After a day of everything BUT the broadcast -- meetings, planning, talking -- we're now settling down to write and stack things. The weather makes for a fascinating story tonight: The number of states in cloud cover due to a tropical storm in the east, the sudden force of the western hurricane, and the projected path of all the wind, rain and precipitation during a weekend when so many Americans will be on the move. We'll cover it all tonight.

Also: domestic politics, the situation in Iraq, the fracas over nicotine levels -- and everything you've ever wanted to know about annuities.

Also -- and notably tonight -- we'll read some of your emails. Here's a hint: there's no shortage of them!

We've all joked that it will be impossible to escape from 30 Rock after the newscast. The MTV VMA's are going on here tonight. The pre-show screams are audible with each early arrival outside my window right now -- we're in for quite a ride tonight.

Please be kind enough to join Campbell Brown on the broadcast tomorrow night, as we drive our daughter to college. Have a good weekend. See you next week.

Brian is back in New York and bringing us the early rundown for tonight's broadcast from the Nightly News conference room. Weather likely will be a big part of the broadcast as Ernesto bears down on the Carolina coast and John wallops Mexico. Click the link to the right (below the advertisement) to watch.

We're back home tonight, and after two days of heavy Katrina coverage, the news today is mostly dominated by a particularly violent spike in Iraq. We will also look at the politics of the war -- and what appears to be the emergence of a new message from the Administration. Also tonight, we know more about the final moments before takeoff for the ComAir flight that crashed killing 49 souls on board in Lexington, Kentucky. The investigation is quickly pointing out the cracks in our aviation system -- while those of us who follow the industry closely were quite familiar with them. There is other news today as well, and additionally tonight we'll have another installment in our continuing series on Baby Boomers in America.

We'll run another new (to our audience) portion of our conversation with the President on tonight's broadcast.  I returned from New Orleans to find thousands of emails (I often ask that they be printed out so that I can take them home, travel with them and go through them quickly, while sticking to my vow to read them all) neatly divided into two main categories: our Katrina coverage (overwhelmingly positive) and our interview with President Bush. 

On the latter topic, I was taken aback somewhat by what seems to be the prevailing (70/30) opinion -- apparently echoed today by Rush Limbaugh -- that I was somehow "disrespectful" in the interview. 

Several things here: While I don't know the President outside of the parameters my job, he has always shown me great kindness, we've always gotten on well, and when we parted company yesterday, he was of good cheer and seemed satisfied with our time together (and notably was in NO hurry to end the interview) as were members of the White House staff. My job, remember, is to report...ask questions...and serve as advocate for our viewers who don't get the chance to ask questions of the President themselves. Any charge of "disrespect" deservedly gets my attention, because of my profound respect for the office and its occupants. In fact, one of the topics of conversation any time I'm with the President is our shared interest in Presidential history -- which we discussed during some private time yesterday. I note that one viewer has written complaining of "unprofessionalism" in my "tone of questioning and facial expressions." 

Perhaps some background will help. What we aired yesterday, and will again tonight, was a rather spontaneous, strolling interview in the hot afternoon sun in New Orleans. It was to have been taped an hour later, but the President was understandably anxious to greet the people who'd been waiting for him and Mrs. Bush in the heat -- so we gladly obliged, and things got underway very suddenly. He is, as has been widely reported in this space and elsewhere, a man who truly seems to enjoy the give-and-take and verbal "combat" that often comes with good conversation. He indicated to me more than once yesterday that he was anxious to have a robust discussion. Perhaps because the backdrop and circumstances of yesterday's interview differed so much from the norm -- the conventional presidential interview we've become used to seeing -- people saw something different that struck them as negative in some way. Asking tough questions is one thing, but I am constitutionally unable to be disrespectful around the President of the United States.

A small representation of the snowglobes adorning Nightly News Executive Producer John Reiss's office. Photo by Nightly News Web Producer Constance Parten

On Sunday, Brian blogged about the predicament travelers face with bottled water these days. You can't take it on board in a bottle due to new security regulations. Brian discovered you couldn't even have it in a plastic bottle if you're in Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. 

As my family waited for our flight to leave Logan Airport in Boston last Thursday, I remembered one last minute trinket I had forgotten to get while we were in Red Sox Nation. I needed a Red Sox snowglobe for a certain executive producer who is both a snowglobe collector and a rabid Yankees fan. 

Easy, right? I went from gift shop to newsstand to tchotchke store to find that Red Sox snowglobe. Finally, I found a Red Sox souvenir stand near Jet Blue. STILL No luck. I asked the saleswoman if there had been a run on snowglobes. (Seriously: considering last week's games, there should have been a surplus.)

