Damir Sagolj / Reuters, file

A North Korean child suffering from malnutrition rests in a bed in a hospital in Haeju, September 30, 2011

Months before the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, an array of UN food experts and nonprofit groups urged immediate food aid for the isolated north Asian nation. Three groups that investigated conditions in the country described the urgent need for food, reporting “acute malnutrition” among North Korean children, “widespread consumption of grass” and elderly people on “knife edge.”

Despite these dire assessments, and warnings that conditions are worsening, the Obama administration has balked on a decision over food aid for the isolated Asian nation. This week, just as promising talks were under way in Beijing between U.S. and North Korean envoys, the news broke that Kim had died. That change put the question of aid on the back burner again.

“We need to see where (the North Koreans) are and where they go as they move through their transition period,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland addressing questions about food aid on Tuesday. “We will obviously need to reengage at the right moment, but… we haven’t made any internal decisions here.”

Some provisions of a food aid deal that was purportedly being discussed in Beijing surfaced in South Korean press reports. The United States would provide 240,000 tons of high-protein biscuits and vitamins — 20,000 tons a month for a year, the reports said – targeting North Korea’s most vulnerable people — pregnant and lactating women, children, and hospital patients. Nuland would not confirm these reports.

The terms that were under discussion, she said, were related to monitoring to ensure the food reached its intended recipients, and “the kinds of food aid that we would consider if the conditions were right and if the right decisions were made.”

Eating bark, grass
Meanwhile, there is substantial evidence of a growing food crisis for millions who live in the countryside, beyond the relative comfort of Pyongyang, researchers and humanitarian groups say.

“What we saw… was extensive chronic malnutrition and cases of acute malnutrition, which is where the person is basically dying,” said David Austin, director of the North Korea program for Mercy Corps., one of five nonprofits dispatched to investigate the situation in February.

“More than 50 percent of people who are reliant on (state-provided grain) were out seeking out alternative food—things like bark, wild grass, and leaves—and mixing it in with food. We found there was no protein or fat in people’s diets.”

The mission was undertaken at the request of the federal government’s humanitarian aid agency, USAID after North Korea called for international food aid in January. Their report and a strong recommendation to proceed with the food aid went to USAID in April.  

When Austin returned to North Korea in September, he says he learned that government grain rations had been cut by more than half to about 150 grams per day.

“That’s basically (the equivalent of) one potato,” he said.

In addition to the report by the U.S. group of nonprofits, two other groups—one made up of UN agencies and a group representing five European nonprofits—came to the same conclusions.

Marcus Noland, senior fellow and Asia expert at Peterson Institute for International Economics, said data support the eye witness reports.

“The price (of grain) is rising rapidly. That’s bad news,” said Noland. “Normally after the fall harvest, there’s plenty of food, so the price goes down, and then it starts spiking in the late spring -- the so-called ‘lean season.’ This year the prices have basically continued rising right through the harvest… because there isn’t enough food in the country.”

The price is also rising on corn, and coal, which used by many North Koreans to heat their homes, he said.

Since last spring, humanitarian groups have been pressing the U.S. government to step in, as it has before, as a major contributor to North Korean aid needs. The last U.S. food handouts ended in March 2009, when North Korea expelled U.S. aid groups that were monitoring the distribution. Shortly afterwards, the North conducted long-range rocket and nuclear tests that prompted tough international sanctions.

Even though Pyongyong politics are opaque and in flux, not everyone agrees with U.S. “wait and see” posture on food.

“As far as we understand, the North Koreans have not withdrawn their request for food aid,” said Austin. “But the U.S. government has continued to delay its decision. We think there is a humanitarian need that must be answered. Children are dying.”

And some observers argue that the transition may present an opportunity to test the waters with Pyongyang’s newly named leader, 27-year-old Kim Jong Un.

“The fiscal price tag for 240,000 tons is not that big, so it seems to me as a conciliatory gesture at the beginning of this new leadership, you have more to gain than lose,” said Noland of the Peterson Institute. “This guy could turn out to be even crazier or more brutal than his father or grandfather…. But it strikes me that given the circumstances the downside risk of moving forward is very low, compared to the ill will from backtracking.”

What officials are not making explicit is how the food aid is linked to concessions from Pyongyang, such as promise to halt its uranium enrichment program or to resume six-party nuclear disarmament talks, which ground to a halt three years ago.

Food for nukes?
From the point of view of humanitarian groups, aid should completely independent of politics.

“We don’t want to see the humanitarian principals linked to things such as giving up nuclear weapons,” said Austin of Mercy Corps. “It undermines the moral authority of both.”

The State Department maintains that U.S. humanitarian assistance should not be politicized, but merely compliment U.S. foreign policy.

So, coincidentally – or not -- when U.S. humanitarian envoys were discussing food aid with the North Koreans in Beijing over the weekend, the U.S. nuclear nonproliferation envoy was also holding talks in the Chinese capital. According to the AP report, sources close to negotiations said the food aid talks with North Korean officials in Beijing “yielded a breakthrough on uranium enrichment.”

Food aid that is dependent on nuclear concessions is not fated to go far in Pyongyang during a leadership transition. North Korea watchers say that the anointed leader, who lacks the stature of his father or grandfather, is likely under immense pressure to prove his bravado to the military establishment, not compromise on defense issues.

The Obama administration has its own politics considerations. Without securing progress on nuclear disarmament, providing aid to North Korea may become bludgeon for Republicans to use against him in an election year.  

