Now that the U.S. has officially ended its combat mission in Iraq, what's next for the war-torn nation? Read a Q&A with NBC's Richard Engel, who has reported from the Middle East since the war began.

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ANALYSIS
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News

Spot the joke.

Ever since he became Israel's prime minister and immediately became embroiled in a seemingly never-ending series of crises, skeptics have argued that Benjamin Netanyahu is brilliant at only one thing - surviving.

Analysts have run out of metaphors to describe his survival skills. But he will need all of them now that his foreign minister resigned, leaving Netanyahu's government with the slimmest majority in parliament, 61-59.

But few doubt his government will, somehow or other, live on. The bigger question now is - will the peace process survive?

Here’s the punch line: I wrote that January 1, 1999.

Actually, maybe it's not so funny after all.

The only update is that today's foreign minister hasn't yet resigned, but is threatening to do so, if Netanyahu makes any significant progress toward handing parts of the West Bank back to the Palestinians.

There isn't much danger of that, though.

The stuff of fantasy
It's unfortunate for President Barack Obama, who has said he wants a peace agreement wrapped up within a year, even though the process of implementation could take up to 10 years. Apart from Washington's expectations, you only have to listen to the rumblings in Jerusalem and Ramallah, the Palestinian National Authority’s administrative capital, to understand that rapid progress is the stuff of fantasy.

Shimon Schiffer is generally recognized as one of the best political commentators in Israel. Here's his assessment in Tuesday's Yedioth Ahronoth, the most widely circulated paper in Israel:

"The prevalent assessment among officials who have been monitoring the efforts to restart the direct negotiations is that nothing will follow the photo-ops the three men will have in the three-day summit. In other words, this is a content-less initiative that is not going to move things forward by even a single meter."

One obstacle: Netanyahu told his people that any peace agreement would have to be based on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation. President Mahmoud Abbas has an equally intransigent demand: he will never recognize a Jewish state.

All the issues dividing Israelis and the Palestinians have remained the same for decades: the future of Jerusalem, the status of Palestinian refugees, Israel's final borders, a security agreement.

Analysts generally accept that, one day, the final arrangement will be: Jerusalem will be divided between Jews and Arabs with the holy areas under some kind of international supervision; Palestinian refugees will be absorbed in the future Palestinian state with a token few thousand coming into Israel based on family reunification; the final borders will be along the lines of June 4, 1967, with a land swap to take into account Israel's settlement blocks on a meter-for-meter basis; security for both states will be guaranteed within a wider peace agreement that would follow an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough.

But, small question: when's the breakthrough?

Is it within a year, as Obama is demanding, or perhaps desperately hoping? Israelis and Palestinians know that when an American president needs a foreign policy victory, Mideast peace will top their agenda. So they need to play along, keep their heads down, and blame the other side for any eventual failure.

Looming Iran
Each failed peace process brings Armageddon one step closer. Past major failures have swiftly been followed by violence. This time though a Palestinian uprising following a failed peace process appears unlikely; according to all Palestinian and Israeli sources. Palestinians just seem not to have the heart for another fight.

However, maybe Iran and its allies in the region do. The balance of terror is slowly shifting as reports multiply that Hezbollah in South Lebanon has 45,000 rockets with a vast long-range capability, putting Tel Aviv into its sights. Hamas in Gaza is also said to have advanced rockets that can hit Tel Aviv.

Then there’s Iran's ongoing nuclear program.

This makes a peace agreement, or at least some kind of peace process that offers hope rather than catastrophe, all the more urgent.

There are positive signs on the ground. Apart from a few of tragic killings -- on Tuesday, the Israeli military reported that a Palestinian gunman shot dead 4 Jewish settlers -- there's been little Palestinian-Israeli violence in the West Bank for 18 months. Economic growth is whizzing along at 8 percent, jobs are growing and foreign investment is arriving. The West Bank is one of the world's few economic success stories these days. Strangely enough, so is Israel.

But while there is a real improvement on the ground in relations between Israel and the West Bank, is the time right for a rapid push for peace? After all, close to 1.5 million Palestinians live in Gaza under the control of Hamas, which rejects all moves toward peace with Israel.

Skeptics scoff, but at least Obama is offering a way forward, extending a branch for peace.

But judging by everything one hears in Jerusalem and Ramallah, politicians on both sides are still not yet ready to climb down from their tall, tall trees.

Martin Fletcher has covered the Israel-Palestinian conflict for over 30 years

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News

ST JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND -- Blame Mother Nature.

An iceberg sank the Titanic. And now, a hurricane has chased the Titanic expedition back to shore.

The captain of the research vessel Jean Charcot informed team leaders days ago that he was uncomfortable with Hurricane Danielle’s track.

And his decision to return to port was smart as the seas are now kicking up at the site in the North Atlantic, and are expected to become 40-foot swells when the brunt of the storm hits.

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The return to port does provide the teams opportunity to re-group.

The main power supply onboard the ship failed in the final hours of work, and the ship's onboard power system is not well integrated. This vessel was built in France and was once used by Jacques Cousteau. However, the power system in France is different that that of the United States, so you can’t just plug in this high-tech equipment without all sorts of complicated conversions.

The team also is using the time to consider where to look next.

The mapping equipment returned some stunning results. The The Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) nicknamed “Ginger” and “Mary Ann" used sonar to map a 5-by-3 mile area. It’s long been believed the wreckage sat in a 6-square mile area, but now these new maps reveal more wreckage that’s never been studied, photographed or documented.

When the team returns, in about a week, they want to see what is there, in 3D and HD.

Love at sea
The one thing the Titanic historians onboard say is unlikely: finding the necklace. If you saw the Leonardo DiCaprio movie "Titanic," you remember the "Heart of the Ocean" jewel.

Sadly, the experts say that’s simply a Hollywood creation.

But then again, you never know what can happen on an expedition like this.

Case in point: MaryAnn Keith and Evan Kovaks are both researchers who met five years ago while floating at sea on a mission to the Titanic.

This morning, they gathered on the bow with the captain and were married. So perhaps that is the "Heart of the Ocean" -- their love for each other.

Meantime, NBC News editor Vince Genova somehow found a few minutes of downtime to put together a mini-movie of the last 7 days. Click below to view.

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By Carol Grisanti in Islamabad

Shame and anger best describes the feelings of many Pakistanis to fresh allegations of match fixing by their national cricket stars. When the “News of the World,” a popular British tabloid, exposed a scam on Sunday involving a conspiracy by members of Pakistan’s cricket team to defraud U.K. bookmakers, it left Pakistanis reeling.

“I’m embarrassed to say that I’m Pakistani," said Mustafa, a junior high student in Islamabad.

Samiullah Khan, a 30-year-old computer technician, said he felt personally betrayed. “I am disappointed,” he said. "Our team should hang their heads in shame; they have brought disgrace upon themselves and upon all of us.”

The “News of the World” said it paid more than $200,000 to a middleman to deliver details on 3 “no-balls” -- balls that are called foul by umpires -- in the test match, which ended on Sunday in a stunning defeat for Pakistan. A test match can last up to 5 days where each team may play twice in two innings to win, draw or lose.

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The newspaper’s account, with an accompanying video, alleged that the two star bowlers, Mohammed Amir and Mohammed Asif, were paid to deliver the “no balls” at the exact points in the match as agreed upon with the fixer. It’s called “spot fixing” or “micro fixing.” It’s inside information on when players agree to act in a predetermined manner, usually at a particular time, to influence betting. While “spot fixing” often does not affect a game’s outcome, it can still earn millions for syndicates setting odds on specific details of the game or the players.

The third largest bookmaker in Pakistan was skeptical about the “News of the World" expose and thought the U.K. media was blowing the whole incident out of proportion. “On this video they are showing an exchange of £150,000 ($230,000) to spot fix,” he said. I have my doubts about this man in the video because I am sure that if the players were involved in this, then the rates would have been much higher. It would have been many millions of pounds not a mere hundred plus, so something is wrong here” he pointed out.

