The front page of Wednesday's "Iran News" carries a picture of a smiling President Ahmadinejad with two young children, while an article alongside claims Iran is close to industrial-scale enrichment of uranium, and there'll be no going back. The "Tehran Times" has Iran ready to strike the U.S. "anywhere" if attacked. Pretty ominous stuff.

But turn a few pages and there's a rather different take on the Great Satan - a rundown on the Oscars with a large photograph of a smiling Al Gore, Oscar in hand. There's also a piece about David Beckham's likely impact on U.S. soccer, together with an interview with the former captain of the Iranian national team, who is now coaching a team in Los Angeles, and paints a glowing picture of his time in the States. "I see the potential and talent here," he says.

It's a rather intriguing picture, as indeed it has been since I stepped off the aging Mahan Air Airbus at Imam Khomeini International Airport early this morning after the eight-hour flight from Bangkok.

Still looking for more for the 'little man'
My taxi driver for the 90-minute ride into Tehran sported the regulation beard, but soon announced that in his view Ahmadinejad is a "sheep"-- not regarded here as the brightest of animals. We passed the massive Imam Khomeini mosque, where the late founder of the Islamic Republic is entombed, still floodlit at two o'clock in the morning.

"If Khomeini knew how much has been wasted on that place, he'd turn in his grave," announced my driver, who was clearly not impressed with Iran's new president, who was elected on a populist platform of more widely distributing Iran's oil money and bringing more financial relief to the "little man."

My driver regarded himself as one of those men, and wasn't impressed with the results. He was skeptical of all the anti-American rhetoric that Ahmadinejad has been dishing out in recent days on a tour of northern Iran.

TODAY VIDEO:  Iranians to attend Iraq summit Iranian officials cautiously agree to attend the Baghdad-organized conference of Iraq's neighbors on March 10 that the U.S. plans to attend. NBC News' Ian Williams reports from Tehran

I also learned that the Imam's mosque has become a late-night rendezvous for young men and women hoping to meet, talk and exchange telephone numbers, never an easy task in the Islamic Republic. The mosque may appear an odd place to do that, but the youngsters reckon it's relatively safe from the prying eyes of the religious police.

My hotel, the Esteghlal (Independence) used to be the Hilton, though the big Western chains long ago abandoned Tehran. On arrival, my taxi driver cracked a joke, in Farsi, about Ahmadinejad, which made the doorman chuckle -- clearly another of those "little men."

The hotel looks over the snow-capped mountains to the north of the city. It's a dramatic sight at first light, before Tehran's notorious smog descends. Al Gore might have a thing or two to say about that, and if today's newspapers are anything to go by, his words might well attract as much interest among the young and the "little men" as the fiery rhetoric from Ahmadinejad.

For all the public flogging and private government meetings about the problem of content piracy in China, perhaps the best illustration of the problem can be measured by the remarks of another American I heard at a lunch here in Beijing.

The statement went something like "Piracy is terrible; so terrible that I plan on limiting my DVD purchases to only 100 this year."

The remark was followed by peels of laughter.

Why all the chuckling? Because in China, pirated DVD's sell for around $1.50 – if even that much – and are not bought furtively out of the back of some guy's trunk. They are sold in plain sight everywhere: in expatriate-oriented video stores and at Western supermarkets, but mostly to countless Chinese who find it's an easy way to see big-budget movies at a low-budget price.

For that matter, it's sometimes the only way to see Hollywood-type movies in any sort of timely fashion since Chinese officials limit the number of American and European films which screen here yearly.

Illegal, but how's the picture? 
Are the pirated DVD's of decent quality? Depends.

Long time ex-pats knowledgeable in the art of buying pirated DVDs warn newcomers never to buy disks of movies still in U.S. theaters from the guys on the street in front of Beijing tourist stores.

Those movies tend to be nothing more than grainy copies shot by someone in a movie projection booth with a camcorder. It's hard to make out what's even on the screen, but you can clearly see people in the audience standing up and making their way for snacks and bathroom breaks.

Another aspect of pirated DVDs which often produces a chuckle is the labeling. Often it is painfully translated. Or it may be in perfect Chinese - which in some cases is worse. Or, in an effort to hype the movie and make the DVD packaging look authentic, it's not uncommon to see the pirates list a quote from a movie critic that is negative; heralding something like, "That's two hours of my life I will never get back."

Problem is: copies usually are good
The truth is, though, that the majority of the DVDs are good copies – and that's why U.S. entertainment companies aren't laughing. Movie piracy is just one aspect of intellectual property rights theft that is a huge concern for American companies doing business with China.

Carlos Gutierrez, the U.S. Commerce Secretary in Beijing, told me in a recent interview that intellectual property right theft worldwide costs U.S. business as much as $250 billion in lost sales annually.  

For its part, China has stepped up efforts to crack down on pirates. But many U.S. company executives fear that the pirates stay one step ahead – and have come up with a strategy to fight back: Good old price cuts.

If you can't beat them, join 'em
For instance, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment announced in November that they entered into a partnership with the largest video distributor in China.  

Knowing that relatively few can afford to pay, or are willing to pay, $15 for a movie, Fox plans to sell its movies on DVDs for as little $2.25 - $3.75 – still more than double the going rate which can be $1 or less.

The move by Fox comes on the heels of similar efforts announced by Warner Bros. last year.

Ultimately, though, the biggest competition for Fox and other Western entertainment companies may be the lightning speed that pirated copies of movies and TV show can hit the market place.   

At the press conference where Fox Home Entertainment was announcing its new China rollout, a video store just three blocks away already had illegal copies from the current season of the Fox hit show "24" on the shelf.

And the boxed set for the whole of the just-finished fifth season? About $8 bucks.

Despite U.S. assertions that the most lethal roadside bombs in Iraq are being imported from Iran, the U.S. military over the past year has increasingly found them being both assembled and manufactured in Iraq, officials tell NBC News.

At a briefing in Baghdad this month, U.S. officials publicly revealed for the first time what they called evidence that Iran was manufacturing explosively formed penetrators --EFPs -- a type of roadside bomb which has emerged as the biggest danger to U.S. troops here.

