Editor's Note: NBC News Anne Thompson and her crew were on assignment in Greenland, but due to a strike by Air Greenland, flights have been few and far between. Anne managed to get out of town on Thursday evening, but her crew – producer Mario Garcia, photographer Bruce Bernstein and his son and soundman, Curt Bernstein were not so lucky.

KANGERLUSSUAQ, Greenland –

Once our correspondent Anne Thompson managed to catch a flight, the rest of us – Bruce, Curt, and I – decided to go ahead and hike out to an ice fjord in Ilulissat. And it was a good thing because after having been on iceberg cruises and flying over ice sheets, we all agreed that the most amazing sight was the sunset last night – at 10:30 p.m.

With 20 hours of daylight in Greenland during the summer – it means long working days or long layovers when you are delayed like we are. But we were delighted to catch one more glimpse of the natural beauty Greenland has to offer.

Curt Bernstein / NBC News

So many places to go, so few planes! NBC News' Mario Garcia and Bruce Bernstein in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.

On Friday morning we got some good news when we heard the Greenland Air strike was over.

With that, we presumed we could get from where we sat in Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland's major airport on the west coast.

We called Air Greenland and of course they said, "There are flights, but you're not on any of them."

However, after some back and forth and some time left on interminable hold, the agent from Air Greenland did get back to me with a flight from Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq. I asked here when it left and she said, "When you get here."

So after a mad dash to the airport, we hopped a flight to Kangerlussuaq.

Once we got on the plane, all of the announcements were made in Danish, Greenlandic (an Inuit language), and English – except the safety announcements in the case of an emergency, which were only in Danish and Greenlandic! Good thing we've flown a lot and know what to do! (Greenland has been self-governing since 1979, but it is still a part of the Kingdom of Denmark).

The strike has been frustrating, but Air Greenland has actually been doing a good job of getting everyone to and fro. They have been very good about given us free food – excellent Greenlandic fare – free hotels and even a free beer with our meal tickets.

Maybe a musk ox safari?
So now we are in Kangerlussuaq, and here we sit.

Basically, the entire town consists of the airport. The hotel is at the airport and everyone who lives in Kangerlussuaq is at the airport. It appears to be a town of about six people. It was an old U.S. airforce base during World War II, so that's why there is a big runway here.

We'd walk around, but there is nothing to walk to. Terminal One is about 10 yards from the entrance to the hotel – so this is it. There is nothing here.

You can allegedly go sight-seeing here. You can apparently go on a Musk ox safari  or hop on a helicopter to go check out the ice. But after having already done that with some world class climatologists like Koni Steffen, it seems a bit passe. 

Air Greenland tells us that we'll either go to Copenhagen, Iceland, or maybe Brazil tomorrow (just kidding about Brazil). So meantime, we're here and we don't know where we're headed next.

Maj. Erica Clarkson would have liked to be in Special Forces or the Army Rangers. But she is barred from doing that - or serving in units likely to be engaged in direct combat.

Jane Arraf / NBC News

Maj. Erica Clarkson on the job with the Army's 3-2 Stryker Brigade in Iraq.

But in Iraq, even if female soldiers aren't assigned to a combat unit, combat comes to them. Clarkson's story isn't about what women can't do, it's about what they are doing in Iraq.

She's the physical therapist for the 3-2 Stryker Brigade. In her 13 months deployed here, she's treated more than 4,000 patients. They're not all office visits. She goes out on medical missions everywhere the Strykers are deployed – which happen to be some of the most volatile places in Iraq.

"In terms of what job occupations the women are allowed to enter it's still very limited – however in Iraq it doesn't really matter what your job specialty is," she said. "There is no front line."

Clarkson has been in a firefight flying over Fallujah and had a rocket recently land 300 feet from her trailer. When she rides in the Stryker vehicles, the soldiers often ask her to stand in the hatch-and-pull security – an honor indicating that they feel she's a capable soldier.

For more than a year she's traveled every few days to one of the five bases where the Strykers are deployed. She's worked seven days a week, 14 to 16 hours a day for the past year. It's an exhausting and often lonely job.

"This is an infantry brigade and it's all about the soldiers. There are very few officers, and even fewer female officers, so I'm quite unique and that gets a little lonely sometimes," she said.

The brigade surgeon, Lt. Col. Michael Oshiki, says that as well as having a wealth of military and clinical experience, Clarkson is more physically capable than a lot of male soldiers.

"I'd say women are in combat, and anyone who says they shouldn't be in combat, clearly isn't in touch with what's going on right now," said Oshiki. "I think there's a lot of consternation about women serving in combat roles in infantry and cavalry types – that's a sticking point because I think it has less to do with the capability of women to do the job and more to do with the inability of men to handle women doing the job."

Clarkson has assisted him in trauma cases for badly wounded soldiers, including volunteering to help prepare the body of a soldier who had died so no one in his unit would have to do it.

"That was something that very few people would be willing to do," he said.

VIDEO: Women on the frontlines

On one of the days we caught up with her, she was at Liberty base in Baghdad – the most luxurious of her accommodations. Of course luxury in the army is all relative. This one was a shared trailer – with room for a bed, table and closet.

The California native often has a cot in a tent on other bases. Some nights it's a sleeping bag on the ground.

"It's hard. I've slept on tarmacs many a night – you go to airfields and sit there for several days before you actually get out."

"I am definitely a different person now than I was 13 months ago without a doubt….It's amazing how little you need to survive. And how as an American – having weekends and having holidays and having all this down time – and then being here, and working every single day, (and realizing) that that you have the strength and endurance to go every single day."

Clarkson is also the only acupuncturist in Iraq. One of the most satisfying things she's done she says is treat Iraqi women and children who won't go to see male doctors. "I feel I understand the Iraqi people better and…that's a big piece of why we are here. It helps them to understand that we are actually good people and want to help."

"There were weeks when I would see a trauma every single week – a lot of Iraqi children shot through the spine – little girls shot through the hip; men badly burned – their skin just melted away."

She takes comfort though in what she does, which is heal people.

"You try not to think about it – you try to do the best medical care that you can possibly do. And when those thoughts go back in your mind, those smells go back in your mind, you just try to get them out and just think positive thoughts," she said. "There are so many things to be proud of here and there are so many great experiences that we do – somehow I've just developed the ability to adapt."

When she returns home soon to Fort Lewis, Wash., she will be a changed person, she says.

Update: Anne Thompson managed to get a seat on a plane out of Greenland on Thursday evening. However, as of 8:30 a.m. EST Friday, the rest of her crew - producer Mario Garcia, photographer Bruce Bernstein and his son and soundman, Curt Bernstein - are still stuck there and hoping to get on a flight home...

ILULISSAT, Greenland –  I had camped out on green ice sheet, ridden helicopters into glaciers where only a handful of people have been, scrambled up and down mountains, but nothing has been as challenging or frustrating as the Air Greenland strike.

We're stranded on the world's largest non-continent island.  "We" is our NBC News team – producer Mario Garcia, photographer Bruce Bernstein and his son and soundman, Curt Bernstein.

Today we were supposed to fly from Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq and then on to Baltimore.

This evening's flight to Baltimore is Air Greenland's last scheduled flight to the United States until spring '08. 

NBC News

The NBC News team soaking in some sun with some new friends in Greenland.

If we were in the states, we'd hop on another airline or rent a car and drive, but Air Greenland is the only domestic airline here and there is no highway system. There is not even a two-lane road connecting the few towns that exist. The only way you can get from place to place is by plane, helicopter, or boat.

We have too much gear to take a chopper. We could go by ferry to Kangerlussuaq, but that would take two days and we don't know where we'd go once we got there.  We are hoping Air Greenland solves this problem fast but we aren't optimistic.

So we're off to shoot another stand-up and then hike to the fjord; if worse comes to worse, the innkeeper has promised me a tree for Christmas if I bake cookies.

Hope to see you all before Spring!

SYDNEY, Australia –

The cartoon showed two policemen trying to ride on a pair of kangaroos, grimly holding on as the animals tossed them around. "Hang in there constable," said one. "We've got to have all 36 of them battle ready by next Tuesday."

The caption beneath the cartoon read: "APEC security - plan B."

Next Tuesday is the start of APEC, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation's annual get-together, which this year takes place here in Sydney, and culminates in a weekend summit of 21 regional leaders – including President Bush – on Sept. 8 and 9. It will also attract the usual and varied crowd of protestors, whose often-violent antics have become a routine sideshow at these international gatherings.