Over the weekend, the story snowballed into headline news in the Pakistani media. For the first time in more than a month, the devastating floods that have devoured a fifth of the country and affected more than 20 million people were pushed aside on the TV channels and in the daily newspapers. The video of the “News of the World” sting was played over and over again.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yusuf Reza Gilani, said the allegations “had caused a huge embarrassment for the entire nation. I am hurt."

Pakistan’s president, Asif Zardari, ordered that he be apprised of the ongoing investigation in the U.K. after Scotland Yard was brought in to interrogate the team’s players and arrested the middleman, Mazhar Majid, on suspicion of fraud.

Cricket is the national obsession in Pakistan, almost as revered to Pakistanis as their religion. Young boys and old men -- even the Taliban -- bat the ball in parks and in parking lots all across the country. For most Pakistanis, weighed down by food shortages, electricity shortages, the unimaginable losses wreaked upon the country by the monsoon floodwaters and the ever present threat of terrorism, this cricket scandal seemed to be the last straw.

But this was not the first time that Pakistan’s cricket team have been involved in scandal. Cricket scams became so common in Pakistan that in 1999 the government of Nawaz Sharif appointed a judicial committee to investigate charges of match fixing. Many of the national players were fined and banned for life.

Fahad, a university student in Islamabad, seemed to sum up the national mood. “They should be hanged,” he said. "I am more angry than sad and I think they should be hanged when they come back to Pakistan.”

Fakhar Rehman and Shahid Qazi contributed to this report.

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News correspondent

ABOARD THE JEAN CHARCOT - We saw our first pictures of the Titanic wreckage in 3-D, high-def early this morning. I expected euphoria, maybe cheering,  in the command room of the Jean Charcot, the research vessel that's documenting the Titanic debris before it disintegrates. Instead, there was an intense silence.

About 11 scientists and archeologists crowded around the special monitors. Everyone was wearing a pair of three-dimension glasses to take in the stunning visuals. The cameras, mounted to a Remotely Operated Vehicle, also called an ROV, sent back pictures live as it traveled along the starboard side of the submerged vessel.

Photo by Kerry Sanders

At times the port holes reflected back light. There’s still glass in some of those windows two miles down. As the cameras climbed up along the ship's side, it floated over the deck near the bow, and you could see anchor chains in place as if the ship had been at sea just days ago. The Titanic sank April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg.

Along the railings there are lines of what looks like un-formed iron. Those are the trails excreted by the naturally occurring microbes that are slowly digesting the steel of this once proud ship.

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Shooting Titanic in 3-D was Billy Lange’s idea.  He’s from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Lange was the first to spot the wreckage 25 years ago. This morning he sat front and center, exhausted by delays, but driven by the giddy energy of doing something no one has ever attempted before.

Photo by Kerry Sanders

The only disappointment here is mother nature. Hurricane Danielle will force the expedition to head for cover early Sunday morning. The ROV will be pulled from the waters tonight, and then the captain will point North West for St. John’s Newfoundland.

It’s only a delay. The RMS Titanic, Inc assembled team will return once the weather passes.  They’re just bummed to have finally made it here and have to delay their goal. One of the things they hope to do is document upwards of 40 percent of the debris field which has never been photographed or mapped before.

Photo by Kerry Sanders

You can follow the team's updates on facebook.com/rmstitanicinc.

Related links from Kerry Sanders:
-First new images of titanic debris field emerge
-Kerry Sanders Q&A on the expedition

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent

ABOARD THE JEAN CHARCOT – As we continue to float two-plus miles above the wreck of the Titanic, there was a significant scientific development Friday.

The Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) nicknamed “Ginger” and “Mary Ann” that were launched earlier this week to crisscross the ocean floor and retrieve information have now come home to the ship.

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They left on a pre-determined route: “Ginger” traveled north and south and “MaryAnn” traveled east and west.

As they traveled about 40 yards above the sea bed, following a pattern like “mowing the yard,” the two AUV’s fired outside-scan-sonar.

Woods Hole Oceanographic teams working with the Waitt Institute, which owns the AUV’s, have now downloaded the side-scan sonar.

The picture that is emerging is a first of its kind, stunning image of the five-mile, by three-mile area where the Titanic came to rest.

The images are color-coded, but with some expert input, what you may not see at first glance becomes quite obvious.

Titanic expedition leader David Gallo says this is an “awesome” moment.

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He and his team knew the Titanic broke into two pieces, but nobody realized the debris field was a large as it is.

Upwards of 40 percent of the area where the Titanic sank has never been mapped or documented – until now.

Up next: 3-D images. If all goes according to the plan, those images will come to the surface by Saturday morning.

This underwater geology is science you can clearly follow with a good expert, so click on the video to follow what the maps mean.

Related links from Kerry Sanders:
Underwater equipment launched in Titanic search
Keeping an eye on the weather enroute to Titanic wreckage
Diving down to document Titanic debris

A team of underwater archeologists, maritime engineers, technicians and explorers are trying to do what's never been done before: document every inch of the debris field where the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912.

NBC News' Kerry Sanders is with the scientists aboard the Jean Charcot research vessel in the North Atlantic. On Thursday Sanders and Titanic historian Parks Stephenson's responsed to reader's questions about the research expedition.

Read the chat here: Kerry Sanders Q & A on the Titanic expedition

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By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent

ABOARD THE JEAN CHARCOT – Yes, things really do go “bump in the night” out at sea. In this case it was my head. Ouch!

Rough seas last night almost rolled me out of my bunk. My head took a wallop against the bulk head, but I’m OK.

Wednesday morning could not be more glorious. We’re one-and-half time zones east of New York. The temperature is in the mid 60’s with a gentle breeze, and there’s an air of excitement as we near the site of the Titanic’s wreckage.

By Dwaine Scott/NBC News

Sunrise seen from the deck of the Jean Charcot in the North Atlantic enroute to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.

Among those onboard is Billy Lange from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He was the first to spot the wreckage in 1985.

He says he could not have imagined back then that he’d return with the gear he has onboard, and for good reason: the high-tech, HD 3-D equipment he will deploy into the depths of the North Atlantic was not yet invented 25 years ago.

When the research team arrives at the wreck site, it plans to pause in silence to remember those who died. The team has brought flowers to toss into the same frigid waters where more than 1,500 souls were lost when the ship hit an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912.

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Keeping an eye out for bad weather
The captain of the Jean Charcot research vessel has one eye on the ship’s weather charts and radar. Hurricane Danielle may move east of Bermuda and follow the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream could provide a highway for the storm to the spot we’re headed.

If there were an emergency order to evacuate, the research team says that its autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which are akin to a torpedo, could remain in the water-gathering data.

There is a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) tethered to the Jean Charcot which would have to be retrieved and then we’d move as quickly as we can to safety.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

If you’d like to follow some updates from the expedition team members, click on: facebook.com/RMSTitanicinc.

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent

ABOARD THE JEAN CHARCOT – We departed St. John’s Harbor, Newfoundland, at 9:17 p.m. last night. A full moon bathed the calm waters of the cove as a pilot guided our 243-foot research vessel into open waters of the North Atlantic.

I’ve joined a team of underwater archeologists, maritime engineers, technicians and explorers as they try to do what’s never been done before: document every inch of the debris field where the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. Premier Exhibitions, which has Titanic artifacts on display in Las Vegas, Indianapolis, and Columbus, Ohio, is funding the multi-million dollar expedition.

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The primary challenge as we begin the voyage is not one of technology, but the one sailors face all the time: the weather. As of now, Hurricane Danielle is projected to follow many possible paths, but one of them could involve a direct route to the where we are headed.

For those of you who want to track our movements, we are currently at 45 degrees, 47.6 minutes North; 051 degrees 45.3 minutes West.

Among the teams working together onboard are experts from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Phoenix International, the Waitt Institute and NOAA.

