HAVANA – During many visits to Cuba over the last two decades, I have never heard so many everyday Cubans openly criticizing life on the island as I did during this last trip to cover Raul Castro officially taking over the presidency from his ailing brother, Fidel. 

There have long been Cuban dissidents and independent journalists challenging the socialist government and suffering for their beliefs. The difference now is that common citizens are starting to raise their voices a bit, at least on economic issues.

In past years, such public complaining would have been punished and was rarely heard.  People have always griped here, as they do everywhere else in the world, but in Cuba it used to be done much more discreetly, usually after looking both ways to make sure no one from the government was listening.

What changed is that a little more than a year ago, after becoming interim president, Raul Castro actually urged Cubans to openly air their grievances. He even listed some of his own complaints about waste and inefficiencies in the government-controlled economy.

With that as a cue that they were now allowed to speak out, millions of Cubans let loose and registered a long list of criticisms.

They are fed up, they said, with low wages that can't even cover basics necessities, overcrowded buses, meager supplies in government-run stores and long waits and too few workers in Cuba's vaunted health care system.

VIDEO: Cubans complain about new leader

Younger Cubans – in particular, those born long after the 1950's revolution – expressed anger at not being able to enter Cuba's luxury hotels, where only foreign tourists are allowed, unless they happened to be working there. They said they wanted an end to Cuba's exit-visa requirement, where a person can't legally travel outside the country without prior government approval. 

In this fast-moving global world, they also want more access to the Internet and satellite television, which is tightly controlled. And they want the right to buy and sell a home or a car, which is currently prohibited.

A Cuban rock bank called Moneda Dura (Hard Currency) even has a music video that makes fun of Cuba's daily grind, touching on censorship and the government's heavy hand 

VIDEO: Cuba censors Moneda Dura's hit video

Private Cuban Internet sites openly criticize the government as writers, artists and filmmakers join housewives and cab drivers in telling anyone who'll listen what's wrong here.

Rising expectations
With all the complaining, there is a widespread expectation that it will lead to at least some improvements in the country, some lessening of restrictions.  

One Cuban analyst said, "The leadership now has a mandate and that mandate is very distinct and clear: It is necessary to make changes." When asked to further explain, he said there is a need "to make socialism more social ... less hyper-centralized, more participatory, more democratic."

A government official quietly offered the thought that Raul Castro now has to face a public demand of his own making: the "genie" is out of the bottle.

On the day of the National Assembly meeting, however, when Raul Castro formally became president, a lot of people who had high-hopes for substantial improvements got a big shock and a rude awakening.

No one was surprised by Raul Castro's nomination; that was widely expected.  So all eyes that day were on the second-in-command position, that of first vice-president. When the person named was not a younger reformer type, as a lot of people had hoped, but instead a hardliner – a 77-year-old Communist Party ideologue named Jose Ramon Machado Ventura – many people in Cuba were disappointed and even felt betrayed.

One young Cuban said she was going to sit down and cry. Others argued into the night about what a mistake they thought this was, predicting more and more young people would vote with boats and airline tickets and leave the country for good.

Meanwhile, Raul Castro pledged in his acceptance speech to continue consulting with Fidel on matters of importance, further signaling a continuation of the old order. But, he also indicated some restrictions might be lifted to make life a little more bearable here, although he warned not to expect too much, too fast.

So, the public expectations are dialed back a bit, but the complaining continues. Cuban leaders seem aware of the disaffection, but have not yet addressed the concerns with any concrete actions. The question many ask now is just how much is the government willing or even able to do as it focuses on surviving past the time of Fidel and Raul Castro? 

It's a fascinating time in a unique place where new voices are joining the mix. 

While American are being treated to a political thriller, here in Thailand we are being entertained by something closer to pantomime, the latest act being the return this week of Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister, deposed in a bloodless military coup 17 months ago. 

I learned of his imminent return from a taxi driver who picked me up at the airport after I'd arrived back in Bangkok from North Korea, where local TV doesn't carry a great deal of news about the outside world, or anything else for that matter, and where I had been covering the visit of the New York Philharmonic.

It was a curious conversation. "Sorry, no meter. Meter not working," the taxi driver announced, soon after we'd set off.  It was late, I was tired. I really didn't need this, so I replied rather curtly, "No meter, no money!"

The meter then miraculously sprung back to life. A moment or two later he turned to me, beaming, giving a thumbs up sign.

"Thaksin back tomorrow, back tomorrow!"

I'm sure there is no direct connection between the driver trying to rip me off and the return of a man whose government was accused of massive corruption, but it did give me pause for thought.

The last time Thai politics made headline news was when the military sent tanks onto the streets of Bangkok in September 2006 to remove Thaksin from power. It was the 18th coup since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

SLIDESHOW: Thailand's September 2006 coup

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It followed massive protests, largely engineered by the Bangkok elite, and accusations of abuse of power, as well as corruption.

I guess the generals thought Thaksin would just fade away as most deposed leaders have in the past. But the billionaire businessman had three things going for him: Massive support among Thailand's poor, a well-oiled political machine and pots of money.

He had reinvented Thai politics, which used to be essentially a competition of the Bangkok elite, with populist policies, including cheap health care and low-cost village loans. Men like my taxi driver, who suspect all politicians are corrupt, loved him for it.

Elections gave him the biggest majorities in Thai political history.

Thaksin is also smart. And while the military-appointed government bumbled along, he kept in the headlines, even buying the British Premier League soccer club Manchester City, the poorer cousin of Manchester United.

Last December the generals fulfilled their promise of new elections to return Thailand to democracy. As the election campaign was heating up, Thaksin signed three top Thai players and announced that a Manchester City football academy would open in Thailand. (Two of Manchester players were on the aircraft returning with Thaksin this week).

Guess what made the headlines in soccer-obsessed Thailand?

So there was no surprise that the election winner was a party packed with Thaksin's supporters, and led by a man – now prime minister – who described himself as a Thaksin proxy.

The foreign minister in the new government is Thaksin's former lawyer; the finance minister is his former spokesman.

Thaksin is facing a raft of corruption cases, but the new government has moved quickly to remove the head of the police unit responsible for many of these cases.

And the police chief, regarded as being an honest cop, in a force often accused of corruption, was also removed from his post this week.

Thaksin is technically out on bail, having been only been charged so far over a questionable land deal.

Thai newspapers report that he and his family and close aides are staying in luxury suites at the exclusive Peninsula Hotel on the Chao Praya River, which is partly owned by another minister and close friend.

Thaksin says categorically that he will not return to politics, but nobody believes him, and he is widely assumed to be the puppet-master behind the new government.

The military is left with considerable chunks of egg on their face. The former army chief and coup leader is reported to have moved into a military base, just in case.

Will the tanks be back on the streets again? Probably not immediately. The government installed after the last coup was regarded as incompetent (though not corrupt). But it was a pretty good advertisement for why soldiers should never be allowed near government.

But Thaksin is a polarizing figure. You'll find few people here who are neutral about him, and it could be only a matter of time before protesters are back on the streets, especially if there is overt interference in the corruption probes.

I was reminded of a conversation I had with a Thai journalist friend shortly after moving to Bangkok a few years ago. She'd just returned from studying in the U.K., and told me how pleased she was to be back in a city that was then engulfed in another political crisis. "Britain's just too stable," she complained. "Not like here."

She did have a point.

SILVER BANKS, Caribbean Sea – Tail slapping, fin slapping, breaching, surfacing to breathe and diving again, it's an incredible show of nature.

We are shooting a story on humpback whales, which will air on the Today Show and other NBC News outlets in the coming weeks.

To capture video of the whales in their natural habitat, we have come to the Silver Banks, a 40 square mile area about 80 miles off the coast of the Dominican Republic.

We've been out here for two days and at any time of the day, if you look out from the ships' deck, the view is spotted with whales.

This section of the Caribbean Sea, due to the incredible number of coral heads sprinkled throughout it, receives no through boat traffic. A couple of wrecked boats dotting the area demonstrate why any boat captain would give the Silver Banks a wide berth.

