by Ann Curry, NBC News

SOMEWHERE IN CHAD -- Our NBC News team has landed in Africa and is again heading to the edge of Darfur, gearing up to report a pivotal moment in this tragedy.

Anytime now the International Criminal Court will announce whether to issue an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan for the atrocities in Darfur, a region of Sudan.

About six years after a war between the government of Sudan and a rebel group unleashed systematic rapes, mass killings, and the burning of hundreds of villages, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions are still waiting in camps in Sudan and Chad, waiting for hope and justice.

As our news team moves from planes to vans toward this world of desperation, I think of a woman named Myriam, who survived the burning of her village called Tamajour, just two days before we found her under a tree.  Her 5-year-old daughter was traumatized and refusing to eat.  When we took her back to her village to salvage what she could, it was still smoldering.  The only life she had ever known was in ashes.

I think of Khamis, 13-year-old orphaned when his mother was killed and his father was lost in an attack.  When we last saw him, he was a boy alone, surviving on his wits and the kindness of others in a refugee camp.  Still he was able to be a good student in the camp's school.

I think of Aziza, raped as a virgin at 17, by an Arab wearing a Sudanese uniform. She said he first wanted to know what tribe she belonged to.  He told her, "You are black.  You have no place here.  We will push you out of here.  This land will remain for us."  Then he grabbed her tightly and raped her, biting her arm and neck to mark her a victim of rape.

In the hospital, we found elderly Gida Zakaria, severely burned when her thatched roof was set on fire. White gauze was wrapped around her slender body. She told us her husband couldn't move fast enough and was burned to death.

Photo: Six-year-old Khalid (left) recovers at a hospital after a Janjaweed attack, flanked by his mother and sister. Click here to see more photography by the NBC News team and Ann Curry during a 2006 trip.

In a nearby room, a young man lay motionless, both his eyes bayoneted.  At his side, his wife was weeping and his children sat stunned.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has argued Sudan's President Omar al Bashir masterminded genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur and should be brought to justice. 

What will the court decide?  And what do the victims have to say about it?

Who more deserves a voice than the victims of atrocities?

Ann Curry will be filing reports for Nightly News, TODAY, and msnbc.com this week. Click here to read her 2006 blog entries. Follow her Twitter feed here.

By Robert Bazell, NBC News Chief science correspondent

We'll have a report Monday night on Nightly News on some of the implications for health care in the economic stimulus package that was just passed by Congress and that President Obama is expected to sign into law Tuesday. So how do you know what is in a 500 page bill that was written, passed in different versions by the House and Senate, reconciled by conference and then passed again by both houses, all in a matter of weeks?
 
You can try it yourself.  Go to the Library of Congress's search service called THOMAS at http://thomas.loc.gov (named after Thomas Jefferson). Click on "bill number" and type in H.R. 1. It does not allow for a more direct link from here. But once you get there you can see summaries of the bill from the Congressional Research  Service as well as a copy of the entire piece of legislation.
 
For an estimate of the cost of the legislation you can get the report to Congressional leaders from the Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9989/hr1conference.pdf
 
As so often happens with the reports we prepare for the Nightly News, we can't cover all the ground we want.  A couple of things we left out which we hope to cover in future reports:  The bill stops some cuts in funding for training of doctors and other medical professionals that had been mandated by the Bush Administration.
 
It also pays out $1.1 billion for further studies of the effectiveness of various therapies.  Betsey McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York who now works for a think tank, doesn't like this at all. Ms. McCaughey played a key role in helping to defeat the Clinton attempt at health reform in 1993 and 1994. She recently wrote a column on Bloomberg.com claiming that this research will be the first step toward allowing the federal government to "monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective."
 
It is a curious argument because almost everyone involved in health care reform believes that unless we bring costs under control, there simply will be less health care available for almost everyone.  And the main way to control costs is to learn what treatments truly are "appropriate and cost-effective."  But as I said, we will cover this issue in more detail at a future date.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

Although I know people who are enjoying a day off, or returning from ski vacations, we hardy souls are here on the job today: the few, the proud...with no other plans, and a total dedication to work. Since you were kind enough to come to the blog (during what is likely a day off for you, too), I wanted to reward you by bringing to your attention a few notable items from the web and publications. From one societal sidebar to another, to the political to the emotional. I hope you had a safe and happy Holiday weekend. We're actually happy to be here to prepare tonight's broadcast, and we hope you can join us.

By Janet Shamlian, NBC News correspondent

You have to WANT to get to Battle Mountain.  The northern Nevada town is just off Interstate 80, but only after you've logged considerable car time with an hour or more between exits. Producer Martha Caskey flew from Los Angeles to Reno and then drove 200 miles east. I landed in Salt Lake City and headed 300 miles west--most of it desert and all without the benefit of satellite radio! With mountain ranges in every direction and a sunset for the ages, it was a stunning if quiet ride.