Our NBC Team includes cameraman Dwaine Scott, video editor Vince Genova and engineer Bruno Trepanier. Together, we will provide live reports and pictures from the ship in the middle of the North Atlantic, as well as from the wreckage site, which is two-plus miles under the water’s surface.

It’s estimated 40 percent of the wreck has never been mapped or studied.

I’ll update our movements here online as well as live on MSNBC, NBC’s Today Show and Nightly News, The Weather Channel and on your local NBC station. You can also follow the developments on Facebook by checking out RMS Titanic.

Come along on an adventure.

Related link: Titanic expedition will create 3-D map of wreck
See more on msnbc.com's: Technolog

By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News’ Pentagon Correspondent

As U.S. combat troops complete their withdrawal from Iraq, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway addressed Afghanistan’s deadline for its similar pullout next summer during a Pentagon press briefing Tuesday.

Conway predicted that a significant number of U.S. Marines and combat forces will still be in Afghanistan “hammering” militants well past the July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawal of American forces.

Conway claimed that President Barack Obama’s timeline to begin withdrawal is "giving the enemy sustenance," telling the insurgent forces all they have to do is wait for the Americans to leave to take over control of Afghanistan.

But Conway said in some respect the deadline could work in favor of U.S. forces. Conway explained the Marines will be there well after July 2011 and implied that it could come as somewhat of a surprise to the insurgents. He asked, what the enemy leadership will say "when we're still there hammering them?"

Conway also appeared to hint that Obama's deadline to begin the withdrawal of Afghanistan was in part a political move because "President Obama was speaking to several audiences at the same time."

He also acknowledged that Americans are "growing tired of the war" in Afghanistan. Pointing out that 60 percent of Americans polled recently are against the war, Conway said America's "leadership has to do a better job of explaining the last chapter" of the war and the consequences should the U.S. abruptly pull out of Afghanistan.

Don’t ask, don’t tell
On a different, but related subject, Conway suggested that if the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” law is repealed, the Marines may consider allowing Marines not to share quarters with homosexuals.

Conway said the Marines may make such housing arrangements "voluntary" to accommodate any "moral concerns." He said many Marines are "very religious" and because of their moral concerns "don’t want to room" with homosexuals.

But Conway stressed that if the law is repealed, the Marines would take the lead in implementing it. "We cannot be seen as dragging our feet. We've got two wars to fight. We'll implement it and move on," said Conway.

As U.S. combat troops pull back into Kuwait from Iraq, there’s another war being remembered in Britain this week, as yet one more old hero passes on.

Billy Millin stands out among the many courageous people of World War II for the uniqueness of his contribution to the Allied victory: He played the bagpipes.

Photo by Phillippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

Billy Millin, who landed British troops on D-Day, returns to Normandy in 1995. Here, he stands next to Josette Gouellain, who asked him to play her a song back in 1945. Mallin played "The Nut Brown Maiden," in admiration of the little girl's hair and eyes.

Piper Millin was on the personal staff of the legendary commando leader Lord Lovat. Both were Scots -- Lovat hereditary chief of the Clan Fraser -- and like every one I’ve ever met from that land, fiercely proud of their nation.

When the 1st Special Service Brigade hit the Normandy beaches on D-Day, Lovat ordered Millin to strike up his pipes. Millin jumped straight into the knee-deep water in his kilt and belted out “Highland Laddie.” He kept going, even when the man behind him was shot dead.

On the beach, Millin marched up and down the water’s edge under withering enemy fire, urging his comrades forward with his music and boosting their morale.

One soldier said many years later that the skirl of Billy’s pipes had lifted his spirits, reminding him of home and why he was fighting.

Millin stayed with his unit as it advanced through France over the following days, playing whenever he was ordered to by Lovat.

As they reached Pegasus Bridge – another famous chapter in the history of those days – Millin again piped the troops across under sniper fire. “It seemed,” he said, “a very long bridge.”

After the slaughter of the First World War, the British government had barred pipers from leading the charge.

Lovat told Millin: “But that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”

German prisoners said they hadn’t shot Millin because they thought he had gone off his head. They’d confused courage and pride with madness.

Millin died on Tuesday at 87. His gallantry won him the French Croix de guerre, and was memorialized in the movie “The Longest Day.” A statue is being erected in his honor near Sword Beach.

His family described him as a “great Scottish hero.”

Friday was 70 years ago to the day that Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to other heroes of that war.

In August and September 1940 the Royal Air Force was locked in a fierce battle with the German Luftwaffe in the skies over England. The actions of those young pilots in what Churchill called the Battle of Britain were crucial in preventing the invasion of these islands.

Churchill famously summed up their contribution in a speech to the House of Commons on Aug. 20, 1940: “Never in the field of human conflict,” he said, “was so much owed by so many to so few.”

At the end of that speech, Churchill said something else – less well remembered - that was to have a lasting impact on both the U.K. and the United States – an observation that is felt today as U.S. troops pull out of Iraq.

Churchill introduced the first phase of a growing strategic alliance between Britain and the United States. It would mean, he said, that “These two great organizations of the English-speaking democracies … will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my part, looking out upon the future, I do not view that process with any misgivings.”

Seventy years on, British and U.S. troops are still “mixed up together” – and losing their lives – in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer

CAMP VIRGINIA, KUWAIT – Headlights pierced the pitch black horizon as the first members of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team convoy rolled over the empty flat desert of Iraq into the safety of Kuwait.

Onlookers, military personnel and a few NBC journalists, shared a sense of watching history unfold as the first convoy of the last combat brigade left Iraq on Tuesday, the start of a two-day process to get all of the units over the border and into Kuwait. But the ceremony to greet the incoming soldiers was touchingly simple.

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Brig. Gen. Nick Tooliados and his aide stood at attention to salute each passing tank commander and shout a few words of praise. “Good job guys, way to go!” A soldier yelled “Hooah!” in affirmation.

The helmeted tank commanders perched above each massive, heavily armored and armed eight-wheeled vehicle turned and saluted back. A few raised their hands in a victory sign, one high-fived his gunner and smiled.

In a single burst of jubilance, one soldier shouted out the back of his Stryker vehicle, “We won, we're going home! We won! Its over! America, we brought democracy to Iraq!”

‘It’s just a relief’
Further down the otherwise empty road, each driver pulled off the road and easily maneuvered their Strykers into rows. Hatches opened and as soldiers emerged, they stretched and slipped out of their now unneeded flak jackets and helmets.

Then they immediately began what they called “tearing down,” the long process of disarming, stripping down and cleaning their vehicles to prepare them for shipment, a process that would last for days. NBC News delayed this report because of a military embargo until the final unit of the massive convoy crossed the border in the wee hours Thursday.

In temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and after a two-day drive from Baghdad, they began unscrewing heavy machine gun barrels, emptying containers of ammunition by hand and cleaning out candy wrappers and empty cans and bottles from their vehicles. But they didn’t complain. They were relieved to be out of harm’s way.

Staff Sgt. Heon Hong, who hails from Guam, spent three tours in Iraq. For the last 12 months, he trained Iraqi security forces. “Oh it feels good, I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad were done with Iraq. Hopefully I never come back to Iraq.”

“It’s just a relief you know,” said Pfc. Timothy Berrena, originally from Connecticut. “[After] 12 months of straight being in that vehicle – realizing that this may be the last time I wear that kit in the wild is a nice feeling.”

Staff Sgt. Steven Bearor, of Merrimac, Conn., like so many others, thought only of home. Asked what was the best part of coming to Kuwait, he said, “One, you know no one else is going to get hurt, and two, I am going home.”

Some reflected on the small blessings they once took for granted. Pvt. Troy Danahy of Hampton, N.H. , explained what he’d missed during his tour. “Just America in general. I just miss grass, simple, little things, winter, snow and all that.”

Sgt. Keith Chase said he has a new-found appreciation for the safety of American roads. “Just knowing that there’s people not out there trying to hurt my comrades and myself. Knowing that we can drive on safe routes is a big plus, and I won't ever take that for granted again because I know there’s bad guys out there that really want to do us harm.”