"No," she said, "we can't sell them in the airport anymore because of security regulations. You're not allowed to take them on board the plane. It's because of the water in the snowglobe."

Yes, America, it's true.  Those two ounces of liquid inside the snowglobe violate the new security regulations.

Chief White House Correspondent David Gregory does the Early Nightly honors today. Click the link to the right (below the advertisement) to watch.

Now that our two-day trip to New Orleans is coming to an end, I have time to share some photos shot by NBC News folks in the field.

First, the backdrop for Tuesday's broadcast... what used to be 2120 Tennessee Street, washed or blown into the 2200 block, in the Lower Ninth Ward:

Photo by Roxanne Garcia, NBC News

Here's what the set looked like in a rare quiet moment before Tuesday's broadcast:

Photo by Roxanne Garcia, NBC News

Ever wonder how they shoot the sweeping aerial shots that show you the devastation's scope? Here's cameraman Ray Farmer in the construction lift:

Photo by, yes, Roxanne Garcia, NBC News

As for how the network sends all the live images to your TV screen, here's the satellite truck nicknamed "SwampBoy," which covers the Southeastern U.S. and more for NBC News:

Photo by Roxanne Garcia, NBC News

They'll hate me for doing this, but here is Team Brian Williams, at least editorially, during this trip.  Front left is producer Subrata De, next to her is producer Jean Harper, and in the background, left, is associate producer Megan Marcus, and right, producer John Zito.

Photo by, you guessed it! Roxanne Garcia, NBC News.

Finally, my favorite image of the trip, taken by Nightly News intern (and New Orleans native) Jed Strong, of Brian on set Monday. He's a junior this year at Northwestern, but he's already got quite an experienced eye.

President Bush is airborne, and right now we are feverishly condensing a wide-ranging 25-minute conversation with the president (with stops and starts for cameras, logistics, venues, and the heat) into broadcast form. The term of art we use is "crash edit," and right now that's exactly appropriate. We covered a number of topics, from Katrina to Iraq to his own legacy... to his relationship with his father... to his summer reading list. The latter contains a surprise that surpasses Albert Camus' "The Stranger."

The schedule for the president's time on the ground... and our time with him... was revised as late as 2 a.m. It was further revised when the president moved our interview up by an hour, on the fly, because of the heat of the day and the crowd waiting to see him and the first lady.

We will take a moment tonight to air tape of how we began the broadcast exactly a year ago. How little we knew then... about what was on the way.

We'll also have the other news of this day, but from where we sit -- the president's comments make up much of the news. A lot of people -- the best technical and editorial people in our business -- worked very hard today in the blistering heat of the wasteland that is this portion of the Lower Ninth Ward -- in order to bring you tonight's broadcast.

Tomorrow evening we'll be back in our home studio in New York. We hope you can join us for tonight's broadcast from New Orleans.

Photo caption: Brian and President Bush talk today at Musicians' Village in the Upper Ninth Ward. Photo by Subrata De, NBC News.

With 2 1/2 hours to spare, Early Nightly is up! Brian talks about his day with President Bush. Click the link to the right (below the advertisement) to watch.

Just wanted to let readers know what you've probably already figured out by now -- because of the tight schedule and life inside "the bubble" with President Bush -- we are late with the Early Nightly today. Brian did record one during his morning with the president, and we're expecting to have it soon. To use TV-speak, Brian's exclusive interview with President Bush is a very late "crash." We hope to offer you a video preview in about an hour and we'll publish a complete transcript when it's available. In the meantime, here's a nice perspective photo shot by NBC White House Producer Antoine Sanfuentes this morning at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, where President Bush attended a prayer service to mark the Hurricane Katrina anniversary.

After Nightly News and after our prime-time special concluded Monday night, we drove back to our hotel. Which also happens to be President Bush's hotel. Big mistake. In the old days (as recently as when I covered President Clinton), it wasn't unusual for people to enter the lobby of a major metropolitan hotel (depending on configuration) and have no clue that the Leader of the Free World was upstairs ordering room service. In the old days, it used to be cool to let it be known you were staying "at HIS hotel." No more. In the post-9/11 world, the very last place you want to stay is the president's hotel.

