repeal happened,” says Bautista. “So I couldn’t say, I’m gay and I have a fiancée, can you guys help me out please? But I think that even if I had said it, it still wouldn’t have mattered because the rules are the rules. This marriage is not real to the Navy.”

Her family tells her she should leave the Navy. But she and both children would lose their health insurance, unable to be considered as Schwartz’s family dependents.

Six-year-old Destiny knows her mother is about to leave, and follows her everywhere. She has an infectious giggle and a wobbly front tooth. She reads in English and Spanish, and speaks a few words of Arabic that Schwartz has taught her.

“What am I going to do if I get out?” says Bautista. “I love the military. I want to keep serving. I want to help out this country. I want to still go on deployments, and I want to go back on a ship.”

If some changes don’t happen in the next three years, she and Schwartz, could even be deployed on a ship at the same time — away from their children.

“Her shore duty ends in 2013, and she goes to a ship,” Bautista said. “Because it’s a rotation – you go from shore to sea. I don’t get transferred till 2014 to a ship, so by that time, both of us are going to be on a ship, and we’re going to have two kids.”

“If we had spouse co-location, and the Navy recognized it legally, that wouldn’t happen. It’s one person on ship, and one person on shore because one person always has to take care of the kids. We’re not getting any of that because we’re not recognized as married.”

Bautista sees the next three years as a difficult test.

She and Schwartz plan to trade three-month stints with their baby. “I think it’s ridiculous to have to do that. But I’m thinking more of the bonding that has to be done. Alejandra’s never had a baby before, so she’s more excited about this baby than I am.”

Bautista, who works as a counselor, has no idea when it may be possible for them to live together as a family again.

“I think I’m doing a very good job in the military, helping out sailors. That’s my job; that’s what I do,” she said. “And I think it’s time that somebody helped me out, because I’ve been helping out everybody. So why can’t the favor be returned?”

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Holocaust survivor Betty Stein, 92, takes off her cardigan. She squares up to the table, bat in hand, deep in concentration. Her eyes dart rhythmically in time with the clack, clack of the ping pong ball.

At the next table, Eli Boyer, 91, sings a love song in Spanish as he plays. The retired accountant speaks four languages, and flits between Russian and English with his coach Elie Zainabudinova. As long as the ping pong ball ricochets back and forth, their absorption is total. Flashes of their former lives creep across their faces – laughter, determination, a mischievous grin.

Only when they sit down do their eyes give it away. The tell-tale existential terror of Alzheimer’s. The confusion. The forgetting of who they are.

Stein and Boyer are among one hundred participants in a ping pong therapy program for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia at the Arthur Gilbert Table Tennis Center in Los Angeles.

Founder Mikhail Zaretsky says the sport does not cure, or even slow down the disease, but helps the 100 participants by raising their heart rate and the blood flow to their brains, and exercising them mentally as well as physically. He says it helps their depression, improves their balance, and makes them more alert.

Alzheimer’s erases memories and robs the brain of its ability to learn. A 1997 Japanese study touted the benefits of table tennis for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

Betty has been playing ping pong weekly for almost a year now. When she arrived she could barely keep a rally going for three or four strokes; now she’s hitting 20 or 30, says Zaretsky. “After she started playing ping pong, she was telling her caregiver stories that she hadn’t ever told before,” he says. “She told her more details on how she survived the Holocaust – how she had to hide for a few days behind a stove.”

“This was amazing, and some doctors suggested maybe she was depressed, and when she started playing ping pong maybe the depression went away a little bit. We don’t know exactly.”

Zaretsky also takes the program to seven nursing homes in the Los Angeles area. He hopes to use the program as part of a U.S. study on the benefits of table tennis for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

Boyer’s wife Michele, who has been married to him for 50 years, noticed his dementia starting five years ago. “On the days he plays he’s more alert, he’s happier, he walks faster and his comprehension is a little more in memory for that day. It’s a little surprising, but you can really see it. And it gives him a sense of pride in himself.”

“I’m holding it right, I’m holding it right, that’s what I’m going to do,” chants Boyer repeatedly to the rhythm of the ping pong ball. “You’re gripping the racquet like the Chinese,” reassures his coach. “Chinese players do that.”

She asks him to sing a song in Russian. Boyer breaks into “Besame Mucho,” a Spanish love song. In his clear voice the lyrics continue to roll as he keeps the ball in play to a different beat.

No tight or revealing clothing, no blue jeans, no blue shirts, no orange clothing, no jewelry, no cell phones.

For the first time, I thought of the possible mental condition of the people I was visiting, and how little some of them would have to lose.