The absence of boat traffic, and waters too shallow for killer whales, creates an ideal spot for mating and calving humpback whales. In fact, at this of year, this area has the largest concentration of humpbacks anywhere in the world.

Atlantic humpbacks migrate to this area from their summer feeding grounds in the North Atlantic – in areas like Maine and Newfoundland. They are known to congregate in several areas in the Caribbean at this time of year, but the Silver Banks has the greatest concentration of whales.  

It's also an incredible show of what a little conservation can do. By the 1950's, whales had been nearly hunted to extinction. So in the 1960's the International Whaling Commission was formed, and banned hunting a number of endangered whale species – including the humpback. And the humpbacks have made an incredible comeback.

The Silver Banks are controlled by the Dominican Republic, and to its credit, the government has made it a conservation area. That means no long line or net fishing, and only a small number of private boats are allowed in the area by permit.

We are on one of those boats. We came here to meet a man named Tom Conlin. Eighteen years ago, he decided that he wanted to get people in the water with whales.

Now for the official "Don't Try This At Home" warning: It is discouraged, and in some places I believe against the law, to chase down a whale and swim with it. But Conlin has spent nearly two decades perfecting a technique he calls "soft in-water encounters." The idea is to slowly approach a whale in a boat moving at very low speeds, so that the whale can get used to the boat, then, if the whale appears willing and doesn't turn away, letting people quietly slip into the water and float with snorkel gear near the giant sea mammal.

Today we had a moment – actually two hours – that just blew everyone away. A mother humpback and calf allowed a group of about 13 awe-struck whale watchers to observe and follow them all afternoon.

I could see the characteristic grooves in the humpback's head. A couple of times I looked her in the eye. The baby would hide under the mother's tail, then pop up for air and return to roll around the mother. To say the whale is huge, a marvel of nature when it glides through the water, is an understatement.

It's amazing to see the details of the humpback's prehistoric head, followed by a body the size of a submarine. A "baby" probably less than a month old, is tiny compared to the mother, but it dwarfed the humans watching it. I'm not sure there are words for it. We'll post pictures and video on msnbc.com when we return.

To think man almost hunted these gentle giants to extinction once, and there are those who would like to hunt them again, and then watch that mother and calf glide through the water, allowing all of us to watch in admiration, will make a conservationist out of just about anyone.

Conlin says part of the reason he wanted to introduce people to whales in this way was so that when they have the opportunity to contribute, to helping them, they will do so. I'd say its working.

PYONGYANG, North Korea – There was a first note of discord in the concert hall today – over flags.

"They seem to have short-changed us," said a grim-faced official with the New York Philharmonic, as he hauled down the Stars and Stripes. "There was discussion over flag size, and we wanted the flags to be the same size. So we're changing it."

So up went a new, bigger flag.

It had happened during rehearsals this morning, which were more like a full show, since the hall was packed. Yet nobody I spoke to could tell me who the audience was. The orchestra had expected a few students, but they looked like officials. As one member of the orchestra quipped to me, it might be tonight's audience having their own rehearsal.

They did seem to appreciate the humor of the Philharmonic's Director, Lorin Maazel. After introducing Gershwin's "An American in Paris," he said: "Perhaps some day a composer will write a composition called 'An American in Pyongyang.'"

After the rehearsal I returned to our hotel, the Yanggakdo, a monstrous 42-story building in an island in the Taedong River, which runs through the City. It has been affectionately dubbed "Alcatraz."

Not all the floors are used and if you hit the wrong elevator button you find yourself stepping out into a freezing dark hallway of one of the mothballed floors. With a few minutes to spare, I made for the bookstore, where the majority of publications contain the thoughts and writings of the late Great Leader, Kim Il Sung or his son Kim Jong Il, otherwise known as the Dear Leader.

I was after a Kim Jong Il classic called "The Great Teacher of Journalists." At first the assistant in glowing traditional robes told me she didn't have it, then confided that she'd do her best to get it. When I returned to the hotel, there she was calling me over in a slightly conspiratorial way, book in hand, and a bargain at 4 Euros (they don't accept dollars here).

Read the rest of Ian Williams blog in the Daily Nightly blog. See his report on the New York Philharmonic's concert on Nightly News with Brian Williams Tuesday evening.

PYONGYANG, North Korea – No sooner had Lorin Maazel stepped off the aircraft this afternoon, the maestro was surrounded by cameras and bombarded with questions.

"Hang on," he said defensively, "I've only seen the airport."

There is incredible interest in this visit to North Korea by the New York Philharmonic – the first cultural exchange of its kind, and the single largest group of Americans to come here since the end of the Korean War.

VIDEO: Diplomatic overtures in North Korea

There was chaos for a while as journalists, musicians and agitated North Korean security men mingled at the foot of the aircraft steps before the orchestra posed for a group photograph in front of the aircraft, a Boeing 747. They were then ushered to a more agreeable backdrop (for the authorities) of the terminal building with a giant picture of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, who though dead, remains head of state.

His son, Kim Jong Il, is in day-to-day charge here, and it is usually hard to move anywhere in Pyongyang without images of the two, together with some pretty blood-curdling anti-American propaganda.

Significantly, the billboards on the nearly deserted road from the airport to the city centre had been toned down.

Read the rest of Ian Williams blog from Pyongyang in the Daily Nightly blog.

RUMMELSHEIM, Germany – Fair warning: This story involves one of those fairytale, somewhat kitschy German villages.

It also includes a cuddly toy, environmental laws and high-tech sneakers.

Let's start in Rümmelsheim. Rummelsheim is the type of village where the grass seems to have been cut with rulers and fingernail clips. The sidewalks are so spotless you could eat off them.

Many Germans would call this little wine-growing town near the Rhine River a "lawn gnome community"– referring to those plastic dwarfs which often characterize "proper" German gardens and are a common sign of the German propensity for orderliness.

Sometimes that penchant for order is taken to extremes.

Take, for instance, a recent visit I made in an effort to shoot some video of the picturesque village. After I parked my car – perhaps a little sloppily -- I was immediately approached by an elderly local man, who was passing by with his grandson.

"You should be filming your car and the violation," the man began yelling at me.

Startled, I turned around to see what had gotten him so angry. It turned out that the tires of my car were on the edge of the sidewalk.

"This is not in order," were his last words as he walked away, steaming mad.

Which leads me to the cuddly toy....

A couple of years ago, another criminal – this time it was not me – disposed of an old white plastic garden chair beneath a lonely tree along the country road between Rümmelsheim and a neighboring town, Waldalgesheim.

A scandal! Especially in such a tidy town. In addition, the German Product Recycling and Waste Management Act, plastic requires adequate and special waste disposal – and the chair was in clear violation of the code.

"We were just about to send out our waste disposal team, when somebody placed a large teddy bear in the chair," said Albert Fastner, Rümmelsheim's mayor.

Fastner and others in the town liked the colorful new roadside eye-catcher – and the town council quickly voted to leave the chair and the stuffed animal in place for a while.

VIDEO: A look at Germany's stuffed animal shrine

"Ever since then," Fastner explained "cuddly toys have come and gone. Even the original bear disappeared for a while. And once, somebody added an umbrella to protect it from the rain."

Today, the big brown teddy enjoys the company of a happy, fluffy red heart, a colorful caterpillar, Disney's Pluto, a gigantic stuffed banana and a smiling yellow guitar.

The mayor admitted that strictly speaking, the "cuddly-toy-cemetery" – as a few disgruntled locals call the site – violates municipal waste disposal laws. But, Fastner argues that the generally positive response from the community justifies an exception to the rule.

He may also have in mind the fame that the cuddly collection is bringing to his town – over the past months, German, as well as international, media have picked up on the story and numerous radio, television and newspaper reporters have visited the toy-strewn tree.

"As long as whoever is responsible for this little shrine keeps the site clean and it does not impact public order or obstruct local traffic, we will tolerate its existence," he said.

Which leads me to the sneakers....

Protecting the environment is a hot issue in Germany – and, just as in Rummelsheim, adhering to environmental standards is taken very seriously. These days, almost every German household has a minimum of three different garbage cans: one for paper, one for plastic and one for "regular garbage."