An intelligence analyst and explosives expert said they were being manufactured in machine shops in Iran and smuggled across the border to extremist Shiite groups. They were believed to be manufactured only in Iran, the analyst said.

This week, in the first statement of the kind, the coalition said Iraqi and U.S. forces had arrested two insurgents in an EFP workshop in a raid near Hilla south of Baghdad on February 17.

"The two were in the process of assembling EFPs," the military said.

Lt Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of ground forces in Iraq, told NBC News this week that while the technology had initially come from Iran, it had since migrated.

"They initially started to come from Iran," said Odierno in an interview. "I think now we see some of the technologies -- some of the training -- being imported from Iran and probably being constructed here."

"I can't tell you they're exclusively coming from Iran," he said. "I will tell you that all the things, the indicators, that we have here [are] that the materials, the training and even a lot of the funding for the insurgency, for these types of technologies, are in fact coming from or being supported by the Quds force or other people from Iran."  

EFP attacks on the rise
The Quds (Jerusalem) Force is an elite element of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. American officials have given conflicted accounts as to whether they believe they are acting on direct orders from Iranian leaders in the manufacture and supply of EFPs used to attack American troops here.

The U.S. military for the first time this month revealed that at least 170 U.S. troops had been killed and more than 620 wounded in EFP attacks since they saw the first one in 2004. They say EFP attacks -- which routinely kill three or four soldiers at a time -- have increased dramatically over the past year.

The distinctive feature of the bomb is a concave metal cap, usually copper. When the bomb is detonated the metal turns inward into a high-velocity ball of molten metal that can cut through a tank, experts say.

Officials say the EFPs are being machine-tooled in Iran and then smuggled across the border usually in component form. Some senior U.S. military officials, however, say although it has not been previously announced, U.S. forces have been finding an increasing number of the advanced roadside bombs being not just assembled but manufactured in machine shops here. "It (the impact) isn't as clean but they are almost as effective," one official said.

Other officials said they believed the Iraqi-made EFPs were considerably less lethal than the precision-tooled shaped charges smuggled from Iran but still a significant threat.

Iraqi officials have closed several of the border crossings with Iran to try to cut down on weapons smuggling across the border.

The U.S. military says most of the weapons are entering illegally through the official border crossings, which they say are understaffed and riddled with corruption. Smugglers use the official entry points because large parts of the border with Iran are riddled with land mines from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, officials say.

"What's your name? What's your father's name?" asked the manager of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Friendship Bus at the dusty bus station in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province.

He quickly wrote down the names and paternal names of more than 100 passengers all trying to travel to Jalalabad, Afghanistan on two separate buses on Feb. 13. We were surprised that we didn't need to show our passports or any travel documents, but since we had valid visas, we produced them. All that was required was to pay 250 Pakistani rupees, or $4.00 each, to board.

On the bus were many of our fellow Pashtun tribesmen. No one was worried traveling across the border without travel documents. No one seemed to care.

"I make this trip every Thursday," said an old man with a white beard. "I visit my relatives; no one ever disturbs me, why should they?" he asked us.

We had to agree.

To read the rest of the blog, click here: $4 for a one-way trip to Afghanistan.

The City of Lights has a problem. It can't decide what kind of world capital it wants to be and it may be gradually losing its soul in an effort to preserve it.

I have been living in London for more than three years and a few weeks ago, I went back to what's essentially my hometown to visit friends and family as I do on a regular basis. Thanks to the Eurostar, it takes about as much time to go to Paris by high-speed train as it does to go across London by tube.

Every time I step out of the Gare du Nord it strikes me again just how much Paris is a magnificent city that boasts incomparable assets. Its reputation as a tourist mecca is unsurpassed.

Landing in the French capital is like a dream come true for millions around the world. Culture is everywhere and the city presents an exceptional mix of atmosphere and history, architecture and "joie de vivre," romance and art. Not surprisingly, France in 2006 was again the number one destination for tourists worldwide.

That's great news for the nation's coffers. The $45.5 billion spent in France represents a vital boost for the national economy and provides jobs for hundred of thousands. Rude waiters and obnoxious taxi drivers did not succeed in deterring 78 million visitors from exploring the country. And most of them came to (or traveled through) Paris.

 And yet, for a world capital, there's something missing. There is no buzz.

Something missing
Unlike cities like London, New York or Barcelona, it sometimes feels provincial, sleepy.

Over dinner, Parisian friends confirmed that they too feel the capital is gradually turning into a gigantic open-air museum. And although some in the "Ville des Lumières" have numerous reasons to be proud of where they live, more and more Parisians resent what's happening to their city. People don't live in museums.

We understand that the local authorities are eager to preserve the splendor of Paris, they'll tell you. But when their determination is compounded with the traditional French illnesses -- layers of bureaucracy, strict and inadequate business rules, and hefty taxes to name a few -- it reinforces the feeling that nothing here can ever change.

Arguably, some of the issues are purely economic and not specific to the French capital. Any big city in the world has to deal with property prices pushing lower-income families away from the center, car pollution, environmental challenges, meeting public transportation needs and the ensuring security of its inhabitants.

But Mayor Bertrand Delanoé is accused of turning the French capital into a "sacred" city where stringent regulations prevent a natural evolution of the city.

Residents associations say Delanoé behaves like a dictator. His opponents claim he never exploited the best of Paris and failed to grab opportunities introduced by world growth and globalization.

As often in France, cultural issues seem particularly divisive.

A perfect illustration is the petition by art purists criticizing the Louvre's director Henri Loyrette and President Jacques Chirac for "prostituting" the museum's name.

Their mistake? They have signed a multimillion dollar deal to lend some of the museum's 300,000 paintings to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and are negotiating with the United Arab Emirates to create an extension of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi that would allow some of its paintings to be exhibited in a deal worth over $1 billion dollars.

This is symptomatic of the familiar struggle between the old and the new world. Traditionalists say this is a vulgar plan that's not worthy of "our cultural values."

"One can only be shocked by the commercial and promotional use of masterpieces of our national heritage," says the petition signed by 4,400 people so far, mostly civil servants working 35 hours a week and paid by French taxpayers. By lending out the masterpieces, the Louvre's director is copying the "disastrous" example of the Guggenheim Museum in New York "which boasts of being an entertainment business."