I had been in a car crash (not serious) the day before. I wasn’t expecting anything bad to happen to me inside the prison. But imagined that if it did it would be much the same kind of sudden violence coming out of nowhere.

I realized all my trousers that weren’t jeans were dressy. I thought of the absurdity of buying new clothes to visit a prison, and found a pair of (tight) brown corduroys. I dug in my boyfriend’s wardrobe and found an old black t-shirt that was long and baggy on me.

I asked him how I looked. He said brown and black was a bad color combination, but that I looked suitably dressed for the reception area for new prisoners.

I was visiting the California Institution for Men state prison in Chino, with Reuters television cameraman Krystian Orlinski and producer Dave Adhicary.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just ordered California to release more than 30,000 inmates over the next two years or take other steps to ease overcrowding in its prisons to prevent “needless suffering and death.” California’s 33 adult prisons were designed to hold about 80,000 inmates and now have about 145,000.

The U.S. has more than 2 million people in state and local prisons. It has long had the highest incarceration rate in the world.

The prison houses 5,982 inmates on a patch of arid farmland east of Los Angeles. As we stepped out into the parking lot we saw what looked like barracks behind a triple layer electric fence, topped with razor wire.

A crackle of machine gun fire broke the silence. Then another. I looked at Krystian and raised an eyebrow. “Yes those were automatic weapons,” he answered.

We met the press officer, who told us there was a firing range inside the prison, so the officers could stay sharp. He began our tour.

First stop was the sensitive-needs exercise yard. Our guide explained that this was where they kept sex offenders, gang members who owed money, and other inmates who wouldn’t be safe living with other prisoners.

Most were walking slowly around the perimeter fence. Some waited in line to use the parallel bars in the center. One sunbathed on a bench.

I saw a prisoner with red hair and tattoos of Celtic knot patterns and shamrocks. The harsh midday sun beat down on his pale skin. I wondered why he didn’t wear a t-shirt. I thought of how much I relied on sun block, sunglasses and a hat, living in California. I noted that I’d never seen so many people with multiple tattoos in one place.

I shot the inmates walking with a 70-200mm. I manually focused to compensate for the many layers of mesh fence. Some made gang signs, some smiled, some glared, some shouted out questions about who I was working for.

A rhythmic shouting cadence came from a building next to the exercise yard.

Our guide explained that gang members in jail viewed themselves as soldiers. They trained to be ready to fight at any time – with prison officers, other prisoners, upon their eventual release.

Even when they weren’t allowed out to exercise, they would work out together in their cells. One guy would shout through his cell bars, out to the echoing hallways, to set the pace as the other inmates would do pushups in their tiny cells.

The prison officers all looked as if they were onto that game, and had built their upper body strength to match the prisoners pound for pound.

Prisoners sitting in small cages were our first sight as we walked inside. They are kept in the cages while waiting for medical or counseling appointments, or for permanent housing. A couple of women walked down the corridor, wearing bulletproof vests.

First we visited a two-person cell, where prisoners are typically housed.

Anthony Turner, 46, showed us around the tiny living quarters he shares with Daniel King, 25. When they both lie down in their bunk beds there is barely an inch of vertical space between them. A toilet and small basin are next to the beds. The only possessions in the cell were a few basic toiletries, some greetings cards, a photo of a pregnant woman, and a poignant handmade card from a child.

“We miss you. xoxoxxoo. p.s. come visit soon!” it said, next to a drawing of a king.

Turner said he was given a 25 years to life sentence under the three strikes law. He is unlikely to be visiting anyone soon.

We visit a recreation room, and then a huge gymnasium, which are being used to house prisoners, due to the overcrowding.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the gym, I imagined walking in here as a new prisoner and taking in the 202 people I would be spending years in this room with. They were a scary-looking bunch.

A heavy-set guy with tattoos all over his body and neck started shouting that he didn’t want to be on camera.

We walked up the stairs onto the platform where a female prison officer was sitting. I wondered how she could deal with working every day in this room full of aggressive men.

Another guard had the whole room in his gun sight through a window in the top left corner of the room.

One of the prison officers accompanying us said he had been spat at, bitten, and stabbed during the time he had worked there. Another remarked that the sleeping quarters in the gym were not much different from the ones he had experienced in the U.S. Navy.

There are no rehabilitation programs inside the prison, and inmates have nothing constructive to do all day except for the brief periods when they can go outside to work out.

Some were sleeping, some reading, some playing cards or dice, one group was playing a dungeons and dragons game, one guy was sketching tattoo designs, another crowd was watching music videos on a small television. Most were wandering around or chatting.