Confident they left Iraq in good hands
Most of the soldiers expressed pride in a job well done. Chase’s company cleared Baghdad’s streets of explosives and led the way out of Iraq for the convoy to Kuwait. “My company and my platoon, we did route clearance in and around Baghdad for the last year and we cleared a lot of kilometers up there over the past year.”

Pvt. Nicholas Kelly served with Chase and expressed relief at being done. “Amazing. We finally made it out, we made it back. We’re good. Happy to be here. Happy to go home. We got our mission done successfully and it was good to go.”

Bearor, who helped train Iraqi security forces, felt they had left Iraq’s security in good hands. “We did a damn good job. They [the Iraqi security] are ready to go. I have … faith and confidence they will be able to pull off the job.”

Ready for next job
No complaints were heard as soldiers continued the business of breaking down the tank-like vehicles in which they spent so much time over the past year.

They saw each mundane task as bringing them one step closer to home. But almost everybody we spoke with had already re-enlisted or was planning to re-enlist.

As a result of his service, Pfc. Joshua Abblar, who is originally from the Philippines, became a U.S. citizen during a Fourth of July ceremony presided over by Vice President Joe Biden in Baghdad. He was proud of his work and almost wistful about leaving.

“Our job was to provide security to Iraqi people, go on patrols and make sure nothing was happening. Also clearing roads of IED explosives and supporting the new government that’s forming now,” said Abblar.

This was his first deployment, but he was ready for more. “I just started my job, it’s my first year and I loved every second of it… I feel kind of sad because we got a bond between the people in Iraq.”

By Jack Jacobs, NBC News military analyst

NEW YORK – It has been a complicated logistical enterprise, but the president’s goal of reducing the American presence in Iraq seems to be proceeding more or less according to his campaign promise.

But anyone who thinks that there will be no U.S. forces in Iraq is mistaken – we will continue to suffer casualties and spend money while the fractious politicians in Baghdad try to get a grip on their fragile democracy.

Sadly, the odds of long-term success are long.

Combat troops say 'So long'
We are withdrawing combat troops, but we will leave behind a substantial support base of Americans to help the wobbly Iraqis: technical experts, logistical support, engineers, air power, administrative people and a host of other assistance that the Iraqis desperately need. Some will be located in Iraq, and some will be based in nations bordering Iraq, but they will remain in the region for a long time to come.

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U.S. troops will help provide local security, but the American combat role will be formally terminated. The thousands of soldiers, Marines and airmen left behind will serve as advisers, formed into mobile teams to train Iraqi military and police units. As we discovered in Vietnam and a number of other places, advisory work is slow, labor-intensive and frustrating.

Advisers have no authority over the Iraqis and must battle disinterest, ethnic tension, illiteracy, ineptitude, fear and corruption, all formidable opponents. Terrorists, separatists and the disaffected will have to be found and eliminated or converted, but in the meantime there will be violence. And strategic regional threats, Iran chief among them, will complicate Iraqi military recovery. Getting the Iraqis into fighting trim will be neither quick nor easy.

Lights need to come on
Not all of Iraq’s problems are security troubles. A good example of the many other things that need to be fixed is the electrical power grid. It does work, but only occasionally and not in a predictable way. Even if residents can become inured to an intermittent and insufficient supply of electricity – commerce can’t.

A viable commercial sector is a principal element of stability, and economic activity will not grow until we help the Iraqis generate adequate, reliable electricity. In a country that has consumed billions of dollars in American aid, this important task is not supposed to be difficult to accomplish.

Whatever else one can say about President Barack Obama's decisions on national security – and there is plenty to criticize – one can’t accuse Obama of failing to keep his word on Iraq.

Then an Illinois state senator, Obama voted against the invasion, and he has been consistent in saying that it was a waste of resources and distracted us from the objective of eliminating the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But Obama also has announced that, beginning in less than a year, he will order a withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan as well.

Presumably, he intends to fight the Taliban from a distance with remotely piloted aircraft and with the occasional special operation. Although these instruments are cost effective, they are not decisive in an asymmetrical conflict, and so his pledge to defeat the Taliban, which requires more time and troops, is a hollow one.

Different challenges, same goal
In most respects, Iraq and Afghanistan are as different as can be. Iraq was a centrally governed political entity for a long time; Afghanistan is a loose collection of tribes. Iraq has a history of successful agriculture and industry since ancient times; Afghanistan is mostly desolate and is among the poorest countries on earth.

But Obama's strategic objective in Iraq is startlingly similar to that in Afghanistan: establish and support a stable democracy that can defend itself against its enemies. However, like in Afghanistan, it is not clear that there is much to support in Iraq just yet.

There is a continuous, paralyzing and often violent argument among Iraqis about parliamentary representation, about the method of voting, about the distribution of resources, about almost everything – basic concepts on which citizens must concur if the political machinery is to operate at all. Debate is healthy, but paralysis is not, particularly in a nation that is at risk without strong leadership from Baghdad.

Everything we are doing in Iraq, and everything we continue to sacrifice, is for the purpose of giving the Iraqis safety, stability and prosperity.

We deposed a dictator and put in his place a system designed to deliver political power to those who did not have it before, but in the process we are leaving the Iraqis without the leadership it needs to survive.

In the wake of our departure, Baghdad's weakness is liable to encourage the rise of another despot, demonstrating something we learned during our own revolution but have evidently forgotten: installing democracy takes time and patience, two valuable resources in short supply.

Jack Jacobs is a Medal of Honor recipient for heroic actions during the Vietnam War.

BEIJING – As news spread this week that after decades of growth, China had officially passed Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy, behind the United States, I was on the outskirts of western Beijing for the unveiling of the third generation of China’s “pod houses.”

Huang Rixin, a spritely 78-year-old former engineer turned Beijing landlord, has made a name for himself in recent months producing cage-like, 21.5-square-foot living spaces dubbed “capsule apartments” for the capital’s burgeoning class of jobless and underemployed college graduates.

Photo by Wang Yish/Imaginechina

Two Chinese men sit in their own small spaces in capsule apartments in Beijing, China, in a photo taken June 12, 2010.

Taking Japan’s famous capsule hotels for inspiration, Huang has improved on previous iterations of his pod houses by doubling the size of the rooms and including more shelf space. Huang views his pods, with rent of about $51 a month, as a cost-effective way to house the estimated 3 million recent university graduates seeking employment or earning less than the average starting salary of approximately $400 a month.

In many ways his capsule apartments highlight the social and economic problems that belie China’s gaudy GDP numbers.

Even as the national economy surges, China’s per-capita income has simply not kept pace, and millions of people have been left out of the nation’s economic miracle.

China’s per-capita income, at around $6,600, is closer to that of Turkmenistan or El Salvador, rather than to the U.S.’s $46,000 or even Japan’s $33,000.

While China’s liberalized economic policy has certainly pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and transformed the country into an industrial dynamo, little of that prosperity has trickled down to the majority of would-be Chinese consumers – the very people who many economic experts insist will fuel China’s growth well into the 21st century.

One such expert is economist and Peking University professor Michael Pettis. In an excellent blog post this week, Pettis, succinctly summed up this point, writing, “In order to reduce China’s excessive dependence on export surpluses and investment, it is vitally important that household consumption, which in China represents probably the lowest share of GDP ever recorded, rise significantly.”

Not enough ‘Made in China’ consumed there
For better or for worse, China’s Communist Party has tied the legitimacy of its power to elevating the economic situation of its people. So far, this approach has paid off, as Chinese citizens over the years have enjoyed healthier incomes and lifestyles.

However, as time has gone by, China’s economic model – modeled on the Japanese system of subsidizing growth through heavy capital investment, easy low interest government loans and an undervalued currency – has proven to be too successful, essentially starving domestic consumption in favor of national growth through export.

In short: Too little of what China produces ends up consumed by the Chinese themselves.