Reuters

A mounted police officer exercises her horse at the New South Wales Mounted Police stables in Sydney on Aug. 27. Â

As a key plank of crowd control, the Sydney police were planning to deploy three dozen horses, but confirmed today that the animals have been quarantined following an outbreak of horse flu. Six of them have been confirmed sick with a virus that is sweeping Australia. Horses from elsewhere in the country can't replace them because all interstate horse movements have been banned.

Hence the cartoonist poking fun, while the police try and figure out how to replace the horses. "It will impact on our security plan, but we have to work around that," the deputy police commissioner told the Telegraph newspaper. "Security will be up to scratch, but it means we will have to go to another plan."

The horse flu has been headline news here – not so much because of APEC, but because racing has been temporally suspended, and for many Australians that is a huge blow. The flu rarely kills, but life without the races is unbearable for many. Some are flocking to bet on dog races as an alternative way to lose money, while newspaper columnists speculate about the blow to the Aussie spirit if there is a lengthy period without horse racing.

"Crab racing could have been a better substitute," one wrote in the Telegraph today, only half joking. "But the field wandered into a buffet lunch and was never seen again."

Some 4,000 delegates are expected here, and as they arrive, Sydney residents are getting out – trying to escape the upheaval and the intense security.  They've already had a taste of what's to come, with trial convoys, escorted by motorcycle outriders, their sirens blaring, cutting through the city streets. Today a fighter jet screamed overhead – another trial for when Bush arrives.

The New South Wales tourist authority said there has been a big increase in hotel bookings in areas outside the city as residents respond by heading to the countryside.

When not considering how a horseless police force will cope, the newspapers here have been speculating as to whether Bush's decision to leave early – he's only stay for one day of the two-day summit – is a snub.

There's a lot of skepticism about the Australian wish to concentrate on climate change. Neither Bush nor John Howard, the Australian prime minister, are convincing advocates of climate change action. And those emerging polluters, China and India, are unlikely to commit to anything that limits their dash to growth.

My own theory is that Bush rightly decided not to stay for the traditional and excruciatingly embarrassingly group photo. This usually takes place on the last day, and features all the leaders dressed in some sort of traditional dress, looking very embarrassed and very silly.

If that is the reason, though, it hasn't worked. The Australian organizers say they have decided to take the fancy-dress group photo on the first day of the summit!

Cuban athlete Erick Hernandez sets a new Guiness Book of World Records mark by  bouncing a soccer ball on his head 350 times in one minute. 

VIDEO: See the Havana head-bouncer in action

The magic is finally here in Cuba and it didn't take that long.

Harry Potter fans here waited just about a month before getting their hands on bootleg copies of this summer's mania.

Pirated versions of both the book and the video are now available on the island – and can be had for just pennies.

At any Havana underground video club, 5 pesos gets you a "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" rental for the night. That's roughly 25 cents.

Diehard buffs can snap up their own bootleg flick for 50 pesos – about $2.50.

And to add to the magic here in Cuba – Harry Potter speaks Spanish.

At least two different pirated versions of the film are circulating on the island.

In one rendition, the boy wizard sounds like a rich kid from Venezuela.

In the other, his Spanish is heavily dusted with Bolivian slang.

Both bootlegs leave a lot to the imagination – grainy and dark, the flick sometimes fades to black right in the middle of the scene.

The audio suffers its problems too – at times it's garbled and low.

But, that hasn't stopped Potter's pals in Cuba from making it one of the summer's blockbuster films here too.

"I sell a dozen copies every day," said one hawker, who would not give his name, surreptitiously selling the movie along with a dozen other titles outside a Havana bakery.

 "I just ran out."  He still had a few more hours of sales before calling it a day.

A neighborhood kid I know peddled his bike to four different rental clubs before he finally found an available copy.  "It made my summer," said Ariel, after watching the movie three times.

Other aficionados are getting their Harry fix with a bootleg Spanish-language version of the young wizard's final adventures in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

While you can't find the 784-page book for sale in any of Havana's 45 varied bookstores, you can spot kids on park benches or sitting along Havana's seawall reading dog-eared copies printed on cheap copy paper.

Some downloaded the illegal copies from an on-line blog originating in Spain, allegedly translated by a fan who posted the unauthorized version of the final book just four days after its July 21 release.

Others are reading bound copies whose origins remain a mystery.

Previous Potter volumes have appeared in different countries including Venezuela and Mexico months in advance of the official Spanish release.

In past bootleg operations, pirates making a fortune from the super-selling J.K. Rowling's series have been discovered and prosecuted for copyright theft.

But Potter's fans here, as around the globe, give scant thought to copyright infringements.

Many will tell you that its torture waiting for the official Spanish translation.

Titled "Harry Potter y las Reliquias de la Muerte," the book won't be released by Spain's publishing house Ediorial Salamandra until early next year.

"I could barely sleep thinking about whether Harry lived or died," said a college student who started a Harry Potter fan club at her Havana high school back when the young wizard was just learning how to fly.

Nermeen al-Mufti reported on the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's – she was the only female Iraqi reporter on the frontlines.

Like many Iraqi journalists, Mufti is a nationalist. She didn't live through the Saddam years, raise a child on her own, and spend years trying to show Western journalists parts of the real Iraq to give up now.

She moved from Baghdad to her hometown of Kirkuk and started an Arabic-language newspaper, as well as writing in English for the weekly al-Ahram. 

Electricity cuts, curfews, and unpredictable phone and Internet lines are only the start of difficulties there. Like all journalists and any other Iraqi in the public eye, she faces the very real prospect of being killed for doing her job – being caught in a cross-fire or a car bomb, or like dozens of local journalists, deliberately targeted.

VIDEO: 'Most dangerous assignment in the world'

More than 140 journalists and media workers have been killed in Iraq since the war began – most of them murdered and most of them Iraqi. 

"Until now no one has been tried for killing, kidnapping or torturing a journalist," Mufti points out.

Apart from the physical danger, there are also increasing government restrictions on what Iraqi journalists can cover and the threat of suspension, fines or jail for unwarranted criticism of public figures.

"I'm not a hero, but I think it's my duty to write toward keeping Iraq united," says Mufti. "I do it to try to restore the Iraq I knew – that gave me my identity, memories and pride."

For several years before the war, I was the only Western correspondent permanently based in Iraq. There was no independent Iraqi media. People like Mufti tried to push the envelope by writing a trouble-shooting column in state newspapers for people having issues with Iraqi government bureaucracy. For any Iraqis – including journalists - even asking normal questions could get them and their families thrown in jail.

When Baghdad fell, I was thrilled to see Iraqi journalists get on their feet, learn how to ask questions, and finally demand answers. Now those Iraqi voices – the only people who can really speak for their country - are being silenced again.

A lot of Iraqi journalists don't write under their own names. Most of them started in other professions and never thought of being reporters, but they are the eyes, ears and insights that make it possible for Western journalists to write anything at all.

Many of them go to great lengths to remain anonymous – particularly when it comes to being photographed or videotaped.

Our producer Ghazi Balkiz interviewed one woman working for an American newspaper in silhouette so she wouldn't be recognized – by people who might want to kill her, and even by her own family.

"Very few people know what I do," said the journalist, a single mother of two. "My father doesn't know what I do. My father doesn't know what I do for the simple reason that it would give him a heart attack."

I got a call a few months ago from another courageous Iraqi journalist I'd known in the Saddam days. She worked for a Western news organization and was one of the very few people I knew who would persist in trying to get answers – at the cost of regularly having her credentials revoked by the Information Ministry and being barred from working.

She had supported her entire family for years. When I talked to her though she said she was just staying at home – it had become too dangerous to work.

The journalist interviewed by Ghazi said she continued to take the risk of working because Iraqis had allowed the rest of the world to make assumptions about them and now they had to speak for themselves.

"Who should tell the world about our culture? It is us. Who should tell the world about our beliefs? It is us. Who should tell the world about our lives? Why have we waited?"

"What I'm trying to say is, please don't take (what is happening in Iraq) at face value," she said. "Get to know us better."

We couldn't show her face on camera. We couldn't print her name. But her voice, and Mufti's and all the other Iraqi journalists who believe telling stories of their people and their country is worth risking everything is still strong.

It was not the fact that a large gathering of Muslims was taking place last weekend that drew our attention to the event – it was where it was and who might attend that attracted our curiosity.

"I traveled for five days," said Maroof Asad from Tajikistan. "The Pakistani officials detained me for 24 hours at the border, but I was determined to get here."

We were determined too; we wanted to see just who might show up at the Tableghi Jamaat (Islamic missionary group) festival in Qila Saifullah, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

NBC News/Mujeeb Ahmad

A group of men gather at Tableghi Jamaat's annual festival in Qila Saifullah, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The village was hosting more than 75,000 Muslim men who had come for three days of prayers and sermons to learn to emulate the life of the Prophet and then to instruct and convert others.