Many German communities even top the "sorting enthusiasm" by providing an additional brown bin for organic substances.

My hometown, like many others, even has three extra containers for glass (one for brown, one for white and one for green).

And if that's not enough, a pending legal decision may even create new regulations for throwing out old sneakers.

Adidas, the German sports clothing manufacturer, is waiting for a decision from the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig on whether or not its new high-tech running shoe, the Adidas Intelligence 1.1, will be considered "normal waste" or fall under special rules for electronic appliances. The reason? The shoe contains an electronic cushioning control unit.

Since 2005, manufacturers in Germany are required to take back electronic devices and assure environmental-friendly disposal under German law – creating additional costs for the manufacturer.

Get ready for sneaker-sorting bins!

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra's historic visit will attempt to break the isolation of North Korea, also known as the the "Hermit Kingdom" amid a prolonged standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

VIDEO: Cultural diplomacy in North Korea

Cuba's rulers seem to have pulled off what many would have considered unthinkable just a few years ago – a systematic and tidy transfer of power from one Castro to the next.

For ages, Cuba watchers feared that the island would either unravel or erupt when Fidel Castro stepped down. Some predicted a political power struggle would ensue, sparking thousands to flee across the Florida Straits on homemade or smuggler's boats. Others envisioned Cubans flooding the streets to demand democratic freedoms denied under socialist rule.

Instead, when Raúl Castro officially took over the presidency Sunday, the nation serenely went about its daily business.

In truth, over the past year or so, people here have acted fairly blasé about the whole Fidel business.

VIDEO: Complaints about new Cuban leader

Shortly after he fell gravely ill and temporarily handed over power, Fidel's overshadowing presence began to fade from the country's collective consciousness.

People began referring to Fidel's rule in the past tense.

People dared to imagine life after the man who had ruled for close to half a century.

And the longer he remained hidden from public view, the more people began speaking out.

During the 18 months Fidel Castro was sidelined by illness, average Cubans openly advocated his retirement — from his detractors to those supporters vowing to carry out his legacy.

"He has been our teacher, and now it's time for him to rest," said Daniel Soto, who studies economics at Havana University and belongs to the UJC, Cuba's young communist organization.

Daniel Yero, a waiter in Havana's Chinatown, thinks the entire system is broken and supports a radical change to sweep across Cuba's political structure. "I think it's a terrible country because we don't have money. We don't have freedom. We don't have nothing. We need change. Change! Change! Please!"

Scratch the surface, though, and you see a new Cuba emerging.

For the first time in all my years on the island, people are speaking out loud and clear about what does and doesn't work here.

VIDEO: Raul Castro takes over in Cuba

"Just about everyone is clamoring for change," admitted a Cuban government official. "The genie is out of the bottle."

And it was Raúl Castro who held the lamp in his hand and released that genie.

Over a year ago, he authorized grass-roots meetings across the island for people to air their grievances. A leaflet laying out the guidelines for those meetings stated that the discussion would take place in an "atmosphere of profound freedom and sincerity."

Many took his words at face value. No topic was considered taboo, although the meetings were off-limits to the international press. Before the process ended in December 2007, more than 3 million people attended close to a quarter of a million of these government-organized gripe sessions.

Surprisingly to no one familiar with this island, millions of complaints rolled in about how hard life is for the average person.

People mainly grumbled about the high cost of living and low state wages, the island's dilapidated housing stock, inefficiencies in the national health care system and problems in public transportation.

"No one in this country is happy with their wages. After paying your mortgage, bus fare and electricity, there is not enough money left over to pay for food. It's that simple," said Liliana Rodriguez, a social worker who helps families in trouble.

People also complained about not being allowed to open up small businesses or book a room in Cuban hotels reserved for international tourists. Others want the law to change so they can freely travel abroad without first asking for government permission, as well as buy and sell their homes and cars.

"Who owns my house and car? Not me, since I can't sell them!" complained Lucy Valdes, a retired engineering professor.

Raul Castro is viewed as a reformer by good numbers of Cubans, having earned that reputation after he himself publicly criticized food shortages and hardships of everyday life.

"Criticism when handled right is the key to making progress," said Castro, acting then as interim president. "We agree that too many prohibitions and rules do more harm than good."

At the same time, though, he warned the nation not to look for quick fixes. "Nobody here is a magician or can pull resources out of a hat," said Raul Castro.

Both outside experts and government officials appear to share his view. For the time being, sources tell us not to expect to see any big or systemic changes to the Cuban economy -- an idea reinforced on Sunday when the Cuban parliament named hard-line idealogue Jose Ramon Machado, 77, vice president.

But telling Cuba's working poor to be patient is another story as they struggle to better take care of their families and improve their current standard of living.

For a growing number of African American retirees, moving to Africa is a return home, but for others, spending the golden years there allows a lifestyle grander than they ever imagined. NBC's Martin Fletcher reports from Accra, Ghana.

VIDEO: More retirees choosing Africa

MOSCOW – A generation ago, Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin defined the no-go zone between East and West. If you listen to Russian officials these days, that geopolitical schism has now shifted to the Serbia-Kosovo border.

On one side, Russia defends its nationalist proxy, Orthodox Serbians, who say they will never accept a non-Serbian Kosovo; on the other side, Kosovars – more than 90 percent of whom are Albanian Muslims – are backed in their desire for independence by the United States and most of Western Europe.

This new East-West gap should surprise no one who's watched and listened to Russia's take on Kosovo since June 1999.  

Then, just as Serb forces were involuntarily withdrawing from Kosovo, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered his general to take his troops – part of an international peacekeeping mission – and occupy the strategic airport in Pristina before NATO could get there.

Those Russian troops eventually re-joined the peacekeeping operation, but only after days of intense negotiations in Finland between U.S. and Russian officials. Most Serbs believed that Yeltsin had abandoned Serbia by acquiescing to NATO's demands.

SLIDESHOW: Serbs protest Kosovo independence

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For years, every time rumors of an Albanian declaration of independence for Kosovo were whispered in Pristina or Brussels or Washington, Moscow would weigh in, warning that such an illegal act could plunge the whole European continent into another spasm of violence. But no one seemed to take notice. 

Then Russia started to muscle up: President Vladimir Putin is no Yeltsin, and Russia under Putin has grown into an economic powerhouse, no longer afraid to throw its weight around. During Thursday's massive rally against Kosovo independence, Serbian protestors were holding up posters of Putin, showing that they consider the Russian leader to be their chief ally in the current stand-off with the West

People inside Serbia and beyond are now taking notice of what Russia is saying. And for many in the West it's frightening.

On Friday, Russia's NATO envoy, Dmitiry Rogozin, warned that Russia might have to resort to "brute military force" if Europe recognizes an independent Kosovo. But in the same breath, Rogozin backed off some, suggesting that Russia would not to go to war over Kosovo. Still, many are asking, how did it come to this?

Russian analysts explain that the West – especially the United States – has fallen victim to a miscalculation which some equate to being as grave as the ill-advised invasion of Iraq. They say that the West has grossly underestimated the place Kosovo holds in the hearts of Serbs, no matter how many – or few – actually live there. As Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said at the 200,000-strong rally in Belgrade on Thursday, "Kosovo is Serbia."  

This is not to be taken lightly. He used the same words almost 10 years ago when I spoke to him following his election as president of a new, seemingly moderate post-Milosevic nation. "Kosovo is the origin of Serbia," he told me. "We will never give it up." No one took much notice.

Analysts here in Moscow also warn that the ripping of Kosovo from the Serbian province will open a Pandora's Box of potentially destabilizing ruptures all around the world: Chechens in Russia, ethnic Serbs in Bosnia, Russians in Moldova, Abkhazians in Georgia, Basques in Spain, just to name a few.

Would the United States defend these groups if they were to declare independence in violation of territorial integrity and international law, experts in Russia ask? If not, then why in Kosovo?