When we arrived last night, we were stopped at a steel barricade, manned by Secret Service, Louisiana State Police and National Guard troops with dogs. I explained that we simply wanted to go to our hotel rooms, and that I was joining up with the president's traveling "bubble" in the motorcade, early tomorrow. That's when a tall guy, straight-faced and apparently born completely without irony... approached our menacing rental car. He resembled both rare drawings of President Tyler and photos of Tommy Smothers. Anyway, we were "instructed" by this straight-faced guy with a blue blazer, an earpiece and male pattern baldness, that we "are holding due to a movement." 

There's just so much good material there. A rich trove, really. What he meant was: the president and the first lady were dining at Mother's Restaurant around the corner and would be moving through the streets in his motorcade, and so no one could possibly drive or walk anywhere near the hotel. The restaurant was even more heavily-fortified: members of the black-clad Secret Service "CAT" team were spotted in the back alley with massive, cello-sized automatic weapon cases, post-movement. Not a cello player among them.
                     
Just to show that I was paying attention during my own years of dealing with the Secret Service, I asked to talk to the "SAC" (Special Agent in Charge). The call was placed to Washington, a call was placed inside the hotel, but the "SAC" was apparently not able to either hasten or break the movement.

We held, in the nighttime heat, for the duration of the movement. It seemed like the movement took forever. Then, the long hold was suddenly lifted. The male pattern baldness/blazer guy made the "movement over" sign with his hand, the troops parted, the dogs parted. Then they let us in. Elements of the motorcade were parked in the hotel driveway (the swanky new "on the road" version of the black Suburban and its twin decoy, both tricked out with flag stands and presidential seals on the rear passenger doors), as the aforementioned Leader had just walked through the lobby. I did enjoy getting a good look at the new generation motorcade communications vehicle -- a heavily-retrofitted Suburban nicknamed "Roadrunner," which allows the president to place a scrambled satellite telephone call to Gen. Abizaid, Vladimir Putin or Dick Cheney -- from a motorcade moving at 60 miles-an-hour. I also chatted up the White House technicians who were transporting the "blue goose" podium being used at today's speech by the president in New Orleans. Once in the rarefied air of our own hotel lobby, the Uniformed Secret Service then checked us all before we were allowed the thrill of entering, one hour later, our own hotel rooms. Next time, it's the Holiday Inn on the interstate.

It was a nice distraction for the first few minutes. The nighttime drive through parts of New Orleans East was downright depressing. There's no power for long stretches of the city. One of our producers said, "it looks like East Germany." And it did.

Our local station here, while airing our NBC documentary, added a "crawl" graphic at the bottom of the screen that said, in part, "IF YOU ARE OVERWHELMED (by the images on the screen)..." and then they offered a mental health call-in line. It's still that bad here. Just SEEING what these good people went through... is enough to send SOME of these good people... right over the edge.

It is still such a sad place.

Editor's note: If you missed Monday night's documentary about the first five days of Hurricane Katrina, in Brian's own words, you can read or watch it here.

Many of you on the East Coast have now seen the first of this week's two Nightly News broadcasts from New Orleans. Here are a couple photos NBC News interns Kaylee Hartung (left) and Jed Strong (below) took on location.

30 minutes from now on the NBC television network, Brian anchors a primetime special called "Katrina: The Long Road Back." Here's a sneak-peak:

One year ago tonight, we were on the brink of a storm that would shake America like no other: A natural disaster, and the unnatural one that followed, made more tragic because it defied logic.

Tonight at 8 p.m. EDT, Brian Williams reports from outside the Superdome in New Orleans, the very place that last August became a corner in hell. What you'll see tonight has never aired on network television -- some of the pictures were considered too raw to broadcast at the time of Katrina, and they may still be now, but NBC has chosen to air them tonight as part of the one-year anniversary of the storm, and the government response to it.

We try to be very careful in choosing the street, neighborhood or building that serves as the backdrop for our coverage, especially on a night like this one, considering the size of the live viewing audience and the level of interest. We are sensitive to charges that media portrayals of New Orleans are all alike, and we are always actively looking for "mixed progress" neighborhoods where there is work underway, and where people have decided to put down stakes and stay. We are in such a neighborhood tonight -- but the view changes (as it does all over this region) seemingly every few feet. The odor on the street is staggering (they are STILL finding bodies at the one-year mark) and the drive into this neighborhood is depressing. A police officer remarked, "this neighborhood's gone." But not everyone. Tonight we'll try to highlight the good (recovery) with the bad (retreat) while surrounded by the ubiquitous destruction that the waters caused.