Similar gatherings of pilgrims belonging to the movement take place all over the Muslim world every year, but the location of this one along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was enough to make us hop in the car to check it out.  

Qila Saifullah is a village in Baluchistan, Pakistan's largest province where many of the Taliban leadership reportedly keep safe havens. The Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah was often seen in Qila Saifullah before he was hunted down and killed last May by American Special Forces in Afghanistan. 

We drove two and a half hours from Quetta, the provincial capital, through the craggy wilderness of the Baluchistan desert. The temperature was well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And since the monsoon rains have been late in coming this year, the ground was particularly dry and we stirred up clouds of brown dust as we drove by. But eventually the sand-colored landscape gave way to the green valley of Qila Saifullah.

"Don't ask me any questions about Osama or Mullah Omar," said Abdul Kabir, sporting a long black beard and black turban – a common "look" among the Taliban ranks. "I don't know where they are, but if I did, I would welcome them into my home and protect them from the American invaders."

Kabir and his group of more than 100 similarly dressed young men said they were from South Waziristan, one of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal areas, and did not want to mingle too much with the others. "Too many people ask us too many tricky questions about Osama," he said.

The scene of the event was like a country fair – large multi-colored tents were erected along the road outside the main square of Qila Saifullah – the same road that leads to Pakistan's tribal areas. On the tents and trees were signs welcoming foreigners and stressing the goal of the event – to spread the word of Allah all over the world.

Vendors hawked water, soft drinks, melons, coconuts, and kebabs.

We met Muhammed Bakir, 25, from Bangladesh sitting cross-legged outside one of the smaller tents. "Muslims must unite and prepare to use jihad at the proper time," he told us in a soft voice, barely audible as the call, "Allahu Akbar" summoned the faithful for prayer. Bakir hurried off to join the others in prayer before explaining just when the proper time for jihad might be.

There were Arabs, Sudanese, Afghans, Uzbeks and Tajiks all trying to communicate with each other in the local Pashto and Urdu languages, or through an interpreter. A group of Afghans told us that they knew for sure that some Brits and Americans were in the crowd, but as hard as we searched, we couldn't find them.

But almost everyone we spoke with seemed to know where the spies of ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency were -- and they were just about everywhere.

Western intelligence analysts believe that Tableghi Jamaat, the missionary group that organized the event, is a major recruiting arm for Islamic terrorist groups. Others argue that it is an apolitical group of missionaries dedicated to spreading Islam across the globe,  not much different from Christian missionary groups.

Two of London's July 7 suicide bombers attended Tablighi sermons and Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber," who was jailed for trying to blow up a commercial airliner with a bomb hidden in his shoe, is also believed to have belonged to the group.

Last year when the same three-day celebration of faith was held in North Waziristan, a tribal area of Pakistan, pamphlets were distributed with greetings from Osama bin Laden.

Abdul Majid, wearing traditional white baggy pants and long shirt with a black and white turban came from Zabul, Afghanistan. He said he was trying to find some peace from all the bloodshed and misery.

"First Russia, and then America, has made Afghanistan a laboratory of death and destruction," he said. "The fall of the Taliban has brought us occupation once again by foreign troops."

A group of young bearded men from the Kakar tribe, one of the largest of the Pashtun tribes invited us to drink some sweet milky tea – a Pashtun specialty.  The Kakars inhabit the northeast of Pakistan's Baluchistan province as well as across the border in Afghanistan. They are an ancient tribe and claim to be the ancestors of all the Pashtuns – the ethnic group comprising 15 percent of Pakistan's population, most of whom live in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas.

Shamsullah, a local Kakar tribesman said that he believes that the Taliban and al-Qaida bore equal responsibility for the crisis facing Muslims today. "Islam preaches tolerance and forbids the killing of innocent civilians," he said. "Al-Qaida and Taliban were wrong to use our land as a springboard for their own goals."

Salman Harifal stared into his teacup as he listened to Shamsullah speak. Harifal disagreed with his opinion.

"The Taliban and al-Qaida are sincere and are fighting for the renaissance of Islam," he shot back in an angry tone. "It is the double standards of the West that has caused all the bloodshed."

Asad, from Tajikistan, was listening to their now high-pitched voices from under the shade of a nearby pomegranate tree. "Muslim rulers are responsible for this pitiful situation," he said. "They made the alliances with the United States."

A mob attack on eight Indians who were chased through a small eastern German town on Sunday, as onlookers shouted slurs, has sent shock waves through the country.

Photos of victims' beaten-up faces and reports that the crowd of about 50 people threw stones and chanted, "Foreigners out!" as the Indians were chased through the town of  Muegeln reminded many of the gruesome images from the country's dark Nazi past.

AFP - Getty Images

Kulvir Singh, one of the Indians injured in the attack speaks to the press. Â

And – once again – it has stirred a fierce debate about racism and xenophobia in Germany that is making front-page news and triggering comments from all political levels.

Critics say that a lingering anti-foreigner sentiment in parts of German society is being ignored. A representative from Germany's Jewish Council argued on Wednesday that the country is lacking a coordinated "nationwide action plan" when it comes to right-wing extremism.

The German government was quick to condemn Sunday's attack, fearing that the developments could tarnish the country's image.

"The worse Germany's reputation becomes, the fewer people who we need for our progress and prosperity will come here," said Wolfgang Thierse, vice president of Germany's lower house of parliament.  

Meanwhile, the mayor of Muegeln has repeatedly denied that there is far-right extremism in his town.

However, eastern Germany has experienced sporadic racist attacks on foreigners since reunification in 1990. The economically depressed region is a breeding ground for anti-foreign sentiments – particularly because during communist times the government often treated the small numbers of foreigners as outcasts of society.

The eastern state of Saxony – where the recent attacks took place – is a stronghold of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD), which gained 9 percent of the votes in state elections in 2004 and is now represented in the state parliament of Dresden.

Despite the fact that there are a number of nationwide projects against right-wing extremism – funded by the German government with nearly $26 million this year – there is a clear need for a strategy to combat racism that also reaches the communal level.

A recent study commissioned by Germany's Green party examined two communities – one in eastern Germany and one in the southwestern state of Bavaria – which found that feelings of racism, anti-Semitism and hostility to democracy are widespread in both regions.

In Muegeln, a police investigation is underway to determine whether the attack was indeed racially motivated and who the main culprits were. But the shameful fact remains that none of the German locals helped to protect the foreigners.

GUANGZHOU CITY, China –

Zhao Xian Yong sat at his desk, surrounded by a mean-looking team of U.S. Special Forces soldiers and a heavily armed private contractor. A Black Hawk helicopter hovered overhead. "We are all under a lot of pressure," he told me, "it's bound to have an impact on business."

Zhao was a toy trader and the soldiers all models. His store was one of hundreds that line the corridors and alleyways of Yidelu, a warren-like toy wholesale market in China's Guangzhou City. He represents a factory in Donguan, close to the border with Hong Kong, where the model soldiers, each around eight inches tall, are made for a few dollars, but retail for several times that in the West.

VIDEO: Inside a wholesale Chinese toy market

Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong Province in southern China, the country's toy-making hub. Nearly four out of every five of the world's toys are made in China, the majority of them in Guangdong. The province alone exports nearly $12 billion worth of toys a year and 1.5 million workers are employed in its more than 6,000 factories.

While the traders are clearly rattled by the latest product recalls in the United States, many trying to put on a brave face.

Lin Wei Bin, who represents five factories, walked along rows of shelves straining under the weight of radio-controlled cars, boats and planes. "No need to worry," he kept telling me, pointing to a quality control sticker on some of the boxes. He admitted, though, that quality varies enormously.  "The stuff for export is generally better," he told me.

While nearby a woman selling racing games pointed to the stacks of boxes in her window. "Most break easily," she told me. "Cheap plastic, maybe one or two days." Thinking I was a buyer, her aim was to entice me to buy a more robust-looking game made out of metal that sat high on her stack.  She insisted it would last. "How many containers you want?"

The main part of Yidelu covers five floors of a scrappy, sprawling building containing every conceivable type of toy: Dolls, teddy-bears, model cars, games – you name it, they have it, some branded (and possibly fake), others not.

We'd visited to gauge the mood of the traders at a time when the China Toy Association was claiming that thousands of workers were losing their jobs, and criticizing the media (i.e. us) for exaggerating the problem. 

"The overwhelming majority are safe," insisted an uneasy man from the association. He said it was not just a question of export controls, but also import controls. In other words, it's your fault, too. 

