Bernat Armangue / AP

An Israeli woman talks on the phone after collecting gas masks for her family in a shopping mall in Jerusalem in this Aug. 22 photo.

TEL AVIV – Did you know:

• If a bomb explodes near you with a little bang, that's a sign it is carrying chemical or biological weapons? A loud bang means a conventional warhead.
• If an attack is chemical, you will know right away? But if it's biological you'll only find out after a few days.
• If it is nuclear, you should lie down and cover your head? And don't get up when the first blast wave passes over you because it will be followed by a second wave.

Useful, eh?

All these facts are good to know if you are in Israel and war with Iran, and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, were to break out around you.

Report: Iran mulls 'pre-emptive attack' against Israel; commander warns of 'World War III'

Or if something happened with Syria, Iran's ally, which has large stockpiles of biological and conventional weapons.

With the latest opinion polls showing that half of Israelis fear for the continued existence of their state if war breaks out with Iran, and with more than half rating the chance of such a war within a year as "medium" or "high,” the more you know about what the war would entail, the better.

Here are some more facts:

• If you suck a bead made of castor oil, it could kill you. It contains ricin, a lethal poison.
• After Chernobyl, it took 25 years before Welsh sheep could be eaten because the nuclear radiation settled over Wales as it drifted most of the way round the world.
• And cigarettes contain polonium 210, the poison used to murder the Soviet ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Probably no country in the world is as prepared as Israel for such an attack, with every home built in the last 21 years possessing a mandatory bomb shelter. City centers have vast public shelters with special rooms set up for non-conventional attacks. And citizens are instructed in how to protect their bomb shelters against chemical and biological warfare.

Mistakes happen
But mistakes can happen, as I can personally attest. 

One evening in the winter of 1991 during the first Gulf War, with Iraqi Scud missiles rocketing over Jordan toward Israel, the bomb alarm sounded. My family quickly locked themselves in our bomb shelter, and I raced through the dark, silent streets to broadcast from our NBC News studio.

Israel's Netanyahu: Draw 'clear red line' to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons

This had become routine. I spent all night in the studio, responding to the many alarms, and went home around 5a.m. I didn't check on the family because I knew where the Scuds had fallen and none were near my home.

This one time, however, with 30 minutes to go before my next live broadcast hit, I had a sense that something was wrong. For the first time after an attack, I called home to see how my wife and my three sons, all aged below six, were faring.

No answer. I called again. No answer. Twenty-five minutes to go before my next “live hit” on TV with Tom Brokaw. I felt sick with worry. What could have happened?

I ran downstairs, jumped into my car and raced home. I figured a 10-minute drive, five minutes at home and 10 minutes back, I'd be in the studio with seconds to spare.

Life-saving decision
Ends up, because of that calculation, I saved my family's lives.

When the all-clear sounded, my wife, our three sons, my sister-in-law and the dog, a schnauzer called Tofi, couldn't get out of the shelter.

The heavy steel lock would not budge. They hung on it and pulled and tried and tried but could not open the door. When I arrived home, about two hours after they had entered the bomb shelter, I heard faint cries of "help, help."

Instead of pushing the handle up, they had been pulling it down, locking it instead of opening it.

I was able to open the door from the outside and all was well.

But if I had stuck to my usual routine and not called home and just returned at 5 a.m., after leaving them at 8 p.m. the night before, they would have been dead.

It's simple math: An adult breathes about one cubic meter of air per hour, children more. Five people in a small room of about nine cubic meters would begin to lose air after two hours. Seven hours? They'd have all been dead.

A miracle? Sixth sense? Whatever, it's a warning of what can go wrong in times of stress. And however prepared Israelis are for what awaits them, accidents happen. When Iraq attacked Israel in 1991, far more people died of heart attacks than Scud rockets.

Country on edge
Since that time, every apartment built in Israel must have a blast-proof room that protects citizens from conventional blasts and also, with plastic and tape, can protect against chemical and biological weapons too. Walls and doors are approximately 8-12 inches thick and doors and windows are airtight.

Every citizen has, in theory, a gas mask. In practice, there aren't enough to go around.

Everybody asks, do you think there will be war with Iran? Nobody knows, and if you see Israel’s crowded cafes, the bustling streets, the crammed beaches, you may think that nobody cares.

Yet Israel is a country on edge. Most seem to have bought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s line that the price to pay to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb is much lower than the price to be paid if Iran has the bomb.

Fueling those thoughts are memories of what happened when the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. Today, there are approximately 6 million Jews in Israel. Few Israelis can argue against Netanyahu's insistence of: Never again.

And yet, I don't know anyone here who has prepared their bomb shelter. They're all a mess, used to store boxes, suitcases, footballs and wine. They are used as computer rooms, bicycle storage, play rooms. The attitude is, for the most part, we'll worry about it when the time comes.

Until then, live life.

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• In Iran, sanctions bite and currency collapses
• 'Lady whisperer': Cabbie snaps topless female passengers
• Officials: Terrorist groups in Libya tried to unite
• Women on ballot in Palestinian city's 1st election in decades
• 'Overwhelmed' aid agencies seek $340M to help Syria refugees
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Matthew Christopher / abandonedamerica.us

Photograph taken at the Angeronia Medical Center.

Reporter's notebook by Jane Derenowski, NBC News

Things sound different in a place where no one goes.   

Words echo off walls in empty rooms.  

Real or imagined creatures scurry through mysterious puddles.  

Shadows fall in strange places. 

Time doesn’t stop in abandoned buildings, it just moves differently -- and before their ultimate demise, photographer Matthew Christopher is determined to document the life, purpose, and deterioration of these structures.

They aren't just brick and mortar, wood and windows -- Christopher believes the abandoned buildings dotting America’s landscape also have something of a soul.  He wants us to remember our country’s neglected factories, schools, churches, and hospitals before they are gone forever.

He started this project 10 years ago while working in the mental health field.  Some of his first photographs were inside a deserted asylum.  

Matthew Christopher / abandonedamerica.us

Photograph taken at Harmony House Inn.

Matthew Christophe / abandonedamerica.us

Photograph taken at Galilee Steel administrative offices.

Since then, he’s documented dozens of abandoned buildings across the country and presented their stories at galleries and on his website, abandonedamerica.us.  The goal, he says, is to highlight the economic failures leading to their downfall and the social impact on communities fractured by the closing of these neighborhood mainstays.

We met recently at the partially deserted Holmesburg Prison near Philadelphia.  It was eerie, but there was a certain beauty in the stillness and things left behind.  Inside, it reminded me of a quote by French composer Claude Debussy who famously said, “Music is the space between the notes.” The places Christopher photographs tell their stories with silence and extraordinary light – the spaces between the life and death of a building. 

His pictures make me feel like someone told me a secret. 

Christopher is a thoughtful man, melancholy in his assessment of decay -- and I feel lucky he shared his art and technique with us.  I am also grateful to NBC News photographer Bob Riggio for documenting our adventure inside a place almost no one goes.

