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Conveying the tragedy in Darfur

Refugees from Darfur gather around an NBC News camera at a camp in eastern Chad.
Photo by NBC's Antoine Sanfuentes.

The story in Darfur and now Chad is hard to understand. Cutting these pieces with my editor Bev Chase, we struggle with a way to visually explain the enemy so that it registers with viewers. In this area of Africa, the people are all black. The bad guys, the good guys, the women, the children. It's what your ORIGINAL ethnicity is that matters, and even that is complicated. There are black Arab Africans and black ethnic Africans. They look mostly the same and there are good and not so good people on both sides. But one side is being sanctioned by the Sudanese government to not just fight a war, but to wipe out a civilian population. This fight is about land, and power. Genocide usually is. Burning, raping, looting and targeting certain types of people are the weapons in this war. As Ann Curry and her team in the region have told us: Our challenge is to convey that what's happening there is no less real than if you came home one day and found your house burned to the ground and half your family missing or ill.

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Early Nightly is up

Brian anchors the broadcast tonight, which will feature more reporting about the Iraq Study Group and its mission. Plus, another mega-merger in the airline industry. Is it the first of many more? And Ann Curry continues her courageous reporting from Darfur. If you missed last night's powerful story, click here.

And click here or on the image to watch today's vlog.

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Welcome to Hanoi, mind the motorcycles

A woman admires a new window display put up prior to this week's APEC summit in Hanoi.
Photo by NBC's Ian Williams.

Hanoi has a far slower pace after Ho Chi Minh City, though no shortage of the dramatic contrasts that are such a feature of the new Vietnam. Take our hotel – a marvelous Soviet relic that seems somehow stuck in a time warp. Yet just down the road is a raucous new bar, based on the theme of the Wild West, complete with a seven-foot neon cowboy over the entrance.

First the hotel: It’s called the Vietnam Trade Union Hotel, a squat eight-story building, close to Hanoi’s crumbling colonial-era police headquarters. There are big APEC signs near the entrance, and like much of Hanoi, the place has been given a fresh coat of paint.

There’s a gift shop near the Spartan reception area, selling Russian-style Matrushka nesting dolls and key rings with portraits of Russian president Vladimir Putin. There are many sales ladies behind the desk, though it proves enormously difficult to get their attention. A man from the Foreign Ministry tells me that the service culture of the south is still catching on up here.

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Quote of the day

In an update from the region designed for our internal use, Richard Engel wrote us today to say: "Every day Iraq is now closer to OPEN Civil War," and he went on to cite as his evidence the cabinet ministries now at war with each other. It got our attention. The story of the day, for what it illustrates, might be the kidnapping en masse in Iraq. We will talk about both tonight.

Also this evening: the fight for the sub-Speaker House Democratic leadership positions... who has the votes? Today there were indications of a tilt away from Murtha and toward Hoyer... and we'll cover the former tonight. Also this evening, the automakers still known as the "Big 3" and their meeting with the President today.

Tonight we're going to continue airing the courageous reporting of my friend and colleague Ann Curry from Chad. She has done truly heroic work over there, on a story important to her and important to us as well.

We will look at the early start of the holiday retail season, price-wise, and we will continue our "Coming Home" series tonight, which got off to an emotional start with our report from Walter Reed last evening.

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Early Nightly is up

Brian is in the anchor chair from New York tonight, but is otherwise occupied this afternoon, leaving 'Early Nightly' duties to Brett Holey, whose day job is directing the broadcast.

Click here or on the image to watch the vlog, which focuses on all the ways you can consume Nightly News -- at home, at work, and on the move.

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YOU KNOW YOU'RE NOT IN N.Y. WHEN...

Nightly News will originate from our Washington bureau tonight, and on tonight's broadcast we'll start off our series of reports called "Coming Home." Tonight features our reporting at Walter Reed. I hope you find the report on our returning veterans as inspiring as my visits there have been. Which all brings us to the headline above.