NBC News/ Adrienne Mong

On the move in China's toy capital.

In the streets outside the main market, boxes piled on hand and bicycle-pulled trolleys leaned precariously as they were transported through narrow, crowded streets.

We looked for American buyers, but none were to be found. In one store, Bangladeshi buyers placed an order for remote-controlled helicopters, and a team from Venezuela negotiated for model cars. Were the Venezuelans happy with the quality of their toys, I asked.  They were a little embarrassed. "Well, I think so, yes," one of the buyers said, laughing.

China, and Guangdong in particular, really is the workshop of the world.

The wholesale traders represent factories, but they don't make the products. They know that not only does quality vary enormously, but you get what you pay for. There really is a Wild West atmosphere and attitude here, and a short visit to this bustling district underlines how difficult it is for Beijing to enforce standards and rules – freshly beefed-up in the wake of the latest scandals.

Mattel is credited with having some of the strictest oversight in the business. They found the problem toys, albeit belatedly. How many others are getting to the world's markets, imported by companies with less rigorous oversight? A visit to the Yidelu market is hardly encouraging.

NBC News' Kerry Sanders called in this report from his cell phone in Chetumal, Mexico.

When Hurricane Dean roared in last night and we knew that this was a Category 5 storm, I was actually surprised. At first I thought, 'OK, this needs to be stronger. I've been in Category 5 hurricanes, and this is not that strong.'

Yes, it was powerful. Yes, trees were being toppled, power lines were coming down and power poles were snapping – but ultimately, it did not feel strong enough to be a Category 5, the strongest possible hurricane classification.

VIDEO: Hurricane Dean hits Mexico

So as we tried to calculate, and now we know, it looks like the eye came ashore north of Chetumal and it weakened quickly after making landfall. That is good news because north of Chetumal is primarily a huge national preserve known as the Mayan zone, an uninhabited jungle. That was good news because those 165 mile an hour winds had little to destroy as they came in. The area is mostly just trees and other vegetation.

The folks who live in that national preserve had mostly been evacuated. The government sent in vans and buses to get the residents, most of whom are indigenous. Many of these locals do not even even speak Spanish, but rather a native Mayan language, but the authorities were nevertheless able to get most of them out.

The authorities are just now beginning to assess the damage, but so far it looks like the worst fears have not been realized. That will be remarkably good news when you consider the size of Hurricane Dean.

SLIDESHOW:  Dealing with Dean

Winds still blowing, but could have been worse
Meantime, the wind is still blowing very strong here – gusts up to at least 125 miles an hour and rain squalls continue. Portions of corrugated tin roofs that have been ripped off are banging down the street, awnings have been torn down and business signs have been toppled. But the wind is likely to let up probably in the next two hours.

Most of the folks in Chetumal are remaining in their homes. But the police and the military are out now beginning to assess the damage.

And we did see someone on the street earlier with a rake trying to clear the debris from one of the sewer grates so that the water collecting there – it was up to his waist – could go down the drain. It looks like he was successful because the water level has begun to lower.

Still, most people are still inside their homes. Looking out the window now, I can see a family sitting at the window and there are some smiles on their faces. I think they are make the same assessment as most people here in Chetumal – that this storm could have been a lot worse.

 U.S. troops often turn to chaplains for guidance, but chaplains face unique challenges as well.

Chaplain Steven Rindahl of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment in Baghdad explains the challenges he faces on a daily basis trying to offer comfort and solace to the troops in such difficult circumstances.

VIDEO: Coping as a chaplain in IraqÂ

As hope dwindles for the lives of 181 trapped miners in China, angry relatives demand answers about one of the worst mining disasters in the country's history.

It's the only the latest mining accident to hit an industry which has seen more than 2,000 deaths so far this year.

See video of NBC News trip to the mine in China's Shandong province and the desperate race reach the trapped men.

VIDEO: Chinese miners families demand answers

We are headed south on Mexico's Route 307 to Chetumal. I am in a caravan of NBC News SUVs. Producer Martha Caskey and I are following Claudia Foghini from our Spanish Language network Telemundo.

The road south from Playa del Carmen is a double lane divided highway. It is wide open, both north and south.

There is not as much traffic as I would have expected, but then again, cars are a luxury here. The wealthy have cars, the poor take buses and there are lots more poor than wealthy here. We have seen some buses headed north, but not many.

 VIDEO: Residents and tourists scramble to get out of Mexico's Yucatan Penisula

It's an odd thing: we are headed south to where Hurricane Dean will probably hit while others are trying to evacuate north and avoid the storm.

Hot and humid with tension growing
I've covered hurricanes since 1982, so I am well aware that every move we make needs to be calculated and deliberate. Also, I've learned from experience that construction methods, especially in older buildings, may appear solid, but can be death traps in a hurricane.

Our goal is to get into place for news coverage, but we also want to be far enough inland so that we don't want to get caught up in the storm surge which likely will flood the coast.

It's hot, humid and there is a growing tension among those we meet.

We just filled up the tank at a still operating gas station. The attendants said they're not sure how much longer they will remain open since they have to go home to prepare for the storm.

Our SUV is filled with water, peanut butter, jelly, bread and granola bars.

That will be our food for the next several days as our team of 14 covers the impending arrival of Hurricane Dean.

LIMA, PERU -- One of the most difficult parts of covering the Peruvian earthquake tragedy was actually getting to and from the disaster zone, which is about 125 miles south of Lima, the capital. It was the same dilemma facing rescue and relief workers.

We set out from Lima before dawn, and headed for the hard-hit town of Pisco, having been told that on a good day it could take more than three hours to make the trip. Our goal was to tell the broader story of the earthquake by focusing on the recovery efforts at the San Clemente church in Pisco, which had collapsed on top of 300 parishioners. They had been worshiping at an evening Mass when the eight-magnitude tremor shook the ground for two agonizing minutes, causing the roof and walls to fall.

Our team consisted of producer A.J. Goodwin, photographer Alexis Triboulard, sound technician Hector Vasques and myself. We traveled in two mini-vans, and the first two hours of the trip south along the Pacific coast were uneventful -- until we felt one of the powerful aftershocks.

Credit: AFP - Getty Images
A car passes a collapsed road near Chincha, Peru.

We had stopped at a gas station to buy water and a few other supplies. I went back to the car to make a cell phone call, and suddenly felt the vehicle shaking from side to side. At first I thought it was caused by someone putting in fuel, but when I saw people running out of the buildings I knew that wasn't the reason. The look on the face of the lady who managed the station confirmed it was an aftershock. She had been through this several times already, and was clearly terrified. (An e-mail from the NBC News foreign desk informed us we had just experienced a 5.9-magnitude jolt.)

Not far down the road along the Pan American Highway, we began to see the first real physical evidence that a massive earthquake had hit the area. Parts of the highway were missing, or buckled, and on one stretch the entire southbound lane had separated from the rest of the road and was hanging over the edge of a huge sand dune. The realization that some of our highway was built on sand was not at all comforting. It was slow-going as we wound our way through the mess on a two-lane highway now reduced to just one lane in spots.

Proceeding onward to the town of Chincha Alta we saw collapsed walls and a few destroyed homes and shops, and as we continued south the scene got worse. In the town of San Clemente, our voyage ground to a halt -- at the end of a huge traffic line.

The highway bridge at San Clemente, over a wide riverbed, was in very bad shape. There was an ominous crack on one of the supports, and parts of the road were torn up, or had sunk two to three feet below the normal level. Great fissures ran down the middle of the roadway. With only one passable lane, traffic could only go one way at a time, and the jam-up was massive. Trucks of every kind, buses and cars were forced to wait on both sides of the bridge for about an hour, leaving drivers to worry about radio reports that gangs of young people -- our driver called them "bandits" -- were looting vehicles in search of food and water.

It was here, during our long wait, that we began to see how desperate people were becoming. Residents in the area were complaining loudly that they had no supplies, no electricity and no hope the government would help them. Some organized a march to the bridge, where they shouted slogans and demanded relief. Police tried to maintain order and finally organized a stop-and-go traffic pattern that got everyone across the bridge. When it was our turn, and we were creaking along on a pulverized road, on a shaky bridge high above the river, I kept thinking this would be a really bad time for another one of those aftershocks.

Limping along on an increasingly crowded road, we knew we were getting closer to the earthquake center. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed, and people were just milling around, still seemingly dazed by what had struck them.  Entering Pisco, we asked directions to the town square, and by lurching through insanely crowded streets got as close as we could before we gave up, and decided to walk the rest of the way. As it turned out, our destination was looming overhead, just a few blocks away.