Matthew Christopher / abandonedamerica.us

Photograph taken at First National Bank.

Raheb Homavandi / Reuters file

A money changer holds Iranian rial banknotes as he waits for customers in Tehran's business district in this January 7, 2012 file photo.

The United States, the European Union and the U.N. have imposed tough economic sanctions against Iran, blocking access to the international banking system and curbing sales of Iranian crude oil as a way to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program.

As a result, Iran’s currency, the rial, is in a constant state of flux, but mostly on a downward trajectory. These days, it seems to fall in value against the dollar on an hourly basis. On Tuesday the currency hit an all-time low against the U.S. dollar, trading at 26,500 to the U.S. dollar on the open market, according to Persian-language currency tracking website Mazanex. 

“Our money is becoming more and more worthless every day,” said Sarvenas Sadi, an elderly woman doing her daily shopping in Tehran earlier this week.

She picked up a handful of limes and exclaimed, “These were 100 percent cheaper last year!”

Asked whether she ever thought she would see the currency devalue so much, she replied, “Never! I remember before the [1979] revolution $1 was worth 70 rial, now it’s worth 26,000! Who would have ever have thought!”

Iranians feel the pain of sanctions: 'Everything has doubled in price'

Did she think things would ever balance out and the price of goods would come down to what they were before. “Unfortunately I don’t think so. The thing with Iran is that once the price of something goes up, it never comes down again.”

So what’s the solution?  “Eat less limes,” she jokingly replied. 

AP

Two potential Iranian customers look at fabric bolts in Tehran's old main bazaar in this picture taken July 14, 2012.

Manufacturing hit hard
The financial situation is affecting people from all classes. Thousands of workers have been laid off and have not been paid back wages because companies have simply run out of money. Majid, a 32-year-old mechanic who used to work for a large car company was recently laid off and is owed six months’ salary.

“They are laying off people left, right and center. I doubt there will be a company left by the New Year,” he said, giving just his first name because of the sensitivity of the issue in Iran. Persian New Year will be on March 21, 2013.

The car industry, one of the biggest manufacturing sectors in Iran and a massive employer, has been affected dramatically; Iranian media have reported a 30 to 50 percent drop in car and component production in the past six months. Iran was the 13th-largest auto maker in the world in 2011, producing 1.6 million vehicles.

The Iran Khodro Company, the country’s leading vehicle manufacturer, had become the largest vehicle manufacturer in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa.  The company won the annual national prize for export activities in 2006 and 2007 with Russia, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Egypt, Algeria and Bulgaria among their key consumers.

But higher prices, due to the soaring costs of components as a result of the sanctions, have caused a drop in demand.

Israel's Netanyahu: Draw 'clear red line' to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons

For instance, France's Peugeot Citroen halted shipments of vehicle kits for assembly in Iran earlier this year, saying international sanctions barring transactions with the country's banking system made it difficult to obtain sales financing.

Majid, the mechanic, said he is looking for work elsewhere but it is proving very difficult. “There are not many jobs going and it is getting me more and more depressed.”

Oil sales to travel - down
The oil sector has been hit hard too.  The Iranian Labor News Agency reported that a letter on behalf of 20,000 oil workers from across the country was sent to Labor Minister Abdolreza Sheikholeslami complaining that they had not been paid in months. The letter demanded an increase to the worker’s salaries of $120 to $285 a month, adding that at the current rate they were "way below the poverty line.” 

Mohammad Reza Bahonar, a prominent Iranian member of parliament, said oil exports in June-July had dropped to "around 800,000 barrels per day," according to a report by ISNA news agency. That’s a low not seen in more than two decades, and less than half the 2.3 million barrels per day exported just a year ago.

But Minister of Petroleum Rostam Qasemi was quoted by ISNA saying that overall oil production this year "will be the same as last year."

The strangling of the economy isn’t just affecting blue-collar workers.

Middle-class Iranians had become accustomed to foreign travel – to Dubai, a playground for Iranians only an hour and half away, Turkey, one of only a few countries that does not require visa’s for Iranians, and Thailand. But the cost of travel to any of these destinations is prohibitive to many.

More Iran coverage from NBC News

Maryam, a travel agent in Tehran who also only gave her first name, estimated that the number of travelers has been halved in a year. “The price of tickets and organized tours increased almost a hundred fold. They say that this will boost domestic holidays, but I think that is even too expensive for most people.”

This was evident to me last month flying back to Tehran from London via Dubai. Usually the flight from Dubai to Tehran is jammed, but not this time. Business and first class were full with the super-rich of Iran, but 70 percent of the plane which makes up the economy class was almost empty.

Expected to get worse
Mehdi is a young entrepreneur who imports computers and accessories who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said people are just not buying in Iran right now. His biggest wish was that the value of the rial would just stay fixed against dollar – even if it was at an unfavorable rate – just so consumers would know how much things would cost in a weeks’ time, a day or even in the next few hours.

While the sanctions have certainly taken a major bite out of the economy and are hurting people from all walks of life – it does not seem to be making the government authorities buckle. If anything it seems to have stiffened the government’s resolve and things are set to become even more difficult in the not too distant future.  

Britain, France and Germany are urging their European Union partners "to further step up the pressure" on Iran. Further sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic's energy, finance, trade and transportation sectors are expected to be formally adopted on Oct. 15.

Slideshow: Everyday life in Iran

At schools, in shops, and on the streets of big cities and small towns, daily life plays out in Iran.

Launch slideshow

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A close look at pebble-filled layers of rock has convinced scientists that NASA's Curiosity rover is driving through a dried-up stream bed on Mars where water flowed vigorously billions of years ago. They say it's the kind of place that just might have supported life when the planet was young.

"This is a rock that was formed in the presence of water," Caltech's John Grotzinger, project scientist for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, said today during a televised news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The evidence is in the shape, size and composition of the rocks that Curiosity came across at multiple sites during its landing on Aug. 5. Conglomerate rocks, consisting of pebbles cemented together within layers of sediment, were seen at three sites:

• Goulburn, a bedrock formation that was exposed by the blast from Curiosity's descent.
• Link, a rock outcrop that was seen once Curiosity headed out from the landing site.
• Hottah, an uplifted slab of craggy rock that was given a visual inspection two weeks ago.

Hottah in particular showed clear evidence of rounded pebbles that were too big to be smoothed by the action of the wind. Some of the rocks are as big as golf balls. The best explanation for the gravelly pebbles was that they were eroded by the vigorous flow of water, said Curiosity science team member Rebecca Williams, a senior scientist at the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute.

