On a trip with Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, over the weekend, I asked him about reports that he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were on such bad terms that Maliki had asked for him to be replaced.

"It's nonsense to think he's ever asked," Petraeus said as we sat down and talked in an abandoned wool factory turned into a combat outpost west of Baghdad. "We actually have a very good relationship."

But that doesn't mean they haven't had their moments. Petraeus said he and Maliki had had serious disagreements over the issue of reining in Shiite militias, but that had been several months ago. "These are tough issues and sometimes they require a degree of candor."

VIDEO: General worries about withdrawal

As for the report that Maliki had complained to Bush about Petraeus during a video conference, Petraeus said he had sat in on every one of those video conferences since he's been here.

Officials on both sides say the reports of stormy relations are greatly exaggerated.

There is, though, a clash of personalities as well as cultures.

Petraeus, widely considered brilliant, is demanding and driven. "There are no soft edges," said one of his colleagues who said Petraeus tends to offend Maliki's sense of pride by not observing the elaborate Arab rules of courtesy.

Maliki, repeatedly told he's in charge of a sovereign country but bombarded with instructions from American officials, often bristles at the U.S. demands.

Petraeus is updated by his commanders every morning on progress around the country – everything from significant attacks to electricity levels to construction projects. He absorbs the detailed charts instantly, zeroing in with questions often meant to determine what's going wrong as well as what's going right.

As the man who wrote the book on counterinsurgency, overseeing with a Marine general the first revision in decades to the military's manual on how to fight unconventional wars, Petraeus implemented a lot of those lessons long before they were policy – in fact before the military admitted there was an insurgency. When I covered him in Mosul in 2003 and 2004, he was already reaching out to tribes and ex-Iraqi Army generals who had served under Saddam.

When he can, he gets out to the farthest reaches of Iraq to talk to soldiers and Iraqis and see for himself how things are going.

I was covering the war from northern Iraq in 2003, unembedded, when Petraeus first arrived as commander of the 101st Airborne. In those days, I'd drop by for a chat and if he was going somewhere interesting, we'd hop on his helicopter with him. Those days are long gone. Media coverage now is a carefully orchestrated production.

That was part of the reason why we found ourselves following him around over the weekend as he talked to soldiers and visited markets in the rural area of Abu Ghraib. Attacks have dropped there since tribes teamed up with the U.S. Army to fight al-Qaida.

Jane Arraf/ NBC News

Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, speaks with a local man in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad about the security situation in his neighborhood.

Still a sense of humor
It was one of those places where Iraqi men hanging around in the 120-degree Fahrenheit heat give soldiers and reporters wary looks, as if they're not sure yet whether the insurgents or the Americans are going to win and they're still hedging their bets.

Petraeus though, surrounded by his personal security detail, seemed completely relaxed, walking around with a soft cap rather than his helmet and chatting with shopkeepers and people in the street.

Petraeus was introduced to one local man who had four wives – permitted under Islam.

"Four wives!" Petraeus said. "And I thought I had a heavy rucksack to carry."

It may not translate that well, but he does have a pretty good sense of humor.

Just 36 hours after touching down back in gray, rainy London after my assignment to a parched Iraq during the height of the sweltering summer heat there, I stood outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.

Dressed in a red and white polka-dot summer dress, red straw hat and matching handbag, I was part of a long queue of even more dressed up mostly Brits lucky enough to be among the thousands who for several days each summer are invited to mingle with royalty on the verdant lawns of Buck house at one of her Majesty's Garden Parties.   

I was thrilled when I got the news just before leaving Baghdad that my name, along with several others, had been picked in a drawing by the Association of American Correspondents in London – an organization which is given a certain number of tickets a year for the event by the palace. Most of the invites are sent out by the Lord Chamberlain and are by nomination only.

I excitedly plotted with friends on the phone and via e-mail about what to wear, (the dress code for women being "afternoon dress with hat," while men were advised to wear "morning dress, lounge suits or uniforms." I'd managed to grab a hat on sale at the Jordan airport and had figured out the perfect shoes. 

Yet suddenly, the transition to this dramatically different world – which I'd jumped at as a welcome antidote to Iraq – was proving somewhat overwhelming. 

Feeling a bit silly and very much alone in what seemed line an endless sea of couples – my invite, as a working journalist, was strictly solo – I was already wondering if this was such a good idea. What's more, it looked like rain.

"Please have your passport and proof of address along with your invitation ready for the security check," said a distinguished looking policeman working the lines of expectant guests. "But most importantly, a smile," he laughed.

Then, a few minutes later, another policeman came running after me, apologizing that because my bag was larger than usual (thanks to the must-have British accessory – an umbrella), he'd have to give it a special check and sticker. "And maybe you can slip a bottle of wine in there on your way out," he joked, looking at my oversized handbag.

After the rigorous and sometimes rough security checks that became routine amid the dangers of Baghdad, I was caught off-guard. The gentle kindness reminded me that, for the first time in weeks, I felt safe.

London, and the royals, might be a prime (if different) terror target. But at that moment, I felt safe in the hands of old England – complete with ladies in hats and afternoon tea served at 4 p.m.

Settling into this new, unfamiliar world, I was relieved to meet up with another solo journalist from a Dutch newspaper. We got down to the task of reading the program: Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Earl and Countess of Wessex (that's Edward and Sophie), the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, and the Prince and Princess Michael of Kent would all be attending.

We tried to recall who was doing what these days. London-based journalists are supposed to know that information by heart, but we were pretty rusty. Didn't the Queen's son Edward have an unsuccessful business venture? And how many children did his wife, Sophie, have? Princess Michael of Kent, who is quite the looker and the main target for lesser royalty sleaze, would surely make for light-hearted people watching, we enthused.

My new Dutch pal was hoping that the day's headlines in the London Evening Standard, "Camilla doesn't want to be Queen," might prove to be a story and was on the lookout for British color.

But I was more worried about how to address the queen should I encounter her. "You don't have to curtsy if you don't feel like it," explained a republic-loving friend who moves in these circles. "But make sure you don't address her first. She has to address you and you call her 'Ma'am' - but it's pronounced more like 'Mom.'"

Her Majesty's Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, as it's called, kicked off with the playing of the national anthem to herald the arrival of the queen. And after a tiny peek of her majesty (head to toe in peach) and the Duke of Edinburgh as they descended toward the lawns, that at least for us, was pretty much our only glimpse of royalty.

According to the program, the queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the other royals "each take a different route and random presentations are made so that everyone has an equal chance" to meet and greet them. But in retrospect, I think you need to be strategically placed or have an event producer on call if you hope to see anything other than the backs of elaborate hats. The only other time we caught a glimpse of Her Majesty, she was enjoying tea with selected guests in the Royal Tea tent, cordoned off from the rest of us.

Tea was the mainstay of the day for the approximately 8,000 invited guests. Apparently approximately 27,000 cups were served, along with 20,000 dainty sandwiches and 20,000 bite-size, but delicious, pieces of cake for the many British faithful who patiently waited for their turn.

"This isn't really what I'd call a party," my Dutch newspaper pal quipped. "To start with it doesn't have that very British pre-requisite to breaking the ice – alcohol," she observed. It was hard not to agree, but most of the people around me didn't seem to need any extra intoxication.

An invite to the event, a royal seal of approval and thanks, was more than enough to sustain many of the guests – from the old ladies in wheelchairs, to the proud ambulance drivers, to the charity workers, the shy school teachers and the dignified local government officials adorned with their gold chain of office. Never mind the jaunty uniforms of the handsome army officers and their glamorous wives that suggested combat zones more reminiscent of Hollywood than Iraq or Afghanistan.

There was a pride in the faces of many of the chosen guests, which for a war-weary, cynical journalist attending by default, was quite humbling.

With no cameras allowed in due to security reasons, I don't have much to document the day. 

So, I've decided to order the palace-produced video of the event, if only to remind myself that I was really there – in that part of England where tradition, manners and a sense of pride in serving the nation still matter. A place, which for those few hours, seemed a million light years away, not only from the darkness of Iraq, but from the harsh reality of modern-day England.

My blog fell victim to the Chinese censors.
 
It's probably the title that turned them off. I thought "warinchina" was kind of cute. They obviously did not. The site, like those of many other bloggers, is still blocked, stuck behind what has been labeled as the "Great Firewall of China," the largest system of Internet censorship in the world.