“If you were the Obama administration and looking at this situation with the North Koreans," Noland said, "are you going to expend any political capital on these guys? You’ve got other issues... Do you want to take on dealing with North Korea in Congress? The answer is no.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The plight of women in Egyptian society has been well documented over the years. From enduring daily sexual harassment to being marginalized from politics … being a woman in Egypt has been and is tough.

But there was something about the video of soldiers stripping and dragging women in the street and ferociously attacking them that has triggered public outrage here. Even as their bodies lay motionless on the concrete, the soldiers repeatedly beat them over and over …

On Tuesday, Egyptian women fought back and by doing so, pro-democracy activists say, they lifted the spirit of their cause and their country.

Thousands of women took to the streets of downtown Cairo, walking on the same Tahrir streets where days earlier they had been beaten, arrested and dragged.

PhotoBlog: Egyptians rally to protest treatment of women 

They wore black and held signs that read “mourning.” They were protesting abuse by soldiers, not just over the past few days but over the past several months, which included alleged “virginity tests” against female detainees, sexual intimidation and harassment.

The women were from all walks of life. Young and old, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor walked shoulder to shoulder.

Niveen Redha, an Egyptian woman living in Canada and visiting Egypt, joined the march to denounce the military crackdown on protesters and women over the past few weeks.

Others called on people watching the march wind through the streets to join them, shouting, “It could be your sisters and mothers that will be attacked next.”

'True protectors'
As the women marched around central Cairo, men formed a human chain around them, making sure no one could disrupt their march.

On more than one occasion men came up to me and said of the obviously peaceful protesters, “look at these thugs” -- a sarcastic rebuke to the ruling military council, which has tried to paint the pro-democracy protesters as lawless thugs.

One man said the “noble women of Egypt are the true protectors of the revolution” and called on the men of Egypt to “shave their mustaches” – telling someone to shave his mustache is often considered an insult in this patriarchal society.

Images of a veiled woman being beaten and stripped on the street, exposing her upper body down to her bra, have fueled the determination of pro-democracy activists calling on the military council to hand power immediately to a civilian government. The video and the images from Saturday’s crackdown have drawn strong condemnation from the UN and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people," she said Monday.

Sexual threats
Ghada Kamal was one of the women assaulted on Friday. For three weeks she was part of an “Occupy Cabinet” protest outside the prime minister’s office. The protesters there wanted to prevent the military-appointed prime minister from entering his office. On Friday, the military entered the encampment and attempted to break up the protest.

The 28-year-old pharmacist was dragged away by soldiers who kicked her in the face, groped her and clubbed her head with a baton. While she was in military custody, she said, a soldier taunted her by saying, “We will have a party with you today and show you how much of a man I am.”

Such accounts are common among women who are detained by the military. Human rights organizations also have documented cases of women being given forced virginity tests.

In the face of mounting domestic and international criticism, the military said in a statement Tuesday on the Supreme Council of Armed Forces Facebook page that it apologizes to the women of Egypt and said it had the deepest respect for them and their right to protest and to participate in political life during Egypt's transition to democracy. It added that the military would investigate and hold to account all of those responsible for these violations.

The recent military crackdown has united Egypt’s political forces in demanding a quick transfer of power to a civilian government. The closest thing to a civilian government taking shape in Egypt is the lower house of parliament. Two-thirds of that body has been elected, and the final round of elections is expected in early 2012.

But the military says that until then, it has no plans to concede power.

When Egypt's uprising began 10 months, pro-democracy activists trusted the military would protect the revolution. Now that trust is all but gone.

Sabah Arar / AFP - Getty Images

Iraq's former premier Iyad Allawi during a press conference in Baghdad in October, 2009.

A leading Iraqi politician has accused the country's prime minister of acting like Saddam Hussein in trying to silence opposition, saying he risks provoking a new fightback against dictatorship.

Iyad Allawi -- a former prime minister who leads the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc -- also claimed the United States had pulled out its troops "without completing the job they should have finished."

Allawi said that the current premier, Nuri al-Maliki, had used fabricated confessions to demand the arrest of the country's Sunni Muslim vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi.

Al-Hashemi, who has taken refuge in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, denies allegations he ordered bombings and shootings against his opponents. The move against him, on the very day U.S. troops left the country, threatens to upset a balance among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.

Speaking to Reuters two days after the final departure of the U.S. forces that ended Saddam's Sunni-dominated rule, Allawi called for international efforts to prevent al-Maliki, who is a Shiite, from provoking renewed sectarian warfare of the kind that killed tens of thousands in the years after Saddam fell in 2003.

"This is terrifying, to bring fabricated confessions," Allawi said shortly before leaving the Jordanian capital Amman to return to Iraq. "It reminds me personally of what Saddam Hussein used to do where he would accuse his political opponents of being terrorists and conspirators."

• Arrest order for Sunni VP in Iraq raises tensions

"We fear the return of dictatorship by this authoritarian way of governing. It's the latest in a build-up of atrocities, arrests and intimidation that has been going on a wide scale," said Allawi, who comes from the Shiite Muslim majority but who has drawn support heavily from disaffected Sunnis.

As prime minister for 10 months under U.S. occupation in 2004 and 2005, Allawi was accused of revealing an authoritarian streak himself. He later led the Iraqiya bloc to first place in last year's parliamentary election but ended up joining a coalition headed by al-Maliki, who retained the premiership.

• For 'the Sheik,' US pullout is cause for alarm

He said he would now try to unseat the prime minister in the legislature: "We have to make a move to bring about stability to the country by trying to find a substitute to Maliki through parliament," said Allawi, who repeated allegations that Shiite Iran is seeking control in Iraq now that U.S. forces have left.