While this is in every way a "Washington Bureau" and is very much in Washington, D.C., our building, dedicated by then-President Eisenhower, is in a kind of mixed-zoned suburban neighborhood. Our neighbors include a busy street of gas stations and fast food, the nearby campus of American University, and the secret and sprawling Homeland Security complex. So it was with a start that during our 2:30 editorial meeting, while we sat in a window-lined conference room linked to New York via speakerphone, I looked out the window and saw... a deer. It was no ordinary isn't-that-cute deer, either. This was an 8-point buck. The kind of deer that could have posed for the cover of the Cabela's catalog. The kind of deer that insurance companies use for their logos. Proud, iconic and startlingly out of context. While I'm no stranger to deer, it was a strange sight in Washington. I'm told they hang out here all the time, and often startle our employees en route to the parking lot. They enjoy eating the flowers along the front of the building. Soon, it will be time to head back to New York.

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Freshmen lessons

Two lessons that  authorities have included among the first to impart to the 54 new members of the U.S. House of Representatives: how to cover your (rear end), and to how to duck and cover.

Newly elected members, some wide-eyed in awe of the their surroundings, are here on Capitol Hill today for freshman orientation. The morning portion of the program was devoted to advice on how to run an office and an organization within the ethical boundaries of the House.

On the way into the closed-door confab, congresspersons-elect were handed a pamphlet from the Hill's Office of Emergency planning that featured instructions on how to cover your head with a bio-hazard mask in the event of attack, replete with photographs of smiling models with the plastic sheaths over their faces.

"It's fine, especially if I were having a bad hair day," said member-elect Nancy Boyda, D-Kan.

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Early Nightly is up

Brian anchors the broadcast from Washington, D.C., tonight, where he'll report on the amazing men and women he's met at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, recovering from injuries suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While he's on assignment, congressional correspondent Chip Reid makes his 'Early Nightly' debut. Click here or on the image to watch.

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Real to Reel: Jonestown massacre

As you step off the elevators on the third floor of 30 Rockefeller, the home of Nightly News, you can't help but see the large, glass display case that fills the center of the foyer.

Inside are numerous photos, pages of notes, a flak jacket, cameras, a helmet and other items that once belonged to NBC correspondents, cameramen and crew -- those who lost their lives while covering the news.

Among these items is a memorial for cameraman Bob Brown, 36, and Correspondent Don Harris, 42 -- both of whom were murder victims in Jonestown, Guyana, on Nov. 18, 1978.

Those old enough to remember what became one of, if not the most notorious mass murder-suicide in history, likely remembers that these two NBC staffers were gunned down along with California Congressman Leo Ryan. Brown and Harris were covering Ryan's trip to Jonestown to investigate troubling reports from the "People's Temple." They were killed on an airstrip as they were about to leave and just hours before 900 residents of Jonestown drank cyanide-laced fruit punch.

"Showing extraordinary bravery, cameraman Bob Brown recorded the attack, perhaps even the shot that killed him. Rep. Ryan and Correspondent Don Harris were wounded. The gunmen then approached and fired execution-style into each victim's head," the NBC memorial reads.

NBC Correspondent Fred Francis wasn't with Brown and Harris, but he arrived in Guyana shortly after news of their deaths and the mass suicide surfaced. Here, he shares his memories of covering this grisly story and how it has affected him in the years since:

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In the mix this Monday...

I don't know what other parents do in the morning, but my daughter is used to listening to all-news radio on the way to school. I keep half an ear on what’s happening while we talk. (Full disclosure: the amount of conversation depends on how wide-awake we are on a Monday morning.)

Today’s news included the item that President Bush would meet with the Iraq Study Group this morning at the White House. If you are not familiar with the term "study group," any student can probably tell you. It’s used in schools as an informal learning strategy in a group setting.

Her question was, "Mom, shouldn’t they have studied Iraq before the war?"

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