To define it in more familiar terms, Kosovo, for Serbs, is like a combination of Jerusalem and the Alamo: both the birthplace of its identity, forged in a bloody defeat at the hands of the Turks in 1389, and the crucible of its religious faith. Over the centuries, Russia has been Serbia's natural ally, sharing the Orthodox religion and the Cyrillic alphabet. But the United States also has been a trusted ally to Serbia through two world wars and other difficult times.

But strangely, friends of a friend can act like enemies. Just when it seemed like Russia and the United States were on the brink of what some consider a new Cold War, tiny Kosovo reared its head, caught the West's fancy for freedom and declared its independence – just as it promised it would. In the process, it triggered the kind of belligerent rhetoric we haven't heard from the Russian military in years.

Forget Checkpoint Charlie. Kosovo means hot zone.

Q & A: The history of strife in Kosovo
Key dates in Kosovo's drive for independence

MONROVIA, Liberia – To put it mildly, it was pretty bad.

As part of President Bush's visit to Liberia's capital Monrovia, the final stop on his five-country African tour, we made a 30-minute drive into the center of town.

What we saw was shocking and disheartening – a once proud city in ruins.

The drive was marked by crumbling infrastructure and tattered shanty neighborhoods where a complete roof is a rarity and electrical power a luxury.  

SLIDESHOW: Bush visits Africa

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It's sad, but understandable – considering that the city is still recovering from a bloody 14-year civil war that ended in 2003.

"I know it's hard to tell if you've just gotten here from the U.S. or from another African country, but Liberia has made amazing progress in just a short time," said Conor Hartman, an advisor to Liberia's Internal Affairs minister.

"Liberia was at rock bottom, but with good governance and continued growth I think you'll continue to see a great turn around."

It's not hard for Hartman to be optimistic. Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-banker who is known affectionately among her people as the "Iron Lady," is making progress. 

In July 2006, Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female leader, began to restore power to parts of Monrovia. And thanks to hundreds of millions in aid from the United States, Sirleaf is working to rebuild health, security, education and physical infrastructure here – a good start on a very long road.

It is hard to resist the urge to openly pull for the Liberian people. Founded by freed American slaves, the country's flag closely resembles ours and its capital city was named after U.S. President James Monroe. Bush's visit here today was the first by a U.S. President in 30 years.

Seeing the carnage left behind by war, poverty and disease it is obvious change will be slow.

But if resilience is worth anything, it is a good bet that Liberia will take small steps forward.

I truly hope to one day return and compare the Liberia I saw today with the Liberia I hope will come.

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer

Imagine Versailles plundered and razed to the ground by marauding invaders. 

Then imagine, some hundred years later, a Donald Trump-like figure announcing that he will build an exact, full-scale replica of Versailles... not in its original location – but hundreds of miles away. All for the princely sum of $3 billion.

Why, you might ask, would anyone do such a thing?

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The original Yuanmingyuan -- so thoroughly destroyed that decades later even the flowers are fake.

Well, in China, a lot of people are wondering the same thing about a plan to rebuild the Old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, once hailed as the Versailles of the East.

A complex of imperial gardens and buildings located in Beijing's far northwest, Yuanmingyuan is one of the capital's beloved historic sites. Its name in Chinese means "Garden of Perfect Splendor," some fans also called it the Garden of all Chinese Gardens.

Built largely during the 18th century and under the supervision of five Qing emperors, Yuanmingyuan covers 865 acres. It was famed not just for its beautiful grounds replete with waterways, hills, and scenic landscapes but also for its elegant mix of imperial palaces, pavilions, and European buildings, featuring the work of artisans from around the world.

But Yuanmingyuan was sacked in 1860 by English and French troops during the second Opium War - an act condemned by French writer Victor Hugo, who deemed the complex more impressive than Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. If that wasn't bad enough, it was sacked again in 1900.

In the process, priceless artifacts and works of art were whisked away from Yuanmingyuan's grounds to museums and private collections across Europe. 

The episode has often been cast as a national humiliation, in which foreign imperialists bested the decrepit Qing regime to occupy Chinese cities and ports.

Since then, Yuanmingyuan has limped through the nation's post-revolutionary stages, rebuilt piecemeal through the collective efforts of local officials, historians, and preservationists.

Not so anymore.

Enter a farmer-turned-millionaire by the name of Xu Wenrong, who has decided he will restore the Chinese people's honor through profit. 

He wants to build an entirely new Yuanmingyuan in his regional home of Zhejiang province, hundreds of miles away from the original site.           

"[T]he destruction of Yuanmingyuan Garden caused by the Anglo-French allied forces is a humiliation to both our country and our nationality," said Xu.  "To reconstruct a new Yuanmingyuan Garden is to cleanse this insult to our country and our people."

The pint-sized 73-year-old Xu isn't your seemingly everyday patriot. As founder of the privately-held Hengdian Group, he transformed acres of farmland in the central province of Zhejiang into Asia's biggest movie studio, often referred to as Chinawood. 

The studio and its 13 back lots in Hengdian – which includes a full-size replica of the Forbidden City – also function as a giant theme park. In 2006, Hengdian attracted 4.65 million visitors.  A new and improved Yuanmingyuan would expand Xu's stable of tourist attractions.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A full-scale replica of the Forbidden City in Hengdian, Zhejiang Province.

But his project, which would take five years to build and would rely on donations from the public as well as private investment, hasn't inspired the same kind of patriotic fervor amongst ordinary Chinese.  If anything, it has sparked a lively debate online and in local newspapers. 

Approval has come from some corners – including local Communist Party officials – but opposition has been louder. The China Daily newspaper quoted an historian as saying, "The remnants of the old ruins are witnesses to a specific period of history, there is no value in recreating them elsewhere."  

Other naysayers have argued an extravagant theme park would be a colossal waste of money, wondering why Xu doesn't just restore the original Yuanmingyuan in Beijing. Some have even suggested the whole plan is a scam, while the Guangzhou Daily noted that China's 2,500-plus theme parks overwhelmingly lose money.

The Hengdian Group has been working hard to deflect criticism.  On Monday, it rolled out a lavish press conference at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse (normally home to visiting foreign dignitaries) - both to unveil project details and to kick off its fundraising drive.

The press kit they handed out was a briefcase stuffed with fancy project brochures, a feasibility study, a DVD with computer-generated images of the new Yuanmingyuang, newspaper clippings praising the project, a 400-page historical tome on its destruction in 1860, and another 400-page book of essays debating the construction plan.

And before a capacity crowd of local journalists, Xu and his partners read speeches detailing the reasons why the idea of recreating an exact replica of Yuanmingyuang was a good one – citing good business sense, environmental protection, and cultural pride. 

But it was a personal note that struck a chord for me. As Xu told the crowd, "I am a farmer turned entrepreneur. In my opinion, farmers are great. It is the laboring people who created the world and history."

Looking around Beijing now in the midst of a building frenzy – powered by millions of migrant workers who have come from China's rural hinterlands – one can see his point. Perhaps a glitzy version of Yuanmingyuan would capture just perfectly the country's rapid transformation from old to new.

KIGALI, Rwanda -- Could these be new laws in tiny Singapore? Plastic bags in the entire country are illegal, as part of the fight to save the environment. Use leads to a fine equal to 10 U.S. dollars. Same fine for smoking or spitting in public. Civil guards in red uniforms carry rifles to enforce the laws.

On the last Saturday of each month, every citizen, including cabinet ministers and the president, must go outside and clean the streets. Each day, shopkeepers must sweep the sidewalk in front of their store. Paved streets in towns as well as dusty alleys in poor villages, and the highways in between, are spotless. A cigarette butt or old newspapers or abandoned coke cans on the ground are so rare as to be remarkable.

VIDEO: Rwanda's long road back

Bikes and walking are encouraged over cars and buses. In the center of the capital, traffic flows easily even at peak times. A car blowing black exhaust fumes risks being impounded on the spot.

OK, here's the punchline: It isn't Singapore, it's Rwanda. But on an African continent of desperately congested and polluted cities, why this startling emphasis on cleanliness here, in a country with so many other problems?