The Hottah slab, which measures 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) thick, looks as if "somebody came along the surface of Mars with a jackhammer and lifted up a sidewalk that you might see in downtown LA, sort of like in a construction site," Grotzinger said.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

A closeup view of the "Hottah" rock outcrop shows the characteristic pebbly rock that is associated with the action of a flowing stream. Broken surfaces of the outcrop have rounded, gravel clasts, such as the one circled in white, which is about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) across. The rock formation was named after Hottah Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / PSI

This set of images compares the Link outcrop of rocks on Mars (left) with similar rocks seen on Earth (right). The image of Link, obtained by NASA's Curiosity rover, shows rounded gravel fragments, or clasts, up to a couple of inches (few centimeters) wide, within the rock outcrop. In accordance with the Mars mission's tradition, Link takes its name from a rock formation in Canada's Northwest Territories.

The evidence from the ground meshes well with the evidence from orbit indicating that Curiosity is near an 11-mile-wide (18-kilometer-wide) fan of material that may have washed down a channel in ancient times, when Mars was warmer and wetter, according to William Dietrich, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley.

"These stones ... are very, very revealing to us about the process," Dietrich said. Some previous research has suggested that water flowed on Mars only for brief periods, separated by long, cold, dry spells. That scenario might not have provided enough time for life to get a foothold on the Red Planet in ancient times. But Dietrich said the patterning of the channels within the fan suggested that water streamed through the area for well beyond a thousand-year time scale.

"We can step away from the idea that there was a single burst of water ... that built it all in a day," he told reporters.

Based on the size of the gravel seen by Curiosity, Dietrich estimated that the water moved at a speed of about 3 feet (1 meter) per second, at a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep.

"Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them," Dietrich said in a NASA news release. "This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.

This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover landed. Higher elevations are colored in red, with cooler colors indicating transitions downslope to lower elevations. The map highlights an alluvial fan of material, apparently issuing from a channel named Peace Vallis. The black oval indicates the targeted landing area for the rover known as the "landing ellipse," and the cross shows where the rover actually landed.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UC-Berkeley

This image shows a dry streambed on an alluvial fan in Chile's Atacama Desert, revealing the typical patchy, heterogeneous mixture of grain sizes deposited together. On Mars, Curiosity has seen two rock outcrops close to its Bradbury Landing site that also record a mixture of sand and pebbles transported by water. Scientists say the mixture was probably deposited along an ancient streambed.

So far, the scientists' conclusions are based exclusively on visual observations by Curiosity's high-resolution Mastcam imager. Further imagery, along with chemical readings from other instruments on the rover, will likely be used to fill out the story of the ancient stream bed, Grotzinger said.

The main goal of Curiosity's two-year primary mission is to assess how habitable Mars was in ancient times. That's why mission managers chose 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater as Curiosity's landing site. It has that alluvial fan, which appears to issue forth from a channel that has now officially been designated Peace Vallis. It also has a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain, known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, which could preserve billions of years' worth of Mars' geological record.

Grotzinger noted that the three requirements for habitability typically listed by astrobiologists are the presence of liquid water, the availability of an energy source (such as sunlight) and the presence of carbon-based compounds that can be used as the building blocks of life. 

"Now we've got a hall pass for the water examination," Grotzinger joked.

Theoretically, a long-flowing stream could be a habitable environment. "It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though," Grotzinger said in NASA's news release. "We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment."

Even if the rover's instruments detect the right kinds of carbon compounds, that would not serve as confirmation of ancient life on Mars. That would "have to wait for another mission," Grotzinger said.  

More from Mars Curiosity:

• See a crescent moon in Martian sky
• Curiosity touches first rock, then takes off
• Mars rover spots mini-moon's transit
• Cosmic Log archive on the Mars mission

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NEW YORK -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that a “clear red line” be set to stop Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, telling the U.N. General Assembly that with a nuclear Iran, no one in the world would be safe.

In a speech at the U.N. Thursday, Netanyahu said that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to build a bomb by next summer. He said his "red line" to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons is to stop it from accumulating that uranium -- because it would impossible to know when Iran has achieved the next step: building a detonator to fire a weapon.

At the U.N. podium, the Israeli prime minister showed a cartoon-like picture of a child's version of a bomb -- and drew a red line to illustrate his ultimatum.

He said that he and Israel appreciated President Barack Obama's statement that the U.S. also would not let Iran get a bomb -- and that he is confident that together the U.S. and Israel can chart a path together.

Palestinian leader: We seek 'nonmember' UN status 

But he was very tough on Iran, reciting a litany of terrorism by Iranian proxies around the world and saying that given Iran's aggression without nuclear weapons, if it got nuclear weapons, who'd be safe anywhere?

Richard Drew / AP

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel shows an illustration as he describes his concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions during his address to the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012.

In his speech, he also compared a nuclear-armed Iran with a nuclear-armed al-Qaida -- and said the only way to prevent war is to draw that red line against Iran accumulating enough enriched uranium to create a bomb.

Follow Andrea Mitchell on Twitter

An August report by U.N. inspectors said Iran has stockpiled 91.4 kg (about 200 lbs.) of the 20 percent material.

According to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, around 25 kg (about 55 lbs.) of uranium enriched to a 90 percent purity level would be needed for a single nuclear weapon.

Israel, believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its existence and has expressed frustration over the failure of diplomacy and sanctions to rein in Tehran's nuclear activity. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for peaceful energy purposes, not for nuclear bombs.

Obama warned Iran on Tuesday in his speech to the General Assembly that he would do what it takes to prevent Tehran from getting nuclear arms and that "time is not unlimited" for diplomacy to resolve the issue.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said this week he did not take seriously the threat that Israel could launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Ann Curry, NBC News Special Correspondent

NEW YORK – Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was one of the world's most famous political prisoners until her release two years ago.

After 15 years under house arrest, NBC News’ Ann Curry asked her Friday what her message is to other people all over the world struggling for freedom?

“It's the same struggle for everybody everywhere; because unless we are free we can't really realize our own potential. And if we can't realize our own potential we are like a crippled tree. It would be a stunted growth,” Suu Kyi replied.  

Now on a 17-day coast-to-coast tour of the United States, earlier this week Suu Kyi met President Barack Obama at the White House and received the Congressional Gold Medal for her long fight for democracy in a country ruled by army generals since 1962.

She sat down with Curry on Friday morning and discussed her emergence from house arrest, her new political role in Myanmar and what kept her going all those years.

'I just didn't know how to give up'
During her years under house arrest in the country also known as Burma, Suu Kyi was separated from her family, and unable to see her husband, British academic Michael Aris, before his death from cancer in 1999. Suu Kyi was released in late 2010 and has since joined hands with members of the former ruling junta that detained her to push ahead with political reform.

Curry asked her what sustained her over all those years?

“Well, I just didn't know how to give up,” Suu Kyi said with a smile. “I never thought of needing anything to sustain me. It never occurred to me that I should give up.”

 Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi calls for release of Russian punk band Pussy Riot

She also credited the perseverance she learned as a child from her mother and father, Aung San, a Burmese independence hero and founder of the modern Burmese army.

“I was brought up by my mother very strictly,” she said. “She always spoke about the importance of a sense of duty and if you take up something you just don't drop it.”

She said she also felt an obligation to see her father’s dream of an independent country come true.