Sites such as Flickr, Wikipedia, religious websites, Amnesty International as well as Western news media are all blocked.
 
Ten years ago no one thought China would be able to control the Internet, or the scream that it could unleash. Heralded as the great medium of democratization – an unsilenceable siren of anarchy and free speech – the theory went that since the Internet is decentralized and quick to adapt, no despot or authoritarian would be able to restrict it.
 
They were wrong. For the most part, the Chinese Communist Party has succeeded – and Western companies appear to have been eager to help.
 
Western involvement
Yahoo! China,  for instance, blacklists certain words and phrases. If someone types, say, "democracy" or "free speech" in its search engine, the words are automatically picked up by the servers and the results are blocked from appearing on the user's screen, according to the Weekly Standard. 

Similarly, almost all chat rooms in China are monitored by censors who delete politically incorrect comments in real time. Yahoo! and other Western Internet companies have been heavily involved in this process, according to news reports and human rights observers – Human Rights Watch issued an extensive report on the issue in 2006.

In fact, Yahoo! may have gone the farthest of the major Western web companies in working to please the Chinese authorities. The firm has not just passively supplied the tools for suppressing dissent, but it has also actively assisted the government in arresting those advocating free speech.

For instance, the Christian Science Monitor reported in September 2005 a Chinese journalist was arrested after information about his activities was provided to mainland police by Yahoo of Hong Kong. It was information they were under no obligation to provide. Yahoo! denies sharing information with the Chinese Security Agency.

But Yahoo! is by no means alone. When Google launched its Chinese language site in January 2006, it was harshly criticized by human rights organizations for agreeing to censor its search results in order to comply with Beijing's strict restrictions on information.

Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, defended his company's compliance with local law. Speaking to reporters at a press conference in April 2006, Schmidt said, "I think it's arrogant for us to walk into a country where we are just beginning to operate and tell that country how to operate."

However, more recently, Google may have begun to change its tune a bit and has taken a new approach to censorship. The search giant is now appealing to U.S. trade representatives to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers and a hindrance to the growth of the global economy. By lobbying U.S. trade officials, Google is hoping that they will start to treat the issue of international censorship in economic terms, rather than just as a political issue. 

Microsoft also censors blogs and the results of its search engine.  In 2006, Microsoft shut down a Chinese blogger's site which discussed politically sensitive issues, such as a Beijing newspaper strike. According to Microsoft, the blog was shut down at the Chinese government's request. (MSNBC.com is a Microsoft - NBC Universal joint venture.)

At the time, Brooke Richardson, group product manager with Microsoft's MSN online division at company headquarters in Redmond, Wash., told the Associated Press, "When we operate in markets around the world, we have to ensure that our service complies with global laws as well as local laws and norms."

That may well be the case for the Western companies trying to do business in China, but the few Chinese Internet chat rooms not yet silenced by the censors are increasingly filled with users expressing their discontent about the situation.

Ways around
A brave few are even taking on the government directly. For example, a man in Shanghai is suing his Internet provider for blocking his blog, which is hosted on an American server. The Internet provider refuses to give him an explanation why the site was blocked.

And the restrictions have led to some creative ways of getting around the government's long arm. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, for example, found that 10 percent of users admit to regularly using foreign-based proxy servers to get around government censorship. 

By rerouting their Internet connection through a proxy server in Japan, Europe or America, Chinese users can make it appear as if they are accessing the Web from one of those locations and circumvent the Chinese gateways.

The government has tried to fight back, compiling a list of potential proxy servers to block, but someone with knowledge of the system is able to easily avoid these measures. According to Ethan Gutmann, author of, "Who Lost China's Internet," "A shrewd native engineer could probably root out and defeat 99 percent of those government agents."

The next generation
Knowing this, the government has begun working on the next generation of censorship technology: the Golden Shield.

This new system would be a nationwide digital surveillance network, a database-driven remote surveillance system linking national, regional and local security agencies with immediate access to the records of every citizen in China as well as a vast network of surveillance cameras. Supplementing these records will be speech and face recognition software, smart cards that allow authorities to wirelessly identify people, credit records, and Internet surveillance technologies to monitor surfing patterns.

With the crystallization of the next generation of Chinese Internet surveillance, there is little hope that the wall of control will be tumbling anytime soon.

It looks like warinchina.com will have to wait.

Joy – it's not an emotion you see here very much. But on Sunday, it washed over Iraqis in waves – sweeping them into the streets after Iraq's soccer win over Saudi Arabia in the Asia Cup – to cheer until they were hoarse and dance until they couldn't dance anymore.

The euphoria was infectious. You could see it in the faces of young men in our neighborhood who don't normally have much to cheer about chanting and whirling through the streets wrapped in Iraqi flags. "Bring it! Bring us the cup!" they shouted.

Even sweeter for Iraq's battered national pride, it was a trophy seized from Saudi Arabia, the country's rich and powerful neighbor and a three-time winner of the Asian Cup. Iraq, forced to train outside the country with a team cobbled together of expatriates, was the underdog.

VIDEO: Iraqis unite in soccer celebration

The city sweltered under a blanket of 120 degrees Fahrenheit heat. With the electricity off in a lot of neighborhoods, people crowded into cafes and homes with generators to watch. For 71 tense minutes, the score stood tied at zero. And then, the heart-stopping winning goal.

In Baghdad, a lot of gunfire can mean either that that things are really good or really bad. The bursts of AK-47 and machine gun fire lasted for almost half an hour. After falling bullets in last week's celebrations killed more than four people and wounded a dozen, the government imposed a ban on celebratory gunfire. But no one was going to enforce it. Certainly not the policemen jammed into the backs of police trucks dancing and waving their guns in the air. A large police officer crammed into one truck and bursting out of his blue shirt balanced surprisingly gracefully on his toes as he cheered along with the young men in the street.

A stream of cars drove by on streets supposed to be empty of vehicles to prevent suicide car bombs like the ones after last week's celebrations which killed more than 50 people. Our Iraqi cameraman filmed a taxi with more than a dozen cheering young men piled on top of it as it joined the chaotic parade. More of them seemed to be inside but it was so crowded it was hard to tell.

A shiny new fire truck, for once not heading to the site of a car bomb or an explosion, drove by packed with cheering emergency workers. Boys in the street banged pots and pans and beat plastic bottles together when they could no longer shout. Fathers brought babies wrapped in Iraqi flags out to join in the festivities. Some of the two million Iraqis who have fled their home country joined in the celebrations as far away as Europe, the U.S. and Canada – waving flags and driving through streets of mystified pedestrians.

Iraqi state television showed live scenes of ecstatic crowds across the country. In Basra, Baghdad and Erbil, it was a glimpse of a divided country united by the surge of nationalism. Some of the cracks still showed though. "We beat the Wahabees!" said one man in a Shiite neighborhood referring to the puritanical Sunni Muslim faction. Others held up images of Imam Hussein, particularly revered by Shiite Muslims.

Americans kept asking whether there would be any lasting effect of this unity. For a lot of Iraqis, forced to live day-to-day, the question didn't really matter – this was their day to celebrate.

NBC News' Michelle Kosinski was recently on assignment in Brazil, riding the Iberostar, a luxury five-star cruise ship, up the Amazon River for a  for a story about ecotourism for CNBC's "On the Money." Watch her report here:

VIDEO: A luxury trip up the Amazon

 

 

When all is said and done, Cubans are very practical people.

Living for decades under a centralized island economy with limited international trading opportunities has taught people real survival skills. Cubans learn to make do without some basic commodities and find creative solutions to life's everyday challenges.

But that pragmatism has not always extended to how people view Fidel Castro.

VIDEO: Fidel Castro's legacy

If anyone had suggested last July that their 80-year-old president would still be convalescing a year after emergency intestinal surgery that almost killed him, lots of Cubans wouldn't have bought it.

This was the David who has stood up to the Goliath of the north, in the view of his supporters.

If 10 American presidents and 200 CIA plots couldn't kill him, how could a little intestinal bleed and infection?  

For a good part of 2006, Castro's health dominated the national conversation. It was the buzz at every bus stop and barber shop.