Fourteen years after the genocide, when Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days, Rwanda is still coming to terms with its months of madness. Local courts still try killers, who apologize and finger other killers still at large. But parallel to this ongoing purging of the psyche of an entire nation, is a cleansing of the physical world as well as of the inner one.

It isn't only B.G. (Rwandans refer to life as B.G. and A.G. – Before the Genocide and After the Genocide.) Street cleaning was also mandatory B.G. But we sometimes forget that the 1994 Genocide was not the first, but the third, assault by the Hutus on the Tutsis in thirty-five years, so the physical purging element may still somehow be related to mass murders, only earlier ones.

Click here to read the rest of Martin Fletcher's post about Rwanda's long road back in the Daily Nightly blog.

KIGALI, Rwanda –  Draining.

Before departing Washington with the President Bush on this six-day, five-country African tour, many well-meaning friends and colleagues said the trip would be an emotional one for me. They must have reasoned that this being my first trip to the land of my ancestors, surely that must count for something beyond words.

Unable to grasp their certainty and not being the emotional type, I gave no hint of how lightly I regarded their expressions. But how wrong I was.

AP

U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush lay a wreath at the Kigali Memorial Center, which documents the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, on Feb. 19, 2008.Â

Today, I was confronted by the most heinous example of evil I've ever seen. We visited a memorial of Rwanda's 1994 genocide, a site in Kigali where the remains of more than 250,000 victims are still buried.  Thanks to the film "Hotel Rwanda," many Americans know what happened then: Close to a million Rwandans were slaughtered by their own countrymen in a 100-day period.

To see pictures of the bodies of hundreds of babies, children, women and men piled up like trash in burned out churches was truly numbing.  Staring at the mass gravesites where bodies sent a chill down my spine.  Who could do such a thing?  Hadn't this poor, starving and struggling country been through enough?

Renewal
Today there are signs of hope.  To many, the country's resurgence is an absolute miracle. Though still racked by poverty, the lure of commerce and natural resources are attracting increased aid and investment from countries like the United States.

SLIDESHOW: Bush visits Africa

The man who provided tours today, Freddy Mutanguha, survived the carnage of 1994, but lost four siblings and both of his parents.

He spoke in a clear, matter-of-fact tone about what happened then, but managed to rescue us from the emotional depths with an unbowed optimism about the progress here and the future of his country.

Without a hint of bitterness in his voice he said, "We are becoming whole."

Miraculous indeed.

For those who think the election campaign is suspenseful in the United States, come visit Pakistan.

In the United States, it may be a close contest among the Democrats – and the ultimate outcome on Nov. 4 is still hard to predict. Here the elections are full of intrigue, poll rigging and death threats.

The Pakistani elections scheduled for Monday are parliamentary elections for a new national assembly.

SLIDESHOW: Pakistan prepares for vote

President Pervez Musharraf isn't running. He already got himself elected as president for another five years last October in a somewhat shady procedure thanks to a parliament crammed with his supporters. And then he declared martial law to quell the outcry.

Yet, at the same time, these elections are all about Musharraf and whether he will be able to maintain his grip on power.

'Down with Musharraf!'
Pakistanis blame Musharraf for everything from the rise of Islamic militancy, soaring food prices, and crippling electricity blackouts, to the assassination of opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Recent opinion surveys show that two-thirds of those polled want Musharraf to resign.

If one or more of the opposition parties win a parliamentary majority, they are threatening to impeach him. "Down with Musharraf!" can be heard at every opposition rally.

Noted Pakistani author, Zahid Hussain, dismisses that as campaign rhetoric."The opposition parties will not go for impeachment unless there is an untenable confrontation with Musharraf," said Hussain. "They know if they try and impeach him, it will completely unsettle the situation and things could go out of control."

But amid the outcry at the rallies, there also is talk of backroom deals. Every day there is another report or rumor that Asif Zardari, the husband of Benazir Bhutto and now the leader of her Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Pakistan's largest political party, or Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the other main opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-N are secretly trying to work out some sort of co-existence and power sharing with Musharraf. 

Carol Grisanti / NBC News

Election rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan for Pakistan Muslim League-Q candidate Sheikh Rashid Ahmad.

Musharraf's political base is the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, (PML-Q) – a rump party he cobbled together from Nawaz Sharif's supporters after he ousted Sharif in an army coup in 1999. Sharif, exiled for eight years, is now back.

The "Q's" as Musharraf's party is called, is having a hard time due to his sinking popularity.

Meantime, all the opposition parties insist that the polls have already been heavily rigged and the vote will be compromised in favor of the "Q's." Both the PPP and the PML-N of Nawaz Sharif predict anarchy in the streets if their respective parties don't win.

But Musharraf insists that the parliamentary elections will be free and fair.

"It is not possible to stop some sort of problems at the tactical level on the question of rigging, but we have taken all measure to make it rigging free," Musharraf told a seminar of government officials and intellectuals on Thursday.

Hardly anyone believes him.

A good friend of mine here in Islamabad called me this morning, distraught. Her name and the names of her entire family have been taken off the polling lists.  That means they can't vote. When the family called the election commission to find out why, they were told they did not register in time. My friend told me that's not true. "The truth is the government knows how we voted in the last election, and they didn't like it," she said, and asked that her name not be used because of the volatility of the situation.                                                          
Most Pakistanis doubt these elections will bring stability. And none of the politicians have much to offer in the way of change.

It's rather dizzying trying to make sense of it all and almost impossible to report it accurately. Everyone is on guard for something terrible to happen.

There have been death threats against many of the leading candidates as the Islamic militants try to derail the election process. Candidates have been warned to avoid large rallies for fear of suicide bombers.

Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, a former federal minister and one of Musharraf's top lieutenants, is on the terrorists' hit list. He has won every election since 1985 but this time he may be in trouble because of his links to the unpopular Musharraf.

"What do I do?" Ahmad said in a telephone interview with NBC News. "Do I campaign and try to win an election and perhaps lose my life, or do I sit at home and just give up?"

Timeline: Pakistan's traumatic history in pictures

Prince Seeiso of Lesotho takes NBC News on a trip through the mountain kingdom in southern Africa to show the enormous challenges his country is facing in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

VIDEO: Royal duties in HIV-plaugued Lesotho

By Ed Flanagan, NBC News Researcher

Edison Chen, a popular singer, actor and TV host in Asia, was hoping American audiences would discover him when Christopher Nolan's newest installment in the Batman series, "The Dark Knight" is released in the United States sometime later this year.

Getty Images

Actor Edison Chen seen here in Oct. 2006.Â

Instead, Americans are getting their first taste of this young Hong Kong actor via one of the largest sex scandals to hit the Hong Kong/Chinese film scene in recent memory. 

The scandal, now known as the "Edison Chen Incident," exploded when digital photographs showing Chen apparently performing sexual acts with other Hong Kong celebrities, Bobo Chan and Gillian Chung, turned up on prominent Hong Kong Internet bulletin boards systems (BBS) and celebrity blogs.

The episode not only raises important questions about privacy and censorship, it is arguably the former British colony's biggest scandal in years and has secured a place on newspaper front pages every day since it broke a couple of weeks ago.  

In the days after the release of the photos, Hong Kong police investigating the case tracked the source of the photos to a computer service center where Chen had taken his laptop for repairs. Police arrested eight employees of the service center in connection with the photo release since the discovery, and announced that they believed over 1,300 racy photos of celebrities had been stolen.

In places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, where the hunger for celebrity news is ravenous and invasive, the daily leak of new images has kept the story on the tabloids' front pages, alongside breathless updates on the stars and ongoing legal proceedings.

While the tabloid buzz has currently settled on the stars already exposed in the photos, much of the discussion on Chinese and Hong Kong blogs has been speculation over which other actresses and musicians will be implicated. Rumors of a tawdry video showing Chen's onetime girlfriend, Maggie Q., who Americans may know from Mission Impossible III, Live Free or Die Hard, has kept hundreds of thousands of Chinese netizens glued to online forums and chat sites waiting for updates. 