 “My mother always brought me up to understand that my father loved his country and of course I always knew that he didn't live to see his dream come true. He died just before we regained independence. And I suppose always I wanted to realize his dream for him.”

Suu Kyi honored with Congress' highest award

Possible presidential run?
Suu Kyi won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for championing democracy in opposition to the military junta that held her under house arrest for years. 

Suu Kyi's election to parliament in April helped to transform the pariah image of Myanmar and persuade the West to begin rolling back sanctions after a year of dramatic reforms, including the release of about 700 political prisoners.

As for her house arrest, she said she learned at least one important skill during that time: how to listen.

“I learned to listen very well because I listened to the radio about five, six hours a day. And this ability to listen has stayed me- has stood me in very good stead,” she said. “It helps you to understand how people's minds work. How other people think. What their point of view is.”

Ease sanctions on Myanmar, Suu Kyi says on U.S. tour

She is confident in her country’s future – but did not rule out the possibility of ever running for president of Myanmar.

“No, if you're a politician you never rule out such a possibility,” she said.

Suu Kyi is currently in New York, where 40 years ago she worked for the United Nations. She'll then travel to Kentucky, Indiana and California to speak on campuses and meet Burmese expatriates.

See the full invterview with Ann Curry here. 

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

NEWS ANALYSIS 

CHICAGO – Now that the Chicago teachers strike has ended, it is inevitable that people will try to figure out who won and who lost. But more might be gained if we went beyond that.

What if more time were spent thinking about what students and the country gained from this strike, because it focused attention on the debate over teacher evaluations, the weight that is given to standardized tests and the growing demand for education reform?

Broken system
A lot has been said about the need to get rid of bad teachers and the union that protects them. The truth is union leaders will tell you they don’t like bad teachers, either. But the union would argue that it’s not their job to weed out bad teachers. Rather, they say, school leaders should do a better job identifying bad teachers and weeding them out.

In Chicago, according to a 2009 report by the New Teachers Project, 91 percent of teachers were rated “superior” or “excellent” by school principals. Out of the nearly 30,000 teachers in the city public school system, only a small fraction received an “unsatisfactory” rating. But with student achievement at such a low level, clearly something must be wrong with how the evaluations were being done.

So this is a good time to consider who’s responsible, in addition to teachers, for what happens in school. I spoke with several teachers on the picket line over the past few days who were concerned that they didn’t have books to start the school year. Why isn’t everyone up in arms about that? 

Other teachers told me that they were assigned to classrooms outside of their area of expertise. One woman on the picket line told me she had taught English last year but she was trained to be a gym teacher. “I just tried to help out where there was a need,” she said. 

Biggest losers of Chicago's teachers strike? The students, critic says

Does anyone really believe she is the best English teacher for Chicago kids?  

Should those students and that teacher be judged on how well she’s able to prepare them to take a standardized test?

And don’t think this is an isolated, one-of-a-kind situation.  It’s not.  You will find similar stories in schools all across this nation.

In Finland, where students far out perform American kids, they don’t take standardized tests at all. Students are measured by how well they do on their classroom work and drills.

There is a collective national will in Finland to educate all students, and there’s a plan to succeed. Finland starts by hiring the best and the brightest to teach. Finnish teachers are required to have a master’s degree and teachers come from the top 10 percent of college graduates. Compare that to the U.S., where 47 percent of America’s teachers come from the bottom third of their class, according to a 2010 McKinsey report.

Chicago teachers agree to end strike, classes to resume Wednesday

Big issue: poverty
Then there’s the issue of poverty and safety and how it affects teaching and learning.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel went to court this week seeking an injunction to force an end to the strike claiming, in part, the walkout was a threat to “public health and safety.”

As many as 87 percent of the public school children come from low-income families, according to figures from Chicago Public Schools.   

More than 90 percent of them qualify for the free or reduced breakfast and lunch program.  For many, school is where they go, not just for an education, but for food. 

It’s also where many children go to feel safe in a city stricken by far too much violence.

The teachers hit the picket line demanding money, a fair evaluation system and job security but, they also wanted more social workers in the schools to help them help children who have been traumatized living in broken homes and broken neighborhoods.

According to the Chicago Public Schools Employee Roster, there are 382 social workers in the school district that serves 350,000 students.  If my math is correct, that amounts to about one social worker for every 916 students. 

“That means social workers are doing paper work because they don’t have time to do much of anything else,” said Lorraine Forte of Catalyst Chicago, an independent newsmagazine dedicated to reporting on urban education.  

Education Nation: Get involved in our 2012 summit, Sept. 23-25

Not unique
Chicago’s school problems are not unique.  Poverty, crime and lack of resources affect schools all across the country.

Experts are quick to point out that none of these issues should be used as an excuse for failing to educate America’s children. Teachers, city leaders, policy makers and education reform advocates all agree that these factors also shouldn’t be left out of the conversation. And in fact, they aren’t – but real solutions need to be found.

Chicago has presented an opportunity for the nation to take a closer, more thoughtful look at a multitude of reasons why schools and test scores and graduation rates are lacking.  It might also inspire us to look at schools that are working to see if they could be replicated. 

That’s what we will be doing starting this Sunday when NBC launches its Third Annual Education Nation Summit.  But what’s wrong with America’s schools won’t be fixed if too much time is spent adding up winners and losers from one strike.

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Slideshow: Anger over film spreads throughout Muslim world

Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

Launch slideshow

News analysis

Updated at 7:53 a.m. ET: CAIRO — It's been just over a week since hundreds, perhaps a thousand, angry and offended Egyptians gathered outside the U.S. Embassy's gates in Cairo. They carried Islamist banners and chanted, "The only God is God and Muhammad is his Prophet."

At one point perhaps two dozen of the more brazen protesters scaled the wall and breached the embassy grounds. They lowered and destroyed the U.S. flag and raised a black, Islamic flag in its place. They fled when security guards (not the Egyptian police) fired warning shots over their heads.

This amounted to little violence, but the act itself was the psychological equivalent of taking a beachhead. Within hours reports emerged that a similarly sized group had stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Some were calling it a copycat protest, but it was much more perilous: Four Americans were killed in the melee, including the U.S. ambassador.

Within 48 hours the world would witness angry protests unfolding at U.S. embassies, businesses and symbols of power in more than 20 countries.

This paroxysm of protest — and violence — had begun in Cairo. But what, really, began there?

Much of the mainstream media has played it as a spontaneous reaction to a disgusting film clip which denigrated Muslims and happened to be made and promoted in the USA.

But New York Times editorialist Ross Douthat argued it had nothing to do with a "genuine popular backlash," but everything to do with old-style power politics. For Jim Clifton, chairman of the pollster Gallup, it wasn't about religion or politics, but rather the desperate expression of young Arab males, deeply humiliated because they couldn't find jobs.

'Political manipulation'
Egyptian analysts seem to be more in agreement: Many protesters outside the U.S. Embassy were genuinely offended by the film. But the real driving force behind the protest — in Cairo and Benghazi — were radical Islamist groups who know how to exploit rage for political gain.