It's been called a recession boom town. Battle Mountain's three thousand residents don't love the term but acknowledge these ARE good times. At least right now. While layoffs and foreclosures plague so many cities, there have been few of either here. New homes are sprouting and if the Owl Café's lunch crowd is any indication, people are spending.

So what's the secret? As you can see in Monday night's Nightly News report, Nevada may be the Silver State, but Battle Mountain is all about gold. This is mining country and with an ounce topping 900 dollars, there's no down time. They're running hard and even have a few jobs open at salaries averaging 65-thousand a year.

It's a fun place to be these days, as we witnessed from the all-you-can-eat 'crab feed' on a Saturday night. Who says you can't get fresh seafood in the desert? They flew in thousands of pounds for a fundraiser and sold out every last ticket. It was quite the party. And yet this is town of realists. They've seen the cycle before and know it's just a matter of time before their fortunes change. When the nation recovers the price of gold will, inevitably, decline. And so too will the boom for Battle Mountain.

                 
                                                           Janet Shamlian/NBC News   
                      Workers prepare crab flown in for an all you can eat 
                      party in Battle Mountain, Nevada.

by Lester Holt, NBC News anchor

The commuter plane crash investigation is already generating lots of important clues. Between this writing and the time we go on the air tonight the NTSB will provide another briefing, but we have already learned the crew was using autopilot at the time of the accident, which, as it now turns out, may have violated the airline's rules regarding flying into severe icing conditions.

by Lester Holt, NBC News anchor

Just a few weeks ago, I was standing in front of a camera along the Hudson River, reporting on efforts to retrieve that ill-fated US Airways Airbus from the frigid water off New York. I remember remarking to a colleague how lucky we were to be reporting on this "miracle" water landing in which everyone survived, and how close we came to reporting instead from behind a police line with smoldering wreckage behind us.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

In the first moments after first word of last night's crash, there was an unbelievable amount of information available on the internet. Within minutes, I could trace the flight path from Newark to the loss of radar contact, at about the location of the final five-mile "marker" where the aircraft was slated to turn on its five-mile final approach. I was able to find the precipitation in the area and the temperature aloft, as well as its last known airspeed. I was also able to pinpoint the location of impact, based on what I was hearing from our local station. All of us who travel frequently in the Northeast and elsewhere have flown on board that aircraft type, and will continue to. What I could not do, sitting at my laptop last night...was change the outcome, or save any of those souls who were lost last night. One of the passengers, known to several of us here for her work on behalf of 9-11 families (following the loss of her own husband that day) will be profiled by Tom Brokaw on our broadcast tonight. We mourn all of them.

I hope you have a good weekend. I hope you can join us for tonight's broadcast.

By George Lewis, NBC News correspondent

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

Until this afternoon, the buzz of the web and media world was the Joaquin Phoenix moment last night on Letterman...which I happened to be watching as it aired, in all of its strangeness.  If it was a Kaufman-esque send-up, it does beg the point. Then actual news took over the afternoon conversation, with this piece and word that President Obama has lost another Cabinet nominee. We're putting it all together for tonight, and we hope you can join us.

By Pete Jeary, NBC News, London

Serendipity - the ability to make fortunate discoveries by accident. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it tastes all the better.

On Christmas Eve, I decided on a whim to book a cheap flight with a discount airline for the miserable, dark days of  February. I had finally decided to get some snow, because for the past decade in southern England there had not been any appreciable snowfall.

I think of my carbon footprint, and consider myself an ethical traveler, but with each leg of the flight costing just one British penny (less than one and half cents) it was too good an offer to miss. Round-trip from London to Norway for three cents? Yes Please!

A few days before the trip I searched online for details of my destination - Sandefjord in southern Norway. Instead of the couple of hits I expected, there were dozens of news stories about the place. They mostly pointed to one man - Geir Skeie.

Geir had just won the prestigious Bocuse d'Or competition in Lyon, France. Held every two years, it's considered the Olympics of Haute Cuisine. Geir had placed first among 24 chefs from around the globe… and his headquarters were in Sandefjord.

So taking advantage of my cheap flight, I arranged to meet Geir just a few days after his victory. It almost didn't happen because the day before I was set to fly, southeast England slid to a halt after the heaviest snowfall in nearly 20 years. But thankfully by Tuesday the runways were clear and my flight took off just fifteen minutes late.

Sandefjord is a charming town that thrived in the first half of the twentieth century on the whaling industry. There's a whaling museum and an old whaling ship docked in the harbor. But nowadays one of the harbor's biggest attraction is the Solvold restaurant, workplace of Geir Skeie and his mentor, Odd Ivar Solvold.