For months, most Cubans were convinced he'd be back on his feet before long.

They even ignored Castro's personal and candid health updates published in the government press, warning people that he "might lose the battle."

Back then, as he tried to prepare people for his death, folks just plain believed that he would rebound and rebound swiftly.

"Fidel," chanted his supporters, "won't let us down. He'll be back by the new year."

"Castro," chided his detractors, "won't be able to stay out of the limelight for more than a few weeks."

No matter the camp, I remembered thinking just how people seemed to be ignoring one small detail – the guy was up there in years.

Perhaps people were just afraid to imagine the end of Castro's roughly five decades of power, I thought. Maybe they had a fear of the unknown.

Whatever the motivation, here was a nation in denial.

VIDEO: No Fidel on Revolution DayÂ

Western diplomats in Havana quietly worried that Castro's prolonged absence from the national stage would spark a power vacuum and in-fighting.

Longtime observers feared that the nation would take to the streets, rejecting the peaceful transfer of power to his brother Raul and a small hand-picked collective.

Instead, at this very complicated juncture, the regime seems to have successfully managed expectations.

SLIDESHOW: Castro's life in pictures

Raul established a business-as-usual atmosphere by capitalizing on his reputation as a good manager who relies on outside input. Letting other people take center stage, he has insisted that his big brother would recuperate and come back.

The message was simple – no power struggle was ensuing here.

In fact, this was so successful that even members of his ruling Communist Party now see the transfer of power to Raul as permanent.

Although, there is still much debate on Havana's streets about what the transition of power may or may not bring.

"Fidel will come back but in a different role," said Liliana Rodriguez, a graduate student. "Other people will be in control. He'll help set policy."

Juan Cabrera, a pensioner who teaches history at a Havana night school program for teen drop-outs, believes Castro is enjoying retirement. "The succession has been good for my country. No surprise endings."

But lots of Cubans, including Cabrera's youngest son, disagree by strongly rejecting the status quo. Juan Manuel, who works as a gypsy cab driver, turned in his Young Communist membership back in 1993 after Soviet aid dried up and triggered the collapse of the Cuban economy.

"I just want one thing: Change, change, and more change," said the 36-year old Cabrera.

VIDEO: Cuban-Americans debate U.S. relations with Cuba.

That translates into reforming the economy to raise the standard of living – the one thing all Cubans pretty much agree on.

Free social services and food subsidies aside, the multiple-income average family here earns the equivalent of between $60 and $75 a month.

State employees clamor for higher wages while many dream of starting their own business. People think they have a better shot at this with Raul Castro at the helm.

Yet, Raul's reputation as a reformer may be more fiction than fact. Some associates have described the 76-year-old Castro as even less flexible than Fidel when it comes to supporting free market measures. In addition, chances of seeing Raul undertake any major reform dim further when you consider that his power at the moment is merely custodial.

 No longer asking
Still, the island seems to have hit a turning point: the myth no longer rules the perception of the man.

As one government official observed, "It took a better part of a year, but people here finally accept that Fidel may never be strong enough to put on his military uniform and resume his official duties."

That's an ironic turn of events – given the fact that the regime continues to classify Castro's health information as a state secret. So, the public still does not know even the name of the illness that sidelined their president.

But, perhaps, even more ironic – people have stopped asking.

Proving, when all is said and done, Cubans are very practical people.

For a moment today, everyone in Iraq was happy. Without discrimination - Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians – were all delighted.

Our national soccer team had managed to unify us Iraqis, make our hearts pleased, draw smiles on our faces and let us put our arguments aside when they beat South Korea in the Asia Cup to reach the tournament's final on Sunday.

I was watching the game with some of my other colleagues. I tried to ease the tension while the game was on by serving tea and nuts. The room was filled with cigarette smoke and the sofas we were sitting on bore the brunt of jumps and kicks during the game and with every penalty shot.

Then came the crucial moment when we scored the winning goal during a penalty shootout to beat South Korea 4-3 and advance to the Asia Cup finals. There were shouts of joy, with people jumping in the air, wishing one another congratulations and celebratory gunfire in the street, the Iraqi way to express pleasure.

All the Iraqi TV channels were broadcasting the game live, as well as Iraqi celebrations all over the country, from Sulaymaniyah up north, to Basra in the south, and of course, in Baghdad. The country rife with discord was united in joy.

Later, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki congratulated the team, as did the commander of Baghdad security plan – along with a plea for people to stop firing guns and to express their elation in a more peaceful manner.

And for a time, the gunfire did stop. It was replaced by laughs, smiles and the waving of the Iraqi flag down the street and out of car windows. The scene of so many Iraqis hugging one another and filling the streets with cheer was indescribable. I was thanking God for bringing us so much joy after so much pain and sorrow.

Unfortunately, the peace was shattered before it could really begin as soon as two suicide bombs went off that killed at least 50 and injured more than 100. It was just a split-second, but for a time we felt joy again on the streets of Baghdad.

* The names of local journalists are not used to protect their identity.

You can tell that Iran is feeling a little beleaguered these days when there are reports that Tehran may be under attack from rodents!

That is what the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported this week, that police had, ahem, "arrested" 14 squirrels on charges of espionage.

The rodents were found near the Iranian border, allegedly equipped with eavesdropping devices, according to IRNA.

When asked to confirm the story, Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghadam, the national police chief, said, "I have heard about it, but I do not have precise information." He declined to give any more details.

IRNA said that the squirrels were discovered by intelligence services – but were captured by police officers several weeks ago.

'Are you serious?'
The reaction to the report on Tehran's streets was varied – from disbelief to assigning guilt for the alleged infraction.

"No, I had not heard about this, but it does not surprise me, foreign countries are always meddling in Iran," said Hassan Mohmmadi, a fast-food vendor.

Mohammadi asked me if I knew where the squirrels were from, and I told him that I didn't know. Then he came to his own conclusions. "I bet they were British squirrels, they are the most cunning," he replied.

Meantime, an independent journalist, Sepher Sopli, was not surprised by the idea that another country would spy on Iran, so much as he was dumbfounded by their methods.

"I read this story in the papers and though it was very bizarre; what struck me as odd was that in this age of modern technology, people were relying on squirrels to do their spying," Sopli said.

But, the report was still strange enough to surprise. "That's very funny, but you're not serious are you?" said Soraya Jafari, a student in Tehran.  

Maybe not a first
Espionage not entirely foreign to animals. If true, this would not be the first time animals have been used for military endeavors.

During World War II, Allied forces used pigeons to fly vital intelligence out of occupied France.

More recently, U.S. Marines stationed in Kuwait trained chickens for a low-tech chemical detection system. It's also well documented that dolphins have been used to seek out underwater mines.

VIDEO: Were Iranian captives forced to confess?

 Spying is something that is taken seriously in any country, especially in a place like Iran, where numerous people are currently being held on charges of espionage.

Still, the squirrels that breached the Iranian border carrying sensitive spying equipment must have been nuts.

Taking advantage of a brief lull in the action while some of my male colleagues were out on a military embed, I tried to follow up on a promise I'd made to myself when I arrived on this latest assignment to Iraq – to try to find out who is the Iraqi woman circa 2007? 

Unable to stray too far, I started by chatting with some of the Iraqi women in the compound where our hotel is located. On another occasion, when it was just too dangerous for me as a Westerner to venture out, I asked our female translator, Rose, to do some of the leg work for me. I also persuaded her to make some pretty embarrassing phone calls.

What I found, while perhaps not exactly the in-depth take on female society I'd hoped for, offers a small taste of the everyday lives of some Iraqi women. The headline, should you choose to stop reading now, is no sex, too much food and no future.

Shams, the 24-year-old woman at the security desk in the lobby of our hotel, made it adamantly clear that she believes she has no future in Iraq.

"The only way I have a future is if I come back with you to England," Shams said. "There is no hope for the women of Iraq. And with all these killings, we'll be left with no men. The only way to secure a husband is to leave the country."

And it's not just the future – it's the now. Shams' youth has been severely compromised by the security situation. It's too dangerous for trips out, so there is no way to meet boys on dates and the only recourse for friendship and intimacy is via a cell phone or the Internet. The highlight of the week for her is a visit to a girlfriend who lives next door.