"Maliki has crossed all red lines and Iraq is now facing a very, very serious and very difficult situation," he said.

'Very heart of democracy'
"We are watching events unfolding which are aimed at the very heart of democracy and stability," he added. "The Americans have pulled out without completing the job they should have finished. We have warned them that we don't have a political process which is inclusive of all Iraqis and we don't have a full-blown state in Iraq."

"We want to resolve issues between Iraqis in a peaceful way and we want to bring stability. Iraqis should fill the vacuum, rather than anybody else," Allawi said, in a reference to his view Iran is intent on filling a vacuum left by U.S. troops.

Iraq sits on a sectarian, Sunni-Shiite faultline that is generating conflict throughout the region, notably between Iran and Sunni-ruled Arab states like Saudi Arabia. While the overthrow of Saddam in Iraq bolstered Shiites, the uprising against Iran's Syrian ally President Bashar al-Assad could lead to power in Damascus shifting toward Syria's Sunni majority.

"The rise of sectarianism is already there," Allawi said. "We are witnessing the beginning of it and the influences of what is happening in the region is only adding fuel to the fire. My fear is that the Iraqi people will lose faith in the political process and sectarianism will prevail.

"Unless the international community and the region get involved and unless sense prevails, Iraq is heading towards a very big conflict."

Also Tuesday, al-Hashemi told a televised news conference that he has not committed any "sin" against Iraq and also described the charges as "fabricated." He accused al-Maliki of being behind a plot to smear him and declared that efforts at national reconciliation had been blown apart.

"I'm shocked by all these things," al-Hashemi told reporters in the northern city of Irbil. "I swear to God that al-Hashemi didn't commit any sin or do anything wrong against any Iraqi either today or tomorrow and this is my pledge to God."

He said the arrest warrant was a campaign to "embarrass" him. He blamed al-Maliki, although he did not say specifically what he believed the Shiite premier had done.

"Al-Maliki is behind the whole issue. The country is in the hands of al-Maliki. All the efforts that have been exerted to reach national reconciliation and to unite Iraq are now gone. So yes, I blame al-Maliki," he said.

The Iraqi prime minister effectively runs the Interior Ministry, where the charges originated.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

NBC News

Sadaf Rahimi, in pink, throws a punch with her older sister, Shabnam, in the background on Dec. 17, 2011. They are working out in the Ghazi Stadium in Kabul, Afghanistan.

KABUL – It was known as the stadium of death. Ghazi Stadium was where the Taliban held public executions, stonings and mutilations during their brutal rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. This once blood-soaked pitch is now a field of dreams. 

The stadium was recently reopened after a U.S.- funded refurbishment and thousands of Afghan athletes gathered to celebrate the event.

It is impossible to forget the dark history of this arena, but Mohammed Sabher Sharifi is determined to move on.  

"There were many people killed, especially women. Now it is for the young generation of sportsmen, especially the females,” Sharifi said Sunday as he pointed toward an Olympic flag which stands next to the Afghan flag and will remain there until the 2012 games.

As a member of the Afghan National Olympic committee and coach of the women's boxing team, Sharifi faces a daunting task. He wants to create a winning team of female boxers.

Every afternoon, in the basement of Ghazi Stadium, in a small, dusty room with battered punch bags and cracked mirrors he oversees 20 teenage girls, as they jump, jog, jab and thrust.

Shah Marai / AFP - Getty Images

Afghan boxing coach Sabher Sharifi trains girls as they take part in a boxing training session at the Ghazi Stadium in Kabul in January 2011.

Photoblog: Young Afghan women at boxing training session in Kabul

"Yes, you see, the girls, they can do anything – and look at their strong punches!” he exclaimed.

The young Afghan boxers arrive at practice fully covered, looking like demure young ladies, but within 10 minutes of starting their rigorous workout, their headscarves are cast off, and they look like sportswomen from all over the world, glowing with health and beaming with hope.

The stars of the team are the Rahimi sisters – 18-year-old Shabnam and 17-year-old Sadaf. At the recent World Boxing Championship in Tajikistan, Shabnam won a gold medal and Sadaf a silver medal, making Afghan sports history.

Boxing is an unusual choice for any young woman, anywhere in the world, but in deeply conservative Afghanistan, it is an act of courage.

“Yes, we have a lot of problems. Here in Afghanistan they think we should stay home, not go to school, and never boxing,” said Sadaf. She said they have received threatening phone calls, but that has not stopped them.

Shabnam, her older sister, said she boxes not just for herself, but for her country. “My dream is that I should represent my country all over the world, especially in the Olympics, raising the flag for my country.”   

Shah Marai / AFP - Getty Images

Afghan girls practice during a boxing training session in Ghazi Stadium in Kabul in January 2011.

She brushed aside local criticism of female boxing. "I just want to box, shoulder to shoulder with the men, and show I can do it." 
Her sister, Sadaf, added, "When we were little, we had a male cousin who was a boxer, and we wanted to be like him."

They both realize that they are among the first generation of women to be granted this opportunity to fight; women boxing in public or competing in sports was a punishable offense under the Taliban. Women's boxing is a new Olympic sport, too.  The International Olympic Committee only voted to include women's boxing in the 2012 Summer Games in London in August 2009.

Coach Sharifi said he has faith in his team, but that they need help, especially financially.  