AP

Hong Kong singer Gillian Chung, left, told the press she was "naive and silly" after racy photos that showed her partially nude with Edison Chen were widely circulated on the Internet.Â

Outside of the realm of the gossip reporting, an interesting debate over Internet rights and the Hong Kong police's handling of the scandal has emerged. Concerns over the police's ability to deal with cyber crimes first arose when they were forced to make an embarrassing retraction after new photos mysteriously appeared on Feb. 7 – a day after the police had confidently announced that the probable source of the leak had been caught.

Furthermore, the police have been under fire from both Hong Kong civil liberties groups and legislators after Commissioner of Police Tang King-Shing declared, incorrectly, that even the mere possession of the tawdry photos could be illegal and grounds for arrest.

Shing's words proved to be inflammatory as netizens nervously wondered whether the police would indeed arrest or punish the tens of thousands of people who had already downloaded or seen the images.

Shing's interview even sparked an angry protest led by prominent Hong Kong lawmaker and activist "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-Hung outside of police headquarters in Wan Chai. The protestors accused the police commissioner of fear-mongering and demanded he clarify his statements.

The seeming ham-handed handling of the case has left the police on the defensive as they now find themselves having to allay public fears about privacy and a perception of selectiveness in investigating high-profile Internet pornography cases more rigorously than others.

The latter problem can be fixed in the short-term through a recommitment to investigating and prosecuting cyber crimes. However, concerns over privacy and government regulation of the Internet will certainly, for better or for worse, draw eerie comparisons to the regulations that currently rule just across the border in mainland China.

Meanwhile, Chen, who had developed a large teenage girl fan base in Asia through his singing and acting roles, now finds himself at the center of a nasty public backlash against his carefully cultivated image.

There has been a growing public perception both in the local blogs and many public forums that whether or not these images were made consensually, Chen took advantage of the girls he appeared with.

While he has since issued a public statement via a YouTube video posted on his website (Chen has been in Canada since the scandal broke), it would seem that the damage has already been done. Since the images were leaked, Chen has been dumped from what was to be a soon to be released Stephen Chow (Kung-Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer) film.

While the Hong Kong glitterati have had their fair share of sex scandals, none of them compare in terms of the speed and voraciousness of coverage. It will be interesting to see if Chen can ride out the negative publicity engulfing him, and whether he can parlay it to jumpstart an ailing career, a la U.S. celebrities Paris Hilton and Tommie Lee who were caught in similarly compromising positions.

Editor's note: Thank you for your comments. This blog contained an incorrect photo of Edison Chen earlier, it has been removed.

Malalai Ishaqzai was anxious to tell her story.

"The Taliban kidnapped my 21-year-old son Mustafa," she said. "They demanded a ransom of $200,000 or else they said they would kill him," she told NBC News. "Then they ordered me to give up my job."

Ishaqzai, 36, is the mother of seven and, as a member of the Afghan parliament, one of the few female politicians in this male-dominated society. She is a prominent figure and well-known in the Afghan capital.

Iqbal Sapand / NBC News

Mustafa, after having survived being kidnapped by the Taliban, safely back at home with his mother, Malalai Ishaqzai, in Kabul.

News of the kidnapping recently surfaced and had become a hot conversation topic in Kabul. 

NBC News went to visit Ishaqzai at her home in an upscale Kabul neighborhood. The family lives well, at least by Afghan standards. An antique red Bokhara carpet covered the entire length of the living room in their fourth-floor apartment.  It was bitter cold outside, but it had finally stopped snowing, and it was warm inside thanks to a gas heater.

A houseboy brought tea and Ishaqzai began to tell her story.

"One evening, my son, Mustafa, and his friend, Nek, decided to drive from our home in Kandahar back to Kabul – about a seven-hour drive," Ishaqzai said in a quiet voice as she recalled the story.

"Near the Liwanai Bazaar in Ghazni province, about half way to Kabul – at exactly the same place where the 23 South Korean missionaries were abducted last year – six men brandishing Kalashnikovs stopped their car, checked the license plates and asked which one was Mustafa. Then they wanted to know where I was," she said.

Mustafa had come into the room by now to join us and interrupted his mother. He was clean-shaven and dressed in Western clothes; he seemed to be still in shock.

"Some men, with their faces covered, were standing on the road and aimed a gun at my car," he said. "I had to stop."

"They checked my license plate numbers against a piece of paper which one of them was carrying. I heard one of them say, 'The numbers match,'" Mustafa said. "They were looking specifically for me."

"'I am Mustafa,' I said. And then I asked them, 'Who are you?'"

At this point Mustafa looked over at his mother, who began to cry.

"They slapped me twice on my face and said, 'We are Taliban. Where is Malalai?'" he said, referring to his mother.

Kidnapping for ransom has become a big propaganda business for the Taliban and a seemingly sure road to easy money. The money raised from ransoms paid goes toward purchasing weapons and funding the insurgency.

Shortly after 23 South Koreans were kidnapped by Taliban militants as they traveled by bus from Kabul to Kandahar on July 19, the South Korean government entered into direct talks with the Taliban. 

More than six weeks after the kidnapping, a deal was reached in which the South Korean government reaffirmed a promise to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of the 2007. Seoul also said it would prevent South Korean Christian missionaries from working in the staunchly Islamic country, something it had already promised to do.

Some reports said that a ransom of $10 million was paid for the release of the group, but the South Korean government denies the charge and said no money changed hands to secure the hostages release. 

The deal reached between the Taliban and the South Koreans was a big win for the Taliban. It gave the militant group the recognition and power it craves and increased their political legitimacy by showing they could negotiate successfully with a foreign government.  

South Korea is not the only country accused of paying for the release of hostages. Germany, France and Italy have all reportedly paid huge sums to the Taliban to secure the release of prisoners.

Ishaqzai was well aware that the Taliban show no restraint, and typically behead their captives when their demands are not met.

"I kept calling his phone," she said. "Finally someone picked up and told me my son had an accident and couldn't speak."

By now, Ishaqzai knew that something terrible had happened. She left Kabul and went back home to Kandahar, her ancestral home, in the southeast of the country. The city is also the home and the spiritual base of the Taliban. She begged local officials in Kandahar to intervene. But no one was able, or willing, to help her.

"Five days went by and finally I got a call from my son's phone," she said.

"'I am Mullah Abdullah Jan Mansoor,'" Ishaqzai said the caller introduced himself. "'I am the man who has kidnapped your son. If you want him and his friend back alive, you have to do as I tell you.'"

Ishaqzai knew she was speaking to the same person who had kidnapped the South Korean missionaries.

The Taliban demanded that all their people be freed from the government jails or else her son and his friend would die. Ishaqzai took the demands to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but he refused to intervene. Karzai has come under intense criticism in the West for negotiating with the Taliban and bowing to their demands.

She then went to her tribal elders in Kandahar who contacted the Taliban and worked out a deal for the release of the boys.

"My tribal elders convinced them I could not pay such a huge amount and that it was very important for our tribe that I represent them in parliament," Ishaqzai said. "In the end, my brother paid $100,000, but only my son was released."

Mustafa's friend Nek was beheaded before his eyes.

"They made me watch them do it," Mustafa said, "I saw his blood and then I fainted. I miss my friend; it is all my fault that he is dead."

Tuesday was Day 68 at the London inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi al-Fayed.

So far the jury has heard from priests and pathologists, soothsayers and Scotland Yard, butlers, bartenders and best friends, videocam-toting tourists and toxicologists, ex-girlfriends and ambassadors, masseuses, forensic experts and eyewitnesses, journalists and jewelers, professors and pathologists, intelligence officers, doctors, bodyguards, ambulance drivers and financial analysts, onetime car dealership managers and Diana relatives, psychiatrists, the French Brigade Criminelle, and a British Member of Parliament. All connected – some in big ways, some small – to events surrounding "the crash."

Alexa Chopivsky / NBC News

John Loughrey shows off the face paint he wears everyday to the London inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed.

Truly a colorful cast. But surely the most outstanding character at the Royal Courts of Justice – ground zero for the proceedings – is 52-year-old John Loughrey, who quit his job as a chef outside London so that he could "do this inquest."
 