The government has tried a variety of strategies to curtail this trend and boost consumption. This summer has seen a rash of labor unrest as the government allowed Chinese workers to agitate for higher wages. It also introduced government subsidies on a number of products ranging from cars to household appliances in a bid to generate domestic consumer spending.

Both proved successful, yet as Pettis noted, consumer consumption in 2009 was still less than 36 percent of GDP, which is an almost unheard of number for such a massive economy.

In essence, China is still the largest market in the world for virtually everything, and despite claims otherwise, Chinese consumers are very willing spenders. However, Chinese wages are currently so low that consumers simply are unable to contribute to domestic consumption unless serious wealth redistribution or salary adjustment occurs.

Tokyo’s take
Meanwhile in Japan, the government’s reaction to being surpassed by their Asian neighbor was so calm, it set off alarm bells.

Japan's economic minister Satoshi Arai said, “It doesn't matter who comes out at the top or bottom. It simply represents each country's current economic health.”

But that thought was not shared by the rest of the country. Practically all of the major Japanese newspapers had editorials warning that Japan was in desperate need of serious change.

In particular, the Nikkei, the largest business daily, lashed out at Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s administration, writing: “The current policies of the Japanese government are not only marked by underestimating fiscal analysis, but they're also extremely ill-equipped to deal with any crisis both in terms of posture and structure."

Hiromichi Shirakawa, chief economist for Credit Suisse explained why he believes Japan is in it's current predicament. "The biggest problem for Japan right now is that there is a significant lack of demand, and also whether they're individuals or corporations, everyone here is exercising 'precautionary saving' against an unpredictable future.”

"It was just a matter of time,” said Shirakawa. “Japan's economy has been contracting while China has been expanding. Japan has already lost in terms of ‘quantity’ and now it's time to look at the aspect of ‘quality’ such as people's personal income and purchasing power.”

Social unrest concerns lead to subdued announcement
Back in China, in the past, a seminal moment like the nation’s elevation to the No. 2 spot would have been heavily played up in state media as proof of increased Chinese prosperity and global relevance.

However, while local news reports have noted the event, they were quick to note the country’s low per capita income and the need for continued gradual economic progress.

The Chinese coverage seemed to be low key in comparison to Western coverage, which highlighted the milestone as front page news and analyzed its implications for the broader global economy.

But it seems that concerns over class friction and social unrest led to the subdued way the announcement was made domestically in China. In the year alone, the central government that has found itself enmeshed in a host of social class issues that run the gamut from dating shows and local government corruption to the rights of household pets.

Whatever their concerns, China has earned its moment in the sun. Deep economic, environmental and social issues lurk, and only time will tell whether China’s status is sleight of hand or real. However, there is no denying that in only 30 years, China has transformed itself into one of the greatest economic power houses in world history.

Whether that economic stature is fleeting – as it was for the Japan – or relatively more long-term, as it has been for the U.S., will bear close watching.

NBC News' Arata Yamamoto contributed to this report from Tokyo.

By Iqbal Sapand, NBC News

KABUL, Afghanistan – I watched the harrowing images of Pakistan on the evening news the other night – roads destroyed, millions of people who lost their houses and loved ones, helicopters distributing food and first-aid kits and evacuating those affected by the flood to safe locations.

I went to sleep feeling sad. Pakistan is our neighbor, after all, and we share similar culture and language. It's easy to imagine a similar disaster happening right here in eastern Afghanistan, I thought.

Iqbal Sapand/NBC News

Towns in eastern Afghanistan's Logar Province have been ravaged by extreme flooding in recent weeks.

Then, at 2 a.m. Saturday night, my cell phone rang.

"Iqbal, for God’s sake, please call somebody to help us!" shouted Ahmad Munner, a friend from my home village of Mohamad Agha.

When I first heard Ahmad’s cries for help, I was shocked and thought maybe the Taliban had captured our village. Two American soldiers were recently killed nearby and Taliban activities have recently increased around my home in Logar province. But that was not what Ahmad was calling about.

"What happened?" I asked Munner.

"The flood destroyed most houses here," he said. "I was able to take my children out to the mountainside and now I’m returning to help other villagers. Please, call the governor or police chief to help us. We don’t have shelters!"

I managed to get through to Mohamad Jan, a police commander in our province. He told me the situation was horrible.

"I brought a few policemen and three 4x4 pick-up vehicles to transport children, women and the elderly to a safe place," Jan said. "Most houses are under water. I can hardly help people."

The next morning I took my car and drove to my village in Mohamed Agha district to see the situation first-hand.

After the hour-long drive, I came up on a scene that reminded me of the decade-long war between the Soviet Union and the mujahideen opposition forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. This time, flooding had destroyed three quarters of the houses. Wooden and mud walls had collapsed. Mattresses and carpets were strewn over walls. Most people had no clean drinking water because the wells were full of mud and dirt.

'I have no other options!'
I started talking to Shawali Khan, a 75-year old man who leaned against a tree as he looked out at the destruction.

"I lost my house," he said. "It rained for one hour and a huge flood destroyed it. I was barely able to take my family out. How can I rebuild this up? I have no other options!"

Iqbal Sapand/NBC News

Ruins are all that are left of Shawali Khan's house that was destroyed in the recent flooding.

As a farmer, Khan lost not only his house but also his harvest. The governor of the province, Attiq Ludin, spoke to me by phone about his efforts to help those affected by what many have called the worst natural disaster to hit the area in 100 years.

"We did our best to transport people from their villages to safer places," Ludin told me. "I asked the central government to provide them with tents and food. More than 100 houses have been destroyed, some people are injured but luckily no one died. We are facing a shortage of tents and food, and we don’t have enough to distribute to those affected by the flood."

Although the destruction in eastern Afghanistan is not on the scale of what we are seeing from Pakistan every day, it is always hard when it hits home. For many in the area, it took years to rebuild their homes and livelihoods following the destruction caused by the decades of war in Afghanistan. Now they need to start rebuilding all over again.

Pakistan floods: How you can help

By Lawahez Jabari, NBC News Producer

JERUSALEM – Video footage of a 5-year-old Palestinian boy, crying as his father is arrested by Israeli Border Police officers in Baka'a, near Hebron, has been making waves internationally and attracting international media attention.

In the video shot on Aug. 2, the boy, Khalid Jabari, chases after his father, Fadel Jabari, as he is arrested, crying and shouting, “Daddy, Daddy!” The boy then tries to pull his father by the shirt to free him from the policemen.

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Walking barefoot, the boy becomes hysterical as he pleads with the troops not to take his father away. The boy continues begging the border police, “leave my father” as he chases after them. A policeman picks up the boy to finally pull him away from his father before he is driven away in an armored police vehicle.

Psychological damage?
Hashem Abu Maria, works with the Defense For Children International charity. After watching the video footage, he said he contacted child support agencies in the field to offer the young boy psychological help to cope with the trauma.

"This child does not comprehend the concept of arrest; he does not know what it means, like the policeman or soldier understands it," said Abu Maria.

"I think that the child thinks that his father is leaving and not coming back – that he has lost him."

According to his grandparents, Khalid Jabari has been having a very difficult emotional time since his father was arrested.

"From the day the father was arrested, the boy isolated himself from everyone. He can't sleep at night and became very violent to his siblings,” said Badran Jaber, the boy's grandfather.

Water dispute
Israeli forces raided the town of Baka'a because the Palestinian farmers were allegedly stealing water. The army alleged that the boy’s father was illegally tapping into water pipes meant to serve Israeli settlers in order to irrigate his family’s crops. As a result, the army pulled out irrigation pipes supplying vines and vegetable fields and arrested several villagers, including the boy's father and uncle.

Jaber told NBC that his family has documents to prove they are registered with the Palestinian Water Authority and that they are paying for the water they use.

He claimed that this was the fourth time in less than six months that the Israeli police removed the family's irrigation pipes and have destroyed their vine trees in the process.

"This land is the source of our income, and it is the cause of our struggle with the occupation since day one of the occupation," said Jaber. "We live from it. We have no other job opportunity in light of unemployment reaching over 40 percent in the occupied territories."