In the Plaza de Armas, the center of town, we found the spires of the San Clemente church, and saw the dome still standing behind them, but then realized that the rest of the huge facility was lying in a horrible pile of stone and wood on the ground. Hundreds of recovery workers, including red-suited volunteer firefighters, were digging through the rubble by hand, stopping periodically to pick up another body -- a neighbor who had died when the church fell in just as the services were ending.

Credit: Mark Potter
Villagers carry the coffin of an earthquake victim in Pisco, Peru.

We spent the next few hours gathering material for our news reports -- interviewing the priest who was celebrating the Mass when the earthquake began, talking to doctors, photographing the long lines of residents waiting for just one piece of bread, perhaps a can of pork and beans, or one small bottle of water. And we saw the heartbreaking scene of relatives struggling to identify the remains of the victims brought from the church and placed side by side in the open-air plaza. Our report for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams can be found here. 

As sundown approached, we finished up our work for the day, and fed out our last bit of video material for The Today Show on a small satellite uplink set up near a compound for Peruvian police and military personnel. Our driver was itching to get back on the road, and said he was very concerned about being stuck on that San Clemente bridge after dark. The "bandits" still worried him.

As it turned, the morning trip from Lima to Pisco, which took not the three hours predicted, but five hours, was a lot easier and quicker than the ride back. We joked grimly that to avoid spending time at night at that bridge, we would have had to leave Pisco right after we got there.

In Peru, many of the truckers drive at night, and when we arrived at the highway intersection to head north to the capital, we felt virtually every one of them was stuck right there. It was scene of traffic madness, with huge trucks playing chicken with buses and cars, horns blaring, drivers swearing, bright headlamps shining in your eyes. To make the left turn for the road back took about a half hour. Crossing to the other side of the damaged bridge would take two hours -- in pitch darkness. 

Actually, by the time we got to the bridge, we realized we were not going to be driving over it. The roadway was so bad, and the traffic so heavy that by then only the southbound traffic went over the river. We, heading north, forced to drive through the river, because road engineers had constructed a gravel detour around the bridge.

As we sat there glumly, thinking of our live broadcast scheduled for 6 o'clock the next morning, we could see it would be a long wait. Each car and truck had to cross the river one at a time. Those that stalled or got stuck were pulled out with the help of a front-loader and a man with a stout rope standing in the tractor bucket. The car in front of us, our own second mini-van, got stuck in the water then the driver hesitated in mid-stream. After much to-and-fro, and instructions from our camera crew, he finally made it, and we in our van then roared across to prevent a similar mishap.

Our hope was that in the towns en route to Lima, we might find a place to sit and finally have a meal. No such luck; we arrived way too late, and everything was closed. Our voyage to Lima ended at 1 a.m., leaving us enough time for about three hours of sleep. The trip back had taken more than six hours.

Our journey showed us several things. First, we had seen first hand the grave difficulties faced by recovery, relief and medical personnel trying to get to the disaster zones so they could begin to help. And for a short moment, we witnessed not only the unspeakable suffering in the Plaza de Armas in Pisco, but also the desperation felt by so many other Peruvians along the way. 

We are just short-time visitors, and were physically able to leave the misery behind, unlike those poor souls who lost loved ones there, and now must sleep outside in the cold nighttime air because they fear aftershocks will topple the rest of the buildings still standing. But the memories stay, along with some powerful impressions.

One such impression we all had is that most of the folks in that Plaza are really sweet, humble people, suffering with grace and dignity. I won't soon forget the man in dusty clothes who stood in a long line for a small bottle of water.  When he finally reached the front of the line, he took his water, then spotted me. Knowing I was a foreign visitor, he walked over, stuck out his hand, grabbed mine and said, "Welcome to Peru, sir. I hope you have a nice visit." He shook my hand a few times, nodded his head, then walked away as I called out a thank you, wished him well, and just stood there -- stunned. 

Our roundtrip drive took eleven hours, well worth a memory like that. 

I was covering a cyclone in Orissa, India. We walked into villages that had been cut off by the floodwaters, where villagers had run out of food and clean water. They'd been waiting for days for aid. "What did you bring us? Where is the food?" one woman asked me.

I had to tell her we had no food for them. What we had – all we had – was a camera and a link to the outside world.

VIDEO: Scenes of destruction

Flying into a remote Iraqi village Thursday – the site of one of the worst terrorist attacks of this war – I knew it would be awful but that's a lot of what we do – go to awful places to try to shed light on what's happened there in the hope that the rest of the world will care. What we came away with was the briefest of glimpses into a heartbreaking part of the country.

Before the war, we would have driven to Sinjar region – we would have left at dawn and by noon been in northwestern Iraq. Although in Saddam Hussein's Iraq the vehicles were full of Iraqi government officials keeping an eye on the government officials who were keeping an eye on journalists.

On Thursday, we left at dawn to drive to the Green Zone, where we took our first of six flights that day – a five-minute helicopter ride over Baghdad that took us to the military airport. And there on the tarmac was a cargo plane flown by the Iraqi Air Force. A C-130. It was beautiful. The Iraqi colonel lectured us on not taking pictures of the crew – they didn't want their identities revealed. 

NBC News/Jane Arraf

Helicopter waiting to whisk us away.Â

I sat in one of the seats bolted into the floor where there would normally be cargo netting. Our cameraman, Anwar, and I went up into the cockpit with Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh. In front of us, Iraq stretched out in miles of desert snaked through with the rivers where civilization began.

We landed at the U.S. Army base in Tal Afar, a city that sums up some of the complications of Iraq. The last time I was there was two years ago with Col. H.R. McMaster and his soldiers as they retook the city – a volatile mix of Turkomen and Arab Sunnis and Shiites – from Sunni insurgents. The insurgents had moved back in after U.S. forces moved on to other areas. Where we were going – about 40 miles north of Tal Afar – there have never been many U.S. troops.

The deputy prime minister, the defense minister and the deputy interior minister, were in our delegation from Baghdad. We got into another set of Black Hawk helicopters and flew to the blast sites.

Circling over the village of al-Jazeera, you could see the leveled buildings and charred ground from the devastation caused by a suicide bomber exploding a dump truck packed with explosives. Army officials said a second truck was barreling toward the village when Iraqi security forces shot the driver before he managed to drive inside the village.

The damage at the second village of Kahtaniya was much worse. As we circled there were crowds of people gathered around yards of tangled metal and collapsed brick. There was so little left it was hard to image there had ever been houses there. More than 100 bodies had been pulled out of the rubble, many of them women and children. More than 175 people had been wounded.

These were Yazidis, an ancient religious sect that predates Islam. And that's part of their problem. In a war in which Sunni extremists believe even Shiite Muslims to be heretics, this closed, secret religion, with its image of devil worship, stands little chance. They don't really worship the devil but they do pay homage to him in an attempt to appease him. While they believe in a forgiving God, they don't have the same illusions about Satan.

Ancient Iraq was not just the cradle of civilization but also the cradle of monotheistic religions. There are dozens of sects unknown in the West. Despite the Yazidis' unorthodox beliefs and their small numbers, they're part of the Iraqi mainstream with their own members in the Iraqi and Kurdish parliaments.

They are also a group – fewer than a million in the entire world – whose history has been marked by massacre and enduing fears that will simply disappear.

It was all that pain, all that fear and a growing anger layered over the normal overwhelming tragedy of the attack that hit us as we arrived with the Iraqi delegation.

"This is not Islam," many of them shouted about the attackers as we got out of humvees to talk to survivors and see the devastation. 

NBC News/Jane Arraf

A Yazidis elder and head of the local council in Kahtaniya who lost 51 relatives in the attack.

Young and old men came up to me and told me how afraid they were – afraid of Muslim Arabs who have always thought of them as infidels, afraid of Kurds who claim them as part of their own much larger community, afraid that they will be abandoned to be slaughtered. They were afraid of Kurdish security forces – the Peshmerga – whom they said they couldn't count on to protect them.

"We need help," one man sobbed. "We need someone to hear us."

"If they don't want us here, why don't they send us to India, to Europe – anywhere?" another man asked.

We were there for 10 minutes when the Iraqi security forces and American soldiers we were with told us we would have to leave – that the crowd had grown too large and too agitated. It would be easy, they said, for another suicide bomber to mingle with the crowd. It was all men. I looked around and there weren't even young girls in the crowd.

As we got back in the Humvees and drove through the streets, I could see women in colorful dresses framed in doorways of the large courtyards that surrounded their homes – looking out into the street but not stepping beyond the threshold.