"There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered," said Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian journalist. "For instance, why after two months of being on YouTube did this film suddenly explode on the anniversary of 9/11? That is political manipulation and manufactured outrage that the right wing is all too happy to use.''

Egypt issues arrest warrants for Terry Jones, Coptic Christians over anti-Islam video

By "right-wing" Eltahawy means ultra conservatives – often called Salafists – who practice a strict, puritanical form of Islam and make up the fastest-growing Islamic political and social movement in the world. On the night of the Cairo embassy attacks, the Salafists saw an opportunity to flex their muscles.

"A lot of people went to the U.S. Embassy not just because of the film, and after the film died down, it wasn't about the film anymore," Eltahawy explained. "They went because of anti-U.S. sentiment, because they know in this region how easy it is to fan the flames of anger."

Dr. Gamal Abdel Gawad, a highly respected Egyptian political analyst, agrees.

"I don't think it was spontaneous," he told NBC News. "People were gathering in one place at a certain time of day, so there was some mobilization behind it.''

Actress sues, says she was fooled into appearing in anti-Muslim movie

And it's clear to Gawad who did the mobilizing. "Radical Salafist groups orchestrated it to express their views and embarrass the [more moderate] Muslim Brotherhood because of competition between Islamic groups."

Post Arab-Spring power play
What's enfolding in Egypt – and to a large extent in Libya — is not just a series of isolated power plays. In both countries the leaders who emerged from the Arab Spring are struggling to eke out a political center in order to govern their new democracies, while under extreme pressure from more radical Islamist — sometimes jihadist — forces. Everything is still at stake.

This has led some Egyptians — like Eltahawy — to worry that their 18-month-old revolution will be hijacked by the extremists.
"I'm hoping that this right-wing drive of the past days is the dying pangs of a group that understands that the revolution was started by us, the majority, and we remain very much the majority."

Gawad is more sanguine about the future. "The revolution is over. The president is in power, and Egyptian political parties are busy preparing for elections and campaigns. The radical groups can't get significant numbers elected," he said. Still, as dramatic scenes over the past week have shown, those groups — often armed — can wreak havoc.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi seemed to give ground to the Salafists, even leaving the country at the height of a standoff between stone-throwing protesters and riot police for diplomatic meetings abroad.

Finally, last Saturday, he gave the order to clear out the protesters and appeared on TV calling on Muslims to protect foreign citizens and property. Some called it a turning point.

Now that a Paris-based satirical magazine has published cartoons of a naked Prophet Muhammad, will Egyptians respond with silent indignation, peaceful marches or be the first to storm their French Embassy?

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London and currently on assignment in Cairo. He has covered the Middle East since the 1970s.

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The first rock that NASA's Curiosity rover will touch for science's sake on Mars is a pyramid-shaped chunk that's been named in honor of a top engineer who worked on every one of NASA's rover missions — but passed away just days after Curiosity's landing.

Curiosity's study of the rock, dubbed "Jake Matijevic," will dominate the next few days of the rover's operations on Mars, just as its observations of Martian mini-eclipses dominated the past few days.

Jake the rock, which measures about 10 inches (25 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide, isn't all that exotic. It seems to consist of garden-variety basalt, similar to the first Martian rock that NASA's Spirit rover examined eight and a half years ago. And that's exactly the point, according to Caltech's John Grotzinger, project scientist for the Curiosity mission. Jake will provide a good yardstick for sophisticated instruments such as the Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer, or APXS, and the laser-zapping ChemCam analyzer.

By matching up the chemical readings from the different instruments, Curiosity's science team will be able to confirm that the findings from the fancy-schmancy ChemCam are consistent with the readings from the APXS, an upgraded version of a device that was included on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Grotzinger told reporters today that it's an opportunity to compare "something which is tried and true with the latest and greatest new technology."

ChemCam can focus on areas that are less than a millimeter (0.04 inch) wide, while the APXS' best resolution ranges around 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inch).

Grotzinger estimated that the testing could begin on Friday — which is the Martian day, or sol, after tomorrow ("solorrow," he quipped). It could take a couple of sols for the rover to reach out its 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm and use the APXS as well as the fine-resolution Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. The rover might have to back up a bit to give the rock a proper zapping with ChemCam's laser. The flashes of light from the tiny laser blasts will be analyzed by an onboard spectrometer to determine the rock's elemental composition.

Remembering Jake
Richard Cook, project manager for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, said the rock's name pays tribute to Jacob Matijevic, a leading engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was involved in NASA's rover missions since Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover in 1997. Matijevic was a Chicago native who earned his Ph.D. in mathematics and came up with the Matijevic Theorem, which was once described as "one of the most beautiful results of recent years in commutative algebra."

Matijevic's obituary in the Chicago Tribune notes that he came to JPL in 1981 and took on a variety of assignments. Eventually, he came to specialize in systems engineering for the Mars rover designs as well as rover surface operations. "He was probably one of the top one or two experts on surface operations here at JPL," Cook said.

Matijevic played a key role in the Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, which were originally planned to last just 90 days on Mars. Grotzinger recalled that Matijevic once said "if this rover lasts six months, it'll probably last six years."

"He seems to have come pretty close," Grotzinger observed.

The engineer switched over from Opportunity to the Mars Science Laboratory mission, but passed away at the age of 64 on Aug. 20, after battling respiratory problems, the Tribune reported.

Grotzinger said Matijevic would have loved dealing with the complexities involved in studying the rock that's named after him. "All that activity and all those considerations are what honor Jake Matijevic so well," he said.

The chief aim of Curiosity's two-year primary mission is to analyze Mars' geology and surface chemistry and determine whether the planet could have been potentially habitable in ancient times. After studying Jake's memorial rock, Curiosity is due to move on to an area known as Glenelg, where three types of geological formations come together.

Since its landing on Mars on Aug. 5, the six-wheeled rover has covered more than half of the quarter-mile (400-meter) distance to Glenelg, and its cameras are getting a better view of the place. Grotzinger said the pictures show thin bands of dark rock that appear to alternate with lighter-toned rock. "As we get closer in to the Glenelg area, we'll understand better and better what these areas are," Grotzinger said. Curiosity is expected to get to the area in a couple of weeks, he said.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.

This map shows the route driven by the Curiosity rover through the mission's 43rd Martian day, or sol (Sept. 19). By Sol 43, Curiosity had driven about 950 feet (290 meters). The area known as Glenelg is indicated by a red dot and label.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

A scan of the Martian terrain looking toward Glenelg reveals areas of light and dark rock.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS An animated GIF image shows Phobos crossing over the sun, as seen by NASA's Curiosity rover.

Messages from mini-eclipses
The Curiosity team is also planning to receive more pictures of the partial solar eclipses that the rover's high-resolution Mastcam system has observed over the past week. Mark Lemmon, a science team co-investigator from Texas A&M University, said close analysis of the imagery could provide insights into the interior structure of Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos.