"We get $1 a day for each athlete. What shall we do? We have poor equipment, we cannot train like others," he said. The team cannot afford to buy decent punching bags, let alone build a proper boxing ring.

Shah Marai / AFP - Getty Images

Young Afghan wrestlers compete in a bout at the Ghazi Stadium in Kabul on May 12, 2011. The Ghazi stadium has returned to its former status as Kabul's premier sporting venue after being used for public executions by the Taliban during the late 1990s.

But Shabnam remains optimistic. Raising her fists in the air, and with halting English she said, "I see you London 2012!"

The sisters may not win medals at the Olympic Games.  Indeed they may not even qualify for the games. They need to win their places in May at the World Boxing Championships in Qinhuangdao, China.

But they have already won a victory: They have shown what Afghan young women who pack a punch can achieve. The Olympic dream is theirs.

Related link: Afghanistan’s National Olympic Committee web site  

Published at 12:15 p.m. ET: LONDON -- CNN star interviewer Piers Morgan refused Tuesday to disclose details about the most damning link between himself and Britain's phone hacking scandal: His acknowledgment that he once listened to a phone message left by former Beatle Paul McCartney for his then-wife Heather Mills.

In a 2006 article in the Daily Mail tabloid, Morgan said he was played a phone message left by the former Beatle on Mills' answering machine, describing it in detail and noting that McCartney "even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone." Mills has said there's no way Morgan could have obtained the message honestly.

On Tuesday, Morgan stubbornly refused to answer almost any questions about how he came to hear the message, saying that doing so would compromise a source. "I'm not going to start any trail that leads to the identification of a source," he said.

Asked by inquiry chief Lord Justice Brian Leveson whether he could supply any information to back the assertion that he had heard the recording legally, Morgan said he couldn't.

Updated at 12:10 a.m. ET: Morgan denies that during his editorship the Daily Mirror newspaper "suppressed" information that cell phones could be hacked in 1998 so that they could use it to spy on celebrities. "Absolute nonsense," he says. 

Updated at 11:50 a.m. ET: Morgan denies any knowledge of paying police officers for information. "I've never been aware of any evidence of that, no," he says.

Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET: "It doesn't necessarily follow that someone listening to someone else is unethical," Morgan says. "It depends on the circumstances in which you are listening to it."

Updated at 11:28 a.m. ET: When asked to discuss the source of a voice mail message of former Beatle Paul McCartney to his then-wife Heather Mills, Piers Morgan refuses.

He also defends the newspaper when it is asserted that the Daily Mirror was among the top offenders of the practice of phone hacking, saying,"You also well know that not a single person has made a formal complaint against a Daily Mirror journalist, so why would you say that?"

Updated at 11:06 a.m. ET: Piers Morgan says the Press Complaints Commission code of practice was displayed prominently in the newsroom at the Daily Mirror, where he was former editor, and says it "informed every editorial decision I made."

When asked whether an editor should have responsibility for his journalists, Morgan says, "The average editor is probably aware of about 5 percent of what journalists are up to at any given time."

Updated at 10:42 a.m. ET: Piers Morgan begins testifying at Britain's Leveson Inquiry into media ethics via videolink from the United States.

• For more details visit breakingnews.com

LONDON -- Former News of the World editor and CNN interviewer Piers Morgan will appear by videolink from the United States on Tuesday at a judge-led investigation into the ethics and practices of Britain's scandal-tarred press.

He is expected to be grilled about comments he has made about widespread phone hacking at tabloid newspapers.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp shut down the News of the World in July after a public outcry over the phone-hacking practices by British journalists at the newspaper.

Morgan's appearance, along with a number of other witnesses Tuesday, has been widely anticipated and critics have been picking through old interviews and Morgan's autobiography "The Insider," in which the 46-year-old Morgan makes clear he knew of phone hacking as long ago as 2001.

• Story: Messages deleted by tabloid journalists? Not so fast...

In an interview for GQ magazine before the public scandal over the practice, Morgan said he couldn't get too upset over hacking because "loads of newspaper journalists were doing it."

And, in an earlier interview for BBC radio unearthed by one of his critics, Morgan appeared to go further, saying it was difficult to condemn private eyes hired to hack into people's phones "because obviously you were running the results of their work."

Dave Hogan / Getty Images, file

Former Daily Mirror and News of the World editor Piers Morgan and Rebekah Brooks (then Rebekah Wade), editor of the Sun newspaper, at the book launch party for Piers Morgan's memoirs, entitled "The Insider," on March 9, 2005 in London.

Morgan maintains that he has never participated in phone hacking or knowingly run a story based on an illegally intercepted message.

"I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone," he said in a statement in August.

• Official website of the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics

Actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller, "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and singer Charlotte Church are among those who have given evidence about press abuse, while executives and lawyers for Murdoch's News Corp have defended the newspaper.

From newspaper man to TV star
Morgan shot to national prominence when he was picked by Murdoch to run the News of the World at age 28. Under his tenure, the tabloid exposed Grant's liaison with Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown and Princess Diana's late-night phone calls to married art dealer Oliver Hoare.

It wasn't all down to good reporting: Morgan has acknowledged that bribes were paid to informants on rival titles.

• Story: Tabloid paid moles at rival papers for scoops?

In 1995, Morgan left the News of the World for the Daily Mirror. His time there was marked by scoops and controversy, including an insider trading scandal.

Among the newspapers to report it was The Independent, which said he allegedly bought 20,000 pounds ($31,000) worth of shares in a technology company the day before it was tipped in the newspaper's investment column. While two other journalists at the Daily Mirror were jailed, Morgan was not charged and kept his job.