Another raging controversy: The Swedish clothing firm H&M had planned to spend $65 million for a megastore on the Champs Elysées, allegedly "the most beautiful avenue on earth." Last month, the Paris city government voted to ban the chain from the avenue saying it was already filled with too many clothing stores and at risk of becoming "banal."

"The avenue is progressively losing its exceptional and symbolic character," the report claimed. So let's ban it.

Such responses are leading to the capital's slow death, in the view of some "modern" Parisians.

Many of my friends believe Paris has long ceased to be an influential city where tomorrow's artistic trends are conceived and launched. It no longer represents an attractive option for creators who prefer the excitement and vibes of other capitals.

And how many Parisians are to be found among the more than 300,000 French now living in London?

Sure, the mayor and his team occasionally come up with a cultural gimmick --"Paris Plage," the summertime beach-on-the-Seine, or the all night music fest of the "Nuit Blanche"-- but this is nothing but the tree hiding the desert.

As the saying goes: "Paris sera toujours Paris"…Paris will always be Paris.

Perhaps THAT is precisely the French capital's problem.

Military officials here are fond of saying that progress can coexist with violence. I think it's true -- one doesn't necessarily cancel out the other. Nor does the experience of one of the many Iraqis grappling with almost unimaginable losses make the kind of sweeping political statement that some readers see lurking there.

My colleague, who wrote about his preoccupation with people dying, would be one of the last people to say that things were better under Saddam. He's just trying to get by, not make comparisons.

"Blood is still blood and human beings are still human beings," he says. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to the fear and uncertainty and overwhelming grief that characterizes life in Baghdad for a lot of people now.

I've always thought Americans were known for their compassion. So why is it that this young father, a quite typical Iraqi, isn't allowed to mourn all the people he knows who have died? If your friends or your neighbors were blown to pieces or shot in the street would people have quite this reaction?

We can debate the figures. We should debate the figures. We have no way of proving that hundreds of thousands have died apart from the daily death toll and the knowledge that deaths are officially under-reported here.

But we can't debate that by almost every measure this is the most complicated conflict the United States has entered.

I interviewed Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the commander of ground forces here, yesterday. I'd covered him when he was in charge of the 4th Infantry Division in 2003 and 2004 and asked him what U.S. forces understand now that they didn't then.

"First," he said, "We understand that it's much more complex than we expected. I think we understand the psychological aspects of this. You know that fundamentally the Iraqis, they are a different culture than we are, and I think we're a bit more attuned to that than we were initially."

So if a three-star general is telling us that Iraqis are complicated and it's really important to the U.S. to understand them, we might want to listen to some Iraqis. Like my colleague.

As I write this, there are mortars landing in a neighborhood not far from here. It's so normal that unless they're close enough to rattle the windows no one even comments on it. That doesn't mean that a lot of people in that neighborhood won't get up and go to work the next morning and even send their children to school. It also doesn't erase the fact that mortars fell there tonight.

I would assume that people who use the word "fraud" so easily aren't really open to other opinions but since a blog is by nature a bit more personal, let me tell you a bit about my credentials.

I've covered Iraq since 1991. I was the only Western reporter based here in the late 1990s. I have had the privilege of reporting from the front lines with soldiers and Marines in almost every major battle of this war - Najaf, Samarra, Fallujah, Tal Afar and a lot of them in between. I have been to those soldiers' homecoming ceremonies, their memorials, and met their families. Most of those men and women would laugh at the idea that any of them are ever "for war."

I can't imagine that anyone wouldn't want this to be better than it is right now. That doesn't mean that we can afford not to acknowledge the complexity of what it's like here. Until those people who want to believe we're making this all up come and walk in these streets -- or better yet -- talk to an Iraqi who lives here, we reporters are the closest thing you've got to being here.

The beauty, grandeur, complexity and savagery of Antarctica are almost impossible to convey in words and pictures.

It's hard to explain the awe-inspiring sight of a 20-ton humpback whale launching himself completely out of the water and disappearing out of sight again. Or to convey the feeling of being in the silent and surreal presence of icebergs that have been wandering aimlessly for centuries in Antarctic currents.

NBC News/ Kevin Burke

Neko Harbor in the Antarctic Peninsula.

Same goes for the sight of 100,000 King penguins and their chicks congregating on a beach the size of two football fields. Or trying to verbalize what it's like seeing looming glaciers teetering precariously on the edge of collapse and destruction. Or the sight of a hungry leopard seal taunting a raft full of tourists.

NBC News/ Kevin Burke

Gentoo Penguin in the Antarctic Peninsula.

I have traveled to the Antarctic Peninsula in pursuit of a life-long goal to see as much of the planet as time allows, and to explore a place that few people ever get to experience.

NBC News/ Kevin Burke

Ice Arch in the Gerlache Strait that runs through the Antarctic Peninsula.

My impressions of this vast frontier at the bottom of the earth are still fresh and forming. At this point the only thing I'm certain of is that this will not be my last visit to the seventh continent.

Whatever most of us dream of, it isn't normally to die a natural death.

This is a country that's been scarred by the last four years. For many of the families and friends of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed since 2003, scarred much more by this war than the years they survived under Saddam Hussein.

These are the words written by one of our talented Iraqi staff. He can't write under his own name for security reasons, but here are some of the things that weigh on his mind.  

Unlikely fears
When most of us hesitate before calling a friend it's not because we think they might be dead.

When most people worry about their children, they don't worry that their children might grow up without them.

Last week my colleague heard that a friend had lost eight brothers in the bombing in the Sharja market in Baghdad. When most of us mourn friends or relatives who have died, the list doesn't normally stretch into the dozens.

The list grows
"A few days ago our ex-neighbor was shot to death after a lot of threats. He was a Sunni who worked with the Americans. He thought we didn't know he worked with them but everyone knew. I think he was killed for that reason. He has three children. I didn't like him, but you can't ignore that he's a human being. He died in an ugly way. They said they surprised him while he was standing beside his shop - they shot him and he was trying to run up the stairs until they shot and killed him.