Mastcam took hundreds of pictures when Phobos made two passes over the sun's disk, and again when Deimos made one pass. Such transits occur multiple times during a short season, and then they don't occur again for nearly one Earth year. Lemmon explained that the timing of the eclipses could be compared with past sightings to produce precise measurements of how the moons' orbits have changed due to Mars' gravitational tides.

"We can't go inside Mars, but we can use these to tell how much Mars is deformed when the moons go by," Lemmon said. "So we measure the transits very precisely [and] we get information on Mars' interior structure."

Some high-resolution images from Phobos' first transit were sent down to Earth over the weekend, but most of the imagery is still saved in the rover's computer memory on Mars, awaiting the right opportunity for transmission, Lemmon said.

Phobos and Deimos have irregular shapes, and the prevailing wisdom is that they're both asteroids that were pulled into orbit by Mars' gravitational pull. Phobos averages 14 miles (22.2 kilometers) in width, and Deimos is roughly 8 miles (12.6 kilometers) wide. Deimos circles Mars at a distance of 14,580 miles (23,460 kilometers), while Phobos is much closer (5,800 miles, or 9,400 kilometers). Phobos is gradually coming even closer to Mars, which makes the moon's orbit unstable over the long term: One of these days, it will break up into pieces and perhaps produce a ring of debris around the Red Planet.

Fortunately, that day isn't expected to come for 10 million to 15 million years. "Curiosity will be safe for a little while," Lemmon said.

More about Mars:

• How a rover on Mars is blazing a trail on Earth
• Martian moon bites into the sun
• Spheres spark new Martian mystery
• Cosmic Log archive on the Curiosity mission

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

When the Colorado fires broke out this summer, Jessica Ghawi told her mother that she wanted to donate sports gear to the children who lost their homes in the fires. 

But before she could realize her dream, Ghawi was among 12 killed on July 20 at a move theater in Auora, Colo.

Now, two months after her death, her family has connected with A Precious Child, a Colorado non-profit. Among their services for children is give SPORTS, which donates new and slightly used sports equipment to families. A perfect match for Jessica’s vision.

On a recent clear and sunny morning in Denver, volunteers gathered around a donated 18 wheeler in the Pepsi Center parking lot and held a sports gear drive.

People pulled up and donated sports equipment and money for a scholarship to pay for registration and tournament fees, equipment and other sports-related expenses.

For the Ghawi family, it was an emotional and successful day. They donated some of their daughter’s sports equipment. The Sullivan family also donated – their son, Alex, had turned 27 on the day he was killed at the theater.

By the end of the day, the nonprofit had collected 25,000 new and gently used sports equipment, $11,000 in cash and $30,000 in scholarship money to be later distributed around Colorado.

Text SPORTS to 50555 to donate $10 to the Jessica Redfield Ghawi giveSPORTS Scholarship Fund.

American missions across the Arab world tightened security on Friday in anticipation of more anti-U.S. demonstrations on the Muslim day of prayer.

Tensions flared with attacks  on U.S. embassies in Sudan and Tunisia, protests in Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, and even the torching of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Lebanon. 

Jim Maceda, veteran NBC News' Foreign Correspondent, has been reporting from Cairo on the protests triggered by an anti-Islam film for the last several days.

Is the wave of protests about more than the amateur, yet provocative, anti-Islam film? What’s really behind the anger? Maceda answered reader questions about the demonstrations earlier today. 

Replay the informative chat below. 

CHICAGO – Felicia O’Connor, a young mother with a child in tow, approached the picket line. She asked the picketing teachers if they “know how long this thing will be going on?”

She leaves for work each day before the sun comes up and said she was unaware of the late night Sunday decision by the Chicago teachers’ union to hit the bricks. 

Now she is stuck with trying to sort out childcare for her 6- year-old daughter, Michaela. She didn’t get an answer to her question from the teachers.

“They don’t know anything. I don’t know anything. We’re just out here blank and I have to go to work,” O’Connor said.

She wound up leaving her daughter in good hands at a local Boys and Girls Club for a few hours while she went out, in vain, in search of a day care. She’s already missed one day of work and hopes her employers will show some understanding.

“Education is important. If my child is not in school, getting the education she needs, you know what… I don’t know, it is just irritating right now," she said. 

Picking sides
Two days into this work stoppage by the city’s third largest school district, and one finds folks starting to choose sides.

Chicago teachers strike day two: Talks stuck on evaluations

“I haven’t had a raise in seven years,” said one middle-aged woman who walked past me as I stood watching teachers march outside the headquarters of the Chicago School Board. “They’re already making more money than I am.”

“I support the teachers because I support my kids,” said a young mother who stood and watched teachers march for a few minutes. “My daughter was in a class with more than 35 kids last year; this year it is up to 41.”

About 26,000 teachers and support staff launched a strike on Monday morning – all dressed in bright red t-shirts and carrying placards – demanding a new contract between the teacher’s union and the city’s school district.

Other parents complained about a lack of school supplies or decent air conditioning for their kids on sweltering Chicago days.

One can likely assume the longer this thing drags on, the more entrenched each side is going to get. “Day One” of the strike came with a bit of a party atmosphere. By “Day Two” on Tuesday, teachers had already started fingering the mayor and chanting, “Hey Hey Ho Ho Rahm Emanuel has got to go.”

NBC Chicago's LIVE Blog: Chicago Teachers Strike

Bigger city issues
Parents also have other concerns that are more a reflection of the city we live in. This has been a particularly deadly year on the streets of Chicago, with the homicide rate up about 30 percent from what it was a year ago. The overwhelming majority of the dead are young minorities. To give kids a "safe haven" during the strike, several churches have opened their doors. 

“There's so much violence skyrocketing in the city of Chicago. We want our kids to be in a safe place,” said Sergio Ramirez, who runs a “safe haven” in the city’s Pilsen neighborhood. 

Some 80 percent of kids in Chicago’s schools are provided with breakfast and lunch at school because they come from impoverished backgrounds. The job of teaching here, and administering an education system, has many more challenges than just ensuring kids are learning the 3Rs.

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Soybean farmer Dean Tofteland smiles at the gift of sudden rainfall on his crops in Luverne, Minn.

Covering the news occasionally produces unexpected insights, as happened when a recent assignment to document the impact of a corporate meltdown turned into a lesson on the raw realities of farming and the weather, both drought and rain.

It was mid-afternoon on a Thursday in the waning days of summer, and we were in the town of Luverne (pop. 4,745), in the southwestern corner of Minnesota.

Luverne is close to the borders of two states -- Iowa to the south and South Dakota to the west -- and about 30 miles from the city of Sioux Falls.

NBC News' senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers, our camera crew and I had traveled there to interview Dean Tofteland, a farmer of corn and soybeans who lost access to his own money when a financial firm collapsed last year. He had parked his money in a customer account, to use as a protection against fluctuations in crop prices. 