The most powerful recurring image in some parts of town is the MP's patrolling the streets in Humvees. The National Guard has fitted their desert-camouflage Hummers with revolving blue lights (to highlight their policing function and increase their visibility at night), but the sight of a vehicle that we associate with warfare presents an aggressive picture. Yesterday we drove past a Hummer that had pulled over a civilian in a traffic stop. Yet another sat idling in a drugstore parking lot. The men we've seen are in fatigues, most with "MP" armbands... and attitudes vary. In some neighborhoods, they ARE the police, and while it is certainly not the Anbar Province, it is not without its dangers and risks. It is hot and difficult work for these citizen soldiers, all of whom left lives and families at home.

Tonight we will take stock of this region one year after Katrina -- we'll actually kick off two nights from here, following the same theme. We'll hear from some of the NBC News on-air team that viewers came to associate with the horrors here -- we'll look at what went wrong, we'll talk about the issue of race and where the national discussion stands. We will also cover the other major stories before us: the Tropical Storm that is likely to return to hurricane status before long, and the crash of the commuter jet in Lexington, Ky. We will try to get at the question of what this experienced air crew was doing on the shorter of the two runways. The short answer obviously is: it can happen. It evidently came close to happening 12 years ago, at the same airport and with a similar aircraft. The stories of the individual souls lost... are heartbreaking.

For now, we hope to see you from New Orleans tonight. And please join me for our hour-long NBC News special, at 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 Central tonight. It's our look back at the first five days of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. We'll look for you then.

Someone much smarter than I once said: "You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give."

I thought about that during a recent trip I took down south to Mississippi and Louisiana. I was traveling to shoot a Campbell Brown story that will likely air Tuesday on the anniversary of Katrina slamming into the Gulf Coast.

The story is a lovely one. I think it's our job, if even occasionally, to tell a story that describes the petals of Katrina and not just the thorns. God knows the thorns are plentiful and obvious and important. We won't learn how to not repeat the inexcusable mistakes of the disaster without the thorns, but it can't hurt to be reminded of the generosity of the angels who walk among us -- the petals. In this case, the petals are a few volunteers in Erie, Pa., who wanted to know what they could do to help.

They traveled down to Mississippi and looked around. They found an errant photograph that had been lost in the storm. Probably just a picture of an old black lab or a father and son goofing around on a Saturday afternoon. Then they found another. And another. Some were covered by dirt and debris. Some were damaged. Some were partially hidden. Some had nails sticking out of them. Some probably had blood on them. Sweat and tears, too.

So the volunteers decided to do something about those lost images, and created the Picture Project. They gathered what they could. They asked around for help. They got sponsors to set up drop boxes. They went back home, far away to Pennsylvania, and slowly, thousands and thousands of photos -- literally, lost moments in people's lives -- began showing up.

The volunteers cleaned them. They organized them. And then they began the extraordinary work of trying to reunite these photos with the traumatized victims of Katrina who had lost them.

I read somewhere once that "being a man or a woman is a matter of birth. Being a man or a woman who makes a difference is a matter of choice."

Nobody made these Erie residents do what they did. And what they did was not simple. They are not independently wealthy. They are not retired. They work for the local government. Sue Weber, Dennis Heintz and Karla Anderson spent their own money, asked their bosses for time off, put the priorities of their own families, their own children, their own friends, their own important lives on hold -- for strangers.

Some of the stories Sue, Dennis and Karla came across were truly wrenching. One involved a family who not only lost their home and everything in it, but they lost their son, too.

The Rickmans had two kids with a rare ailment called Batten Disease. The trauma of the storm sped up the death of one son. And the other is, well, doing his best -- with the care of loving parents. The point is this: Imagine you've lost your home, the contents in it, you've lost your son, and on top of it, you've lost every photographic memory of that beautiful living thing? Unimaginable, really.

Then imagine you happen to be surfing the Web, and a picture of your boy with his dad next to a train -- a trip that had been a dream-come-true for father and son -- pops up on your screen. Well, if you're Carol Rickman of Biloxi, you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. So, you do both. You whoop and you holler, too.

For the Rickman family, the Picture Project literally took something that was lost, forever, and brought it back again. Carol Rickman may not have her boy's life back, but by gosh, she's got the memory of it. The very color of the shirt he was wearing. The smile on his face. The way his hair was parted just so. That was gone forever. But not anymore.

This is a dramatic example, because a life was lost. But what the Picture Project does is reunite families with much smaller moments that mean just as much to those who thought they'd lost them forever. A college graduation. A hug before going off to war. A high-five after an LSU victory. The way a mom's hand sat atop her daughter's head on a lazy afternoon -- one a long time ago, before Katrina blew away that hammock. Forever.