"Last month my friend's father who was an honest, modest man was assassinated by al-Qaida terrorists because he is Shiite. He was 63 years old. They had moved out of their house in a Sunni neighborhood but he came back and saw strangers in their house -- he argued with him and they took him away. We searched everywhere, but everyone told us it was al-Qaida -- they don't forgive and even the Sunni insurgents don't dare to confront them.

"The same day another friend's father, who was the nicest person that I ever knew, was assassinated by unknown insurgents. I used to play with his son in his house when we were children. He was Shiite. He was 65 years old.

"The night after Saddam Hussein's execution, a friend's brother who is Sunni -- from the same tribe as Saddam -- was killed in front of his parents because of his family name. He was 18.

"Last year, the Mahdi militia came and took away two sons of one of my neighbors. They were 24 and 26. They did it in front of him and he couldn't even say anything in case they took away his third son. They didn't even tell him why. They killed them and dumped their bodies at the college. He was really upset that I didn't go to his sons' funeral. I thought I would be killed too if we went."

Most of us haven't come that close to death. Most of us don't believe there are things worse than dying.

Worse than dying
"When I think of the people I know who have been killed I keep asking myself, what did they say to the killers? Did they beg them? Did they pray? What did they do? I told all my friends that I'm not afraid to die -- I'm just afraid I'll beg my killers to let me live."

"What does life mean?" asked my 31-year-old colleague. "I don't know, but I can guarantee to you all that I know a lot more about death."

So when we talk endlessly about the impact of this war and whether Iraqis are better off, I think we should ask the Iraqis who have stayed here. Because most of us can't even imagine what that's like.

Sipping hot spicy tea and enjoying local delicacies on the roof of the Lwara Fort, a red brick outpost of the Pakistani army, 6,000 feet up in the snow covered mountains of North Waziristan and about a half mile from the Afghan border, it felt more après ski than a view onto one of the most dangerous frontlines in the war on terror.

"That's the Chandi Gap where most of the firefights between the militants, the coalition and us takes place," said Brig. Rizwan Akhtar, the Pakistan fort's commander, as he pointed out a pass in the icy hills leading straight into Afghanistan.

We were in Taliban country. The Taliban and al-Qaida militants hold sway here; not the Pakistani army.

Carol Grisanti / NBC News

A Pakistani border guard at Lwara Fort in North Waziristan, Pakistan.

"It's physically not possible to seal the border by deploying troops," said Maj. Gen. Azhar Ali Shah, Commander 7th Division, North Waziristan. "But we make it very difficult for them."

The army was keen to show us just how difficult it is to police this inhospitable terrain, a long mountain border of jagged peaks, some as high as 15,000 feet, deep rugged ravines and countless treacherous paths successfully traversed by smugglers for centuries.

Pakistan border post
We were taken in military helicopters through the mountains of the remote tribal area of North Waziristan on Saturday, visiting the border posts of the Pakistan Army's 7th Division.

Pakistan has deployed 80,000 troops along its 1,500 mile border with Afghanistan; 20,000 troops, 97 border posts and 38 rear posts are in North Waziristan alone. (On the other side, by comparison, in Patikia Province of Afghanistan, NATO and Afghan forces have only six posts.)

But that hasn't stopped the cross border raids and suicide attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan forces. Pakistan rejects accusations that North Waziristan is a haven for Taliban fighters and a recruiting ground for would-be suicide bombers. And army officers bristle at accusations that soldiers guarding the border outposts sometimes turn a blind eye to the movements of Taliban fighters.

"If we were letting the Taliban cross back and forth, we wouldn't be sitting here in this weather," insisted Shah.

TODAY

VIDEO: Senior leaders of al-Qaida operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-fractured worldwide terror network. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

Touching down at an altitude of 9,330 feet, we climbed the slippery steps to Mangro Tai, the army's outpost in the Shakai Valley where fierce gun battles between the Pakistani army and militants have taken place. This is where NATO and Afghan forces killed 150 militants after they crossed from here into Afghanistan in January. The Pakistanis killed the rest as they tried to cross back.

All of this hasn't been enough to stop the criticism that Pakistan isn't doing enough to stem the Taliban threat. U.S. military officials in Afghanistan say cross border attacks in areas adjacent to North Waziristan have increased. And they are gearing up for an even greater surge in violence in the coming weeks as the snows melt.

Pakistan's U.S. and NATO allies blame a controversial peace deal Pakistan signed last September with tribal elders and local pro-Taliban militants in North Waziristan. The militants promised to stop cross border attacks in Afghanistan and live peacefully in Pakistan in return for a halt in Pakistani army operations in the tribal agency.

Last week the outgoing commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry told the House Armed Services Committee that since signing the deal, cross border militancy has tripled.

Doing best they can
Shah defended the peace agreement and said Pakistan is doing all it can.

"This political agreement is not a switch-off-on business that you sign a deal and the next day everything is stopped. It cannot happen," said Shah.

To prove the point even further, the army invited the elders (or maliks) of the tribes and sub-tribes of North Waziristan to meet the media back at a main base in Miranshah, capital of North Waziristan.

"We will defend this agreement with full force," said Malik Gul Abad Khan wearing dark sunglasses and the traditional baggy pants and a long shirt. "There is no connection between us and the terrorists fighting across the border, we do not support them in any way."

The man who inked the peace with the elders and the militants on behalf of Pakistan's government, Ali Muhammed Jan Aurakzai, governor of the North West Frontier Province, told reporters over the weekend that Pakistan has become a victim of terrorism because of what's happening in Afghanistan.

"Outside of Kabul and a few military bases, Afghanistan is free for militants, terrorism and corruption," said Aurakzai. "Why should they come here to look for havens when they have an entire country."

Back at Lwara Fort, Shah told us that in about 15 days time, when the snows begin to melt, the army will start erecting a 8 to 12 foot high fence stretching some eight miles along the border's hills. "We hope to stop them sneaking past in the night," he said, "but it's not only our responsibility."

If the new security plan in Baghdad works, it will work street by street. On some streets in the Dora neighborhood Thursday, American and Iraqi soldiers took the first steps to try to reverse the slide of a city dangerously divided by sectarian violence. 

In some parts of the neighborhood in the south of Baghdad, residents say the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, has forced Sunnis out of their homes and taken over the houses.