Staged event?
Several days after the video of the boy crying was released and created headlines around the world, the Israeli border police issued a statement saying the incident was staged.

The border police statement said: "In the course of enforcement activities against water thieves in the southern Hebron Hills, the force was attacked with stones and two people were arrested for disturbing the peace and attacking police.”

Police went on to say that video from the incident show that “the family chose to make cynical use of a 5-year-old boy" and that "he was well instructed and directed."

"Instead of the family acting responsibly toward a child and removing him from the situation, they chose to make cheap anti-Israel propaganda.”

By Bo Gu, NBC News

BEIJING – I always hated mass exercises. I had to do them every school day for 15 years.

It seemed worse when I was in middle school, between the ages of 13 to 18. Every school day after our “morning study session” the loudspeaker blared the ear-piercing “Athletes March.”

That was the signal for all the students to run out to the soccer field, in all kinds of weather. Wearing the same uniforms, we gathered in long lines and did the exact same dance moves together for five minutes before returning to our classes.

Bo Gu/ NBC News

People gathered in Beijing’s Celestial Palace Aug. 10 for the re-launch of mandatory group exercises for state workers.

The mass exercises, coordinated by radio broadcasts, were first introduced under Mao in 1951. They continued for decades, but were suspended in 2007 so that Beijing Sports Radio could spend more time covering preparations for the 2008 Olympics.

But as China continues to develop and modernize, there are now growing concerns that the population is becoming sedentary and unhealthy.

So the mass exercises are making a comeback.

Collective exercise is ‘more lively’
If a plan put forward by the Beijing Federation of Trade Unions is adopted, it will be compulsory for all state-owned enterprises to do on-the-job calisthenics twice a day in Beijing by 2011. In addition, 70 percent of civil servants and at least 60 percent of all employees in Beijing will be expected to practice the daily exercises, according to China Daily.

Yu Junsheng, vice-chairman of the Beijing Federation of Trade Unions, explained the goal of the mass exercise movement to China Daily.

"Any exercise done by an individual can be tedious and boring. To do exercise with other people makes the atmosphere more lively and employees can take the opportunity to talk to each other,” said Yu."Through collective activity, people feel more relaxed and have greater efficiency at work. That's why we want to resume the fitness activity."

So now every day at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., Radio Exercise Set No. 8 will be broadcast on “Beijing Sports Radio.”

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‘Great leader Chairman Mao taught us’
The resurgence of the exercises brings me back to my youth. As a teenager I hated two things: following orders and being exactly the same as others. The mass exercises are a perfect combination of the two. I was overjoyed at the last year of my college time when we finally were not forced to do it anymore.

The twice-a-day outdoor mass calisthenics weren't the whole story. We had to do eye-exercises once a day too. The eye exercise could be done while students were sitting on their seats. We were told to rub facial acupuncture points around our eyes for a few minutes.

The eye exercises always started with loud music from the loudspeakers that began with a very enthusiastic female voice: “Great leader Chairman Mao taught us, let’s protect our eyesight for the sake of revolution by doing eye exercises…”

While rubbing cheeks might not be scientifically proven to help eye vision, outdoor activities twice a day may not a bad idea for you. The problem is nobody took it seriously.

My girlfriends and I ran to the soccer field every day, jumping and waving when teachers passed by. Once they were gone, we stopped to chat and check out cute boys from other classes. None of us ever showed any interest in doing exercises together. Now I doubt people would be any more passionate ten years later.

Early this week we went to film the launch ceremony at the Celestial Temple in Beijing for the return of the group exercises.

The event showcased about 3,000 people, including government officials and celebrities. Everyone was so blissful and told us it would be a great thing for citizens to improve their health.

As I heard the officials saying they hoped to mobilize 4 million workers to do the exercises together, I couldn’t help thinking: China is probably the only country in the world that could get so many people to march and dance at the same time.

Oh wait, there’s another place that would well beat China – North Korea. Its Arirang Festival features thousands of young students doing synchronized gymnastic movements in Pyongyang’s May Day Stadium daily from August 1 until early October.

Not sure China can beat that.

By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent

MOSCOW – You’ve got to hand it to Vladimir Putin. For someone who so often shows up hours late to his appointments, the Russian prime minister has an astonishing sense of timing.

Earlier this week, 11 million Muscovites were choking from a thick noxious smoke cloud hovering over their city. They were told to wear masks if they ventured outside, but few could find any masks in the pharmacies. And if they stayed inside, they were pummeled by an oppressive heat their winter-friendly houses or apartments were built to retain and amplify.

REUTERS/Ria Novosti/Pool/Alexei Nikolsky

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, wearing headphones, sits in the cockpit of a firefighting plane in Ryazan region on Tuesday.

By Tuesday most people were in a daze from lack of sleep and the effects of the smog on their lungs and nervous systems. The day before, Moscow’s health czar had corrected his earlier reassurances about the heat and revealed publically that it was in fact responsible for doubling the death rate in the city.

"The average death rate in the city during normal times is between 360 and 380 people per day. Today, we are around 700," Andrei Seltsovsky told a city government meeting.

And that didn’t include the blanket of smoky smog which was said to be the toxic equivalent of 8 packs of cigarettes a day. There was a sense that even Russians – perhaps the most patient people on Earth – were losing that patience.

So, under pressure, the city opened up about 120 so-called “anti-smog centers.” Places where you could go to literally catch your breath, with comfortable chairs, tea and biscuits, but most of all, air-conditioning to take the sting out of 100 degree Fahrenheit temperatures. However, by Tuesday, few air-conditioning units had even been installed yet in these urban oases.

By that evening the tension in the streets seemed as volatile as the tinderboxes that were igniting into hundreds of fires throughout the bone-dry nation.

Would President Dmitri Medvedev announce he was sacking half the cabinet and the whole Emergencies Ministry? Would there be denials of a people’s uprising in the Ryazan region – where the worst of the fires were burning? There were reports that some Russians there were actually fighting fires on their own, only hundreds of yards from their threatened homes, with shovels and water from garden hoses, and without a fire truck – or fighter – in sight.

Would Putin address the growing criticism in the small, but increasingly noisy Russian blogosphere, that the policy decisions he made when he was president had neutered the Federal Forest Agency and left Russia too ill-equipped to fight its own fires?

I turned on the evening news on state-run TV that night not knowing what to expect.

Enter ‘Action Man’
And there he was – Putin – in the cockpit of a Russian-built, amphibious Be-200 aircraft, his right hand firmly on the control stick. He appeared laconic; so laid back he could have been in a simulator.

But the fires across Ryazan were burning below him when the plane veered and you could hear, off camera, the REAL pilot – presumably – yelling.

“Attention, get ready to dump!” commanded the off-camera voice to Putin. Putin looking slightly more focused, then guided the stick forward on the command. “Dump now!”

Only then did I figure out what I was looking at: Putin was fighting a fire from inside a water-dumping plane.

With a judo-like flick of his head, he glanced askew and asked what had to be one of the most leading questions of all time: “Did we hit it?” The answer, “Yes, we hit it precisely!” was immediate – as was my amazement. (See video of Putin in the cockpit in the link below).

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Instinctive political timing
Imagine President Barack Obama filming himself dumping 24 tons of water over a California fire from the cockpit of a C-130 and you get a better sense of how instinctive a Russian leader Putin is.

The situation looked very grim that day. People were choking in Moscow, 52 had died from fires across the country, and 2,000 had to flee their burning homes.

This was clearly a time for… Action Man.

So the mild-mannered prime minister of Russia slipped into his blue denim shirt and jeans and – once again – showed his people who was in charge.

It had been some years since Action Man – as he is sometimes called – appeared flying in a chopper, or fighter jet, or bomber, or navigating a submarine. But Putin knew – somehow – that it was time.

And if you think that dumping a plane-full of water over a fire that had already consumed 1.8 million acres of forest and peat bogs would have a minimal effect at best, think again.