However, his editorship at the Daily Mirror ended in 2004 when he ran a faked photograph purporting to show a British soldier urinating on an Iraqi detainee.

Morgan won a second life as a TV personality, eventually signing on as a judge of "America's Got Talent" and taking Larry King's old spot at CNN. So far, he's prospered. Ratings for "Piers Morgan Tonight" have been up 9 percent on last year's figures — good if not spectacular — and he appears to be reaching a younger audience.

CNN spokeswoman Barbara Levin said the network was "extremely pleased" with how Morgan's program was performing and the company has so far stood by its star even as the phone-hacking scandal threatens to draw him in.

'Despicable human being'
"So heartwarming that everyone in U.K.'s missing me so much they want me to come home," Morgan joked earlier this year amid demands he return to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry.

Morgan's denial that he has had nothing to do with phone hacking is hard to square with a 2006 article in which he said he'd been played a phone message that former Beatle Paul McCartney left for his now ex-wife Heather Mills in the wake of one of their fights.

• Story: Emails warned James Murdoch of phone hacking by tabloid

"It was heartbreaking," Morgan wrote of the tape, saying that McCartney "sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone."

How did Morgan come to hear the tape? He's refused to say, but Mills told the BBC in August that "there was absolutely no honest way" he could have obtained the recording. McCartney echoed her sentiment, saying he'd apparently been hacked.

Morgan's autobiography also abounds with tantalizing references to questionably obtained material: There's "a dodgy transcript of a phone conversation" and a celebrity's stolen laptop.

And when actress Kate Winslet demanded to know how Morgan got her cell phone number, which she had only just changed, Morgan shrugged it off.

"Look, Kate," he joked, "You don't get to be the editor of the Mirror without being a fairly despicable human being."

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Will younger Kim's aunt and uncle be North Korea puppet masters?
• Mourning in North Korea, worries in South after Kim Jong Il's death
• Who's in charge? Mixed signals from Egypt's rulers
• Troops move out of Iraq ... then next stop is home
• Manning and WikiLeaks: New push for whistleblower protections

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Kcna / AFP - Getty Images

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, left, and right-hand man Jang Song Taek inspect Mt. Ryongak Recreation Grounds in Pyongyang in this undated photo from the official Korea Central News Agency.

Many things about North Korea are a mystery, but this much is clear: The country’s heir-apparent -- 27-year-old Kim Jong Un -- lacks the job experience to run a nuclear-armed nation of 23 million people. But his elevation to "great successor" was only part of a transfer of power that left other key allies of his father, Kim Jong Il, in key positions around him.

For many Korea watchers, the most likely power behind the young leader is his uncle, Jang Song Taek, 65. Jang, who married into power by tying the knot with Kim Jong Il’s sister, survived 30 years of political ups and downs before emerging as right-hand man to Kim Jong Il.  

“My sense of Jang is that he is a really capable guy,” said Marcus Noland, an Asia expert and senior fellow for the Peterson Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “He may have bad ideas or bad motives, but if you look at his career, it’s clear that he has some kind of capability.”

Kim Jong Un has spent most of his time in North Korea, but he did study for a few years in an international school in Switzerland in the mid-1990s. Since being identified as successor in 2009, Jong Un's status has been plumped up through public appearances with his father, receiving the rank of general and having military orders issued in his name.

"Kim Jong Il picked the apple that didn't fall far from the tree," said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He didn't select a successor who he believed would radically depart from his vision for North Korea."

Jang has credentials as a political survivor, observers say. He’s been exiled from the inner circle of power at least twice. The first occurred when he sought to marry Kim Kyung Hee, the younger sister of Kim Jong Il, over the opposition of Kim Il Sung — the "great leader" who died in 1994; he also disappeared from sight from about 2003-2006, purged for allegedly creating factions and maneuvering to seize power, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a website for military policy research.

Ultimately, however, Jang married Kyung Hee and eventually was elevated to be vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, a position that second in power behind the country’s supreme leader, now Kim Jong Un. He is also director of the State Development Bank. Some South Korean scholars believe that he was de facto leader during Kim Jong Il’s illness.

“In a way (Jang’s) biography reminds me of Deng Xiaoping’s,” said Noland, referring to the Chinese leader who became the de facto head of state after suffering multiple purges. “They keep throwing him to the countryside and he keeps coming back."

Kns / AFP - Getty Images

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's younger sister Kim Kyong Hee, left, attends the Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang, in Sept. 2010. Kim Kyong Hee and her husband Jang Song Taek are considered influential players in the aftermath of Kim Jong Il''s death.

Jang's relationship with Kyung Hee, Kim Jong Il's only living full sibling, is important. Kim Jong Il also has one half-sister and two half-brothers, born to his father’s second wife. But when he took the reins from his father, he evidently regarded these younger relations as a threat and dispatched them to obscure diplomatic outposts.

Kyung Hee, 65, despite a reputation for bullying everyone -- including  Kim Jong Il  -- has been visibly at his side several years, holding key positions in the Communist Party and the government. In September 2010 she and her nephew Jong Un both were given the rank of general in the military, confirming their status in the inner circle.

Whether Jang will pursue the path of protector, puppet master or rival remains to be seen. In the totalitarian system that has survived nearly 60 years in North Korea, the official version has little to do with reality.

"A lot depends on whether the power centers of the regime coalesce around Kim Jong Un, or see this period of uncertainty as an opportunity to change the balance of power internally," a U.S. official told NBC on background. "Those are very tricky calculations to make in an authoritarian society like North Korea."