"I miss everything we used to have in the old days [under Saddam]," Shams said. "The going out to restaurants or hanging out with friends eating ice cream till 3 a.m. These days, with the curfew, I have to be home by 7 p.m. max."

And then there is the shopping. "We all go clothes shopping in one safe area, which means everyone ends up buying the same things, so it looks like a uniform," she complained. Although she admitted that like so many of her Western contemporaries, she still manages to spend most of her salary on clothes. 

Or what's left of it after she's paid $200 of her $500 monthly salary to the taxi driver who brings her safely to work. Other friends who earn less simply cannot afford to get to work. "So they stay at home, unable to practice the professions they've studied for," she said.

But at the bank, I did manage to meet a lively group of ladies who still manage to practice their profession. While the male manager hovered around nervously trying to inject his presence into our conversation, we ignored him and chatted away.

We hit the usual topics of the dangers of simply getting to work, frustrations of infrequent shopping trips, the nightmare of juggling home-work-cooking with power and electricity being scarce and money always being incredibly tight. Again, I was hit by a wall of hopelessness.

"The situation is worse than ever. It's spiraling right down," said Aseel, the 26-year-old single woman of the group and office siren who had regrettably just started wearing a headscarf because of the deteriorating situation. "Only God can help us," she said.

That was exactly why her married colleague, Hoda, 28, started wearing a headscarf three years ago. "I thought, I better play it right by God," she explained. "I've given up on the future."

"It's the worst possible thing, not having anything to look forward too," Hoda said. "Most people spend all their money on food. They just sit inside, in front of the TV, during curfew and eat. It's the only pleasure we have left," she said, reminiscing about the days when they could walk in the park, go to a club, have a swim.

And on that note, I waited until the male boss left the room and broached the subject of sex. Was the situation taking its toll there, too? I'd read that the birthrate in Iraq had dropped by six percent since 2003, so something must be up.

 Menal, a 24-year-old newlywed blushed and conceded that, yes, like everything else, her sex life was suffering.

Hoda was more forthcoming. "Because we are both so stressed – the desire for sex, as for so many other things in life, has diminished."

Looking on the bright side, Hoda added, "The only good thing is where I was once worried about my husband cheating on me, now I don't think he'd be up to it. And even if were, there would be few willing partners!"  

Meantime, Suha, a 32-year-old housewife, told us over the phone that she and her husband quarrel all the time because of the situation and that the depression it brings is impacting their sex life – big time.

"I just don't go out. I spend all my day eating and sleeping," she explained. "I can no longer afford a hairdresser, and even if I could, it would be too dangerous to go there. Some people were kidnapped at the pharmacy round the corner the other day, so that's now a no-go, too. There are no social visits, and it's so bad that I couldn't attend my uncle's funeral. It's got to the stage where I change my clothes three times a day just to pretend I'm going out."

Suha also shared a total mistrust of Iraq's newly elected  politicians, even the women. "These women don't take the needs of the normal Iraq women into consideration," she complained.

I asked Rose, our translator, if she'd mind asking a few questions at the up-market Alwiya Social Club, a middle-class bastion in downtown Baghdad. There the tempo was a little more upbeat.

Zainab, a 36-year-old professional who was lunching with her friend, Hyam, believed the role of women was actually improving. "Now at least we have women in parliament, ministers and ambassadors. Unlike under Saddam when we didn't even have a parliament," she pointed out.

Hyam, 43, and the mother of three, was also more optimistic.

"We hope that the role of women in politics will improve the lot of Iraqi women. I have to hope, otherwise I couldn't live," she admitted           

And her life at home seemed not too bad either. "I manage to get out to some social events and the hairdresser is right next to my home, so I go whenever I want. I work out at home on my exercise bike and when things get too much, we go to Kurdistan for a break."

What about sex? Well even for Hyam it's a no-go. Now that's a real leveler.     

Around this time of year, conversation among Beijing's expatriates turns to the coming summer holidays: what seaside they'll be vacationing at, what Western foods they'll be eating, which books they plan to read, but most importantly how much clean air they're going to be breathing.

Lucky them.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The Forbidden City's famous rooftops can barely be seen through the smog and humidity.

August in Beijing is dreaded for its brutal heat and humidity, which conspire with high levels of pollution, dust, and sand blowing in from the Gobi Desert.  The air gets thicker and hazier, despite the fact that it's also the rainy season.

Just over a year away from the Olympics, one wonders how the athletes will perform under these conditions.

Well, the government in Beijing isn't wondering.   It's busy battling the problem by instituting new power-saving measures to curb energy consumption in order to reduce pollution and laying the groundwork for, well, near-perfect weather.

This week, officials at China's Meteorological Administration are launching a practice session firing rockets into the sky to disperse rain clouds. The drill is designed to simulate part of the climate-control process scheduled to take place around this time next year in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Early this month, when Beijing was hit by a muggy mini-heat wave, President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders initiated a creative solution for energy conservation: they swapped their suits and ties for white-collared shirts.

The breezier garb comes in handy now that the State Council (China's cabinet) has ruled air conditioners cannot be set any cooler than 79 degrees Fahrenheit. A team of 22 officials are on hand to check that offices, hotels, malls, and other big buildings in the city are observing the new ruling.

Authorities will also try out a test-run ban to ease the smog. Beginning the first week of August, one third of the capital's 3 million cars will be taken off the streets for several weeks. Officials have not said how they'll proceed, but it's not their first time. Last November, during a major China-Africa leadership summit, the city banned nearly half a million vehicles, helping to pave – ahem – the way for blue skies.

Attempts to tackle pollution aren't limited to the capital city.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Central Beijing's hazy skyline.Â

Workers have continued to build "The Green Wall," approximately a 400-mile barrier of trees and enclosed grassland stretching across China's northern frontier, to be completed by 2010.

Scientists in the southern city of Guangzhou are trying to create a new species of trees that can "resist" pollution.

In Shenzhen, home to one of China's first great experiments with capitalism, the mayor issued a plea to its affluent citizens to stop buying cars in an effort to help ease growing pollution.

But some wonder whether these steps are enough. A World Bank report, due out soon, according to the Financial Times, claims that as many as 750,000 people in China die prematurely every year from pollution.

And according to a recent report by a governmental official, "The model of economic development that we are currently pursuing is unsustainable."

China's deputy director of State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) added, "One-third of China's land mass is affected by acid rain. Over 300 million rural residents have no access to clean drinking water. One-third of urban residents breathe heavily polluted air." 

The report warned, "Thanks to the traditional model of economic development – which is energy intensive, heavily polluting and relies on high levels of consumption – China has become the world's largest consumer of water, largest emitter of waste water and one of the three areas in the world worst affected by acid rain."

Khalid Hassan was irrepressible. In the days after Baghdad fell, he would drop by my office with the most positive outlook of anyone I'd ever seen. It was only after I got to know him better that I realized how even more remarkable that was.

After Saddam was toppled, the dream of a better life went horribly wrong for Palestinian-Iraqi families like Khalid's much sooner than for most Iraqis. Iraqis blamed even Palestinians born here for supporting Saddam while he was in power and drove thousands of them out of their homes. When I met Khalid four years ago, his family had taken shelter in a school. It was a fact that he mentioned in passing with a rueful and still hopeful smile – hopeful that everything would turn out OK.

NBC News

Khalid Hassan, the New York Times reporter killed in Iraq last week, with NBC News' Kianne Sadeq, left, and Jane Arraf during happier times.

For a while it did. He got a job he loved with the New York Times, a steady paycheck, moved his parents and sisters into an apartment and delighted in the long black leather jacket and trendy clothes he was able to buy. His father was shot and wounded driving a taxi and his family depended on him more than ever.

On Thursday, Khalid was driving to work in southwest Baghdad when gunmen forced his car off the road and opened fire, according to his employers. He survived the first bullet and called his family to tell them he was OK And then incredibly, a second group of gunmen came back and shot this remarkable 23-year-old with the sweet, rueful smile in the head. 

Absorbing that news it felt as if the earth should stop turning for a while. The same way it seems incomprehensible that life rolls on after every sudden death of a friend or colleague or family member that leaves the world you know much sadder and smaller.

Not the only one
Khalid wasn't the only Iraqi journalist to die last week.