Outside the police station, where the Iraqi officials were talking to village elders, Iraqi soldiers pushed back crowds of men who wanted to talk. Some of them reached the gate of the police station, trying to tell me their stories over the wall. Security guards pushed them away until I persuaded an official to let them in.

Some of them had lost dozens of relatives.

Outside, as we were herded toward vehicles to leave, an Iraqi army officer who had lost his entire family told the deputy prime minister that they didn't feel like they were citizens.

NBC News/ Jane Arraf

Iraqi policemen in Kahtaniya, site of one of the suicide attacks

"Why, why? Is it because we're not Muslim?" he asked him.

"We're not Iraqi – I swear to God we're not Iraqi," he said before breaking down. The deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, whose Kurdish party considers Yazidis to be Kurds even though they themselves don't, patted him on the shoulder and tried to comfort him.

And then we were off again.

"Go, go, go! Get in the vehicles – we have to go!" officials shouted at us. I told the men waiting to talk to us that we'd try to come back. People scrambled into vehicles. Security guards clung to the sides as they raced down the road to the landing strip. I looked at Anwar.

"It's normal," he said.

Just before the helicopters arrived, a young policeman with classic Yazidis features and a sorrowful expression approached me. "You didn't talk to to us," he said accusingly.

"I really want to talk to you but they're telling us we have to go," I said. "I'll take your picture." I felt terrible. I didn't tell them I'd try to come back – I didn't think they'd believe me. They were still standing there when I turned to wave, before the dust from the helicopters obscured everything.

What do you get if you combine John Locke from "Lost," the Marlboro Man, and a judo master?

Your first guess may not be Russian President Vladimir Putin, but if these pictures are any guide, it would certainly be the right one. (See video profile).

Dmitry Astakhov / AFP - Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin fishes on the Khemchik River on Aug. 15. Â

Taken earlier this week when Putin took Monaco's Prince Albert II on a camping trip in southern Russia, they were splashed across the front pages of Russian newspapers and are all posted on the Kremlin's website.   

They show Putin in various states of ruggedness, feeling at home and at peace with the rivers, the mountains, the horses and fish, and not least of all, his own bare chest.

Poster boy for Russia?
Despite some incredulous reactions to Putin allowing himself to be photographed topless on blogs I've read here in Russia, "Wilderness Putin," (the action figure doll does not exist yet, but keep your eyes peeled) has been getting a lot of thumbs up here as well. Many bloggers are calling him sexy and wondering if he's free for a date.

While his wife may not take kindly to the proposition, the reactions should come as no surprise. Like any good politician, part of Putin's popularity is based on his image. Compared to the Russian and Soviet leaders who came before him, Putin is leading the charge for the young and healthy generation.

At the end of the Soviet era, it was hard to keep up with which 70-year-old, visibly sick leader was in charge. After Leonid Brezhnev died, neither of the next two successors lasted more than 15 months before dying – leading to the joke of a guard demanding to see someone's ticket to be allowed in to a Soviet leader's funeral, to which he responds that he has season tickets.

Dmitry Astakhov / AFP - Getty Images

Putin gestures as he takes a break during a hike in the foothills of the Western Sayan Mountains in the Republic of Tuva, on Aug. 15.Â

But in many ways, Putin's image is seen in direct contrast to that of his immediate predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Putin is seen as the anti-Yeltsin. Yeltsin is remembered by many for acting like a buffoon in public, for his alleged heavy drinking and recurring illnesses.

The image of the leader is tied to the times. For many, these memories of Yeltsin are memories of a weak, chaotic Russia that may look amusing to the West, but isn't faring too well at home.

VIDEO: Today Show anchors check out the Putin pix

Along comes Vladimir Putin. The black-belt-in-judo, non-smoking, rarely-drinking, cool and collected leader. While his popularity is certainly tied to his image – leading to everything from Putinka brand vodka to the girl-band pop song "Like Putin" (whose singers look for a man who is "like Putin/full of strength/like Putin/who won't drink) – Putin's image is, in turn, mirrored by his era.

This is an era in which Russia is getting stronger, reasserting itself internationally, becoming more stable at home and growing economically. And if it's the image of a shirtless, machete-wielding president which best represents the man who can do all that and enjoy approval ratings at about 70 percent, maybe it's not such a bad thing.

 

 I found Elvis Presley alive and well and living in Israel.

He's not hard to find; just take the highway out of Jerusalem toward Tel Aviv, follow the exit for Abu Gosh, drive up the hill and there he is.

He's taller than I remember, 16 feet and bronzed, which explains his longevity. And when you see his statue you know you've just found the Elvis American Diner. More than 1,700 photos and pieces of memorabilia cover the walls of this 50's-looking eatery and Elvis songs usually blare from the sound system.

But because this was the 30th anniversary of the day he died, Elvis was there in person. (This is the land of miracles you know.)

VIDEO: Shalom! Israel honors The King

There was a young Elvis, an old Elvis, a couple of middle-aged Elvis's – even two female Elvis's. They crooned, gyrated and had amazingly black hair. Many wore leisure suits, white mostly, unzipped to the navel, with sequins and gold piping – and sweat pouring through polyester.

They played to a packed truck stop where gas sells for around $5 a gallon. The Elvis's took turns passing the mike and performing along with the karaoke machine. Some just lip-synched, others actually sang, one guy, Eran Levron who was born on Elvis's birthday, could switch from his soft Israeli accent to a "THANK YOU, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!" It sounded like he'd just stepped out of Graceland.

I have to say it was one of the best times I've ever had in Israel. Of course, the other times I've been here were for suicide bombings, uprisings and war. This was just a love of music and the man who made it.

I talked to Joseph Rozen who at 63 claimed to be the oldest Elvis in the building. For him it all started at the age of 13 when he was given an Elvis 45 record for his bar mitzvah.

Rozen says he sweats so much when he performs because his voice doesn't come from his lips, but his heart. Plus he's singing to his wife of 46 years. She was hard to miss in the crowd as she wore a matching Elvis jumpsuit, complete with gold sunglasses.

The diner is the brainchild of Uri Yoeli who, the story goes, got into Elvis because he loved the music and dressing like the King was a good way to get girls.

Supposedly in 1974 when he got the girl of his dreams and married her – then she said all his Elvis stuff had to go. So Yoeli took it to his parents' restaurant, and as they say, the rest is history.

The specialty of the house is the Elvis Burger which is a cheese burger with fries. (Yoeli seemed deeply interested to know what I thought of it. I said "It's great!" – and it was.) 

Martin Savidge and Elvis, otherwise known as Joseph Rozen, share a moment at the Elvis American Diner in Jerusalem.

The place was bumper to bumper with media as well. Let's face it, who doesn't love a good Elvis in Israel story? There was even a photographer and scribbler from the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper.

I also met Jenny Dror who is president of the Israeli Elvis fan club, "Second to none."

She was gushing about Levron Elvis, (the "thank you very much" guy). Dror said he was not only the best in Israel, but one of the best in the world. I wanted to ask him about that, but he was rushing out the door to get to a gig.

And even as I write Elvis (the real one) sings on Israeli radio as it too pay tribute to the King.

So the next time you are driving to Tel Aviv and find yourself low on gas, head toward Abu Gosh and the Elvis American Diner. You can fill up your tank and take a drive down memory lane.

And be sure to pick up a souvenir like a bottle of Elvis wine or a pack of Elvis cigarettes or maybe the always tacky "I saw Elvis in Bethlehem" postcard. You'll find it right next to the little bottles of "River Jordan Holy Water." Like I said, land of miracles.  

It was a launch party that would have made Microsoft proud, if Microsoft were an anti-Israeli militant group.

Hezbollah held on Thursday what was basically a giant garden party to announce the release of its latest video game, "Special Force II," in which players destroy Israeli tanks, shoot down helicopters and destroy warships; killing Israeli soldiers earns bonus points.

VIDEO: Hezbollah launches video game

Under a giant marquee in Beirut's dusty southern suburbs, Hezbollah displayed captured Israeli helmets, rifles and ammunition in glass trophy cases. The turret of an Israeli tank and jeep Hezbollah captured during its 34-day war with Israel last summer were set on mounds like garden statues, artistically lit by red and green spotlights. Families took pictures of the Israeli weapons as their children paid $10 for a copy of Special Force II, designed by Hezbollah's "Internet Division."

Victory party
All week, Hezbollah has been holding victory celebrations to coincide with the end of the conflict in August 2006, which Hezbollah considers a major victory. It's a war Hezbollah says is not over.