Besides Jang, there are other players who could pose a challenge to Jong Un’s rule, most notably in  the military.

There are other wild cards, such as Kim Jong Il’s former secretary and live-in girlfriend in his last years — 47-year-old Kim Ok — who some refer to as North Korea’s “first lady.”

Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, born to the second of Kim Jong Il's three wives, was assumed to be heir to the "dear leader" at one point, but lost favor when he was arrested in Japan traveling on a false passport while trying to go to Disneyland with his son. He has been watching events in his home country from Macau.

“It’s like watching a family crime syndicate, like the Sopranos,” said Noland. “It’s a combination of brutality and dysfunctionality.”

“The problem is for (outsiders) is that it would be very hard to distinguish between a North Korea that Jong Un is ruling or one where he is just reigning,” he said. “It may be a few years before we have a clear picture.”

Robert Windrem, NBC News investigative producer for special projects, contributed to this report.

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Who's in charge? Mixed signals from Egypt's rulers
• Panetta becomes first Pentagon chief to visit Libya
• Troops move out of Iraq ... then next stop is home
• Manning and WikiLeaks: New push for whistleblower protections
• Rock Center: Searching for Spain's stolen infants

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NASA / NOAA

This picture of Earth at night is based on 1994-1995 satellite data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System, which maps the location of permanent lights on the planet. The borders of North Korea are outlined in white, with Japan off to the right, China to the left and South Korea below.

The death of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, serves as a reminder that the hard-line communist country has long been in the dark — literally. A white border highlights the dark spot known as North Korea in this visualization of our planet's city lights.

This iconic "Earth at Night" picture is based on data gathered by military satellites in 1994-1995, just after Kim inherited power from his late father, Kim Il Sung. The darkness shows how much North Korea has lagged behind its neighbors — South Korea, China, Russia and Japan — in electrification and industrial development. Updates of the data sets show that there's been no change in North Korea's city-light situation between 1992 and 2009. Check out NOAA's "Science on a Sphere" webpage for more about the "Earth at Night" satellite data project.

A different kind of satellite project shows where North Korea has made progress during the dark age of Kim Jong Il: For years, the Institute for Science and International Security has been using satellite imagery to document the state of North Korea's nuclear program. Pictures acquired from orbit over the past couple of years show new construction at the country's Yongbyon nuclear center.

Here's a recent picture of the Yongbyon site from DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite imaging venture. ISIS says the blue roofs on a gas centrifuge plant and an adjoining building appear to be part of increased construction activity:

DigitalGlobe

This high-resolution satellite image from DigitalGlobe, acquired on Nov. 4, 2010, shows new construction at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear site. The building with a deep blue roof is thought to be a gas centrifuge plant.

"Whatever the purpose, these activities show that more is going on at Yongbyon than commonly believed," ISIS analyst Paul Brannan wrote in his latest report. The future of North Korea's nuclear program will be a top concern for the United States and its allies as they assess Pyongyang's leadership transition — and satellites will provide the key data for that assessment.

These satellite views of North Korea serve as today's offering from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which presents views of Earth from space every day from now until Christmas. Catch up on these previous entries from the calendar:

• The full Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Dec. 1: An ornament in outer space
• Dec. 2: The masses in Mecca
• Dec. 3: Santa's shrinking domain
• Dec. 4: The monster of Madagascar
• Dec. 5: Antarctica stripped naked
• Dec. 6: Streaking for home
• Dec. 7: Pearl Harbor from above, 1941-2011
• Dec. 8: The rise and fall of the Dead Sea
• Dec. 9: How an eclipse dims Earth
• Dec. 10: Psychedelic storm
• Dec. 11: Beauty of the Inland Sea
• Dec. 12: Drone-spotting stirs up debate
• Dec. 13: Light up your St. Lucy's Day
• Dec. 14: Satellite spots Chinese aircraft carrier
• Dec. 15: Hooray for Hollywood
• Dec. 16: Olympics under construction
• Dec. 17: Mystery in the Gobi Desert
• Dec. 18: Glow over Miami
• Hubble calendar, from The Atlantic's In Focus
• 2011 Zooniverse Advent calendar

Tip o' the Log to Ezra Klein's Wonkblog at The Washington Post and Afrikent.

Correction for 11 p.m. ET: I mistakenly referred to "Science on a Sphere" as being provided by NASA, when it's actually provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sorry about that! Must have been because the first time I saw the "Science on a Sphere" display was at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

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. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Editor's note: Photojournalist Kael Alford spent 10 months covering the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath in 2003-2004. She returned this summer to see what has and hasn’t changed as the U.S. prepared to withdraw its troops. 

By Kael Alford

When I returned to Iraq for the first time in nearly eight years, I went immediately to the home of Karima Methboub to orient myself. It wasn’t easy to find. Like so many people in a country reshuffled by the cruelty of civil war, she had lost her home and, with all but one of her eight children, was eking out a bare-bones existence in a borrowed apartment in Baghdad.

Karima’s children were safe, and doing quite well considering what the family had been through, a first-hand encounter with the deep corruption and dysfunction of the new Iraqi government: Karima’s second-oldest son, Ali, had been arrested in 2007 in a roundup of suspected “Sadrists” – militant supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr --  at a local café, starting a three-year rollercoaster ride that left the family homeless and deeply in debt.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Duha and and Hibba, pictured here on the roof of their apartment, are 19-year-old twins with a force of energy that keep the house in constant motion. Duha is finishing her last year of high school while Hibba is in her first year of college. Hibba hopes to be a social worker and aid in divorce cases while Duha waffles between hoping for a job in a bank or a hair salon. Thanks to the insecurity in Baghdad, they spend much of their free time at home helping with house work and watching television, only occasionally dressing up and socializing outside in the neighborhood.