Tofteland testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee about his loss and what what it meant for his farm business, and whom he thinks should be held accountable. (All that is part of a story we intend to report for NBC Nightly News in the coming weeks.)

But on that afternoon at Tofteland's farm, something else happened: another story about the realities of farming and the weather, of drought and rain.

According to a report by the U.S. Drought Monitor released late last month, drought covers 62.9 percent of the lower 48 states. It is centered on the lower Midwestern region.

'The garden spot of Minnesota'
As I drove west across the middle of the state, from the airport in Minneapolis to Luverne on Route 212, I passed through low hills covered with corn crops. While many of the nation's farms are grappling with drought, most of the corn plants here appeared lush and green, with only isolated dried-out brown spots near the base of some stalks. 

When Tofteland called me on my cellphone to gauge my progress into town, I mentioned that to him.

"You're driving through the garden spot of Minnesota," he said. "It's probably quite beautiful. They've had a fair amount of rain up there."

NBCNews.com special: Drought of 2012

Tofteland told me it was a different story on the farms in the southern part of the state, where the drought had taken a toll.

The rolling fields of corn continued throughout most of my drive. But the closer I got to Luverne, the more brown spots I saw amid the stalks.

Slideshow: America's farmland baking in drought

/

Drought conditions plague much of the United States after a summer of scorching temperatures and a lack of rain. The dryness is affecting America's farmland, threatening crops like soybean and corn.

Launch slideshow

It was a fairly hot and humid day, so we had decided to do Tofteland’s main interview indoors, at his home, and save the outdoor shooting on his farm for later in the afternoon, when the sun and temperature were both lower (lower sun provides better light for shooting outdoor video).

Weather takes a turn
As we prepared to leave Tofteland's house at around 5 p.m. we noticed that the sky -- which had been blue and clear all day, with a hot sun -- was now turning slightly gray, with small rain clouds.  A check of a mobile weather app with radar showed only a very small blob of rain and possible lightning in the area, surrounded by clear skies.

We set out for Tofteland's farm, about 5 miles south of Luverne, where we began shooting video of the farmer inspecting his corn crops -- cap on head, glasses, striped short-sleeved shirt, jeans.

As he pulled down the sides of a few ears of corn for us, revealing the cobs underneath, it started to rain.

It was now after 6 p.m., and the rain clouds seemed to have amassed directly above Tofteland's property. They were darker gray than before, but we could still see clear sky off to the west, and the sun in its midst. We checked the weather app again. The radar showed the storm blob bigger than before, but still nothing else incoming.

We looked up at the clouds to try to discern their direction. It was difficult to tell. One moment, they appeared to be moving north and east, the next the opposite.

As it began to rain steadily, Lisa set up office in our rental vehicle to work on the "standup" part of her script -- the portion where the correspondent appears on camera in the story.

We chose to believe that it would be a passing storm. We could still see the sun right behind the edge of the clouds.

We decided to shoot some other indoor video we needed while we waited for it to clear up -- shots of Tofteland looking through financial account statements. 

Our crew, Mark Falstad and Heidi Hesse, out of Minneapolis, set up their gear in Tofteland's farm garage, where he had a workbench and various tools and farm implements.

After we finished shooting Tofteland’s documents, we turned our attention back outside. The clouds appeared to have darkened, and expanded. I looked up at one of the edges, and could see cloud parts forming outward, and outward, into masses that were not there moments before.

"This thing looks like it's really exploding," Tofteland said.

The rain began coming hard, in sheets. Ominous dark gray now dominated the sky, punctuated by frequent lightning flashes and thunder.

NBC News

Heavy rain falls on Dean Tofteland's crops in Luverne, Minn.

The sun and those tantalizing clear skies were still visible to the west, but as a sliver becoming smaller and smaller.

Then Tofteland learned that the National Weather Service had just issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the immediate area -- pretty much for the exact latitude and longitude of his farm.

Forced to sell cattle during drought, dairy farmers 'just keep praying' for rain

We had been waiting out the weather for more than an hour, and it was almost 7:30. Lisa and I were planning to drive the 3 1/2- hours back to Minneapolis that night, ahead of our flights back to Washington the next morning. We both decided to stick it out, hoping the storm would pass and we could still get the rest of our shooting done before sunset.

But it was clear to Tofteland that the storm was blowing our plans around like scattered thistles.

He felt a need to apologize for the inconvenience.

"Hey, at least it's good for your crops," we said, meaning it.

As we stood waiting inside Tofteland's garage, the rainfall ratcheted up further, first becoming torrential, then epically torrential. The winds picked up and began whipping the trees along the edges of the crops. The gray clouds had darkened further, and eventually spread to every corner of the visible sky. It clearly was not going anywhere.

"Boy -- that’s a slow-moving storm," Tofteland observed.

The water was now coming down so fast that it was far exceeding the ability of the ground to absorb it. The dirt -- now mud -- of the open space in front of the concrete garage apron began developing large puddles and streams. It had become the kind of rain that makes you wonder about rainfall totals, and possible records.

Like a boy at Christmas
That is when we started to pay close attention to Tofteland, as we realized what we were actually observing.

He was staring out the garage window, at all that rain. His eyes wide with wonder. A smile was spreading across his face. He looked like a boy confronting stacks of presents under the tree on Christmas Day.

We were witnessing a farmer getting a sudden and unexpected ride out of a serious dry spell. 

"We haven't had a storm like this in a long time," he said quietly. "This is the first one we've had all year."

"This," he said, "is a million-dollar rain."

NBC News

Buildings on Dean Tofteland's farm in Luverne, Minn., get pummeled by a late-summer downpour.

Just like that. One good, soaking rain could be a significant revenue boost for local farmers.

Tofteland explained his accounting, why and how the rainfall would boost his and other farmers' harvest of soybeans. The soybeans had been dry all summer, he said, but they can adapt to additional moisture late in the season. 

A rain such as this one, he estimated, could add two bushels of harvestable soybeans to each acre of crop. Over his 1,200 acres, that would add up to 2,400 extra bushels. At $15 per bushel, that would mean a $36,000 bonus for his farm alone. By his reckoning, those two extra bushels per acre could add up to $1 million for all the local farmers in the region's 12 townships.    

No wonder he was smiling. But his delight -- which was as much for his fellow farmers as for himself -- did not last long.

Drought sends Mississippi into 'uncharted territory'

A few minutes later, something else began falling from the sky: small, white pellets of hail, which bounced as they hit the ground.

I picked up one that had fallen close to the door: it was smooth, gray-white and about the size of a penny.

Just as suddenly as the rain had leaped in volume, so did the hail. Soon, the visible ground was covered with bouncing white pellets. And they were increasing in size.

Tofteland suddenly bolted toward a side door inside the garage, leading to an adjoining machine shed.

"Listen to this," he said. "When the hail falls like that, listen to what it sounds like in here."

The roof of the shed was metal, and what might have been hundreds or even thousands of hailstones were striking it, hard.