Namir Nour al-Deen was 22 and a Reuters photographer. He and his driver and assistant Saeed Chmagh were killed during a battle between the U.S. Army and Shiite insurgents in Eastern Baghdad on Thursday. Namir had called a colleague to say he was taking pictures of a damaged building. Witnesses say he died in a U.S. airstrike.

Reuters ran some of his photos in tribute – some were more grim than many Americans will ever see in their newspapers: the outline of a charred body burning in a bombed minibus, a man picking up body parts from the street. Others were signposts of what he'd seen his country become in the past four years – a tangled bridge plunging cars into the river, children turned into refugees.

Slideshow: See some of the images Reuters photographer Namir Nour al-Deen took of the war that ultimately took his life.

When the two were buried, other photographers took the kind of photos Namir would have taken at other people's funerals – the face of Chmagh's son twisted in grief as he clung to the vehicle carrying the coffin, his grieving father in a wheelchair.

While I was on a military embed for a website in May, I ended up with U.S. army medics in a mosque in Baghdad as they treated Iraqis shot in clashes with al-Qaida.

Time seemed to stop as they brought in the wounded – one of them an off-duty Iraqi cameraman for APTN. He died on the floor, two of his brothers by his side. I translated when I could for the Americans treating the Iraqis.

When they didn't need me I asked his brother if I could take photos. "Take them," he said. So I did, trying to capture the frantic effort to save him, the inconsolable grief and rage when he died, and the anguished loneliness of his younger brother keeping vigil by his coffin as the shadows lengthened in the mosque.

"How could you take those pictures?" a friend asked me later in horror. I imagine, like a lot of readers might, he thought it was ghoulish. I tried to explain that that was what we do. We bear witness. That to have not taken photos would have made me a tourist, a voyeur. It was important for someone who had seen and documented so much grief in his country that his own suffering shouldn't go unheard.

Sometimes I think the news is like shrink-wrapped steak in the supermarket. People are happy to have it but don't really think very much about how it got there. A lot of the information and images people get in their newspapers or on the Internet, a lot of the video they see on their TV screens comes from local reporters, translators, photographers and cameramen whose names they will never know.

The interpreters – the difference between accurate information and serious misunderstandings – are particularly anonymous. A third Reuters employee – a translator – was killed last week – shot dead in Baghdad. His name was withheld to protect his family.

Even further below on the safety rung are freelance cameramen who get paid only for the video they manage to sell. One of them showed up yesterday with footage of former insurgents who had teamed up with U.S. forces west of Baghdad. He had likely risked his life to get the footage. We told him we'd done that story and he went away to try to interest someone else.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says 110 journalists and 40 people working with them have been killed in this war – most of them are Iraqis. That may not seem like a large number but it's a huge proportion of journalists.

For most of us, not an uneventful day goes by that we don't consider ourselves and our colleagues really lucky.

On Sunday a large boom rattled the windows in our relatively safe neighborhood.  It was a car bomb exploding on the very corner where a day before our Iraqi crew had been out interviewing street vendors about what they thought about U.S. troops pulling out. An anonymous news agency photographer took video of smoke rising from the blast and his agency sent the images around the world.

"Why don't you take some food for you family," I said to our freelance cameraman, Ali. He had just finished telling me how all the families in his village were desperate for basic supplies.

He'd come down from Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, where the U.S. military had been conducting a three-week long surge to flush out alleged al-Qaida operatives.

And while there have been some military successes, being caught in the middle hasn't been easy for the locals already struggling for survival. NBC had been in the region recently and saw first hand the humanitarian relief effort to help the locals, many of whom have been too frightened to leave their homes

"Then there is the added problem of who really is al-Qaida? Have they indeed gone? Or have they just melted into the population?" he pointed out. "And everyone is frightened of repercussions, especially if we get too friendly with the Americans."

Well, maybe at least some food could help. I thought he could take some of our extra kitchen supplies and some treats for the kids. He politely declined.

"I don't have any transport to carry it," he explained.

"So how did you get here?" I asked.

A naive question considering we deal with dangers of travel every time we go out and I should know that the road up to Diyala is long and treacherous. When we went up there it was by military helicopter. Yet somehow I had expected Ali's car to be parked outside.

"I jumped a lift on a flat-bed truck and then walked five kilometers [three miles] through the checkpoints," he explained, the entire time looking remarkably uncrumpled and unfazed in a crisp blue cotton shirt.

He'd gone through all this to collect his monthly salary which, while generous by Iraqi standards, wouldn't get many Westerners out of bed, let alone get them to go on a trek of about 75 miles. 

Like many Iraqi journalists, Ali was risking life and limb just to get a paycheck. Something to think about during a week when three local Iraqi journalists were killed in two days – a Reuters photographer and driver, as well as a reporter for the New York Times. 

SLIDESHOW: See some of the image Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen took of the war that ultimately took his life.

Â

So, no charitable goodie bags of essentials to go for Ali this time.

"Tell you what you could do though," he added. "All each family needs is $25 to help them survive."

"How many families?" I asked. "Fifty," he said.

My heart wanted to pull out my purse and empty it for them right there. My head said that wouldn't work.

What about all the other families who need help? There are millions of them. Where do you draw the line?

So I gave him his salary, smiled, and said I'd think about what I could do.

I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

A couple of days ago, we wrote a blog about Josh Gartner's discovery of having all the content from his website, http://www.chinaexpat.com/, lifted and posted -- without attribution -- on another website, Confucius Institute Online. 

A day or so after Gartner blogged about the discovery on his own website, the Confucius Institute began taking down some of Gartner's articles from its site.

Then the Institute sent Gartner an apology.

You can read more here: "Confucius Institute Removes Content"

"Didn't think there was that much cash in Iraq," said one of our correspondents, while the rest of us were just incredulous.

"Better than our potential lottery winnings," another colleague added. (We've started to enter the Euro lottery every Friday – it gives us something to fantasize about – usually the fantasy involves chartering a private jet out of here.) None of us really believed the report.

And then today there it was again on all the major wire services: "An official at the bank said about $300 million in U.S. dollars had been stolen, as well as 220 million Iraqi dinars ($176,000)," reported Reuters. 

"Why don't you guys use some of your special talents and go and track that?" I joked with some of our security advisors. "Don't think it hadn't crossed our minds," they teased.

Ends up our initial instincts turned out to be right after all - later on Thursday the Iraqi police and bank manager corrected themselves and said the stolen bounty was more like 300 million Iraqi dinars, not U.S. dollars. That's more like $500,000 dollars.

But it was still a substantial amount, and it got us thinking...what if?

Cash and carry
This is totally a cash society, it isn't a place where you enter pin numbers or engage in email banking, even though it is improving.

For years we would travel in here with bundles of cash strapped to various parts of our bodies as that was our only option. Now at least we have recourse to use the local bank, if not quite your Wall Street service. But most of what we, and everyone else here, does is peel off cash dollar notes.

And while it's no longer the Wild West days of that short period after the fall of Saddam when looting was rife, bank raids were a daily occurrence and U.S. soldiers were coming across millions of dollars hidden under trees, it's still not quite the rule of law. 

This raid could have been worse, but the potential for groups like al-Qaida here is huge. We've heard so much recently about how al-Qaida is resurging. Only yesterday U.S. General Bergner told reporters that al-Qaida is planning to make Iraq a "gateway to victory." At the same time, over 200 explosive vests had been confiscated from a truck smuggling them in across the Syrian border.

The idea of 300 million dinars, if not dollars, in the wrong hands is still chilling – especially since the insurgents here seem to be doing well enough without it.

VIDEO: Report warns al-Qaida gaining strength

As usual we called upon the hardy local staff of the TV news agencies to see if they had covered the aftermath of the heist or if they had any more detail.

I called Reuters TV and was told they knew about it, but were little busy right now.

Just 10 minutes earlier they learned that their Iraqi photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40, had been killed covering clashes in eastern Baghdad.

No more laughs about our board's list of events today.

We were only two days into our work trip to Yunnan province and I was looking for a way out.

Without a doubt, the scenery was a visual feast. Perched high atop Tiger Leaping Gorge – a stunning natural site formed between the Jade Dragon Snow and Haba Snow Mountains – we were treated to breathtaking views of snow-capped mountains and lightly forested hillsides dotted by picturesque terraced farm plots. 