And why do people volunteer -- for complete strangers, no less? Its been said that volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections every four years, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in. Why do we do it? I don't know. But after spending some time in Biloxi and New Orleans, and with these folks from Erie -- I now know that's the kind of community I want to grow old in.

My grandmother couldn't have said it better herself.

Editor's Note: Campbell Brown's piece will air on Tuesday's Nightly News broadcast.

A news story that hit the wires this weekend with little notice may in fact signal an uptick in the strategic chess game that is the Middle East.

Iran announced that it had fired an "anti-ship missile" from one of its Kilo-class submarines during a military exercise in the northern Arabian Sea not far from the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf. 

The missile, known as a Thaqeb -- Farsi for Saturn -- flew less than a mile and most news reports suggested that it would raise the stakes in the Gulf because it gave Iran another weapon against ships transiting the area. 

But U.S. intelligence has quietly told senior officials there is more to be concerned about with this test. The Thaqeb, it noted in a briefing, is "a long-range missile" and thus raised the possibility of Iran being capable of equipping its three Russian-supplied Kilos with cruise missiles. Cruise missiles can be fired, with few modifications, from submarine torpedo tubes.

The test comes a few days after the Israelis announced the order of two more Dolphin-class submarines from Germany, which would give it a fleet of five. The first two, according to U.S. intelligence, are cruise-missile capable.  According to others in the military sphere, those cruise missiles are either nuclear capable or could be. 

Some reports indicate that as early as 2000, the Israelis test-fired long-range cruise missiles in the Indian Ocean, the same general area that Iran tested its missile this weekend. 

All of this raises yet a new fear: a submarine war between the two countries -- one that ultimately could involve a nuclear standoff.

In the world of nuclear strategy, the superpower model has always been the triad —- the three-sided nuclear deterrent force, a hydra-headed monster capable of a lethal strike even when two of the three heads have been lopped off -- a true doomsday machine. 

The idea, embraced by the first five members of the nuclear club, calls for a nation to have nuclear-armed bombers, missiles and, most importantly for the survival of the deterrent, submarines. Taking out a nation's bomber force on the ground or pulverizing a nation's missile field is simple compared to finding and then destroying stealthy submarines, each of which could obliterate the attacking countries' cities within minutes.

It was the strategy that drove the U.S. to build Tridents, the Soviet Union to build Deltas and Typhoons. But until now, no third-world nation has succeeded in matching that grand strategy. India and Pakistan have always claimed to have plans.  North Korea may not need much of a deterrent at all since a nuclear attack on the small country would wreak havoc on its neighbors, who are at most a few hundred miles away.

The mission of the submarines has been long rumored in military journals and even the Israeli press. Israel even refers to them as "national deterrent" assets, a clear indication of their nuclear role. 

In spite of the open-secret nature of the program, Israel has received other help that has moved its submarine deterrent forward. Israeli scientists studying at U.S. weapons labs even worked out command and control issues.

As far back as 1987, U.S. officials were aware that Israel was playing with blue-green lasers, critical to communicating with submarines in time of war. A team of U.S. defense analysts found the research underway at Soreq, Israel's equivalent of Los Alamos National Laboratory, that year. Two years later, a Congressional report found that one of the scientists working on the lasers had done extensive research on them while studying at the real Los Alamos, part of a group of Israeli scientists involved in cooperative military research. 

The defense analysts and congressional researchers knew the value of the blue-green lasers was limited to submarine communications. In situations in which war was imminent or had actually begun, aircraft or deployable rockets carrying the lasers would be fired to bring the submarines to periscope depth for further orders from satellites, which Israel also has.   

Blue-green lasers, unlike their better-known red cousins, can penetrate to depths of 3,000 feet over a range of 6,200-square-miles. As long as Israel knows roughly where the submarines are located, and where to deploy the lasers, word would get through.

The question is where would Israel -- or Iran -— deploy those submarines, and how. Israel could send its subs into the Gulf where, with long range missiles, it could hit most Iranian targets. Iran, on the other hand, could move their subs into the Red Sea or even the Mediterranean Sea, giving it a clear shot at any Israeli target. Israel might have a harder time of it. It would have to either transit the Suez Canal on the surface, or send the subs on an arduous trip around the Cape of Good Hope and back up to the Gulf.   

Military analysts note that the Israeli Dolphins and the Iranian Kilos are diesel subs and would require multiple trips to the surface during any significant transit, thus opening them to attack en route.

Still, the week's events are troubling to U.S. officials. The intelligence about both the Iranian missile and the Israeli sub purchases were widely distributed not just in intelligence circles, but throughout the national security arena. It's unlikely that we have heard the last about either.