"The soldiers are going to those houses now and telling the Mahdi Army they have two weeks to leave," one resident told me, marveling at the idea. She said the soldiers -- American and Iraqi -- were telling them if they couldn't produce a legal title to the homes, they would have to go.

It's a key part of the plan to stabilize Baghdad and one of the most difficult to implement.

Aim: reduce sectarian tension
Both the American and Iraqi governments have pinned huge hopes on this latest plan. At its most basic level it's designed to make Baghdad's neighborhoods secure enough that residents there will turn to Iraqi policemen and soldiers for protection instead of turning to Shiite militias or Sunni insurgents.

It's a shift in this city for the United States. Instead of going into neighborhoods, killing and capturing insurgents, and then moving on to the next neighborhood , Iraqi and U.S. troops will be staying a while.

Because American soldiers will be working with the Iraqis, they believe the Iraqi forces will be less involved in sectarian violence. The security operation is intended to buy time for the Iraqi government to make headway on the political and economic crisis that's helping to fuel the violence.

The top Iraqi general in Baghdad, Lt. Gen Aboud Gumba, in explaining the new security plan to Iraqis this week, said anyone occupying homes and building that didn't belong to them would be evicted.

"And who's going to do it?," was the obvious question from Iraqis. It's also exactly why Iraqis seeing troops do just that in their neighborhoods is particularly significant.

Al-Sadr's followers cooperating?
Al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has perhaps millions of devoted followers, doesn't control all the elements of the militia loyal to him. But he controls enough of them that the Baghdad crackdown has started off without a lot of resistance from the Mahdi Army.

U.S. and Iraqi officials say he's made a deal with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to step out of the way for now. Al-Sadr's officials tell us that the cleric has urged his followers to cooperate with the plan.

"I think there are many of the Mahdi Army militants who have been ordered to leave Iraq -- I think by Mr. Muqtada [al-Sadr] himself -- in order to facilitate the government's effort in implementing the Baghdad security plan," Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told reporters Thursday. Talabani said sectarian tension had eased in neighborhoods controlled by the Mahdi Army, where in some cases the Shiite militia had given Sunni mosques they had seized back to the Sunni community. Talabani also said that al-Sadr had given the Iraqi government the "green light" to arrest any rogue Mahdi militia members.

Although he doesn't have the religious credentials of his revered father -- believed to have been assassinated by Saddam Hussein -- al-Sadr has a very powerful appeal to a large segment of young, disaffected, unemployed Shiites.

There are few better examples of that than in Najaf three years ago where I covered U.S. troops fighting the Mahdi Army for six weeks. Day after day militia members, some of them teenagers, would come out armed only with rifles and be killed shooting at tanks.

Al-Sadr and U.S. forces eventually agreed to a ceasefire. And he now seems to have made another strategic retreat -- leaving a few weeks ago for Iran, officials say. But no one doubts that he'll be back.  

Staying on top of events is no easy task for the average Cuban.

Cuba's communist government regulates the Internet as a controlled substance.  

At the same time, the state owns all domestic media outlets – managing 19 newspapers, 20 television stations and 87 radio outlets across the island.

But one domestic information source has slipped through the state's fingers: the traditional word on the street. Cubans even have a name for it: they call it "Radio Bemba."

Even  though most folks trust it as much, if not more, than what they read in the Communist Party's "Granma" newspaper, Radio Bemba is just Cuban slang for the rumor mill, the grapevine, street-side chitchat as news.

More times than not, some nugget of news rolling along Radio Bemba's "airwaves"  turns out to be right, or at least to contain a grain of truth.

'I-know-a-guy...'
The rumor mill that makes up Radio Bemba draws some of its energy from Spanish language television originating in the United States and entering thousands of Cuban homes on illegal cable or DIRECTV dishes. The shows that are especially popular are Telemundo's "Al Rojo Vivo" and Evening News with Pedro Sevcec. 

Other sources of news and information for Radio Bemba include the I-know-a-guy variety:

A few months back, my neighbor, Juan Carlos, warned me to fill up the tank of my car,

 "I know a guy who says there's a breakdown at the processing plant… Gasoline is going to run out by the weekend." He was only partly wrong. The gasoline lasted through the weekend, but ran out on Monday.

Another time, a different neighbor reported that the island had lost another top musician to the Florida glitter. "My cousin in Miami told me that he saw Issac Delgado at Publics," referring to a Florida supermarket chain.

Also true, and that was at least two weeks before Delgado's publicist officially announced that the musician had defected to Tampa with a signed album deal. 

Fueling Radio Bemba is the lack of entertainment news on Cuban TV where programming slants toward science shows, political talking heads and late-night movies.

So, for celebrity gossip, Radio Bemba is the only place to go.

And, just like in places that do thrive on celebrity news, Radio Bemba is prone to stretching the truth – the juicier, the better.

Ask Pedrito Calvo, the former lead singer for Los Van Van, Cuba's number one dance band. Back in the 1980s, when Calvo was a charismatic sex symbol, rumors circulated that he was infected with HIV. To set the record straight, Calvo recorded a song entitled "El Negro no Tiene Na'" (The Black Guy Doesn't Have Anything). He even went so far as to drive around town with that phrase painted on the side of his Volkswagen beetle.

Often only really source of information
But, gossip is only part of the picture. Radio Bemba is also about uncovering news the government aims to repress.

Last summer when a deadly outbreak of dengue fever spread across the island and made thousands ill, the government treated the epidemic as a state secret. There were no newspaper articles, no TV or radio reports and no public admissions until the disaster passed.

Shortly after the crisis hit, the health ministry mobilized an army of 300,000 to fumigate door-to-door and community-based doctors to check their patients for symptoms.

As you can imagine, word spread fast on Radio Bemba. It's pretty impossible to keep a secret with that many people involved.

On a lighter note, Alberto Santiago spends his afternoons in what's known as "la esquina caliente" (the hot corner) in Havana's Central Park. Radio Bemba, for Santiago and other baseball fanatics, is a "great source of news on Major League Baseball," which is ignored by the government press.