I photographed inmates on the right side of the room, while checking out the belligerent prisoner with my left eye. He was staring at me.

Krystian and Dave started filming a group of prisoners, and very quickly the guy who didn’t want to be filmed, was in front and center of the camera.

I walked down and started photographing them with a wide angle lens. A lot of them were staring into the camera and all trying to simultaneously start conversations with me.

I decided I wanted to walk among the beds to take more natural looking photos. I asked a guard to follow me to watch my back, and he stood right behind me every time I stopped walking, aware of the remote possibility that I could be grabbed as a hostage. We moved fast, and before long were called back by the press officer.

On the drive home, I asked about the prison tattoos and Krystian talked about how prisoners who didn’t join gangs for protection were vulnerable to being raped in the bathroom at the back of the gym.

I recalled the inmates’ faces I’d seen with their varying degrees of resignation or defiance.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I had to go into a place like that,” said Krystian. “No-one ever really knows until they’re in that situation.”

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Patooni Muhanna, who works at a women’s shelter in Kabul, speaks about women’s rights since the fall of the Taliban. Patooni says that despite some positive changes, domestic violence and self-immolation are still concerns.

According to a 2006 report by the UK-based NGO ‘Womankind,’ anywhere between sixty and eighty percent of marriages in Afghanistan are forced, 57 percent of brides are under the age of 16, and 87 percent complain of domestic violence.  Afghan women suffer from the lowest literacy rate in the world, at 13 percent.

Photos and video:  Lucy Nicholson

Producer:  Jill Kitchener
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Lucy flying with Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah to a campaign rally in Samangan province.  Photo: Tyler Hicks

In Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan on Thursday, the traveling press piled into the back of pick-up trucks following Abdullah Abdullah, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s main rival, from the airport to the Shrine of Hazrat Ali.

Supporters race to keep up with Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s convoy as he arrives to give a campaign speech at the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Around 50,000 supporters jostled between the cars in the convoy, so each truck would accelerate, then slam on the brakes.  Abdullah supporters were grasping the back of the truck and trying to climb up.  It was really challenging to stay standing to take photos without being launched into the crowd every time we went from 30-0 mph in 3 seconds.

Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah is mobbed by supporters as he arrives to give a campaign speech at the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

It was 104 degrees Fahrenheit at the shrine, and all the sweaty media members got separated as we fought our way through the throng.  People were horribly packed and a few ended up in hospital with injuries and heatstroke.  It was brutal fighting my way through the crowd.  Even hard to breathe at one point.  The crowd was all men so I was fighting off wayward hands.  The lens hood broke off one of my lenses and the filter on the front of the lens smashed.

Campaign workers attempt to cool off Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah with water before he gives his campaign speech at the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

After Abdullah’s speech, the whole crowd was trying to fight its way back into the mosque.  The security guards forced the door shut against the crush.  I kept knocking to be let in and they eventually opened the door, but the force of the crowd propelled me backwards onto the floor of the mosque.  I was sweating profusely and breathing fast, so a man poured water on my head, soaking all my camera equipment.

Lunch, as always in hospitable Afghanistan, was a beautiful contrast.  Time slowed down as we drank tea from delicate china cups in an anteroom at the governor’s mansion with spinning chandeliers.  Upstairs we entered a banquet hall and were served at least six different meat dishes, rice, naan, okra, soup and watermelon.  Bollywood music videos, and later Abdullah’s speech played on the flat screen television next to Karzai’s portrait.

Then came the rally car drive back to the airport with all the young drivers in the convoy racing each other.  Guys with Kalashnikovs hung out of the back of many of the pick-up trucks and the whole convoy drove at high speed.  They overtook on roundabouts, sounded police sirens, shouted at each other, and screeched tires on every turn, slamming on the brakes for cyclists and donkeys.

Cars tend to barrel towards you on both sides of the road in Afghanistan.  Drivers in both directions abuse their horns until one driver loses his nerve and swerves away from the impact.  We joked about dying, but laughed most of the way because it was just such a relief to not be at the mosque.

The view home flying over the Hindu Kush is a beautiful distraction from the noise, fumes, and claustrophobic heat of the Soviet-era MI-17 “flying truck” helicopters and troop planes the candidates use on the campaign trail.

The remote photo I took of the Olympic flame from the roof of the Bird’s Nest stadium during the opening ceremony ended up on the cover of Time Asia this week.  I had thought the photo was a failure because the torch bearer lit the cauldron with a long fuse, so he ended up being cropped out of my remote camera frame. 