OK, so it was a little longer than an hour. But you can now watch Brian's video by clicking the link to the right (below the advertisement).

We're hoping to get some dispatches from NBC correspondents in the Gulf region and will publish those as soon as we do.

No video for you to watch yet (we should have that in an hour or less), but since I tagged along on this week's trip to New Orleans for the Katrina anniversary, here's a photo of Brian and Subrata recording the Early Nightly on Tchoupitoulas St. outside Restaurant August.

Brian speaks to Gentilly resident Christopher Saucedo on Sunday. Photo by Subrata De, NBC News.

We arrived back in New Orleans on Sunday. If you think this city isn't nervous about hurricane season, consider this: a local police offer told me he purchased an automatic weapon and a thousand rounds of ammunition  yesterday -- when Ernesto's path and size were both uncertain -- because, as he put it, "I'm not going through another hurricane in this city with just my sidearm."

If you think these new airline security regulations aren't having an effect on citizens, consider this: after arriving in Louis Armstrong International Airport here in New Orleans yesterday, I purchased a bottle of water at an airport newsstand. The saleswoman told me she would have to pour it into a large Styrofoam cup (she pointed to a massive stack of cups behind her) if I still wanted to purchase it -- because "we can't have plastic bottles in the terminal." Upon hearing this, the woman in line behind me, perhaps knowing my line of work, said, "Can anyone explain to me, given our history and who we are, how we arrived at this point?"
                                             
In an instant, I completely understood what she was saying. We won World War II. This is the United States. How has it come to this? How did this happen? Who is going to use my bottle of Aquafina -- and how -- to act against this magnificent country of ours?

Both of these stories, separated by about 15 minutes after our arrival here yesterday, speak to the twin national traumas we have been through -- and that we are about to examine via twin anniversaries: the one-year observance of Katrina and its aftermath, and the 5-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

This visit, more than any over the past 12 months, feels strange. Huge portions of the city are unchanged. Renewal is evident but episodic and spotty. Sunday we found a car in the massive multi-level parking garage at the Superdome -- that has been there, locked and abandoned, for the past year. It is the very least of this city's worries. But it is a perfect example of the scope of the problem. How will anyone ever find the owner? Who will remove it? What becomes of it?
                                                            
Everything here is a landmark of some sort, dating back to a year ago. Yesterday we drove by the stretch of sidewalk where we came across a body, baking in the sun, in the shadow of the Superdome a year ago... not the first we had seen, certainly not the last -- this one was memorable because of the children on bikes who had stopped to look it over.
                                                          
While shooting videotape in the city yesterday afternoon, we smelled, while standing in one specific spot -- that smell -- the distinct odor of death and decay, the one that is instantly recognizable to those who've traveled to war zones, crime scenes or natural disasters. 

Last evening, two channels on the hotel cable system were running 9/11 anniversary programming. Three of them had Katrina-related programming of some sort. The in-house channel now runs, on a repeating loop, a guide to the 1-5 hurricane rating scale, and instructions on how to act if warnings are posted.
                                          
The sheer drapes were pulled closed when I checked into my room, and I quickly discovered why: all four panes of floor-to-ceiling glass are clouded... full of water vapor... as are so many of the windows in our otherwise-fine hotel. It's a metaphor, really, for the city outside those windows: it's functioning, even clean in spots -- but just behind a sheer curtain there is still real hurt and great damage.

Sunday night on one of the array of specials on Katrina, former FEMA Director Michael Brown said flatly, "We failed in so many ways, it's hard to take an accounting of all of them." He's right, and you can still see the results from where I'm sitting as I write this.
                            
This week, beginning this evening, we will take stock. And tonight, at 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 Central, we will remember the first five days of Katrina. It is a documentary special that aired once, on the Sundance Channel, on October 27th of last year. It is raw and emotional and uncommonly first-person. I asked NBC to air it on the network and they agreed. We will devote the balance of the hour to those we met during Katrina and the issues it raised. Tomorrow I will talk to President Bush here in New Orleans, just as I imagine I might in New York, on the next awful anniversary we are due to cover in September. We will also report on all the souls lost in yesterday's commuter jet crash in Kentucky. Through it all, life goes on -- in between tragedies -- and we'll cover all of it when we join you from New Orleans tonight.