Far below us, the Jinsha River lazily wound off into the distant horizon. The price for these beautiful views though? Thin air.

VIDEO: The treacherous trip up to Tiger Leaping Gorge

With the cliffs starting at 6,600 feet and my lungs and head already working hard to cope with the load of our camera gear, I was anxious to get back to the gorge base to give my body a break.

But a half-mile from the park's entrance, everything came to a standstill as we ran right smack into a traffic jam that rivaled anything we had ever seen in Beijing.

Blocking our exit from the park were two converging caravans of tour buses and private cars vying for access along the same narrow two-lane path carved out of the side of the cliff. At the center of this honking cacophony of mayhem was one lone tour bus whose nervous looking driver was attempting an absurdly difficult 10-point turn before an audience of hundreds of irate tourists.

As if on cue, a shirtless old man walked by our van and jovially told us, "You aren't going anywhere, there are buses backed up almost two kilometers [over a mile] from here! This place is so popular now, it's always like this ..."

China's travel explosion is a recent phenomenon that coincides with a robust economy and the subsequent growth of middle-class incomes. Much like the travel explosion in America during the 1950s, Chinese are beginning to flex their newly discovered disposable income to travel the country and, increasingly, the world. In 2006, a record 124 million mainland Chinese traveled domestically.

Interestingly, The Standard, a Hong Kong newspaper, reported last month that according to the China National Tourism Administration, Chinese currently make only one domestic trip a year (as opposed to Americans who travel on average seven times a year), but that number will probably rise to two trips a year within the next decade – or 2.6 billion trips.

Important cultural and ecological sites such as Tiger Leaping Gorge have seen a 30 percent increase in Mainland Chinese visitors anxious to take in the stunning views and minority cultures that dot the region.

Protected sites?
Tiger Leaping Gorge has been listed as a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) since July 2003, thanks to its location in the larger "Three Parallel Rivers of Yunan Protected Areas," an ecological haven for countless rare species.

Ostensibly the World Heritage designation should preserve the area from overdevelopment or destruction, but the rising number of tourists has sparked increased concern amongst experts over the stability of the area's delicate ecology and culture.

Further complicating matters is persistent discussion by the local provincial government about constructing a hydroelectric dam on the Jinsha River that would flood Tiger Leaping Gorge and displace more than 80,000 people of varying minority groups in an infrastructure program that would rival the famous Three Gorges Dam in size.

While UNESCO status is meant to protect areas like Tiger Leaping Gorge from this very sort of development, through some clever bureaucratic maneuvering the Yunnan provincial government has quietly attempted to create an exception for Tiger Leaping Gorge, essentially allowing the government to construct the dam there and still abide by the letter, if not the spirit of the UNESCO guidelines.

While the national government (which often operates at odds with the local provincial governments) has repeatedly announced there would be no dam construction on Tiger Leaping Gorge, it has not prevented provincial officials from going so far as to drill numerous exploratory tunnels into the gorge's face to test its ability to handle the flooding that would come with the dam's construction.

Whatever the government plans to do to help limit the ecological and societal damages caused by tourism, it better get going soon. The U.N. World Tourism Organization predicts that China could very well surpass Spain as the second most popular destination after France by 2010.

Beijing alone – the host for the 2008 Summer Olympics – is expecting to have over 4.4 million overseas and 150 million domestic tourists.

With the influx of more moneyed tourists into these areas, the national government will likely face greater pressure to intervene on behalf of local governments who themselves are conflicted by the need to provide economic opportunities for farmers who are increasingly being left behind in this new China.

Have you ever wondered what happens to all of the innocent people killed in the war in Iraq? What happens to the victims of the ruthless revenge killings and the cycle of death we've come to call "sectarian violence."

How are their bodies identified? Where do they go? How can they ever find peace?

One option is the Valley of Peace cemetery in Najaf, burial home for several million Iraqi Shiites. It's one of the largest cemeteries in the world, significant as home to the tomb of Imam Ali, the revered 7th century Shiite leader.

A freelance cameraman recently documented what has become a regular monthly occurrence. Hundreds of unidentified bodies, often impossible to distinguish Shiite from Sunni, are brought almost 100 miles from Baghdad morgues, to rest in the holy Shiite province.

Watch the video link below to learn more about the place where in the midst of tragedy many Iraqis rest in peace.

VIDEO: The Valley of Peace cemetery in Najaf

The girls circle the stage in a nightclub outside of Damascus, holding hands in protective pairs as they march, always counterclockwise, at the same slow pace, one unenthusiastic step per second.

It's three a.m., but bright as a hospital ward in here.

The club owners leave on the florescent lights so customers can get a good look at what's for sale.

The girls' faces are painted in slashes of pink blush. Their lipstick is drab browns and beiges. They want it that way, so it doesn't distract from their eyes, accented with glittering splashes of emerald green and sapphire blue. Many girls connect their thin shaped eyebrows with a black pencil, and have orange and yellow plastic flowers in their long hair, blackened with henna.

VIDEO: Young Iraqi refugees forced into prostitution

Read more of Richard Engel's blog about the dozens of nightclubs on the outskirts of Damascus full young Iraqi girls – refugees forced into what U.N. relief agencies call "survival sex." 

The headline in the Beijing Times this morning gave some of us here pause for thought. An investigative report carried by the paper found that up to half of the city's water coolers could contain fake branded water.

But Josh Gartner was busy pondering another type of counterfeiting.

He was searching for information online about a little-known music group from northwestern China called Sharizhad when he came across an article he'd penned for his website, chinaexpat.com .

The problem was that the piece wasn't on his site. 

It was Confucius Institute Online, which is part of the Confucius Institute overseen by the Office of Chinese Language Council International.  ( The organization is a bit like the Chinese equivalent of USAID or the British Council -- a government agency that seeks to enhance China's standing through "soft power," or cultural-educational exchange.)

So it would appear not even words escape counterfeiting in China.

Wholesale copying
"It was a freak thing," said Gartner, a Brooklyn native who recently moved back to China to run China Expat as the site's managing editor. 

"I started poking around the site," he said, and quickly discovered that several pages, each listing dozens of articles, were taken directly from China Expat, a site that guides the expatriate community on culture and travel around the country.

That was when Gartner stopped counting the number of pieces.  "I was somewhat dumbfounded to find every article I had written completely hijacked," he said.  He added that no one from the Confucius Institute has been in touch with him for permission to run the articles.

Only three of the several dozen articles credited China Expat. "They inadvertently included our information when they cut and paste everything," said Gartner. The rest were lifted directly from the site without attribution. 

Gartner, who spent three years teaching and studying in Chengdu and Dalian, said he was "almost not that surprised" to see this happen. As a teacher, he said he witnessed early on a tendency among some of his Chinese students to plagiarize.

But this was different, Gartner noted.  "It's the scale of it. They just don't seem to care."

Gartner has sent the Confucius Institute an email requesting an explanation. "We want to hear what they have to say," he said. "But obviously I want all that content to come down. We can talk about putting some of that material up, but we're really not at that stage."

No one could be reached at the Confucius Institute when NBC News called for a comment on the matter.

Can climate change and warming water threaten the Great Barrier Reef?

Watch NBC News Anne Thompson's report from off the Australian coast and read her blog about her assignment of a lifetime.

VIDEO: Warming threatens Great Barrier Reef

 Russia's most popular weapon celebrated its 60th birthday, and it couldn't come at a better time for Russia's weapons industry.

At a ceremony in Moscow's Armed Forces Museum, a first model of the Kalashnikov rifle, the AK-47 (the first version was produced in 1947), was unveiled and placed into the hands of its creator, Mikhail Kalashnikov.

NBC News/ Yonatan Pomrenze

Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the famed rifle, celebrates 60 years of the weapon dominating armed conflict all over the world.

The 87-year-old Kalashnikov said he was excited to greet what he called his "first-born," but also said he loves all versions of the Kalashnikov equally – the way a mother loves all her children.

He's not alone in loving Russian weapons. Russia is second in the world in weapons exports, with only the United States selling more. The vast majority of these weapons are sold through the official state arms export agency, Rosoboroexport.

