After four years, I’m standing in a room with the finest press corps in the world. After four years – they’re throwing ME a party.

We’ve been through hell and back ... and back again.

From Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi, Tikrit and to the depths of Baghdad – we’ve literally, spilled the same blood, in the same dirt. Corny? Maybe ... But it’s true.

We’ve lost friends, loved ones, and colleagues. I choose not to count those who have died, gone missing – or simply disappeared. And that’s not counting those who have made ultimate sacrifice, and are often forgotten: those in the Iraqi press, choosing to try to make a difference in their own country. The numbers of lost are just too hard to imagine.

Many of my colleagues have not disappeared here in Iraq – they’ve gone “home” and we’ve never heard from them again. Truth is – what is “home” after four years in Iraq? I wonder how any of us can return home.

I’m humbled by a line I saw in a mini-series about World War II: “I wonder how I’ll explain all this when I get back home.” I do wonder how any of us will explain this place.

Our families – they don’t know ... and we would not expect them to – how could we? We don’t want them to have the burden of worrying about us. Because if they do, we can’t do our jobs with that on our shoulders along with everything else that we’re faced with.

And the simple, humbling truth is: we believe in this ... If anyone didn’t they would not be in this room.

We have had “close calls,” we have made mistakes – we stay up at night, wanting the world to care ... But they will never care enough in our minds. So we choose not to sleep.

We miss our families, our loved ones ... But there’s something about this story – we cannot shake it. It sticks to you like duct tape – something that is a running joke ... Injured? Stick some duct tape on it. Break that piece of equipment? Stick some duct tape on it. We do love our duct tape ...

Our tourniquets, bandages, flak jackets, gum, cigarettes, scotch, water, Gatorade, “wily-X eye protection glasses,” boots, radios, “go-bags”, lucky charms and helmets. Don’t leave the bureau without them. Especially the lucky charms – everyone’s got em’ and they work ... Until they don’t ... Welcome to the embed world. Welcome to Iraq.

We make jokes (bad ones), band together, and look after each other. We’d lay in front of oncoming traffic for any number of our staff members – everyone is equal here in Baghdad. We cut corners, we give the military cigars – and yes, we lie to each other, party together and forgive each other - because in the end – we’re bonded by something we can’t describe.

We love our security – for without them ... You’d see nothing from this country. The sound of silence would be overwhelming from a war that could not be covered without the names of many a former Special Forces soldiers; the names of which – you’ll never hear. Talk about a silent sacrifice.

I choose not to name names, not to list those that are forever my friends: rather this simple thought for those who know who they are.

These are the finest people I’ve ever had the honor of meeting, and they know full well; I breath this story like it’s oxygen ... And I will be back again.

- From Cal Perry, CNN Baghdad Bureau Chief.

We are in Guangzhou, China, trying to get a glimpse about why exactly this yearly migration back home for the spring festival is so important. Being new to China, I really didn’t know what to expect about the restrictions on reporting, but after our nosing about at the factory workers dormitories, incurring the rage of the owner of the factory, we had the opportunity to exercise a textbook trick. When trouble looms, change the tape in the camera; they will ask to hand to them what you filmed which you will do kindly and they will get a nice blank tape. Everybody’s happy.

The next day, our producer decides it will be great to travel with the migrant workers on a leg of their return home. Rushing down the train station platform trying to keep our correspondent framed and being shoved by people desperately trying to get a seat for the long journey, I realize it’ll be tough. Not even five minutes of being in the train, there’s a heated argument on the other end of the car. Not enough seats, but I can’t afford to give up my camera’s position. A coat over it and a woolly hat make it look like a sleeping person.

Very soon, we attract the attention of our fellow passengers. Pictures being taken, sweets offered … the conductor fetches some hot water for our tea. Maybe it won’t be so bad after all. But the novelty and excitement wears off pretty soon: sleeping seated on a hard bench, with equipment all about you, waking now and again to get this or that shot … 10 hours pass – it’s morning and the train is stationary for more than four hours.

Pacing up and down the aisle, it seems like a good idea to haul our gear through the window (all doors are locked, nobody is allowed in or out) and hire a car to move to the next station. But we stick by, and 17 hours later, with intermittent sleep, sparse food and no more tea, we get to Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. At least I’ve heard loads of compliments about this province’s food. Here we’ll stop to send our report back to base, and rest on a nice comfortable bed. As we go, we see how many of our fellow travellers are bottled on the next train’s door … again, fighting to get a seat for the next leg of their trip.

-- From CNN cameraman Miguel Castro

The roar beats like storm gusts against my hotel window. It is the sound of human voices. If they are using words, they have lost any separate identity. It is simply the sound of a crowd, the elemental unit of Chinese history.