Today, Radio Bemba travels an unofficial path, but its origins lie in Fidel Castro's rebel army broadcasts from Cuba's eastern mountains. His transmitters reached only so far, so word of his exploits got passed along by word of mouth.

Then and now, Radio Bemba can exaggerate or change the news. But as comedian Carlos Ruiz de la Tejera points out, "It remains one of the most effective means of communication" in Cuba.

There's very little more serious than accusations that another country's government is arranging the killing of American soldiers. But now the U.S. says it didn't mean it.

On Sunday, a senior U.S. military intelligence analyst told the world's media at a long-awaited briefing about accusations that the most lethal roadside bombs in Iraq could be traced back to "the highest levels" of the Iranian government. Today, the U.S. military spokesman told the same reporters that wasn't what they meant to imply.

And President Bush, asked at his first news conference of the year about the apparent contradiction, said they didn't know how far up the orders went and that it didn't really matter.

When asked what assurance he can give Americans that the intelligence is accurate, Bush replied, "What we do know is that the Quds Force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that.

"And we also know that the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds Force to do what they did.

"But here's my point: Either they knew or didn't know. And what matters is that they're there."

The Quds (Jerusalem) force is an elite group of Iran's Republican Guard.

Detailed accusations
U.S. officials, who insisted on remaining anonymous, on Sunday detailed accusations that the deadliest kind of roadside bomb, EFP's - Explosively Formed Penetrators -- were being manufactured in Iran and smuggled across the border to Shiite extremist groups to use against U.S. soldiers.

The intelligence analyst, an Iran expert, said the "highest levels" of the Iranian government would have known of those actions. But that was Sunday.

On Tuesday, General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disputed that assertion. "That does not translate to that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this," he said.

Earlier Wednesday in Baghdad, another military official weighed in.

"There is no intent to make any inferences or assertions," Major General William Caldwell said. He said the point of the briefing Sunday was to highlight the increased threat to U.S. soldiers from weapons coming from Iran. He said they had decided to go public after exhausting other, less direct means of asking Iran not to allow the manufacture and smuggling of the bombs.

It was another statement from Bush though that had many people wondering what will come next.

"My job is to protect our troops. And when we find devices that are in that country that are hurting our troops, we're going to do something about it, pure and simple."

Not quite that simple.

"No recording devices permitted" read the invitation to the briefing on Iran. At the Coalition Press Office, it wasn't called Iran, or a briefing on accusations that Iran is helping attack U.S. soldiers in Iraq. In the language of international accusations, the topic of the press briefing was "subject matter related to a neighboring country." Everyone knew what it was though.

The U.S. administration for months has accused Iran of sending weapons and technology across the border to be used in attacks on American forces in Iraq. It promised to reveal evidence backing up those charges but officials weren't comfortable that they had enough evidence they could present publicly without jeopardizing their sources.

So on Sunday nearly 50 journalists were packed into a crowded briefing room in Baghdad to listen to officials whom we weren't allowed to identify, talking about things they weren't allowed to fully explain.

The senior U.S. military official told us he should be referred to as a "senior Coalition defense official" rather than an "American official." After journalists pressed the point that accusations this serious were being made by officials who wouldn't divulge their nationalities, he agreed that he and his two colleagues could be referred to as "U.S. officials."

'Growing body of evidence'
He told us that the use of the deadliest form of roadside bomb known as EFP's - explosively formed penetrators - had nearly doubled last year. And he said there was a "growing body of evidence pointing to Iranian supply of EFPs to Iraqi extremist groups."

That evidence, according to a U.S. intelligence official at the briefing, included machine-tooled parts used in the roadside bombs. They had reason to believe they had come from machine shops in Iran and hadn't found any being made with such precision in Iraq, he said.

The official moderating the briefing said the intelligence analyst was the reason for the secrecy. He said it would be dangerous for the analyst, an Iran expert, and his sources to be publicly shown or identified.

Some of the weapons the U.S. believes are being smuggled from Iran were displayed on tables. The de-activated EFP looked almost harmless -- a metal tube the size of a large paint can with a copper liner. When filled with explosives though and detonated by remote control, it turns into a molten slug that pierces armored vehicles, often killing three or four soldiers at a time.

U.S. military officials have talked about them before, but not in this detail. The official at the briefing told us they have killed 170 coalition troops and wounded 620 of them since they first started being used in 2004.

On another table were more than a dozen tail-fins from Iranian mortars marked with the date of manufacture, some as recent as 2006. According to the explosives expert, they are identifiably Iranian because the tail-fins and the mortars are a single piece.

We were ordered to leave everything outside except a pen and notebook when we went into the briefing. Shortly after it started, my pen failed. An Iraqi journalist gave me his - he wasn't using it. Several of the Iraqi journalists got up and left before the briefing was over.

That's the difficult thing about this story -- without having access to information the U.S. government says it can't give us, it's impossible to evaluate the accusations that these weapons are coming only from Iran in operations authorized by the Iranian government. It's particularly difficult because the U.S. doesn't speak to Iran – so it uses other countries –- and the media to send its messages.

Beads of sweat are collecting on Huang Wei's unblemished forehead.

It's 1:30 p.m. in an old warehouse near Shanghai Baosteel Corporation in the city's port, and this 8-year-old is working hard on his Cha-Cha.

"One-two-three-four! One-two-three-four!"

The dance instructor at the Chou Yan Dance School counts aloud as Huang and about 20 other Chinese children – ages 6 to 9 years old – follow along with intricate footwork.

These kids have been practicing and rehearsing Latin dance routines for weeks, hoping to put on a big show for the Spring Festival on Sunday.

NBC News

On the way to an errand today, there was a nicely dressed man walking down the block in front of me who brazenly broke the law in broad daylight: he spat. It's a four-letter practice not only common in China, but also one now being targeted by the Beijing government and volunteers in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

While every Olympic host city hopes for positive publicity from the games, perhaps no other city (not to mention country) in recent memory has banked on the games as an opportunity to show the world it is a sophisticated and worldly player; a global coming-out party if you will.

To sell that message, The People's Republic wants its citizens to be on good behavior: no spitting, cutting in lines or other behavior which would not be good manners to describe.

To get out the message, China just kicked off a public civility campaign with a rally complete with a slogan chanting "We can always improve" and banners telling people: "Don't cut in line."