According to government estimates, Russia sold over $6 billion worth of weapons last year and plans to break the $7 billion mark in 2007. The government agency also estimates that future orders booked last year will be worth over $20 billion.

Venezuela survived the U.S. arms embargo by buying billions of dollars worth of Russian weapons, and Israel complains that Russian weapons sold to Syria make their way to Hezbollah. While those deals by Russia get most of the critical Western press attention, the country's main weapons trade is with China and India.

But no export is as well-known or widespread as the Kalashnikov rifle. Easy to manufacture and tough to jam, the Kalashnikov is the weapon of choice for national armies (President Hugo Chavez ordered 100,000 for Venezuela) and countless militias, guerrillas, and insurgent groups.

An estimated 100 million Kalashnikovs are in circulation in the world – outstripping the U.S.'s M-16 (estimated 12 million) by almost 10-1 – and are ubiquitous in armed conflicts around the world. They are manufactured in 14 different countries.

But the Kalashnikov's status may be best gauged by the range its cultural symbolism. One can find the Kalashnikov on the flag of Mozambique, the logo of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp., the flag of Hezbollah and even referenced in the N.B.A. – Utah Jazz star (and Russian native) Andrei Kirilenko's number is 47 (hence his nickname, AK-47).

But for the weapon's inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov, the existence of vast numbers of the weapon doesn't faze him.

Without even being prompted by the question, he told reporters that he sleeps fine at night, because it's "the politicians to blame for failing to come to an agreement and instead resolving their problems with violence."

All he did, he says, was create a weapon to defend the Russian fatherland.

http://onthescene.msnbc.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/09/arraf.jpg" target="_blank">

It was a moment Lisa Ramaci thought might never happen -- the doors at JFK airport swinging open and a young woman in a headscarf and high heels walking into a new life of freedom -- and safety.

It was a very long journey for both of them. Nour al-Khal is the Iraqi interpreter who was with Lisa's husband, Steven Vincent, when he was abducted and murdered in Basra in 2005. Nour was wounded in the attack and Lisa had spent 18 months fighting U.S. authorities to bring her to the United States.

I first met Lisa more than a year ago at a dinner for the Committee to Protect Journalists. She introduced herself as the widow of Steven Vincent. His murder then was recent enough that you could tell she found it strange to be defining herself that way. Over the next year, this extraordinary woman started a foundation in Steven's name to help the families of local journalists killed in war zones and successfully battled to get Nour to the United States -- all while being treated for breast cancer.

VIDEO: War unites two women in unlikely fashion

"I was filling out paperwork, making phone calls, e-mails, pledging to stand financial security for her, promising that I would let her live with me," Lisa said. Many times it seemed she would never get her here.

But now, here we were with her at JFK, waiting for Nour to arrive, to meet the woman who would be sharing her home. I'd met Nour in the Jordanian capital, Amman, while she was waiting for her visa. Like many Iraqi refugees, she lived in fear that she would be deported back to Iraq. And she wasn't sure what to expect from her new life.

Read the rest of Jane Arraf's story about Nour's amazing journey from Iraq in the Daily Nightly blog and watch her report on NBC Nightly News tonight.

Shaboot and Buny are the favored fish of Baghdadis. Traditionally enjoyed grilled on wood ovens and eaten al fresco in the cool of the evening in riverside restaurants, they symbolize the taste of a way of life that's existed for decades, of easier days gone by.

However, the local appetite for fish appears to be on the decline.

"People just aren't eating it much anymore because there are so many dead bodies being fished out of the river that they are worried about eating fish that have been feeding on dead bodies," a colleague told me after venturing out to some of the (once popular) restaurants on the river banks.

In fact fishing dead bodies out of the river seems to be the main activity along the banks of the Tigris these days. Hardly a day goes by without another report of a body being dumped into Baghdad's main waterway.

The river is convenient for dumping corpses, and, it seems, has become a useful artery for extremists.

"What we found is that locals are not using the Tigris River for fishing. In fact as we engage with the local population they tell us the only people using the Tigris River are insurgents and extremists," U.S. Gen. Rick Lynch said at a recent press conference.   

"What we have chosen to do is to take out all boats. So anything that's floating on the Tigris River, what we believe to be an enemy activity, we take out," Lynch explained. "Of the many boats we've taken out, 17 so far, there have been significant secondary explosions indicating they were being used to transport munitions."           

Still casting a line
Yet in some of its twists and turns as the Tigris snakes around Baghdad's city center, there is a semblance of familiar river life.

Young kids are still using the Tigris for what they've been doing for centuries, dipping in the water as refuge from the intense summer heat. And fishermen, at least some, are still fishing.

An NBC translator recently came across a few trying their luck on a quiet river bend. One fisherman named Ahmed described how it's increasingly difficult to make a living from the river.

"There are just fewer places to fish," said Ahmed, who asked that his last name not be used. "We can't use our usual area because it's along the banks of the heavily fortified Green Zone – so the Americans won't let us. And in the nearby Dora area it's too dangerous – there are just too many snipers."

"On top of that, there isn't even much demand for fish these days," Ahmed added. He attributed the lack of demand for fish to the high cost. At approximately $5 per kilogram, fish are almost unaffordable for the average Iraqi who earns about $200 per month.  

Hussein, a local fishmonger, wholeheartedly agreed. He insisted the falloff is sales was more about market price and low income than unease about dead bodies. Baghdadis, he reckoned, are made of stronger stuff.

(Our local NBC News staff tended to agree with Hussein. Questions about fish conjured up memories of cherished aromas and flavors from the past – a treat which, if it's perhaps less frequent these days, is still a feasible on occasions. Not something easily relinquished, dead bodies or not).

But the suggestion of possible problems with fish is starting to hit a nerve. The debate has reached the national TV level with citizens being warned off feasting on fish that may have fed off humans. Shiite clerics have been consulted to check that, in principle at least, the fish are OK to eat.

Meantime, restaurateurs have been busy reassuring people that their fish are from fish farms rather than the legendary, now unsavory, Tigris.

Jinan, Shandong Province –  "You see," Wang Liqiang gestured through the windshield at a taxi that had cut our car off at the traffic light. "This is what I'm talking about."

Wang, an otherwise laidback Shandong native sporting a small potbelly, was working up to his argument.

"China's changing all the time," he continued. "People used to behave okay.  Now with all this development, it's chaotic all the time, and the young people have lost a sense of who they are."

He turned to me.  "Baseball will bring that sense of order back."

Baseball? 

VIDEO: America's pastime catches on in China

"It teaches people manners," Wang was hitting his stride now.  "Baseball is a nine-person sport. Everyone has a position to play. Everyone knows what he needs to do. Everyone has to work together."

Spend time in Wang's company and you soon discover how impassioned the 38-year old is about making America's pastime into China's too.

The former businessman runs the Shandong Zhanwang Baseball and Softball Club from a tiny office in the Shandong capital of Jinan. His goal is to increase China's exposure to the ballgame by bringing the sport to young boys across his hometown province.

Wang's zeal for baseball originated when he first saw it played in 1990 – "at the National Games," he said. "The national team wasn't very strong. But the sport was rather quiet and peaceful."

Wanting to learn more, he went out in search of a book explaining baseball. Then he began following the Chinese national baseball team across the country to watch their games. Before long, other aspects of the sport clicked with him: not just the emphasis on mental aptitude but also courtesy. "Players are required to bow when they meet their coach!"

As China stepped up the pace of its rapid economic development in the 1990s, Wang came to the conclusion that baseball was essential. "Life is like finding your position on a baseball field," he said. "The rules of baseball can help you regulate your life and find your goal. Many people don't have goals. Baseball trains the Chinese people…to fight for their goals, fight for their whole life."

So Wang quit his job in marketing and advertising. He sold his home. He sold his car.  And on April 18, 2002, he founded the Shandong Zhanwang Baseball and Softball Club.

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

Wang critiques his team.

Slogans like "One ball, one soul" in Chinese characters decorate the walls of Wang's office, housed in a school where baseball isn't played and where he says he might be evicted from since the authorities don't see any benefit to having him there.

Wang shrugged and batted away the suggestion that he'd ever leave – an attitude that has served him well in overcoming challenges during the five years he's run the club. 