When Muscovites woke up Wednesday morning, they did so in a New World.

The Kremlin’s golden spires were shining, once again, in full splendor, as was the rest of the capital’s cityscape.

The grey smog was gone. Skies were blue. Air pollution – at one point some 600 percent above safe levels – had returned to normal. The city’s 11 million people could breathe again, without masks, and it didn’t matter to them if some fires were burning closer to Chernobyl and might even unleash locked-up radioactive particles into the atmosphere.

Life was better, just hours after some 70 percent of Russians who get their news from TV saw Putin at the controls of a fire-fighting plane.

Of course there was no connection between Putin’s publicity stunt and the sudden break in the heat wave. He had nothing to do with the overnight thunder showers and strong winds which washed in and blew away Moscow’s smog.

But that was hardly the point – Action Man had acted, and now things were good. And it didn’t matter to most Russians for how long or how it all really happened. Isn’t politics mostly about perception?

SLIDESHOW: Fires rage across Russia

‘The government will take care of us’
It’s as if Putin were in the Anti-Smog Center, earlier that day, when I asked an elderly Russian man why people were so accepting of such a horrific situation, one in which hundreds were dying a day. The man wouldn’t give his name. He spoke softly, but his words were stunning.

“What we see at the moment is worse than it was in World War II or during Chernobyl. Maybe because we were younger then and stronger. We are now no longer capable of defending ourselves, and all we can do is hope that the government will take care of us. But the government is not defending us, either.”

Uncannily, as this man spoke, Vladimir Putin was jumping into his Be-200 for a photo-op he couldn’t resist. And storm clouds were – for the first time in weeks - beginning to form over Moscow.

Hundreds of fires are still burning, and the shroud of smoke and smog could return to Moscow. Action Man may have to strike again.

Meantime, the 30 percent of Russians who don’t believe in miracles – or in Putin – are screaming “foul” in various blogs and online chat rooms. But it’s hardly a nascent opposition. One angry blogger named “viking_nord” demanded that Putin pay the equivalent of an $80 fine…for flying without a pilot’s license.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News Correspondent based in London, currently on assignment in Moscow.

World Blog: Relief from heat eludes Muscovites

By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer

CAIRO, Egypt – As Ramadan kicked off around the Muslim world, Egypt’s faithful got a small break from the rigors of fasting and religious devotion.

The Council of Ministers, a secular body of government ministers, turned back the clock an hour, allowing people to catch an hour more of well-needed sleep and to break their day-long fast a little earlier.

REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

Men break their fast with food given as charity, on the first day of Ramadan in Cairo, Wednesday.

During the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, Muslims refrain from drinking, eating, smoking and sex from dawn to dusk.

For roughly one billion Muslims worldwide, the religious obligation is not only a time of physical deprivation but a cherished month of reflection, prayer, family togetherness and commiseration with those who are in need. In Egypt, many people use spare moments to reread the Quran, the Muslim holy book, in the metro, waiting in doctor's offices or on their lunch breaks.

But the physical demands of a summer time fast are daunting. In the sweltering Cairo summer, where temperatures often top 100 degrees Fahrenheit, an hour respite from the sun is welcome.

“It is a good thing,” said Shehata Abdel Ghani, as he leaned on his cane. As the guardian of a mosque, Abdel Ghani spends the entire day outside.

“It makes my day shorter,” he smiled.

With about 13 hours of daylight during Cairo’s summer, sunset – when the faithful can enjoy their first food and drink of the day – can seem like a long way off.

Although Mohamed Mohsen Ali fixes computers in air conditioned comfort for a living, he still enjoyed breaking the fast an hour earlier than normal.

“It is better; the sunset is now at 6:30 p.m. instead of 7:30 p.m. The day would be really long otherwise,” said Ali, who assumed the time change ought to be sanctioned by religious authorities.

“They need to seek the approval of Al Azhar [the most influential Sunni institute in the world] before taking a decision like that,” he said.

“Nobody could have taken responsibility for that on their own,” he added.

SLIDESHOW: Muslims observe the holy month of Ramadan all over the world

‘A bad thing’
But others worried that the temporal sleight of hand might not have been religiously sanctioned.

“I don’t know what they are playing at,” said Dina Riad, a fitness instructor. “To make it easy for people? To save electricity? I think it is a bad thing … I don’t know if Islamic people approved it or not. I don’t know who came up with this idea, but I don’t like it. The Prophet Mohammed did not say we have to change the hours. I think we are the only country in the world to do this!”

In fact, they weren’t the only country in the world to do so, authorities in the West Bank and Gaza also moved the clock back an hour.

But the time change didn’t help Gamal Abdul Nassar much. He couldn’t find a ride home because city buses had stopped an hour earlier.

“It has turned everything upside down. We use that hour to do our shopping, and now the buses stop early. Why did they change it? To save an hour?” asked Nassar.

“We get up with the sun, not the clock. Haven’t they heard of a biological clock? It is an entirely failed project without any redeeming value,” he said.

Nevertheless, Nassar’s biological clock is going to have an uphill battle. When Ramadan ends, Egyptians must turn the clock forward again, for two short weeks, before turning it back again in time for autumn.

SLIDESHOW:

By NBC News' Bo Gu

BEIJING – As Beijing’s population of 22 million people continues to grow, another population is also on the rise: dogs.

Beijing Public Security reports that in recent years there has been a growth rate of about 100,000 dogs a year. By mid-2010 the total number of dogs registered with the Beijing police was around 900,000 – but of course, that doesn’t take into account all the unregistered dogs.

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Along with the burgeoning dog ownership, the market for veterinary care – as well as dog grooming - has catapulted. And as the middle class is willing to spend more on their pets, a unique service has become the newest fashion trend: dyeing dogs’ fur.

The dogs – mostly white-haired chow-chows, poodles, and bichon frises – are often dyed to look like other animals such as pandas, donkeys, raccoons. Or they simply have their ears and tails dyed in bright colors.

Photo courtesy of Jianwen Pet Beautician School

A dog who had a tough guy look painted on him – down to the toe nails.

We visited the Jianwen Pet Beautician School in northern Beijing and watched a white poodle named Laifu get his coiffure colored.

After being styled to have a carrot-orange tail and a red Chinese shirt, Laifu’s dog-fashion obsessed owner wanted to have a pair of blue-green-yellow butterfly wings painted on his back.

Laifu cooperated well, standing there for a few hours without barking or showing any sign of pain. He’s probably used to it.

Check out more dogs getting dye jobs in this video above.

And watch NBC’s TODAY Show anchors discuss the trend in a recent segment:
Tiger or terrier? Chinese transform dogs with dyes

Google vs. China. Facebook vs. Pakistan. YouTube vs. Turkey. Blackberry vs., well, half the world. If it seems like the Internet is under siege lately, that's because it is. The cat-and-mouse game between government censors and communications technology is a lot like life along the San Andreas Fault. There are low level rumblings all the time, but every once in a while there's a tectonic shift.

But why so many tremors and earthquakes lately? And is it a good idea for multinational, for-profit companies to be the standard-bearers for basic human rights like free speech?

Read more from msnbc.com’s Bob Sullivan about why all these issues are bubbling up now in his column Red Tape Chronicles: Why smart phones threaten would-be censors.

By Irina Tkachenko, free-lance producer

We don't trust the air we cannot see or chew.

The line familiar to Los Angelenos decades ago came to mind as I woke up on Wednesday night in my Moscow apartment, heavy-headed and yearning for a breath of fresh air, and looked out the wide-open window. The street below was bathed in a milky substance, diffusing light from lamps and completely obscuring the buildings across. Cars -- I knew they were cars, though all I saw were blurry bright dots in the milk -- were crawling along the highway not two hundred yards away. Smog?