The sound was deafening. We had to cover our ears after a few seconds.

Drought expected to take toll at checkout

For Lisa, Mark, Heidi and I, the storm and its hail was a bit of a minor adventure, a natural event, interesting for spectators. But for Tofteland, weather events like this one held his livelihood and those of all farmers like him in their grip.

His face had darkened now. His brow was furrowed, his eyes intense, his mouth twisted into the beginnings of a scowl.  

From good to bad
While the rainfall had been good for the crops, the hail was clearly not.

"It's bad for the soybeans," he said. "Hail like this can bruise the stems and cause the pods to fall off the plants."

The best-case scenario? The hail could subtract two bushels of soybeans per acre. It could completely erase his bonus from the rain, and those of all the other farmers.

The worst-case scenario? The hail could devastate all their soybean plants.

"It could wipe out the entire crop," Tofteland said.

Somewhere in between could be a loss for Tofteland of tens of thousands of dollars.

One minute Tofteland was up, the next he was break-even, or perhaps way down. 

What Mother Nature suddenly giveth, she just as suddenly could taketh away.

Americans tell their story of #Drought2012

Tofteland continued gazing out at his fields, eyes squinting into the distance. He was like every farmer who had ever lived -- looking up at the sky, wondering whether the weather would bestow benefits or costs.

Although the National Weather Service announced that its severe thunderstorm warning would end by 7:45, this storm continued to develop past that prediction. Its clouds churned in multiple directions, and small tendrils of clouds appeared to reach down toward the ground. 

The mobile weather app's radar showed its dramatic growth, roughly centered on Tofteland’s property.

The farmer drove up the road to figure out the storm's scope, and reported back that, just a mile away, it wasn't even raining and the sky was blue.

It seemed as if this storm was his farm's own personal supercell.

The weather app showed something else: a smaller protruding part on one side of the storm.

In drought-stricken Wisconsin, farmers helping farmers

"That's bad," Tofteland said. When you see something like that, he told us, tornadoes could form.

Right about then, we realized that the thunderclaps had begun to blend together into one long continuous rumble -- not unlike the sound of a freight train.

We decided to decamp.

As we drove away, the storm still towered in the sky, a fearsome and threatening giant, its destructive potential on full display, backlit by the sun setting below the horizon.

Barely an hour later, it was gone.

When we got to a hotel in Sioux Falls, the local TV station's weather report announced its sudden formation and demise in the same breath. The full sweep of radar imagery was the visual history of its instant growth and dissipation.

When we met up with Tofteland at 6:45 the following morning to finish the shooting, the sky was clear, and the sun's early morning light carried that extra beauty that seems to come only after a huge storm has passed.

Emergency well drilling brings relief to farmers stricken by drought

The storm had formed out of nowhere and dissolved back into nowhere. But its impact was significant and permanent.

The storm's rainfall totaled between 2 and 4 inches in two hours -- a potential windfall for Tofteland’s soybean crop, possibly generating tens of thousands of dollars in extra soybeans and revenue.

The largest hail was quarter-sized and had struck his plants -- a potential loss of tens of thousands of dollars in lost soybeans and revenue.

Some of the soybean stems had bent under the onslaught of hail, and their plants were still lying flat, Tofteland reported two weeks later. Others had bounced back and were upright again. He still does not know how much­­­ of his soybean crop was permanently damaged or how many soybeans were lost.

In the end, it may have been a million-dollar rain.

But Tofteland and his fellow farmers will not know until after the harvest which side of the ledger that sudden storm will impact more, whether it will lead to a gain, a loss, or neither. And, like their counterparts across the centuries of human agriculture, they are still dependent on the vagaries of the weather from moment to moment.

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Updated, 6:43 p.m. ET: After a brief health scare earlier Thursday, former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw was back on camera at the Democratic National Convention.

Brokaw was taken to a Charlotte, N.C., hospital earlier Thursday after mistakenly taking a sleeping pill instead of an aspirin.

"I am fine. It's a cautionary tale," Brokaw told NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. "Know what you ingest. I have a daughter who's a doctor, and I'll be paying penance for a long, long time."

Brokaw was discharged later the same day and was in "great health," NBC News President Steve Capus said Thursday.

"We're immensely grateful to the team at Carolinas Medical Center for their excellent care and professionalism," Capus said in a statement.

Earlier, the network said that Brokaw "felt light-headed" on the set of the MSNBC talk show "Morning Joe," and was taken to the hospital "out of an abundance of caution."

Brokaw, 72, was said to be in good spirits while at the hospital, and even joked about his condition on Twitter, writing, “All is well. Early AM I mistakenly took a half dose of (sleep aid) Ambien and made less sense than usual. Made a better comeback than Giants...”

Chris McCumber, the co-president of USA Network, tweeted in reply, "Glad ur feeling better. We need you to suit up next Sunday to play D for #NYGiants."

Brokaw, who served as anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News" from 1982 to 2004, is the author of numerous books, including 1998's acclaimed, "The Greatest Generation."

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By Aarne Heikkila, NBC News

The first thing you notice about Blake Leeper is his megawatt smile. The second thing you notice are his prosthetic legs. Leeper was born without feet, ankles and lower leg bones, a congenital birth defect that's set him apart but never slowed him down.

This weekend, Leeper competes in the 200 meters at the Paralympics Games in London and is a top contender for gold. (He also races in the 100 meters, 400 meters and 4x100-meter relay next week.)

Although he's only been running competitively for three years, he's quickly made a name for himself.

Watch the story tonight on NBC Nightly News.

At the Boiling Point Track Classic in Windsor, Canada, in July, Leeper tied the world record in the Paralympic 100 meters with a run of 10.91 seconds. His motivation, he says, is simple. "Every time I step onto the track, whoever's in the stands, whoever's watching, I'm out to prove to them, and prove to myself that I've done it, I've accomplished something great."

NBC News

From left, cameraman Carlos Rigau, Blake Leeper, producer Aarne Heikkila, and correspondent Miguel Almaguer.

Accomplishing the seemingly impossible is nothing new for Leeper. He played basketball and baseball growing up and seems to get pleasure in proving the doubters wrong.

"At birth the doctors said I would never even walk," he says with a grin. 

It is natural to compare Leeper to fellow double below-knee amputee Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, who has blazed trails in competing against able-bodied athletes, most recently at the Olympic Games in London.

At their first head-to-head meeting at the 2011 Paralympic world championships in New Zealand, Leeper came up short, but his coach, Joaquim Cruz, was impressed by what he saw.

'Meet the Superhumans': Paralympians burst onto world stage 

"(Blake) was right there competing with the giant. He wasn't intimated by the world record holder, he just went to compete, and I said, 'I can work with that.'"

Cruz is optimistic about Leeper's chances in London, but no matter the outcome, he says, Blake's already proven to have the heart of a champion.

"This is a kid who not too long ago was not able to run at all," says Cruz. "They gave him a set of legs and three years later, he's breaking world records."