In a speech earlier this week, Hezbollah leader Sayid Hassan Nasrallah declared there is "no ceasefire" with Israel, but only a "halt of offensive operations." Nasrallah also claimed his forces are fully rearmed with rockets that can reach "anywhere" in Israel, but added that he does not want another war.

Until there is a new war – many Lebanese fear it could happen at anytime – young people here can now relive the fighting on their computers.

Hezbollah's celebrations and new video game may also have a domestic political goal. Many Lebanese now question if the nation gained anything from what Nasrallah calls his "Divine Victory" over Israel.

During the war, as Israel targeted – Lebanese say indiscriminately – the country's infrastructure, most people here were united behind Hezbollah. But today, Lebanon remains in tatters, and on-going Hezbollah-led protests against the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora have closed most of the businesses in downtown Beirut and scared away tourists. Lebanon has not moved forward since the war. Lebanon has turned on itself. But that's not part of the video game.

It's "funny how time slips away." Elvis has – supposedly – been dead for 30 years now. But, he's still rocking Germany where fans are "all shook up" this week with celebrations, exhibits and look-a-like festivals.

For the German media it seems like "it's now or never" to show old Elvis movies. While it might seem like a bit much, but there is a certain charm in seeing Mr. Presley speak German as a young cowboy in "Flaming Star" or with a flower lei around his neck in "Blue Hawaii."

Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters

Singer Grahame Patrick performs dressed as Elvis Presley during a show in Berlin August 15, 2007.

The American superstar had a special link to Germany. Not only because of his interpretation of the German folk classic "Muss i denn, muss i denn...," but Elvis was of course stationed in Germany with the U.S. military from 1958 to 1960. And it was in Wiesbaden, Germany, that Presley met a 14-year-old girl named Priscilla Ann Wagner, who later became his wife in 1967.

His years as a soldier in the cities of Bad Nauheim and Friedberg, near Frankfurt, are still vividly remembered by many. "I recall that we used to line up for Elvis autograph sessions outside his house in Bad Nauheim. He always took time to meet with his fans," said Angelika Springauf in a German radio report.

Nearly 50 years later there was still awe in Springauf's voice as she recalled, "he once gave me a lovely smile and gently touched my cheek. Oh, my girlfriends were so jealous." She apparently didn't wash her cheek for a week after the momentous event and it was a moment in time she will always remember.

It seems that Elvis enjoyed "a fountain of love" during his days in Germany. He's surrounded by female fans in most of the pictures and historic TV footage from the time.

In the quaint little town of Bad Nauheim, it was "big love big heartache" every day when young ladies back in the 50s wrote their phone numbers with lipstick on the typical German garden fence outside the king's villa. Aging German locals report that every night the wooden fence would be cleaned to make room for more love notes.

"Treat me nice" Elvis sang in 1957 and the American military listened. While his comrades lived in the army quarters at Ray Barracks in Friedberg, Elvis came home to his fancy house every night. In times of the Cold War, the American military made use of Presley's popularity, allowing "the king" to rule as an ambassador of "good America."

And the German car manufacturer Mercedes took advantage of the marketing opportunity as well – providing the American star with one of their vehicles for the duration of his stay.

SLIDESHOW: Life of a King

Presley came like a fresh wind to staid and conservative 1950s Germany. Not many German mothers and fathers were thrilled to be playing host to "Elvis the Pelvis," but many say his visit ushered in the country's lasting love-affair with American pop culture.

"He still preoccupies us, he's well-known across the generations, and he brought about a sexual, musical and social revolution," said the head of a German museum that hosted a recent Elvis exhibition.

And Germany's Elvis celebrations will not stop with the anniversary of his death. Bad Nauheim is hosting the 6th European Elvis Festival until Aug. 19.

For Iraq's small and secretive Yazidis community, Tuesday's attack was one of the worst massacres in the living memory of a community that believes they were the first people God created.

"We want the world to know us better," the sheikh known as the Prince of the Yazidis told me in northern Iraq well before the war when his diminishing community decided that they could no longer afford to be known as devil worshippers.

VIDEO: NBC's Jane Arraf discusses the aftermath of Tuesday's deadly attack in Iraq.

That label is believed to be part of the reason for the simultaneous suicide bombs that have killed 250 people - many of them women and children - in what will likely be deadliest suicide attack since the war began. Officials say the Yazidis, members of a secret pre-Islamic religion considered infidels by fundamentalist Muslims, received letters from al-Qaida in Iraq telling them to leave.

Ancient culture
There are likely fewer than a million Yazidis in the world - by some estimates as few as 400,000. They are believed to be ethnically Kurds but they don't consider themselves Kurdish. Almost half of the entire community has become refugees in Germany and other parts of Europe.

They've been persecuted for centuries because they're mistakenly considered by many Muslims to be devil worshipers - a perception fueled by the secrecy of their ancient religion.

Visiting traditional Yazidis communities is like stepping into another world. Their temples-have cone-shaped roofs - the same shape as the wool felt hats worn by religious elders, who wear locks of hair in long braids. The ceremonies include elements of Zoroastroanism, the ancient Persian religion, and include the worship of fire and sun. At a temple in the Sinjar Mountains before the war, I watched the keeper of the temple light an oil lamp with four wicks and pray to each direction of the flame. In one of the temples, there was an etching of a serpent – in another the moon and the stars.

Like the religion, the temples are often hidden. The Yazidis elders have long worried that as young people become assimilated into Western culture, their religion could essentially disappear. It's an unforgiving faith - Yazidis are only allowed to marry other Yazidis.

In April, police say, members of one Yazidi community stoned to death a teenage Yazidi girl who had converted to Islam to marry a Muslim. Dozens of Yazidis were killed by Muslim extremists in retaliation.

Secretive religion
In northern Iraq a few years ago, the "Prince of the Yazidis" a sheikh who spends his time in Germany when he's not in northern Iraq, told me they had decided that they could no longer be as secretive - that they had to persuade the world that they were God-fearing people. They translated their secret "black book" and even opened some of their ceremonies to outsiders.

SLIDESHOW: Sect in the crosshairs

Still, every time I asked what they believed I got somewhat different answers. While they had decided they needed to make their secret religion less secret, some were not so convinced.

I watched a ceremony in a village in the Sinjar Mountains surrounding a brass peacock - one of the seven the Yazidis believed God handed the first Yazidis directly - a representation of the archangel Michael in his form as the peacock angel. It's an oral tradition in which many of the rituals and beliefs are entrusted only to males - and only when they come of age. But one thing they firmly believe is that they were the first men.

Even more than most religions, they have a complicated relationship with God - the bottom line is that they know God is forgiving but Satan is not - and while they don't worship him, they make clear that they respect his power. So much so that Yazidis don't ever say his name or utter words starting with the letters 'sh' - the same sound that begins the word for Satan. They also don't wear the color blue, eat lettuce or wear ties with collars - all going back to their beliefs about the fallen angel to whom they pay homage.

"Science is our enemy," one of the elders told me. In some of the most traditional of Yazidi communities, education is discouraged. A 14-year-old girl in one village I went to told me she'd never been to school. It was considered "shameful" for girls to be educated, she said.

They've been persecuted for centuries and in times of trouble they retreat to the mountains and the caves. During the war near Dohuk, close to the Turkish border, when I was looking for Yazidi communities,

I found some had literally moved underground - in caves underneath villages that had been leveled by Saddam Hussein's forces during his attacks against the Kurds.

Under Saddam Hussein they survived by not making waves. Saddam, whose

Baath party was originally secular, didn't care what religion they were as long as they weren't a threat to him. Now there's a new threat to these people practicing a religion they believe is as old as man.

In Baghdad's Sunni stronghold of Amariya, American soldiers can't always count on the Iraqi Army or police, so they are turning to former insurgents to help battle al-Qaida in Iraq.

VIDEO: Former insurgents help battle al-Qaida in Iraq

 

I always found it hard to imagine Thai policemen wearing Hello Kitty armbands as a mark of shame for wayward officers.

Evidently most policemen did too, because Thailand's top cops decided Friday to abandon the idea.

It seems there was a rebellion in the macho ranks, as well as outrage on Hello Kitty Web sites.

Yasushi Ukigaya / AP

A police officer in Bangkok showed off the Hello Kitty armband that was going to be a used as a disciplinary measure on Monday. The police have since abandoned the idea. Â

"You have to understand that it's embarrassing for our 30- to 40-year-old policemen to be made to wear this girly, pink armband," conceded police Maj. Weeraprach Wongrat, of the Crime Suppression Division, whose idea it was in the first place.

"It also attracted so much attention – a lot of praise, but a lot of criticism," he said Friday. The Thai police found themselves blasted by Hello Kitty lovers for using their cute icon as a means of punishment.