Like the police officers who sprawl in the lobby of this hotel opposite Guangzhou train station, I am tired. I know from standing among the people, for days and nights on end now, that they are also, individually, tired. Some are spent. They stagger, some supported by others, some in tears, as they proceed from barricade to crowded barricade in their journey towards the possibility of a train ride home.

But the crowd itself is perpetually refreshed.

As each new few thousand are released from one barricade, to run with their bags for a good position at the next barricade, the energy and the sound is as urgent as it was a week ago.

It is no wonder the Beijing authorities fear the crowd above everything. It was the masses that brought the communists to power. The government now is barely recognizable in its policies from those Maoist revolutionaries. But they understand the power of mass emotion.

So, they have produced a troop surge. 306,000 Chinese troops have been deployed, here, in southern China. That is nearly twice the total U.S. deployment in Iraq. The soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army are fighting what Beijing is rather sweetly calling “the war on wintry weather.”

The people crammed and crushed against barricades are perfectly ordinary people. After four years in China, I identify with them not quite as a native, but enough to understand as perfectly reasonable their desire to get back to be with their families for the Chinese New Year holiday.

The police and the soldiers seem genuinely interested in helping them, to ease their suffering. Again and again, I have seen these agents of state security racing beneath the feet of a thundering crowd to re-right a toppled pile of suitcases, to ease pregnant women and children and the frail and the simply over-emotional to a place of greater safety.

On Friday, a woman called Li Hongxia fell before the rushing crowd. By the time, she was lifted clear, she had been trampled by people powerless to avoid her. She died the next day in hospital. Li worked in a watch factory in Guandong. She was trying to get home to Hubei province.

But by the count I received a few hours ago, 483,000 people have made it onto trains. By the surf-like roar from the street outside, many many more are still anxious to try.


-- From CNN Correspondent Hugh Riminton in Guangzhou

You could only admire her bravery. A stream of pumped-up Chinese police reinforcements was slicing at speed through a tactical opening in the security barricades at Guangzhou train station.

The woman, 40ish, slightly built and alone, flung herself into the breach. For a moment it seemed she'd be minced meat. A police officer wrenched her aside and pulled the barricades back together.

"I want to go," she wailed. "I want to go."

But she was back with so many others, on the wrong side of security, with tens of thousands of people between her and the great prize of a seat on a train heading anywhere.

China's current emergency can be seen on one level as an epic collision.

On one side: nature, wild and indifferent. On the other: a very human drive to visit family during one slender window each year.

It is a deeply intimate story.

China's economic rise - and my cheap T-shirts and kids' toys - depend on ordinary Chinese who leave their homes to work often seven days a week in factories in the south. The trip home for Lunar New Year fulfils ancient obligations to family. It is also the only chance most of them have to see family members - including spouses and children - all year.

The vast tides of people waiting at Guangzhou might be sources of fascination, curiosity - even incomprehension. They can never be figures of fun.

Thirty years ago, the travel writer Jan Morris made a trip from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. She spoke of not seeing people so much as "statistics on the move." A neat line.

But the tens of millions currently disrupted by China's weather are no mere statistics. Theirs are all too human faces, desperate to keep faith with their families after for the long months of separation.

Their powers of endurance will be remembered long after their occasional flashes of exasperation or anger.

-- From CNN Correspondent Hugh Riminton in Guangzhou

Switzerland is a stranger to conflict, having opted out of World War II in a state of neutrality, but some visitors bring their own battle with them.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was in the remote Swiss town of Davos this week as part of his ongoing mission to rally international help to drive the Taliban from his homeland.

Though reminiscent of the snow-capped peaks that loom over Kabul, the ski slopes are a far cry from the scarred Afghan landscape – a peaceful picture postcard scene that would set anyone’s mind at ease.

But Karzai remains on his guard.

CNN visited the Afghan leader in his rented Swiss mountain villa overlooking Davos for an interview that drove home the constant state of peril in which he has spent every day since he took office after the 2001 fall of the Taliban.

Before entering the villa, the CNN crew was marched 100 meters along a deserted snow-covered road by a team of security guards. Bags were unpacked, video cameras were scrutinized and each of us given a thorough body check.

The equipment is a particular concern for Afghans, who in the days prior to the Taliban’s defeat, lost iconic Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Masood when a suicide bomber posing as a journalist detonated a bomb in a TV camera.

Only after we have all been checked -- under scrutiny from almost a dozen Afghan security guards, Swiss police and special agents -- are we admitted to the building, where Karzai is waiting.

The level of vigilance surrounding the president is one of the best reminders that his country is still in a state of conflict – one that has come perilously close to ending the life of its leader on several occasions.

Karzai himself is, as always, cucumber cool, but clearly pensive.