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Reuters multimedia project Route to Recovery: A trip through the epicenters of the American recession

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4.30am and traffic is actually moving at the busiest freeway junction in the U.S. If only I could drive everywhere at this time.

Photographer Mike Blake has been up all night waiting to hear whether he will have to evacuate from his San Diego home with his wife and son. Luckily the wind has changed direction and the expected firestorm didn’t make its way to the coast.

Californian homes burn fast.

Not like brick or stone houses. A couple of hours after the first spark, all that remains is a pile of shredded paper. The powdery landscape is broken up by satellite dishes, burnt-out car chassis, metal-framed garden furniture and the odd piece of pottery. An acrid chemical smell lingers for days.

Survivors often use the word “rage” to describe the fire blown through their neighborhoods by 100+ mph winds. It cruelly levels some people’s homes while leaving their neighbors’ untouched.

I arrive in San Diego and call our fire photography guru, Reuters freelancer Fred Greaves. I’ve been listening to local AM radio for the last couple of hours and have called the San Diego fire service command center. While there are countless home evacuations and miles of brush burning, there are also no recent reports of homes on fire. I ask Fred’s advice on where to go. “Follow the black smoke,” he says.

Greaves is close to the Mexican border, I am in the east, Mario in the west, and Mike is covering the evacuation centers.

I can’t see any black smoke through the thick grey smoke. Just a beautiful deep red sun rising.

Immediate mandatory evacuations have been ordered in a rural area out east, so I head that way. I cross a police roadblock with my press pass and my car is the only one driving east as I pass miles of traffic queuing to evacuate in the other direction. The wind pounds my car and I finally see black smoke on an Indian reservation in the distance.

I drive through an eerie deserted landscape of burnt-out cars and buildings. A few people are running. An empty casino is untouched. I see a burning home in the distance, so I stop the car. The wind is swirling, throwing sparks from the flames onto the trees in every direction. I run through a field towards the intense heat, shoot 4 frames with my camera then run back to the car. There are no firefighters in sight.

Further down the road a woman is watching her neighbor’s trailer home burn to the ground as her husband sprays their yard with a garden hose.

Next stop is an affluent area in the hills further west. There is a fire truck in every other driveway. I head toward a plume of black smoke where I find firefighters trying to put out a fire in a private vineyard while pushing the flames away from homes.

When I first began to shoot fires in California, Fred Greaves took me to be outfitted in a firefighter suit and helmet with an emergency fire shelter, and told me to wear jeans and cotton clothes underneath and leather shoes.

The shelter is a reflective sheet which you are supposed to whip out and crouch underneath if fast-moving fire heads your way. A photographer from USA Today told me he had to use his once and ended up in the burns unit. He had to ask his wife to peel crispy skin from his back every night for weeks. “That’s love,” he told me.

All the stores are closed, so I sit outside a gas station in my yellow outfit to transmit photos. My face is smudged with soot, and my hair is matted. A woman rests her hand on my shoulder, tells me “God Bless,” and offers me a sandwich. I tell her thanks, but I’m not a firefighter. “You’re working hard out there though,” she says, but retracts my sandwich. It looks so good.

Prisoners are used a lot for fighting wildfires in California. They stand out in their orange suits. The women work together and most of them chain-smoke as they do the physically exhausting job of clearing brush for a dollar an hour. I once came across a group of male prisoners attacking bushes on a hillside with chainsaws as they tried to prevent a flare-up.

As the sun sets, I see some National Guard troops protecting an evacuated neighborhood from looters. A soldier, who told me he was glad to be home from Iraq, was politely asking residents to park their cars and stand in line.

The area was heavily hit by the fire and there are hundreds of people lining up. I ask a cop what is going on and he says they are escorting people to their homes to collect medication. I asked him if they needed to show a prescription, but he is taking the humane approach. He tells me that as long as people tell him they are going to get medicine, he will let everyone be escorted to see their home.

Most people do not mind being photographed – some are indifferent, some excited to be in print.

One woman who has lost her home starts screaming at a local newspaper photographer taking her picture with a long lens. He apologizes again and again but she continues her tirade. I apologize too, even though I wasn’t photographing her, and she walks away. He seems upset, so I tell him he wasn’t doing anything wrong, that most people appreciate us being there to tell their story. I also tell him he probably made her feel better, by allowing her to vent at someone, even though I’m not sure if this is true.

350 miles after the beginning of the day, I scrub the soot out of my ears, wash my hair, wrap it in a towel and fall asleep before I remember to take the towel off.

Mike and I are flying to Denver to shoot World Series baseball this weekend. I’m not normally excited about high altitude (1 mile above sea level) and temperatures just above freezing, but it will be good to breathe again.