"We are concerned about the image of police as much as that of Hello Kitty," Weeraprach said. "We decided to drop the plan."

He said they would be looking at other designs.

That plan had been to order offending policemen – and most police officers here are men – to wear a pink armband with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts as a disciplinary measure – if the officer was late to work, parks in the wrong place or left his desk while on duty.

"It was meant to be a moral armband for our police," said Weeraprach, "to teach them not to overlook minor mistakes. The armband reminded them that they were being watched." A mark of humiliation, in other words.

But now it is Weeraprach who is a little humiliated.

The Crime Suppression Division has a new commander, Weeraprach's boss, who trained with the American Secret Service and the Canadian police, and who has pledged to modernize a force that has been accused of widespread corruption and extrajudicial killings.

The new commander is said to be a believer in behavioral science and in the "broken window theory," according to which small changes can have large effects. He saw pink armbands as a start. Now it's back to the drawing board.

It's a personal first: I'm taking off the month of August. Four weeks – no work.

Au revoir, silly summer stories: No more of David Beckham visiting the Blue Jays dugout, swinging a bat for the cameras; no more of the English man who grows up healthy eating nothing but Marmite (the British equivalent of axle grease); no more freak snowstorms in New Guinea or forest fires in Dubrovnik.

I'm taking my signal from the news anchors, from the leaders and lawmakers of America, the U.K. and even war-ravaged Iraq – who can ill afford it – it's time for a break. If only it were so …

For August, it turns out, is NEVER slow on news. And the only silly thing about August are the journalists – like myself – who still cling to the notion – somehow – that they can tune out on July 31 and return to Earth on Sept. 1.

VIDEO: See some of Jim Maceda's reports from Augusts past

Case in point – the last quarter-century of my Augusts with NBC News. A caveat here: having spent a few formative years in France, I guess I share that French gene that wants to "vacate" in August. There has been many a desirable destination: the Algarve, Morocco, the Seychelles, Mauritius. But, more often than not (I have the old calendars and agendas to prove it) my destinations morphed into datelines, as I was pulled out of –or never made it to – that August state of mind.

From dodging bullets to coups
Instead, my Augusts have seen some of the most dramatic stories of those years. And even if they weren't always historic, they were still big enough to keep me on duty for days or weeks … in August! "But we have pre-paid tickets to the Galapagos!" was an excuse that worked for most broadcast journalists, I would venture, until around Sept. 11, 2001. It never seemed to work for me.

My first whiff that August and I wouldn't get along was in 1981. I was based in Paris for NBC News and had big August plans – a trip to Eastern Europe with my wife and then 2-year-old daughter. French air controllers went on strike the day before our departure. I cancelled vacation and – instead covered the seemingly endless strike.

When it was finally resolved, it was time to travel to Geneva for a critical OPEC conference. There, the final press conference felt like an August silly story. "OPEC has just decided to raise its production by 10 mil – bil – mil- bil – mil –billion barrels," spurted the OPEC Chairman. What did he say? "As I said, 10 mil – bil – mil –bil mil ah billion barrels." The cartel sheiks weren't taking off August, either, but some clearly needed a rest, or English lessons.

Meanwhile, my Augusts only got worse. In 1982, the month was spent dodging Grad rockets and AK rounds at the height of Israel's invasion of Lebanon. (Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon really didn't get the August thing – not only did he blast Palestinian strongholds in Beirut every day of that ungodly hot August, but he picked August again to pull his troops out of the Gaza Strip – which, yes, is where I spent August of 2005.)

In between I changed my best-laid August plans – often – to cover the Cold War-proxy war in remote Chad (1983), the palace coup against vacationing Mikhail Gorbachev and the subsequent collapse of the USSR (1991), the deadly, Neo-Nazi riots in Rostock, Germany (1992), and that "silly" August of 1993 when I divvied up the month between the worsening siege of Sarajevo and the first Michael Jackson trial in Los Angeles – a memorable August by any standard.

August 1994? Let's see … more breaking news, and back to Paris – quickly – Carlos the Jackal had just been nabbed. After that, it was a string of suicide bus bombings – something almost unheard of anywhere in August 1995 – that took me off holiday and into Jerusalem. August 1997?…in the dusty backstreets of Bosnia's Srbska Republic, looking for the Serb fugitive Dr. Radovan Karadzic for an NBC News special. We didn't find him. Why? He was on vacation in the mountains of Montenegro.

I could go on … Russia's near economic collapse, when the ruble dropped through the floor and Boris Yeltsin was rumored to be dead – or comatose? That was August 1998 … on assignment, in Moscow.

And, fast-forwarding, what about last August? "Oh, just a border skirmish," I hoped as I checked in at Lastminute.com for a quick, hot August fix. Well, I got the heat: in Beirut and South Lebanon again, care of IDF cluster bombs and Hezbollah artillery.

Never giving up the dream
Oh, I picked up on the trend. As set in my Francophile ways as I was, eventually even I came to realize that August and I would never work out…beyond our working relationship, that is. So I made adjustments. And compromises – like August 2004. Doing features on Greek baseball, Technogym work-out machines, and the fate of the Elgin Marbles at the Athens Summer Olympics was about as close as I ever got to my mythical August holiday – while still on the Peacock's clock.

But – with this perennial baggage – why even try to take off this August?  Let's say I'm feeling lucky. And, there are – frankly – no better options. So, I thought, why not give it a shot.

Admittedly, it was an inauspicious beginning – the first five days of my August "vacation" found me in Moscow, wrapping up a story on – did you guess? – a summer camp. For pro-Kremlin Russian youth.

But now, I'm OFF. Halas. Basta. Siyonara. Let there be lots of silly stories I can laugh at over my breakfast Herald Trib and no more business calls for the rest of this glorious month. After all, I know full well that's hardly likely next August. Just ask the Chinese in charge of the Beijing Olympics.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London who will be reporting from Iraq in September, if not before…

Although U.S. forces have stabilized security in Iraq, the country's humanitarian situation continues to worsen, with up to 50,000 Iraqis a month still fleeing or being forced out of their homes by sectarian violence, the top U.N. official here said.  

"Overall the situation remains of great concern and has not been improving. In fact, it has been worsening, there's no doubt about that," Ashraf Jehangir Qazi said in an interview over the weekend with NBC News.

Qazi, the special representative of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, called the current situation in Iraq one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. 

Khalid Mohammed / AP

An Iraqi family flees after clashes erupted between Iraqi security forces and gunmen in the Amil district of Baghdad on June 9.

In addition to tens of thousands of civilians killed and many more injured since the start of the war, one in six Iraqis have been forces to leave their homes, according to the United Nations.

The Iraqi Red Crescent, the sister organization of the Red Cross, estimates that while two million Iraqis have left the country, more than two million others have been displaced within Iraq. Most of these Iraqis have fled fighting or sectarian cleansing in mixed neighborhoods or communities, which have increasingly become almost exclusively Shiite or Sunni.

Qazi said the exodus is continuing.

"According to some estimates, this rate of internal displacement is continuing at 50,000 a month or even more, so this makes it an extremely serious situation," he said.

The number of people leaving their homes and services in their communities has overwhelmed the Iraqi government's capacity to care for them. As Shiites have fled south to Shiite-controlled areas and Sunnis and Christians have fled north, those Iraqis with no relatives to go to and no money to rent houses have ended up in overflowing camps with no running water or electricity.

Camps for internally displaced people outside Najaf are beginning to turn people away, aid agencies say.

Sherko Raouf / Reuters

A woman carries plastic containers to fetch water in a refugee camp in Sulaimaniya, 205 miles northeast of Baghdad July 30.Â

The Red Crescent says one-third of Iraqis don't have enough food or clean water or basic sanitation and shelter.

Qazi, who heads the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, said the humanitarian and security situation might actually worsen.

"Tragically, we can't discount that possibility because up until now things have got worse rather than better," he said.

Balancing act
The United Nations has played a low-profile role in Iraq since a bombing of its Baghdad headquarters in 2003 killed envoy Sergio Viera de Mello and 21 others.

A draft U.N. resolution backed by the United States is expected to be adopted Thursday in New York. The resolution would give the world body a bigger role in trying to mediate Iraq's political crisis and extend its humanitarian mission here.

U.N. agencies have a substantial number of Iraqi employees but are limited by their own security measures to 65 international staff – most of whom stay in Baghdad's relatively protected Green Zone.

The United Nations recently pulled its expatriate staff out of Basra due to deteriorating security there. The U.N.'s own staff union is calling for all international staff to be withdrawn, saying it's too dangerous for them to work here now.