 "I'm probably one of Diana's most loyal fans," he boasts, his face painted – as it is every day – with "Diana" and "Dodi" straddling his nose in blue. "Everybody knows me in the courtroom."

'I want to know the truth'
Loughrey is the court entertainer, of sorts, playing his supporting role by sitting in the public gallery every day of the hearings.

During a break he nods familiarly to a lawyer representing the Metropolitan Police, whose 2006 investigation into the crash determined that the tragedy was the result of an alcohol-fueled accident and not, as some allege, foul play.

"I want to know the truth [about the crash] – which I think was an accident," Loughrey says. It is also why he came to the Royal Courts on Oct. 1, the day before the inquest opened, sleeping on the ground with his coat as a blanket. "I thought the tickets would be in great demand. I had worried about getting in. I was the only person here at 8 a.m. on the first day."

Every morning since, he gets on the court's public ticket line at 6:45 a.m. The prize: Ticket Number 1.

He says that key players in the trial – from Mohamed al-Fayed to former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Condon to ex-Dodi girlfriend Kelly Fisher to Diana friend Rosa Monkton – have signed his Number 1 tickets, one for every day of the trial. He plans to sell them on eBay and donate all the profits to Prince Harry's Well Child Charity when the inquest is done.

"Diana was a few steps forward than everyone else," says Loughrey. "She was big in charity, in helping poor people. She put her royal toe on the line to care for people."

At the end of the day he goes home to his sister, who paints his face – as she has done every night since October – with the two names that star in this inquest: Diana and Dodi. "It's too early to do it in the morning, and I can't do it myself," explains Loughrey, who says he gets only four hours of sleep.

"I have to sleep on my back or else it will smudge."

 

By Ed Flanagan, NBC News Researcher

China may have run in the year of the rat this week, but the nation's heart is still hungrily set on the pig.

With pork prices having jumped over 50 percent in the past year, national attention has shifted to the ever escalating prices for basic foodstuffs. Pork is a staple in the Chinese diet – 65 percent of the 110 lbs of meat the average Chinese eat each year is pork – and the near daily increases in price here have become a banner issue for poor and middle-class Chinese. Now with some of the most severe rates in years, government officials here are quietly wondering if unchecked inflation could potentially lead to a repeat of the public incident that followed the last period of economic hardship.

The pork price hikes have come as a result of factors arising both domestically and abroad. In China last year, blue ear disease ravaged the pig population during what was an already poor production year due to low 2006 prices. Meanwhile, the demand for corn and maize for ethanol production raised global prices for livestock feed, making it far costlier to raise porkers fit for the market. Most recently, the severe cold weather and storms that have hit central and southern China – traditionally regarded as the nation's breadbasket – have destroyed much of the season's crop across the board and wrought further havoc on prices nationally.

The biggest contributor to the inflation rate though is the booming Chinese economy and the rapidly growing incomes that it has brought. To the government's credit, the nation has pulled millions of people above the poverty line in the past decade. However, with this new economic flexibility has come a greater consumption of meat as the population increasingly shifts to a western style diet that features more meat.

The consequences of this swine shortage and the public's affinity for pork on their dinner plates are now playing out in China's markets. During a recent visit to the Pifa Wholesale Market in Beijing for another story, one butcher noted that because of pork's reputation in China as being the affordable meat, the runaway inflation has irked customers and caused them to go out in search of a better deal.

"When pork prices went up, people started buying chicken. When chicken prices went up they switched to fish," he said. "People remember how cheap pork used to be, so it's hard for them to understand why it's so expensive today."

It is that question that has become a source of serious concern for the Chinese government, which has the unenviable task of having to somehow explain to its outraged populace how even with a pig population of 500 million (compared to a US population of just 100 million), it has been largely unsuccessful to curb runaway prices.

While the government has made use of price freezes in the past to temporarily halt rising inflation, the government's other key mechanism for controlling prices is the much vaunted "strategic pork reserve" – a network of government warehouses full of frozen pork. Much like the US government in certain situations will use its own strategic petroleum reserve to help control domestic prices, China has injected pork into the market during moments of rapid inflation or politically sensitive times to ensure a steady supply and reasonable prices.

The pork reserve has been a critical component of the Chinese government's battle with inflation as it has allowed officials to create positive publicity around their attempts to manage the inflation. Without question, the potential for civil unrest that might follow continued inflation is a source of considerable concern for a government that is always weary of the many millions of Chinese who have not prospered under China's economic miracle. The 30,000 tons of pork the government pumped into the market last September and the thousands more it injected just this past month in anticipation of the Chinese New Year festivities was as much a nod of deference to the hundreds of millions quietly toiling in the countryside as it was a move to placate the far more vocal urban population.

As distant as China's pork problem may seem in the United States, Americans should be concerned about the ramifications of a nation of 1.3 billion people unable to raise enough pigs to satiate its enormous appetite. Outside of China, there is a great deal of concern over the side effects of the Chinese pig industries' rapid transformation into a US style system of consolidated farms. Eager to improve production with new farms that boast populations of over 1,000 pigs in close quarters, new strains of the blue ear disease that ravaged the population last year are popping up, creating the potential for new super viruses that could inhibit continued growth in the pork industry.

China has already started to import U.S. pork to supplement its poor production last year, striking a deal with American pork producer, Smithfield Foods Inc. in September of last year to export 60 million pounds of pork. While some believe that the relatively small Smithfield deal will pave the way for greater U.S. penetration into the Chinese pork market, should there be another mass culling of Chinese pigs due to illnesses like blue ear disease, Americans can expect higher pork prices as China looks to the U.S. to meet its own market demand.

Perhaps of greater concern to Americans though is the fear that China could eventually respond to the increasing cost of producing domestic corn and livestock feed by beginning to import more from abroad. Should China elbow its way into the world grain trade, the combined effects of more corn being siphoned off for ethanol production and feeding China's 500 million pigs could lead to soaring global grain prices.

Whether global grain prices rise substantially or not, should pig prices continue to skyrocket in China, expect this researcher to drop everything and follow in the footsteps of Wang Chao, a 22-year-old college junior here in China who last April dropped out of school to take up pig farming and cash in on what is quickly becoming a proverbial golden trough.

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer

CHANGYUAN, Henan Province – I thought I was back in Iraq. It certainly didn't sound like China.

The town of Changyuan in central Henan province rang in the Year of the Rat in full-blown style. Fireworks went off all night, all over town. Traditional Chinese courtyard houses just below my hotel window sparkled and smoked through the wee hours and into the morning.

My last embed with the U.S. military in Iraq hadn't been this noisy.

Making up for lost time
In China, firecrackers are typically set off to welcome the New Year -- in the Chinese, or lunar, calendar, it's the year 4706. Firecrackers are supposed to chase away evil spirits and clean out any bad luck so it doesn't carry over to the new year.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Chinese New Year revelers in Changyuan buy goldfish, a popular symbol of wealth during the holiday.

For years, authorities across the country had banned the use of fireworks because they were considered dangerous -- Beijing alone went without for 12 New Years. Regulations recently eased in Changyuan and other parts of the country, and now many more people can light firecrackers during the two-week holiday period.

To me, it sounded like all 800,000 residents of Changyuan were making up for lost time.

I lay under the bedcovers, earplugs in my ears, eyes squeezed shut, as though it were possible to block out the noise. But it was like being enveloped by white noise from a TV without reception, punctuated by whistling whooshes and the occasional thump that sounded like an outgoing mortar.

Video

[INPUT_REPLACEMENT]

Fireworks ring in Chinese New Year Fireworks are heard going off through the wee hours of the night and into the morning just below NBC's Adrienne Mong's hotel window in Changyan, China. NBC News Web Extra

I didn't even hear a text message from our cameraman, Marcus O'Brien, whose hotel room was two floors above mine: "OMG. Happy New Year."

This was Marcus's introduction to the Chinese New Year holidays.