Duha and Hibbe stop to talk to American soldiers at a checkpoint during a shopping trip in Karrada neighborhood, Baghdad, May 2003.

I had met the Methboubs at the height of the “shock and awe” bombing campaign that launched the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. My life at the time consisted of rotating shifts in a drab hotel room with windows taped to keep them from shattering; anxious tours of destruction and bloody emergency wards on buses chartered by the Iraqi Ministry of Information; and nights interrupted by the nightmarish thunder of U.S. missiles incinerating targets a few miles from my bed.

I had an assignment for an American magazine to profile an ordinary Iraqi family and was introduced to Karima through an acquaintance. Though I had a government minder in tow, I felt relief almost from the moment I arrived at her dim and dingy apartment. Despite their financial hardships – she was a widow living on government rations – she insisted on feeding me a lunch of bread and a thin soup She reserved the largest chunk of meat for me as her guest, though I insisted on passing it to her youngest son, 5-year-old Mahmoud.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Karima Methboub keeps an eye on the air conditioner repairman. Karima has raised 8 children mostly on her own in a society that offers few opportunities for widows without a college education.

Karima allowed me free rein of the house on the days when I photographed the children passing time in the apartment and hallway with inventive games. By the end of our visits, I felt like one of her kids. Those days shared with Karima, her squirming children and a mustachioed government man were the closest thing to normal that I found in Baghdad.

When the capital fell to the U.S. Marines weeks later, I went to visit the Methboubs, something I also did frequently over the following two years. Their apartment became the place I went for direction, grounding and spiritual solace.

During our reunion this summer, Karima described the family’s hardships since my last visit in 2004, most of which were centered around Ali’s arrest and the nearly three years he spent in prison.

It happened after an Iftar feast during Ramadan in 2008, when Ali went to a neighborhood coffee shop to smoke a water pipe with his friends and his brother. Suddenly a joint patrol of U.S. forces and an anti-terrorism unit from the Ministry of Interior surrounded the café and told everyone to freeze.

“It was something so scary,” Ali told me this summer. He said he tried to slip a licensed gun he was carrying to his brother Mohammed, who was sitting apart from the main group. “They hit me on the back, then in the face and tore my lip. Then they pulled my T-shirt over my head.”

Then they took him to a prison in Amarah, a Sunni area of Baghdad.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Ali is Kareema's oldest son. Last year he was arrested in a sweep operation in Baghdad along with a group of men sitting at a cafe who were accused of being members of the Mahdi Army. Although he was never formally charged, he was tortured and moved from prison to prison before his family could raise the bribes and fees to secure his release.

He said he wasn’t charged, but was interrogated and tortured on a daily basis and eventually forced to sign a false confession connecting him to militia activities. He pulled back the hem of his jeans to reveal scars from puncture wounds in his shins where, he said, he was hit with a wooden board with a protruding nail shortly after his arrest.

One officer in particular, a major, was crueler than the others, he said.

“He shocked me (with electricity) in my ears, chest, even my sensitive places,” Ali said, adding that the torture finally led him to invent confessions. “I couldn’t handle it, so I admitted to anything … things I didn’t do, like I killed my cousin, my friends, I kidnapped a relative.”

At one point, he said, American soldiers visited the prison and documented how he had been treated. He was allowed to see a doctor eventually, but was still not released. (Ali’s account matches systematic problems in Iraqi prisons documented in a 2010 Amnesty international report.)

Ali was held for almost another year, the last six months at a local jail, where he was not treated as badly.

During her son’s imprisonment, Karima was beside herself.

“I was a crazy woman,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t work in the day. I could only think of getting Ali out of prison.”

It took nearly three years -- and almost $50,000 U.S. paid to multiple prison officials – to finally win Ali’s freedom, she said. The officials never took money at the prison, she said, instead arranging meetings in other locations to take the bribes.

Living on a diminishing widow’s pension, Karima said she had to sell everything she owned -- her apartment, furniture and family keepsakes – to raise the money. She also had to borrow money from relatives and isn’t sure how she will pay it back. The family now lives in the apartment of a sister who is living in the United States.

Ali finally got his day in court in early 2010 and was released when the judge found insufficient evidence against him.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Hibba does laundry in the family bathroom. Karima and her children had to sell their apartment where they have lived for years, to pay for the bribes required to get Ali released from prison. The apartment where they live now belongs to a Karima's sister who lives in the United States.

His tribulations weren’t finished. Ali was lucky enough to get his old job back as a security guard at the Ministry of Electricity, but his superiors said he wouldn’t be paid until he could produce papers proving his innocence.

As of July, he’d been back at work for several months without receiving a paycheck. Ali said getting documents that say he’s innocent will likely cost more money that he doesn’t have. In the meantime, he keeps showing up at work and keeps his head down.

Karima’s is grateful to have Ali home and that her other children are OK.

Her daughter Fatima, 22, who had left school at age 12 to help Karima with the other children, was living at home again. Her marriage fell apart as a result of domestic abuse. Fatima’s husband, “was banging her head against the wall,” according to Karima.