These challenges – the sport's lack of visibility, coaching/instruction, fields, equipment – stem from baseball's patchy history in China. Although it arrived as early as 1863 (four years before Japan), it never gained the same foothold here as it did with neighboring countries, particularly as baseball was banned during the Cultural Revolution.

The game has since flourished in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, where leagues for all different levels of play have developed and from which strong talent has emerged – but has languished in China.

Take equipment. Although Chinese factories manufacture mitts and baseballs for foreign companies, those products aren't widely available to buy in China. So the resourceful Wang has worked relations with potential sponsors and connections to other baseball clubs in Japan and South Korea to obtain bats, balls, and mitts – often well used and broken in. 

"Mr. Wang is crazy about baseball," said Harry Shi, a Hong Kong-based businessman who met the club owner four years ago. Shi was so impressed by Wang's passion that he persuaded his employer at the time, American sporting goods company SSG, to sponsor the club.  SSG donated 120 baseballs, 24 bats, and one pitching machine – all of which were extremely difficult to come by in China, let alone a small coastal city like Jinan.

Wang also has had to find different ways to fund the club apart from his own money --he's sunk more than $130,000 since 2002.  He just doubled the $10 annual dues to enroll their boys in his baseball club.  It's a nominal training fee he uses to help pay for basic office expenses, playing in competitions, and, of course, travel.

The club's teams try to travel around China, as well as South Korea and Japan, to see ballgames since they're rarely broadcast on Chinese television.  (In fact, we "discovered" Wang and one of his teams in Tianjin. The team had driven five hours by bus to the port city as soon as the boys had finished school at 2 p.m. that Friday in order to catch the Tianjin Lions play the Shanghai Eagles.)

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

One of the mantras decorating Wang's office walls: "One ball, one soul."

It's also been tough trying to raise the profile of baseball in schools. In a country where there are only 60 full baseball diamonds, one of Wang's tasks has been to persuade school authorities in Jinan just to provide a small space for boys to practice catching.  That means vying with basketball courts and soccer fields – two sports that are far more popular in China.

Wang said 2005 and 2006 were tough years.

But whenever he considered quitting, he thought about the boys. "I see the kids love it so much," he said. "How could I do that to them?"

His perseverance has paid off. One of his club's teams won third place in the 2004 national junior competition. And while only two schools in Jinan had baseball in 2002, there are now about a dozen participating in his club.  Wang hopes one of the club's alumni, just about to finish university, will come back to help coach the teams.

Roughly 200 boys, ages six to 17, play on the 14 teams – including his 14-year-old son, a nephew, and a cousin. "It's a family business!" he laughed.

In fact, Wang has found staunch support from the Parents' Association to develop the club. At a practice session that afternoon in Jinan, parents came out to watch their sons play in a concrete schoolyard.

"Each kid is the only child in the family [and] they often get lonely," said Jiang Ai-xia, the mother of 12 year old Zuo Shou-qie, who just started playing baseball this year.  "Letting them play baseball helps cultivate their team spirit and encourages them to play with other kids."

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

Mr Wang's team lines up for drills every afternoon.

Zuo's performance as first baseman may have been a little erratic, but it didn't diminish his enthusiasm. "Baseball teaches us the power of cooperation…and skills," he said.  "Although my skills are not that good."

The boys grin bashfully when they're being interviewed, only allowing their enthusiasm to shine off the field when they talk about baseball's future here, "China is just starting….  Once we start loving baseball, we definitely will beat the other countries," said one boy.

Another explained why they like the Yankees, "Their pitchers throws super fast. They hit also very hard and very far!"

Wang, who is normally stern coaching his team from the sidelines, beamed with pride.

"Five years ago, when I started [this] baseball [team], many people thought I was crazy," he said, especially since he wasn't in it for the money. "Five years later, many people think we are the best in Shandong."

By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent

At first sight of that flaming car, in television pictures trickling in from Scotland, the first hopeful thought was that it must have been some unfortunate accident. And that, at best. Or maybe one of those copycat acts that inexplicably arise when something horrible happens.

No. Within minutes, this appeared to be something more. And so started our journey to Glasgow in a hurry. A most futile rush, as London reacted to this, and its own, fear of continued attack.

A strange thing, to find traffic into Heathrow at an absolute standstill, for miles and miles. Every now and then we'd move a few car lengths in the pouring rain. The tension and worry on the faces in other cars was painfully obvious. Some were resorting to driving on the narrow shoulder of grass. It got them nowhere. As we drew closer, and the hours -- yes, hours --  ticked by, I contemplated several times jumping out of the car and just running the rest of the way to the terminal, but the rain was soaking and I would have had to run through a long tunnel. I should have. Heathrow had reacted quickly with increased security and closed roadways.
 
I, and my photographer Krzysztof, coming in from a different location, both missed the last flight out to Edinburgh, the nearest airport to Glasgow that was still open.

We looked at each other at the terminal, finally. What were we going to do? No more trains at 10 p.m. Our only choice: drive. More than seven hours. The case was developing rapidly in Scotland, even as we stood there.

So off we went, back in the traffic and up the length of England toward the border. More slow hours to tick by, to think about all that was going on around us. Our driver and Krzysztof discussed it in Polish. I eventually went to sleep in the back seat to the sound of the endless rain that has plagued the U.K. Its flooding was the big story here -- until now.

But somewhere during this long dreary night, on the M6,  the very same highway we were driving -- two terror suspects were stopped by police, and arrested.
 
We were surprised. Some more to think about.

They could have been the people next to us at the gas station filling up, the couple that we smiled hello to, or the ones behind us in the convenience store, waiting patiently in line for more coffee for the road. 

Were they making their escape as we sped toward their alleged work? As we and others stood, thinking our mundane thoughts: what route to take, what we had to do the next day, did they stand next to us, imagining what death they could bring to innocent families? Did we politely say "excuse me" to them, as we headed out the door?

Perhaps this is, at least remotely, how some in Florida felt, after realizing they'd been living among several of the 9/11 hijackers.

And as reports come now, that some of the five suspects might have been working as physicians in the region before this, more awful questions follow. Is it possible that the same ones trained to heal, save, protect, and "do no harm" could simultaneously be plotting the most effective, destructive modes to kill?

And as we go about our daily business, be it in London or Glasgow or New York or Peoria, how many might be out there?

Hope lies in people like the ambulance workers in central London last week who had their eyes wide open. They saw something unusual nearby, and though they were busy, they did something about it. They may have unknowingly saved dozens of lives.

John Reid, who lives only a few doors down from the house that two of these terror suspects may have rented recently, told us thoughtfully Sunday that nowadays we seem to be OK with not knowing who lives in our neighborhood, and not caring what they're up to. He felt that from now on, he and many others here would be watching what goes on around them, much more closely, and without thinking twice.

Some call London the world's most cosmopolitan city. It's also where the majority of the U.K.'s estimated half a million Arabs live. Among their gathering spots: the ubiquitous shisha cafés which dot the popular Edgeware Road and Queensway corridors bordering London's Hyde Park.

At virtually any given hour of operation – morning or night – you can find both Arabs and non-Arabs partaking in the Middle Eastern custom of shisha: fruit-scented tobacco, burned using coal, runs through a water pipe and is inhaled through a hose. Paired with a steaming glass of mint tea, this tradition, some say, goes back a thousand years.

VIDEO: U.K. smoking ban will endangers London's shisha bars

But come Sunday, when England's smoking ban goes into effect in public places, shisha business owners are out of customers and cafe-goers without a public place to rendezvous and practice their ritual. An element of London's diverse, vibrant character will be lost.

Losing a slice of life
"Some people they go to the bar, they go clubbing. For me, [the shisha cafe] is a daily thing to meet new people," said Lebanon-born Khalil Mneimne, who sat chatting and smoking with a friend in a cafe on London's Queensway one recent afternoon. "It's a place where we can sit and actually understand each other. A place where we can feel comfortable in."

"It's gonna close and the employees are going to lose their job," Sami Seid Ladri said last week about the shisha lounge he owns down the road. "Everything is gonna end. I've built up this business for five years. Now suddenly it's going to close, first of July."

"The shisha is our culture," he added. "It's for the community."

But not all cafe patrons are worried.

"It's good for the public. It's healthier. A lot of people will stop smoking," offered one burly, well-dressed Moroccan as he lit up a cigar.