Prosperity = lots of firecrackers
Instead of counting sheep, I counted dollars. Yesterday, on our way to film a family in a nearby village, Marcus bought a box of fireworks from a street vendor. He paid 60 kuai (about $8.50).

After we finished filming later that evening, we gave the fireworks to the family. For about five minutes, colorful firecrackers shot high into the night sky.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The telltale red marks after fireworks have been set from inside a courtyard house.

So by my estimate, the residents of not-so-sleepy Changyuan must be prosperous. The fireworks went off solidly for nine hours. At roughly $8.50 every five minutes, that works out to a whopping $918 dollars to ward off bad spirits all night. That's almost a year's income for many families in a town this size.

The next morning, as we checked out of our hotel bleary-eyed, I made a comment to the hotel staff about the fireworks.

"Oh, that was nothing," enthused a young man. "It gets even better at the end of the Spring Festival, on the 15th day of the New Year. Everyone lights up firecrackers. It's much more festive and fun."

I can't wait.

Insurgents who have been driven out of Anbar province have regrouped in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which is seen as the main front against al-Qaida. NBC's Richard Engel recently spent several days patrolling with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and reports from the scene.

VIDEO: On patrol in Mosul

One word of caution: I may be a foreign correspondent, but at heart, I'm a fifth generation New Yorker who grew up eating box scores for breakfast.

If you say "hero of 1969," I still think of Joe Namath, who led the New York Jets to their Super Bowl championship, before Neil Armstrong.

Unfortunately, frustratingly, my relationship with the greatest show on earth – American football and best of all, the Super Bowl – has always been at a distance.

In the '70s, as a cub journalist based in Paris, the Super Bowl was, well, forgedaboudit (before someone had coined the term). In those medieval days, I could find Yankees games on my crackling short-wave radio, but never the Super Bowl.

It didn't get much better in the '80s. As I moved from Paris to the Middle East to London to South East Asia, reporting on the news of the day, I was always trying to watch the ever-elusive football game without much luck.

Toward the end of that decade, however, things began to change. We did a news spot on 'Refrigerator' Perry and his Chicago Bears who came to London to play an exhibition game at Wembley Stadium. That turned out to be the spark that ignited the slow burn of British interest in American football – a pastime that had been seen as rather confusing, annoying (with all those time-outs) and less-than-macho by the die-hard fans of blood-soaked, pad-less rugby.

The '90s brought me to Moscow and Frankfurt. Work meant covering the anti-Gorbachev coup, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the wars in Yugoslavia. But now you could actually go somewhere, push a button and watch the game – the next day.

The NFL Europe League was thriving by then, an international source of fresh NFL talent, and a couple of forward-looking sports bars in Frankfurt figured out how to spike profits by pumping in the occasional football game, especially the Super Bowl.

These events drew a strange mix of young, shaven-headed Germans, NFL Europe back-up players, wannabe cheerleaders, and dozens of American expatriates – who would pay dearly for their wicked hangovers and lack of sleep at the workplace the next morning.

Eventually, by the time I left Frankfurt in 1999, these Super Bowl parties were "live," meaning I finally got to watch the game in real time. That is if I wasn't in Iraq or the West Bank. But there was still a catch: pre-game coverage, Frankfurt time, began at 8 p.m., as did the prerequisite BBQ-ing and beer drinking. The kickoff was never before midnight or 1 a.m. The action – and all those expensive American commercials – would go on all night. In fact, I can admit now that I slept through most of Super Bowl XXX in 1996 when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers and Super Bowl XXXII when the Denver Broncos defeated the Green Bay Packers.

During the 2,000s, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, those of us who were covering the conflicts were still chasing the game.

By then, the NFL Game of the Week had become standard fare on British TV Channel 5. It was packaged by two British anchors who talked about the game much better than I ever could – but again, it aired at an ungodly 1:30 a.m. on Mondays. American football was regularly drawing tens of thousands of fans at Wembley Stadium for pre-season games. And during the 2007 fall season, Wembley hosted the first regular NFL game to be played outside of North America when the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins. 

American troops got caught up in the international dimension of trying to catch the game along with the journalists covering the wars. I managed to watch some of Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 with a company of Marines in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was freezing, the satellite signal was down more than up, but it was the start of a new tradition.

Two winters later, in Baghdad, I looked on as the world saw TV images of a handful of U.S. soldiers with whom we were embedded cheering on the players of Super Bowl XXXVIII, as the New England Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers, from inside a massive, mostly empty tent. That time, there was a lot of patriotism, but not a lot of enthusiasm for the actual game. Some soldiers laughed then when I asked if they would still be fighting five Super Bowls later.

But Sunday night was truly super. I finally caught up with my bowl. No more weak, choppy, TV signals or unstable Internet video streams. No more desert dust or mortar rounds to compete with.

I watched ALL of Super Bowl XLII from the comfort of my London living room on my HD wide-screen LCD, at room temperature, with immediate family, take-out pizza and bottles of Newcastle Ale. And on top of all of that, my New York Giants did the unthinkable, and won.

The perfect Super Bowl was worth the four decade wait, even if it still kept me up all night.

As Super Tuesday looms, many Europeans find themselves gripped by the excitement of the U.S. presidential primaries. Why are they paying such close attention, and which candidates have struck a chord on the other side of the Atlantic?

VIDEO: U.S. presidential primaries grip Europe

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer

CHENZHOU, Hunan Province – It was at Yizhang that our luck ran out.

Just 30 miles away from our destination, we were diverted off the Jingzhou Expressway heading north. 

We had been traveling for two days to get to Chenzhou, a city located in Hunan Province, which has taken some of the worst hits from the freak winter weather that has gripped China in a major cold snap during the past four weeks. Chenzhou's four million people have been without power and, increasingly, without running water, too.

The expressway only re-opened to traffic on Saturday, after being closed for several days. By mid-morning on Sunday we were moving at a good clip. Both sides of the highway were flowing with steady traffic – buses and cars brimming with passengers, trucks overflowing with supplies.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A pylon nears collapse over a field of iced-over rice paddies in Hunan.

In fact, despite below-freezing temperatures, conditions for the highway were so surprisingly good that I merrily sent a text message to our bureau chief in Beijing and our ITN colleagues who had just left Guangzhou and were heading in the same direction as we were traveling: "Roads all clear!"

But then we quickly entered a bizarre looking landscape, where everything was covered in inches-thick ice, including downed power lines and tree branches. Even the rice paddies were iced up. Correspondent Mark Mullen said it was like being trapped in a "snow globe."

At that point, we got stuck in miles-long traffic on the local road and were barely making any progress.

It was around this time that things began to heat up.  (Sadly for us, travelling in an unheated "bread loaf" car – I'm only speaking metaphorically.)

"What are you're doing?!?" The driver of a sedan in front of us had his head out the window, glaring ferociously up at a bus driver who was inching forward, trying to cut in front of the sedan.

After being immobilized for nearly two weeks, everyone was back on the roads, delivering much-needed supplies to hard-hit areas like Chenzhou or trying to get back to their home villages before Chinese New Year on Thursday. 

SLIDESHOW: Images from China's big chill

But since this section of the Jingzhu Expressway was inexplicably closed again, people were now jamming all the arteries flowing off the highway.

And as with many situations involving travel and long hours, tempers were beginning to fray along with any civil conduct.

"You think you're getting anywhere, driving like this?" said a plainclothes policeman who was banging a tree branch on the hood of one of several dozen cars that had tried to overtake the traffic by spreading out to the two far left lanes, effectively blocking all the traffic heading the opposite direction. 

We were all settling in for a wait of several hours when after half an hour a group of policemen managed to bully wayward drivers into moving aside to allow oncoming traffic.

Before long, we were continuing our journey to Chenzhou, observing how much life carries on despite hardships.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A tree weighed down by ice in Hunan Province.

We caught a fleeting glimpse of women squatting on the covered ground, washing clothes using ice.

A young man carried a basket full of homemade rice and fried beef in plastic boxes, hawking them to weary drivers and passengers stuck in traffic,

A convoy of army trucks sped past us, one of them flying a red banner, "Our heart is with the people of the affected areas."