Is this a case of people in the world's most populous country being somehow ruder than other nations? It's really not.

As one historian I spoke with quickly pointed out, during China's infamous "Cultural Revolution" -- the social experiment meant to rekindle revolutionary fervor which included a crackdown on intellectuals and anything that seemed "bourgeois" -- an entire generation of Chinese often went out of their way not to seem too cultured and too mannered.

So, many Chinese are learning for the first time about some positive public practices, and not just from the government. A woman named Lu Chin Meschke is China's self- described Mrs. Manners and has developed an educational organization called "The Pride Institute."   

Lu, a China native who has also lived in the United States, teaches etiquette classes to willing participants. Western practices like handshakes and other greetings are among the topics. But she does have some courtesy cards that she carries and hands out when she sees public spitting and other behavior that gets her attention.

She tells me that most times, the people she politely approaches seem genuinely surprised their behavior might be considered rude. It is this reaction which bolsters her confidence that the world's most populous nation will eventually get the message.

Although she certainly has her work cut out for her: just 1.3 billion people live in China.

The strange saga of an Iranian diplomat abducted in Baghdad took another turn Wednesday with the revelation that Iraqi security officers possibly acting on orders from a rogue government department had abducted him.

The diplomat, assigned to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, was taken at gunpoint on Sunday by kidnappers wearing Iraqi security uniforms.

Iran's accusation that the United States was to blame has threatened to raise tension between the two countries even further.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the Iraqi government was holding four Iraqi military officers in connection with the kidnapping. He told NBC News in an interview that they were investigating whether the men acted on their own or were acting on orders from government officials.

"The government is determined to punish those responsible if they were part of any government entity," Zebari said." I don't want to jump to any conclusions but the type of the operations, the people who were arrested by the security forces, give us some doubts. There may be entities acting on their own."

Incident 'not helpful' for diplomatic relations
Zebari said the involvement of Iraqi military men in the kidnapping was particularly unfortunate since Iraq has been trying to convince other countries to send their diplomats here.

"It is a very embarrassing incident," he said. "On the one hand we are trying to establish a diplomatic presence here in Iraq by our neighbors, by other countries. These incidents are not helpful."

Jalal Sharafi, the Iranian embassy's second secretary, was abducted by gunmen wearing Iraqi uniforms and holding Ministry of Defense ID, Iraqi and Iranian officials said. Iraqi officials said the men may have been fired from the ministry but still retained the credentials.

Zebari said he believed the diplomat was alive. He said U.S. officials he had met with had assured him that the United States was not involved in the abduction. The Iraqi government has previously protested the arrests of several Iranians with diplomatic credentials by U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

The United States has accused Iran of involvement in attacks on U.S. forces here. Asked whether he believed that was the case, Zebari told NBC he would not rule it out.

"Really I have no hard evidence, but I wouldn't discount it at the same time," he said. He said he had raised the issue numerous times with Iranian officials, including as recently as Tuesday, stressing they could not engage in attacks on American forces on Iraqi soil.

Zebari said he was hoping to widen a planned conference in Baghdad of neighboring countries to include the United States and European countries. If the U.S. participated it would be sitting down with Iran, with which it has no diplomatic relations.

Watching the 15-minute cockpit video that was classified by the U.S. military for almost four years, until it was leaked and published Tuesday by The Sun newspaper, is like watching a Greek tragedy unfold.

Knowing that British Lance Cpl. Matty Hull is about to become an early casualty in the war in Iraq, at the hands of two seasoned U.S. fighter pilots, is almost unbearable to witness.

In hindsight, the stops and starts of conversation between the pilots and their ground controllers near Basra, in southern Iraq, sound so confused; so flip, dude; so full of misjudgments, and lethal mistakes.

The British press has had a field day, calling the tape proof of how clumsy and amateur the American military really is. How they've always hidden behind the "fog of war" and never learned the lessons of the Gulf War -- when nine British "friendlies" were killed by U.S. air attacks.

Tom Newton Dunn, defense editor for The Sun newspaper, proudly counted at least six basic safety procedures that were broken by the U.S. pilots (even though a joint U.S.-U.K. military investigation back in 2003 concluded that the pilots had followed the proper rules of engagement).

On Tuesday, Dunn sounded like a man on a mission, accomplished: ''I think the [British] Ministry of Defense would be delighted that we've done this.... The Americans claim that [the video] is confidential and contains secret material. I think they are protecting their servicemen from legal action and embarrassment.''

There were angry British voices, mostly from the media, who were pushing for a criminal case -- even a verdict of "unlawful killing"-- against the U.S. pilots, already cleared of any wrongdoing back in 2003.

Others, though, were more cautious. Former British army Col. Bob Stewart, a veteran of the Gulf War and Bosnia, said the tape clearly showed that the U.S. pilots were "not to blame." He said the tape illustrated just how foggy the fog of war truly is.

''They were asking for assistance, they were reassured that there were no British forces and they attacked in accordance and they were devastated.'' Stewart went on to say that the pilots had already paid a heavy price, having to live, every day, with the guilt of their tragic mistake.

Still, around many water coolers in many British newsrooms, colleagues were reported to be almost gleeful about the Americans -- finally -- getting their just desserts.   

Personally, I recalled another tragedy. Only days after the Basra incident, on a bridge in central Baghdad, another war-hardened U.S. soldier was about to give an order he would regret forever.

Capt. Paul Wolford led his 3rd Infantry Division tank company and captured the Republican Palace grounds we now call the "Green Zone" in Baghdad. One of the most impressive commanders under fire I've ever seen, Wolford mistakenly took a glint from a building, some 1,200 yards away, to be an enemy Fedayeen soldier acting as a "forward observer" guiding insurgent rockets his way.

But the building turned out to be the Palestine Hotel -- a "haven" for international journalists. And the glint came, in fact, from the lens of a news camera. Two journalists were killed by the tank blast.

Wolford, when asked, has always denied knowing that the Palestine was "friendly" and "off-limits." He told me, three years later, that if he could have one moment back in his life, it would be that one.