Geir told me that his recipe for success at the Bocuse d'Or was to keep things pure and simple. He chose comparatively plain versions of the two ingredients that every chef had to prepare: Aberdeen Angus beef and Norwegian cod. Geir decided the judges would prefer to taste the meat rather than be wowed by novelties: "They don't want all these knickknacks" he said. And he was right.

His friend, the restaurateur Odd Ivar Solvold, said he thought Norway would never be famous as a gastronomic paradise, although Norwegian chefs have won the Bocuse d'Or four times. Only the French have won more. He told me Norwegian chefs were free to take inspiration from around the world and were not bound by French, Italian or American traditions.

But there may be a fishy secret to Norway's success - the cod.

Both men told me that Norwegian cod is the best in the world. It's widely considered to be the National Fish of Norway and holds a special place in most kitchens. With the shortage of other fresh produce during the long winter months, chefs are obliged to find interesting ways of cooking and preparing the fish. Odd Ivar believes being so familiar with one of the main ingredients will always give Norway's chefs a competitive advantage.

And just how good is Norwegian cod? Well, the chefs at the Solvold restaurant prepared me one of their favorite dishes: poached cod with an Italian tapenade. I am not a great gourmet, but (as my expanding waistline testifies) I like my food. And, honestly, this cod tasted like nothing I have ever tasted before. Perhaps that's not much coming from someone raised on traditional English fish and chips. But believe me, it's not often that food makes me cry.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

This is a gem -- and how often can we say this: an essay by Fidel Castro on Rahm Emanuel. It must be read to be believed -- and even though our in-house Castro expert says it has the ring of authenticity -- many won't believe it even after reading it. And if you wish, here are a few others.  From February 4, 2009.  From February 5, 2009.

We're back from Washington and we hope you can join us tonight.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

From last night's Presidential news conference: a detail some of the live blogs and today's write-ups missed: the rare presence of a teleprompter for the President's opening remarks. It was further noted that both screens were lowered for the q and a portion. Most Presidents have read their opening statements from paper copy on the lectern.

It was interesting upon exiting our interview with Treasury Secretary Geithner to walk down the hallway and see the various oil portraits of the modern era former Secretaries of the Treasury. There was Larry Summers (currently employed) and Bob Rubin (currently not) whose name is likely to come up tomorrow on the Hill as the nation's biggest bankers come here to face the music before Congress. Won't it be fun to see if any of them fly to DC by private jet?

The best painting in the building? Alexander Hamilton. It hangs over Geithner's fireplace.

Because the market is tanking, I've just been informed that we're doing an NBC News Special Report at 4pm Eastern, after the closing bell.

We hope you can join us tonight from Washington.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

We're still talking about the Grammys here today: strong start by U2 -- the album will be huge. Loved Coldplay, loved McCartney, and how lucky is Dave Grohl? I love Adele but she needs to lose the gum. Loved the USC Trojans with Radiohead (anyone remember "Tusk"?). Loved the Rap Pack despite some obvious tension on stage. M.I.A. looked a bit like she was about to pollinate a flower. You've got to give her credit for working so hard -- an Amy Poehler-like appearance about as late in a pregnancy as you can get. It has to be some sort of Grammy record. Allison Kraus and Robert Plant (a superb recording) certainly shocked a lot of people. So did Katy Perry riding in on a banana. Guess we now know where Chris Brown was. Still deciding what to think about Kanye's new hair -- Whitney's appearance was a heart-stopping moment. Overall, compared to years past, I thought it was a good live broadcast, and it's now clear that a British invasion was underway last night.

Now to the hard part: tonight's broadcast has the President on the road, high tension in Washington (where we'll be on the air with his press conference tonight) A-Rod in the news (for an awful reason) and Sully and crew interviewed in our studio. It's a lot on a busy Monday night and I hope you can join us.

by Lester Holt, NBC News anchor

We're a week away from the beginning of Spring Training, and the baseball world has already been tossed upside down with word that one of its biggest stars may have been using steroids.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

Developments on two threads we've been following: first Andy Card said this about the dress code in the Oval Office and then Joe Klein took his weapon from its holster and wrote this.  Not helping the Bush forces is this photo.  But then President Obama got a new jacket not found in stores. And about our dwindling list of Presidential perks not yet enjoyed by the new President: on Saturday, the First Family is going to Camp David. Wait 'til the President discovers the driving range -- with the cool mechanism that automatically feeds you a new golf ball from underground each time you hit one. Not to mention skeet shooting, cabins each named after a different kind of tree, and extraordinarily crisp and attentive U.S. Navy and Marine personnel to cater to your every need. It's a cool place.