This has been a very busy Sunday.  Several stories are still unfolding tonight.  We have been following a plane crash near the airport in Lexington, Ky.  49 people died this morning in a Comair commuter jet headed for Atlanta.  There was one survivor.  Sources tell NBC News tonight that the plane may have taken off on the wrong runway... on a runway that was too short for this plane to properly takeoff.  NBC's Tom Costello will have the latest.  And NBC's Lester Holt takes a closer look at air safety.

Also... Ernesto is a hurricane and it now appears to have its sights set on Cuba... and then the west coast of Florida.  It has already prompted some evacuations in the Florida Keys and the rest of Florida is on alert for the possibility that the storm could hit the state sometime this week.  We'll have the latest from NBC Weather Plus and from NBC's Ron Mott.

The other major story today is the release of two Fox News journalists held hostage by a militant group in Gaza.  Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were let go early this morning and described their experience at the hands of the kidnappers.

As we approach the one year anniversary of Katrina... NBC's Carl Quintanilla takes a look at the recovery in New Orleans and how life has changed since the hurricane.

Those are some of the stories we're covering today.  We are still gathering information and we'll have the latest tonight.  We hope you'll join us.

It has been a relatively quiet hurricane season so far.  But that could change in the next few days.  Tropical storm Ernesto is threatening to become the season's first hurricane.  As we approach the one-year anniversary of Katrina, Ernesto looks like it could be headed for the Gulf of Mexico.  It is still several days away, and as we have learned, these storms can change course quickly.  We have two reports tonight.  We'll find out more about the forecast... and NBC's Ron Mott reports from New Orleans on preparations for a hurricane.  Why tonight, they're warning the levee system there may still not be ready.

Also tonight, NBC's Martin Fletcher has the latest from the Middle East on the fragile truce between Hezbollah and Israel... and the 2 Fox News journalists being held hostage in Gaza.

NBC's Charles Sabine has the story from Austria of a girl held captive for eight years.

And NBC's Dawn Fratangelo tells us about the big business of back to school... what has become the second biggest shopping period after Christmas.

It's all coming up tonight.  We hope you'll join us.

"You can't have a major urban center if you don't have schools that are working, if you don't have hospitals that can run, if you don't have electricity you can count on. Everybody's still in limbo and that's a pity a year after the storm."Douglas BrinkleyNew Orleans resident and author

I spoke with Doug Brinkley last week in the Ninth Ward. He is the author of the "Great Deluge," which chronicled Katrina and its aftermath. Although he notes the enormous amount of progress, Brinkley expresses concerned about the future of the Ninth Ward and the city itself. He believes New Orleans can maintain its status as a major American city, but only if more basic services are available to residents who wish to return.

Photo caption: Doug Brinkley talks to Steve in the Ninth Ward. Courtesy of NBC News.

Today's posting comes with apologies (some may consider this a blessing) for brevity. Owing in part to yet another unsettled news day, and in part to my schedule -- I've been in a continuous production meeting today regarding the hour-long Katrina special we are airing on the NBC Television Network Monday at 8 p.m. ET.

In the fleeting moments I've had to look away from my computer screen today, I've noticed the cable news networks have had their cameras trained on various aircraft-related emergencies -- part of the drama today, playing out in skyways, runways and taxiways in various parts of the nation and the world. A lot of this fits beneath a post-U.K.-terrorist-plot umbrella of what will become yet another "new normal" for all those of us who fly. Having flown both internationally and domestically since the new restrictions have been put in place, I can confirm: it's a new world out there -- in terms of delays, discarded personal items, bag checks and checked bags. As an aside: I take no joy in admitting that our traveling group found it quite easy to avoid the random-bag-check delays at the gate the other day -- we just found our way to the second of the two lines forming to scan boarding passes. By putting distance between ourselves and the inspectors, we were allowed to board without delay, and we all commented on how easy it was (having already cleared primary airport security, of course) to avoid a second check prior to boarding. By the way, while it goes without saying that none of us had anything to hide, I've yet to meet anyone who truly relishes delays at the airport... say nothing of the thought of someone wearing surgical gloves reaching into your carry-on and laying your possessions out on a table. Our return flight to New York had no such random bag search at the gate -- and all of this is probably in keeping with the definition of "random." We're also awaiting a ruling on an airline strike possibility, which of course will complicate matters in the skies and on the ground.

We're keeping an eye on President Ford's health and we're thinking of him today. We have solid stories tonight on both Lebanon and Iraq. We have the already-promised look at the Presidents Bush, father and son, and we hope to get to some of your e-mails.

Have a good and safe weekend, and I hope you can join us for our Friday broadcast.

We will next see you on Monday night from New Orleans -- when I also hope you can join us for the special we've worked so hard to bring you.