There is a clear contrast the following day when the CNN crew sets up to film Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

Although this takes place within the security surrounding the World Economic Forum in Davos, the event is a markedly relaxed affair.

Fukuda himself is all smiles, joking with the crew when the cameras stop rolling. Asked if he was still enjoying being Japanese prime minister, he grins sheepishly, and replies: “I’m suffering.”

Clearly not as much as Karzai.

By CNN.com Digital Producer Barry Neild in Davos, Switzerland

People who don’t do MySpace, Facebook or similar sites usually moan that they prefer real life social networking, deeming avid fans losers who chat to their pretend friends in secluded dingy bedrooms.

While the rest of us are “poking” or posting on “funwalls”, they are out pressing the flesh, chewing ears, slipping business cards into wallets and no doubt harping on about people who waste their time on the Internet.

The two worlds collided this week at the meeting of big business cheeses and global leaders that is the World Economic Forum. A seminar titled: “Add a Friend: Accept or Decline” lured online community leaders out into the schmoozing open.

So the question is: Can online social networkers do it in real life?

The answer is yes. With gusto.

There was a raucuous hubbub of conversation at the seminar as key figures from business and blogosphere came face-to-face.

As far as I know there was no poking, but plenty of gentle ribbing from networking rivals -- a rather flushed Reid Hoffman, chairman of LinkedIn, absorbed a heckling as he outlined ideas for improving Internet interaction.

Plenty of actual LOL followed blogging legend Robert Scoble’s account of getting booted off Facebook for violating the site’s rules and abusing the trust of his 5,000 “friends”.

Much of the discussion focused on how social sites are miscast as work distractions and how they can in fact drive the workplace, with anecdotes of businesses tapping innovative skills beyond company boundaries through the Internet.

Given the professions of those attending the seminar, it was no surprise that some were blogging the event as it happened, cutting edge cell phones and computers glowing from every table.

But at the end of the evening, these digital pioneers abandoned their electronics and indulged in a bit old school networking – swapping business cards.

From CNN.com Digital Producer Barry Neild in Davos

Almost as heavy as the snowfall that greeted participants at this Swiss Alpine resort, was the cloud of anxiety hovering over the start of this year's World Economic Forum.

Stock markets around the globe were badly shaken by the potential spread of a credit crisis from the U.S. This was not lost on Middle Eastern markets which started selling-off Sunday, their first day of trading, and carried through Tuesday.

The dramatic, and what some saw as a panicked, reaction by the Federal Reserve, to cut interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point sent mixed signals. What is the Fed seeing that others might not? Certainly the signal is that the bottom certainly has not been found on Wall Street, and for that matter some of the European banks as well.

That, however, does not mean the rest of the world should freeze in its tracks and that growth should come to a halt. The Middle East in fact is coming off some of the fastest growth in three decades. The excess liquidity of $400 billion each year from oil prices in the $80 per barrel range has changed the dynamics of the region and what these players are doing with their capital.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that $800 billion will be put into infrastructure in the region. Tall buildings, new financial centers, energy cities, new university hubs -- they are all being built. But the region can only absorb so much capital.

This is where the new darlings of Davos come in: The sovereign wealth funds. In case you missed it, the funds were the subject of front page articles on both Business Week and the Economist over the weekend. The danger from my vantage point here is that there is a lot of discussion about moving fast, taking advantage of buying opportunities (like Citigroup & Merrill Lynch), but also about competing with each other. There is a hint that some of the players are getting ahead of themselves.

Giant Stimulus Plan

There is potential here in Davos to bring like-minded players together for the greater good of the global economy. While the White House debates the merits of the $150 billion stimulus package, there is $1.5 trillion available in the Gulf. That is a serious stimulus package. As respected economist and old Davos hand Fred Bergsten rightly said, this liquidity could lead to a re-coupling of east and west. The investment money from the Gulf, China and Singapore will help avert a recession in the U.S. if, and a big "if" here, the funds are welcomed.

Some anxiety about this was expressed this morning by Mervyn King, now of Standard Chartered Bank, but formerly head of the Bank of England. He said that the funds should agree to a code of conduct for transparency or risk being labelled "irresponsible." That certainly does not set the tone for a collegial Davos-like discussion on closing the gap between those in need of capital and those who hold it right now.

Another Davos veteran, Arif Naqvi, Chief Executive of Abraaj Capital sees this in two stark colors: Black and white. The region is sitting on two commodities in great demand right now: Oil and cash.

Those commodities put the 200 or so players from the Middle East in an enviable position within the halls of the conference center; now if we can only work on the politics so the money can get to work in the right way.

-- From CNNI Marketplace Middle East Presenter John Defterios

World Economic Forum blogger Loic Lemeur on the big topics that will drive Internet chat at the Davos 2008 meeting.