It's been an eventful week, and we'll bring it to a close with tonight's broadcast. We hope you can join us. Have a good weekend.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

As you know, as I've pointed out in this space, I've been tracking the accouterments the President hasn't yet taken advantage of. The big three: Marine One, Air Force One, and Camp David. By the end of this day, two will be off the list. He's taking his first trip outside Washington tonight to Richmond, Virginia. That means two flights on the helicopter (White House to Andrews AFB and back) and two on Air Force One (Andrews to Richmond and return). Sadly for us, it happens right around our airtime tonight -- so any press pool video will take a while to get on the air. If the press of news tomorrow night doesn't crowd it out, we'll try to revisit it. In the meantime, we'll be watching. We are crammed with news tonight: from Sully to Obama to Springsteen to Bill Gates -- and we hope you can join us for the broadcast.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

One of our trips to Iraq was near the height of the insurgency. I remember visiting U.S. Army outposts in the countryside -- and seeing all the various inventive, ingenious and ultimately tragic ways that our troops were forced to defend their own vehicles against IED's and incoming fire. I saw Kevlar vests used as makeshift armor on the doors of "thin-skinned" (non-armored) Humvees. I saw the sandbags and steel plate that some units were placing around the roof gun turret -- which made our machine gunners such easy, inviting targets. When you go back to Iraq these days, you see the "up-armored" Humvees, the M-Raps, all the steps D.O.D. has taken to save lives since the gruesome lesson they learned in the insurgency. Today these memories were triggered by this report in USA Today. It brought back two quotes I remember from the war. The first was from Lt. Gen. William Wallace, who I accompanied to one of Saddam's palaces just two days after the fall of Baghdad, and who famously said of the Iraqis who were shooting at the invading Americans, "The enemy we are fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed...we didn't know they would fight like this." Talk about living in infamy.

The other quote came from my late friend and retired 4-Star U.S. Army General Wayne Downing -- who secretly relished the time we spent stranded south of Najaf early on in the war, on board a grounded Chinook helicopter. Wayne said then and often, "there's no one more resourceful than an infantryman." Wayne no doubt made those remarks while fashioning a high-frequency radio transmitter out of a used MRE pouch and a roll of duct tape. The USA Today article gave me reason to remember all of this today, just as I make a point each day to remember the Americans in uniform who serve there...and elsewhere...every day.

Back to present day: We heard from Dick Cheney today and Joe Klein promptly told him where to go.  Obama's battles continue, and we'll have all of it tonight. We hope you can join us.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

It is a hallway I first walked down in 1979 as a White House intern. I have visited during all the administrations since, and again today the walk from the West Wing press room to the Oval Office felt different -- it already bears the stamp, the mood, and the temperament of the new administration.

The Oval Office doesn't appear to be "lived in" yet. While it was taken over by television technicians and aides, the President's desk had been swept of papers, there are no trinkets, none of the traditional family photos on the top of the credenza behind the desk.

A visitor is left with the impression that the room is used for meetings and official business -- but I'm guessing the President has come to prefer either his upstairs office or the "hideaway" suite that adjoins the Oval Office. It is clear that the press of business has prevented a whole lot of "settling in." Entering his third week as President, he's yet to fly in the helicopter, on board Air Force One... he's yet to see Camp David. Purely as a study of varying styles over the years, it was interesting to watch him move down the hallway, past the Oval to the Cabinet Room, then back into his secretary's office -- along the way making comments to his ever-present aides.

It was interesting as well to see how the tenor of the place has affected the bearing of the Secret Service agents on post throughout the West Wing -- both uniformed and plain-clothed. This is the first time I'd seen the President (to speak to him) since he'd become President -- the first time I'd seen his old campaign aides since they've become White House Aides. Today's twin departures were an unwelcome development and the President reflected that in his comments to me. He took the blame directly. We will air it tonight from Washington. We certainly hope you can join us.

VIDEO: Click to watch the full interview

 By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

For the second year in a row, the Super Bowl was actually a great football game--and congratulations to Steeler Nation.
As for my cursory review of this year's commercials: you could tell we're in a recession. I thought the Avon commercial before the game was an absolutely brilliant appeal to entrepreneurial women in a bad economy. It's a company I remember from my childhood (my mother buying products from the "Avon Lady" down the street) that has kept changing and modernizing and has found a way to market itself in this climate. Our small focus group liked the Pepsi "Forever Young" spot--and I laughed out loud at the Diet Pepsi "I'm Good" counterpart. The E-Trade talking baby was huge again this year. Since I loathe the current trend of trying to copy the feel of the great NBC show "The Office," I thought the Doritos crystal ball ad needed to find a theme of its own. Danica was...interesting. Always is. The Clydesdales are always interesting. The whole 3D thing left our family feeling like we'd missed a memo somewhere. Does every household have a pair of 3D glasses sitting around in the kitchen drawer? Where were we supposed to get them? Bruce proved again why he's the hardest-working man in show business with a great 12-minute concert at halftime. No one on E Street has lost a step since we first got to know them. It's always a great American tradition, and last night was a great show. Since Monday means returning for work...so it goes. I hope you had a good weekend, and we hope you can join us tonight.