Suppose the police come to your office with a search warrant, suspecting you of having committed a crime. During their search, they find something that makes them want to search your home, too. You say no. But they go to your house anyway, where your spouse says yes. Is that a valid search?

No, it's not, according to a federal appeals court ruling today. In a 2-1 decision, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals held that once one occupant says no, the others cannot veto that refusal. It extends a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, involving two occupants of a house who argued with police outside about whether they could come in to search. Under this ruling, an occupant can stop a search, no matter how far from the house.

The case involved the search of a Missouri businessman in a drug case. During a search of his office computer, for which they had a warrant, police officers found what they thought was child pornography. So they asked if they could go to his house and search his home computer, for which they did not have a warrant, and he refused. 

Even though his wife's consent was voluntary, the court said, "the consent to the seizure of the home computer was not valid because her consent cannot overrule his denial of consent. We believe that the Supreme Court has made it clear that the police must get a warrant when one co-occupant denies consent to search."

Our camera caught up with Brian in his office today, where he frankly admits that the broadcast isn't sure what the lead story will be yet. Click the link to the right (below the advertisement) to watch.

The thousands of federal air marshals who patrol the skies on selected flights won a concession today from the Department of Homeland Security -- one they say will help them remain undercover. The issue was how they dress and where they stay, to avoid calling attention to themselves.

The marshals have long complained that a strict dress code was making them stand out, especially on flights full of vacationers. From now on, they can jettison the standard blue blazer and wear what they want, provided their clothes still conceal the weapons they carry.

How they BOARD the planes will also be reviewed, to make them less obvious to waiting passengers.

And they'll be allowed to stay in the hotels of their choice, instead of all checking into the same place, which they claimed compromised their undercover status. One hotel they were required to stay in under the old rules actually had a sign out front that said, "Welcome Federal Air Marshals."

Poor Pluto. I remember Pluto so vividly from that fold-out Scholastic poster, "The Planets of the Solar System," that hung on the wall of every classroom I sat in through the 6th grade. Pluto wasn't exactly the Big Man On Campus in the Planet Community, but it did have a Disney character named after it, and it did have a certain smoky, distant, enigmatic image. All that's gone now. Fold up the posters. Now, astronomers tell us, Pluto's name must not be spoken when the subject turns to planets. We'll talk about Pluto on the broadcast tonight. It will give us an excuse to slip the surly bonds of this troubled world of ours for a 2-minute respite, at least.

THE THURSDAY OUTLOOK
In the news tonight: the FDA decision on the so-called "morning-after" or "Plan B" pill, and the instant reaction to it. There are new economic numbers out tonight (following our lead story on existing home sales last night), this time having to do with NEW homes, and some economists find the numbers troublesome. We will have coverage of today's development in the London terrorism plot, the situation in Iraq and this nation's upcoming anniversaries, both marking tragedies: Katrina and 9/11. Both are, in a way, political events as well.

Tonight we'll kick off our "Long Road Back" coverage (which culminates with our trip to New Orleans next week to mark the one-year anniversary), with Ron Mott in the region on the subject of insurance -- an ongoing sore spot. As I told a print journalist in an interview earlier today, we in the media love anniversaries -- we mark them every chance we get -- and they can also be useful as sign posts and in terms of taking an accounting of progress (or the lack thereof) since the original event. There's also the aforementioned Pluto story tonight, and because I think Americans like to know about their president's vacation plans, we'll have a note about where President Bush is choosing to spend a little down time this week. Hint: he's with family, and it's a beautiful spot.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT...
My thanks to the folks at KSDK in St. Louis. It was a great day spent in a great city. On top of being treated like visiting royalty, the station General Manager Lynn Beall handed me a bag when I left. She indicated it was a gift, to thank me for making the trip and spending the day with her staff. She told me to open it later. When I arrived at the airport, suddenly stricken by fear that the gift was comprised of liquids and gels that would result in my arrest and conviction and near-certain imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, I opened the bag just prior to reaching the security checkpoint. It was a signed baseball from Stan Musial. Using their connections with the Cardinals, the station asked The Man to inscribe a ball, which is now on display in my home. There sure are some classy folks in St. Louis. And yes, I caught up with a few of my buddies who rode with me out to the airport.

It was downhill from there. While the two-hour flight home featured a drunk passenger and a surly flight attendant (and of course no food), I still plan to make it back to that great city the first chance I get. And Stan, wherever you are: thanks. It's beautiful. It was very kind of you.

We're back home in New York tonight. We hope you can join us for the broadcast.