Having decamped to Moscow with my daughter every summer for the last 10 years for our vacation, I was used to annual reports of fires and burning peat, the now predictable ravages of nature in a city surrounded by dried-up peat bogs and large forests. "Just a reminder of how many forests Russia has" was my sister's optimism-in-a-crisis view. But smoke in Moscow? Looking at the barely discernible panorama of my neighborhood, I was stunned, but vaguely hoped the "fog" would dissolve by morning, in what weather forecasters predicted was going to be another scorcher of a sunny day.

Moscow had greeted us this summer with an astonishing 100-degree heat, its highest temperature in recorded history, that seemed to hold up for weeks. Since early July It had rained once.

A few hours later as I stood on my balcony, the only difference was in the color of "milk," which had changed to a pearly grey. My district -- in the ecologically favorable Western part of Moscow, hugging the gentle curve of the Moskva river, and blessed with a large park running for miles -- has always prided itself on cleaner, cooler air than the rest of the city. When I stepped outside that morning to buy drinks for my small family -- many liters of water, milk and juice, a much more important staple than food during this heat wave --- I discovered the air was, indeed, cooler. There were also no shadows. Smoke hung heavy and dense, impenetrable to light. The sun was nowhere in evidence. "Our first stage of a nuclear winter," quipped my friend at a newspaper kiosk, with a smile that did not look happy. Within an hour I have heard from my friends and relatives across the city: the smoke was everywhere, irritating and impossible to ignore. If you had a car, you used fog lights; visibility was a hundred yards or less.

I had a busy day ahead. NBC correspondent Jim Maceda was on his way to Moscow to report on the raging fires across Russia, the unbearable heat and devastation the summer brought to the country whose people seem incapable of either giving up bonfires and throwing around cigarette butts, or equipping themselves with enough firefighting technology to face the consequences. This year alone over 5,000 fires have sprung up in Russia; by early August over 2,000 people were left homeless, and official reports put the number of fatalities at 50 and growing.The areas around the old towns of Voronesh, Nizhniy Novgorod, Ryazan, and now Moscow were being hit the worst. My job was to find a fire not far from Moscow, and send Jim into its midst.

The task seemed easy enough; reports were coming in of villages burning as close as 10 miles outside city limits. But Moscow region was one of seven where President Medvedev had recently declared a state of emergency, and roads leading out of it were now being blocked by the police. Residents - including journalists - were asked to stay out of forests, and the map of the fires shifted hourly. "We don't have any information to offer you” was the response to my question of at least six officials from the Ministry for Emergency Situations. "I could tell you where the fires are burning, if I have clearance from above," offered another. In truth, they were now burning in too many places. Regular forest fires. Peat fires. Top fires -- the most dangerous of all -- where flames fan across tree tops, jump over lakes and fire breaks. These, too, were spreading randomly, leaving people no chance to save their homes even when they were in close proximity to water. The Ministry for Emergency Situations, wryly dubbed the most "effective" government arm by Russian parliamentarians (it saves an average of 95,000 people annually in all types of natural and man-made disasters) has only some 22,000 professional firefighters in its employ (it needs at least double that number, according to its chief, Sergei Shoigu). Even with the help from the army and over 150,000 volunteers, it is waging a losing war.

By evening, having finally reached an official who agreed to tell me where most of the fire-fighting effort was headed outside of Moscow, I stopped to consider my own situation.

Like many Muscovites, I have neglected for years to buy an air-conditioner, dismissing the suggestion from a wiser friend with a shrug: "We have not had a decent summer in years. Who needs an air-conditioner when I have the river right outside?"

This time, after two weeks in 98-degree weather, I had succumbed to the heat and rushed to one of the local outdoor markets to buy -- for a clearly inflated $90 -- a fan. It now stood in the living room corner, churning the acrid air and chasing it around endlessly, balcony closed, providing little to no relief. Our four-year-old Scottish fold cat with fur that would make a bear proud, who had dealt with the heat by setting up permanent residence inside the bath tub, was a good barometer of the fan's efficiency: having spent an exploratory 15 minutes around it, it it retreated to the bathroom for the rest of the day.

Local newspapers were relaying advice from environmental experts asking Moscow residents to cover their windows with layers of gauze, keep it wet, wash the floors and take showers. Driven by a mixture of maternal instinct and the brain melt-down from the heat, I had followed the advice to the letter, pinning the gauze down to window frames - only to discover the obvious: while the air seemed to smell mildly better, it got much stuffier. Throwing water on the material proved an exercise in abject futility - the gauze dried up in minutes. My mom and my daughter were now vying for possession of a decorative fan - an ancient souvenir from China. It felt unbearably hot just to sit. Taking my daughter to an open-air museum or a park was out of the question. An offer from my friends to visit an air-conditioned shopping mall was turned down: without a car we faced a long trek to the subway stop and back. I had made one such trip that morning. The thought of another one was daunting.

I pleaded with my daughter to consider some more "quiet entertainment" -- books. After two weeks of doing just that, she -- angel! -- agreed.

Sleep was impossible that night, despite a sleeping pill. The air, the pillow, my hair - everything permeated with smoke.

The next morning brought temporary relief. "I can see across the street!" - my sister announced, establishing a new standard of quality of life. I went out to replenish supplies of water and was greeted with a notice in the store announcing price increases for all baked goods due to "the situation with the fires in the country." Bread on average cost 30% more. The air seemed to smell less. Or maybe I was getting used to it.

A quick look at the news reports showed fires spreading to new territory, covering over 190,000 hectares in Russia. Around Moscow the word heard the most was peat.

Peat. Covering as much as 35% of Moscow region, peat bogs were dried up in the 1960s and 1970s to make room for more arable land - a costly mistake that would claim lives and suck many millions out of the federal budget years later. Peat is found 5-6 meters underground, where in a dry field it often self-ignites even slightly heated. A constant problem in an average year, during a heat wave like this it can trigger endless fires that spread with the wind. Even modern-day fire-fighting wonders like the heavy-duty "water bomber" plane IL-76 which can discharge 42 tons of water in a single flight, pale in the face of a treacherous peat fire. Each square yard can require as many as five tons of water. Fire trucks and even people have been known to fall through the holes burnt in the ground by peat, making the already dangerous task terrifying.

Jim Maceda and the NBC crew, who had left early Thursday morning, had first struck out east, where most Moscow peat fires were burning - slowly, it turned out that day, causing more smoke than flames. After a long drive through Sergiev Posad and Orehovo-Zuyevo, they turned south and headed for Ryazan, the town some 250 miles away from Moscow. I looked at the map of fires maintained by the Russian website Yandex.ru: the team seemed to be in the middle of what was qualified as a "large" fire. I silently wished them luck. Several hours later I heard from the crew: they had good material, they said, in a clipped manner that spoke better than a long description. They were back much later that evening, safely back. And they had shot a great story.

My own plans for another week's vacation, meanwhile, were short-lived. Moscow is a fantastic place to be in the summer, but at the very least it requires the ability to walk around it. For the last week we were practically under house arrest. I had taken to wearing a surgical mask outside, even on the subway, timing my movements around the city to avoid crowds and the hottest hours, though with the nighttime temperature hovering at 80 degrees, relief was not coming. Our cat - no fan of water - no longer resisted a spritz and breathed with his mouth open. Nobody in the family ate much of anything. We drove ourselves crazy trying to cool off in the shower. My friends were leaving the city, taking their children as far away from the fire-affected zone as they could, some to their dachas in the country, some hundreds of miles away. I had plane tickets for Friday.

As we made our way in a cab through the circuitous backstreets of Moscow to the Sheremetyevo airport to avoid the mile-long traffic jam on a smoky highway, I wondered if there was not something else the city could do but did not know. Who would we ask in a crisis? One logical thought was, the mayor. And a journalist from Life.News did just that. Will the mayor return from his vacation to address the crisis situation in Moscow? the journalist inquired of the Mayor's office. "What crisis situation?" came the response from the press secretary. "There is no crisis in Moscow." Asked where the mayor was, the press secretary responded: "If we wanted to tell you, we would." (Three days later, with smog thickening even further, Yuri Luzhkov did return to Moscow. )