Why didn't his chain of command know about the hotel? Why didn't the ground controller, down in Basra, know about the British friendlies? It's the fog of war, of course. It's what makes war the ugly, imprecise and unjust endeavor that anyone who makes it -- or covers it -- will tell you it is.

If you listen carefully to the cockpit audio in the Hull incident, you hear colliding voices, crackling, breaking up, stepping on one another. And the very real possibility that the pilots were talking about one "target" below, while the ground controllers were referring to another. The fog of war.

Interestingly, here in Britain, one of the rare positive reactions today came from Susan Hull, the lance corporal's widow. She said she was relieved and glad that the video was now out in the public. She would have liked to have heard from the U.S. pilots themselves, she said, but the emergence of the long-awaited video was reason "not to give up hope."

This sounds more like a military wife who understands the fog of war, simply out to know the truth behind it, however painful.

Outside my window in Baghdad there's a man selling balloons from a cart. In the cold gray light of this city where people now try to blend in to stay out of trouble, the balloons stand out like a particularly garish rainbow.

It's just a one-man wooden stall, but it's a reminder of the resilience here -- not just of the balloon seller but also of the man who imports the balloons, the drivers who bring them to the markets and the parents still willing to walk down the street to buy them for their children.

That's always been one of the disconnects here -- the signs of normal life that persist in the midst of widespread violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

Long standing ties despite strife
Take, for instance, the offhand comment of an Iraqi friend telling me about her nephew's wedding this spring.

"He's Shiite and she's Sunni," she said. Not so unusual in her family or in many other Iraqi families (although she's Shiite her father was Sunni). And in her mixed neighborhood, she says, she and her Christian neighbors drink coffee together and agree that the sectarian violence raging through Baghdad is motivated by politics and money.

Yes, another disconnect. In this city where Shiite death squads disguised as police haunt the streets and Sunni insurgents set up renegade checkpoints kidnapping drivers, it still hasn't reached the level of entrenched hatred among the millions of ordinary Iraqis who have lived together and in many cases married each other for decades.

What is most striking is the rise of Shiite power. Last week more than a million pilgrims thronged the highways to pour into the holy city of Karbala south of Baghdad -- crowding the narrow streets to commemorate Ashoura and an event 1,400 years ago that defines Shiite Islam.

A day of commemoration and division
They came by foot and in wheelchairs, many of the men and boys beating themselves with chains and hitting their heads with swords until they bled. They do it in grief and atonement for the death in battle of the Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, whose killing cemented the split between Shiites and Sunnis. Swept away by the beat of drums and the fervor of the crowd, the pilgrims say they don't feel pain.

It is the most powerful thing I've ever seen, and not surprisingly, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, banned the rituals. (When I lived here in the late 1990s people conducted them only in secret.) But after Baghdad fell, when there was only a glimpse of the conflict to come, I walked in the streets as Shiites openly commemorated the rituals of Ashoura for the first time in decades

I'd heard about the festival for years, and on that day three years ago there they were -- thousands of people wielding swords and chains, beating drums, waving flags and chanting in unison. Immersed in their grief as fresh that day as it was more than a thousand years ago, the crowds were no threat to anyone.

But when we got closer to the holiest Shiite shrine in Baghdad, the chanting was drowned out by the sound of an explosion. As trucks carrying bodies sped by my Iraqi colleagues, I kept going until we arrived at the mosque where a suicide bomber had detonated his belt in the courtyard.

An ancient ritual. An ancient rivalry. The marble was covered in blood.

The imam was sobbing -- in rage and sorrow and disbelief. But that kind of modern-day violence was all new then.

"Sure, no problem, you can go to the Internet café," said Ms. Guo, the café's owner. We were negotiating over the telephone on filming web surfers during peak traffic time.

"Come by between seven and nine," she continued.

"Ok, between seven and nine in the evening," I replied.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

An already packed Beijing Internet café early before 8 a.m.

"No, in the morning."

"What?? Are you sure?" I tried to keep down the creeping doubt in my voice, for fear of offending her.

"Oh, yes, most definitely there will be a lot of people," she insisted. "It's free of charge between seven and nine in the morning. Trust me, lots of people."

Connection slow going, but still packed
Given that her café normally charges a mere 30 cents an hour to go online, I wasn't sure free access would make that much of a difference.

And apart from the early hour, there was another good reason to be skeptical about the number of Internet users.

Getting online this month has been a frustrating experience in Beijing -- not because of government censors, but because of an earthquake at the end of December near Taiwan. The quake damaged several nearby underwater cables, disrupting internet services across the Asia-Pacific region, especially here.

For my colleagues, this has meant making tea, reading the papers, and watching the status bar crawl across the bottom of the computer screen s-l-o-w-l-y. On some days it has taken the better part of an hour just to enter our intranet site.

So it was with some astonishment when we arrived in the morning, bleary-eyed, and found the place -- which seats more than 300 people -- filled with young Chinese, mostly university age, pecking away at their keyboards.

All well before 8 am.

Explosive use
Trolling around the café, we found the usual suspects -- people on instant chatrooms, scrolling through blogs, or reading up on the latest news or celebrity gossip.

Many more were watching movies downloaded from the web. Apart from a wide selection of Chinese TV shows, concerts and films, there were also western choices (one guy was watching the original "Star Wars") and what appeared to be a healthy representation of Korean movies.

The overwhelming majority, however, were boys playing video games against each other – "Unreal Tournament" seemed very popular here.

I asked the duty manager whether traffic was this heavy throughout the day. He said it varied, but added that some regulars come for ten hours at a time. Most, he continued to say, usually dropped by to download a movie in the middle of the day.

That should be no surprise. Last week, the China Internet Network Information Center -- a government agency that monitors the industry -- reported that internet use in China last year had leapt almost 25 percent from the year before. That translates to 137 million web surfers, roughly ten percent of the country's population.

Among users, young Chinese aged 18 to 24 were the most active, clocking 21.5 hours on the Internet each week.

China keeping an eye on things…
The Chinese government has been paying close attention. Not only are young people surfing the web, they're policing it, too.

For example, authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen earlier this week introduced a team of 150 new "internet police." The average age is under 30, according to a Hong Kong newspaper, many of them recent college graduates with special police training. Officials claim they are as technically savvy as hackers.