Fatima’s uncles negotiated with her ex-husband’s family and reached consensus on the divorce.  That was nearly two years ago, but Fatima was still sleeping late and moping around the family apartment this summer. With only a primary school education, she can’t find decent work. She hopes to find a new husband, but divorce carries a stigma in Iraq, even when it stems from abuse.

Despite the family’s trials, Karima had one success story to share.

Her second-oldest daughter, Amal, was attending the American University in Sulaimani in northern Iraq (Kurdistan) on a scholarship obtained through the U.S. embassy and has survived her freshman year. 

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Amal Methboub, 20 (left) jokes with classmates in her English composition class at the American University in Sulaimani, northern Iraq. She is the recipient of a scholarship from the U.S. embassy that subsidizes her tuition. She hopes to be a lawyer and work with issues relating to Iraq's justice system and just finished her first year, a preliminary course in English that will prepare her language competency for the rest of her studies which will all be in English.

When I first met Amal, she was already speaking English that she learned in school, and practicing with Americans she met. Another American journalist helped her apply for the scholarship at the university, a private school started by Kurdish Regional Prime Minister Baram Salih that offers instruction in English in hopes that a “neutral language” will help dissolve the divides between Iraq’s political and sectarian groups. 

After what happened to her brother, Amal said she hopes to work in Iraq as a lawyer one day, fighting corruption in the court system. She said the first time she told an uncle she wanted to be a lawyer, he asked ‘Why? All lawyers are liars!’. Amal replied “No, I want to be a good one!” Their devotion to each other first drew me to this family, and after eight years I could see how that dedication had sustained them through their struggles. “My priority is my family,” said Amal, sitting on her dorm room bed when I visited her at school. She had developed the force of character I recognized in her mother. “And second is my studies. I have to focus on my studies to make my family proud of me.”

More from the series:

Introduction: As U.S. withdraws, the people speak
For 'the Sheik,' U.S. pullout is cause for alarm
Patchwork electrical grid a symbol of country's disconnects
A new day for culture and consumer goods
For women, freedoms under fire
Suspicious minds in a squatters' camp
Colonel helped with the ‘Surge,’ then his past came calling

Follow @msnbc_pictures

Anna Gowthorpe/PA Wire

Victim Michelina Lewandowska, 27, leaves Leeds Crown Court on Dec. 6. "I still have nightmares," she said in a statement released Monday.

LONDON -- A man who buried his fiancee alive in a cardboard box because he was "bored" with her was found guilty of attempted murder Monday, British media reported.

Marcin Kasprzak's intended victim, Michelina Lewandowska, 27, was bound and gagged. She escaped by using the engagement ring he gave her to cut herself free and then dug herself out, The Guardian reported.

The newspaper said Kasprzak had attacked her with a Taser and then buried her in a forest near Huddersfield, England, in May. A court was told that he was "bored" of his fiancee and wanted custody of their son Jakub, 3.

'Hatred'
A statement by Lewandowska was read by a police officer outside the court where the hearing took place Monday, BBC News reported.

"For many years I loved Marcin Kasprzak very much. But after his horrific attack upon me my feelings towards him have turned to hatred," her statement said.

"I still have nightmares that Marcin will come back to find me and kill me. My only hope is that he can accept that what he did to me was very wrong," she added.

"I really hope that no-one will ever experience what I went through on that day in May, at the hands of a man whom I loved and trusted," she said.

• Woman buried alive: I used diamond ring to escape

The statement said that during her time "inside my shallow grave," she feared "my life was at an end."

"I prayed to God to help me to survive so that I could look after my young son. The thought of my son gave me the strength to fight my way out of the box and save myself," she added.

Kasprzak, who claimed he only meant to scare Lewandowksa, is due to be sentenced on Jan. 13.

Another man, Patryk Borys, 18, was found not guilty of attempted murder, the BBC said. He and Kasprzak had previously admitted kidnap and Kasprzak admitted possessing a prohibited weapon.

Sky News quoted a spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service as describing the case as  "a heartless and calculated crime," adding that "Michelina was extremely lucky to escape with her life."

From http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

BEIJING — The news that North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il had died made its way to the Chinese capital mid-Monday morning.  Very soon, police tape surrounded the North Korean embassy, where its national flag was lowered to half-staff.

State-run newspapers The China Daily and The Global Times posted the news on their websites -- the latter going with a special section dedicated to the eccentric leader of China’s tiny but troublesome northeastern neighbor. 

Featuring comments by users of Weibo  (the Chinese microblog) and a Kim family tree, the Global Times site was worthy of a Chinese state leader, reflecting the closeness of the two regimes enduring more than half a century.

The Chinese state-run television CCTV broke into regular programming, about twenty minutes before its daily noontime news broadcast, to run a special report on Kim’s death.  Its Pyongyang news team was the first to get reaction within the isolated state out to the world.  The nine-minute clip shows a variety of North Korean citizens crying, almost all unable to speak to the camera.

Despite running his country like a cult, impoverishing and starving his own people while building a nuclear arsenal, Kim was more often than not ridiculed for his appearance and his personality.  Twitter users posted memorable moments such as an Economist magazine cover with Kim with bouffant hair in tinted glasses:Greetings, Earthlings.

We, on the other hand, would like to remember the Dear Leader in action.  After all, the DPRK’s Korean Central News Agency said Kim died while travelling back from a “rural inspection tour.”  What better way to mark his passing away than with a look back at other inspection tours, thanks to this great Tumblr site.

Updated at 6:41 a.m. ET:

Like father, like son.

Within hours of news of the elder Kim’s death, the Tumblr page above spawned a junior: Kim Jong Un looking at things.