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By Kerry Sanders, NBC News
ST JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND - Floating over the spot where Titanic sank April 15, 1912, I stood on the deck of the research ship Jean Charcot with my iPhone chiming as each mail arrived, while my earpiece remained dialed into NBC News in New York where I could hear producers and news anchors.

Cameraman Dwaine Scott, with his own earpiece dialed into the director, focused the camera on my position in front of the Remotely Operated Vehicle, with its 3-D, HD cameras ready for deployment into the frigid North Atlantic waters.

Since we have made it back to safe harbor, chased here by Hurricane Danielle, one of the most-asked questions from viewers, after “What was it like?” has been: “How did you report live from out at sea?”

It’s a good question because after 28 years as a TV news reporter, I’m still amazed how we push the technology and bring viewers to remote areas of the world.

Even though viewers have come to expect live reports from just about anywhere on earth (“Where in the World is Matt Lauer?” certainly has helped create that expectation), I know behind the scenes this is never easy, and this spot at sea was a huge challenge.

Due to the limited space on the ship, our four-man team only included one NBC engineer: Bruno Trepanier.

To best explain what Bruno was able to achieve, imagine you installed a super high-speed Internet connection at your house. Then, you expected it to work during a violent earthquake. In our case, the shaking at its roughest was caused by 6- to 7-foot swells.

The satellite that orbits the earth in its geosynchronous position works best in a tight narrow and well-aimed beam. When the ship is moving back and forth, it requires round-the-clock attention to make sure the tracking system is holding that beam in one spot.

When the equipment was working, which was about 98 percent of the time, we not only had the ability to report live, including switching to those live cameras more than 2 miles down at the Titanic wreckage, but we could also get the Internet, and we had phone lines.

Our live reports traveled back on that high-speed internet line. The taped reports that editor Vince Genova prepared were sent back much the way you upload a video to Facebook. It takes longer than real-time, but the lack of that instant delivery exponentially improves the quality of the picture.

I couldn’t help but stop to consider how much has changed since the Titanic went down. Here I was on the research ship, at times frustrated I’d lost my internet connection to send and receive emails with my producers.

And the Titanic lost more than 1,500 passengers and crew because of technology still in its infancy.

Yes, the RMS Titanic had a radio room, and the radio operator repeatedly tapped out in morse code: SOS and CQD. (It’s debatable, but some believe SOS means “save our souls” or “save our ship” and CQD is often said to mean “come quick danger.”)

But sadly at the time, monitoring radio frequencies was not a maritime requirement. Were that to have been the case, who knows how many lives might have been saved.

The Californian, another ship, was nearby when the Titanic sank, but as history reveals, the Californian did not respond to those ship-in-distress messages.

By Chris Hampson, NBC Director of International News

It’s a story as old as history. Two young dreamers meet. They share the same hopes, the same ambitions. Their friendship blossoms into something rather deeper. Lovers, of sorts. Success comes their way in bucket-loads.

Then it all goes very, very sour, and the accusations fly thick and fast. Intimidation, lies, disaster.

As kiss-and-tell memoirs go, Tony Blair’s new book – “A Journey” – is a real smacker. (It’s also estimated to have made Mr. Blair an estimated advance of around $7 million.)

It’s not that it tells us many things we didn’t already know. It’s his candidness.

On sex scandals, on the Royals, on his need for a strong drink or two.

The Queen was “haughty,” Princess Diana “a manipulator,” President Clinton not “so very different from most men,” he writes.

Jeremy Selwyn / Pool via AP, file

Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in London in 2005.

And behind the curtains of Downing Street a war was going on.

Not between Mr. Blair and his wife (so far as we know), but between the Prime Minister and his powerful Chancellor Gordon Brown, the man who eventually succeeded him.

They were, Blair writes, “a bit like lovers.”

We all knew about the rivalry between the two, and the deal they made 16 years ago that Blair would get the first crack at the top job.

Blair says he knew it would test them: “I was scared of the unpleasantness, the possible brutality of it, the sadness, actually, of two friends becoming foes.”

But not that scared, at least not any more. Just like any other couple whose love turns sour, Blair’s book delivers some brutal views on Brown that will likely finish their friendship for good.

He says he knew Brown would be a “disaster” as Prime Minister (he went on to lose the next General Election).

His rival, while “brilliant and strong,” was “maddening” and “difficult” with “zero emotional intelligence.”

But he didn’t sack him because it was better to keep him “inside and contained” rather than “outside and let loose.”

Blair says he wrote his book because he’s got “something to say.” Even before publication it caused controversy when he said he would give the proceeds to armed forces charities. “Blood money,” said his critics, referring to Iraq.

The war gets its own chapter, in which Blair admits to shedding tears over the loss of life. But he maintains the decision to invade was right.

He talks too of arguing with Princess Diana a month before she died, of the night of the accident and his subsequent uncomfortable meetings with the Queen.

“I spoke, with passion, of the need to accept life’s lessons,” he writes. “I worried she found me presumptuous – she was a little haughty.”

Blair describes the 691-page memoir as a “letter to the country I love.”

Though it’s not, he admits, an objective account.

“There is only one person who can write an account of what it is like to be the human being at the center of that history, and that’s me.”

Maybe. But Gordon Brown has yet to get around to writing his. Bring it on.

Now that the U.S. has officially ended its combat mission in Iraq, what’s next for the war-torn nation? Read a Q&A with NBC’s Richard Engel, who has reported from the Middle East since the war began.

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ANALYSIS
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News

Spot the joke.

Ever since he became Israel’s prime minister and immediately became embroiled in a seemingly never-ending series of crises, skeptics have argued that Benjamin Netanyahu is brilliant at only one thing - surviving.

Analysts have run out of metaphors to describe his survival skills. But he will need all of them now that his foreign minister resigned, leaving Netanyahu’s government with the slimmest majority in parliament, 61-59.

But few doubt his government will, somehow or other, live on. The bigger question now is - will the peace process survive?

Here’s the punch line: I wrote that January 1, 1999.

Actually, maybe it’s not so funny after all.

The only update is that today’s foreign minister hasn’t yet resigned, but is threatening to do so, if Netanyahu makes any significant progress toward handing parts of the West Bank back to the Palestinians.

There isn’t much danger of that, though.

The stuff of fantasy
It’s unfortunate for President Barack Obama, who has said he wants a peace agreement wrapped up within a year, even though the process of implementation could take up to 10 years. Apart from Washington’s expectations, you only have to listen to the rumblings in Jerusalem and Ramallah, the Palestinian National Authority’s administrative capital, to understand that rapid progress is the stuff of fantasy.

Shimon Schiffer is generally recognized as one of the best political commentators in Israel. Here’s his assessment in Tuesday’s Yedioth Ahronoth, the most widely circulated paper in Israel:

“The prevalent assessment among officials who have been monitoring the efforts to restart the direct negotiations is that nothing will follow the photo-ops the three men will have in the three-day summit. In other words, this is a content-less initiative that is not going to move things forward by even a single meter.”

One obstacle: Netanyahu told his people that any peace agreement would have to be based on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation. President Mahmoud Abbas has an equally intransigent demand: he will never recognize a Jewish state.

All the issues dividing Israelis and the Palestinians have remained the same for decades: the future of Jerusalem, the status of Palestinian refugees, Israel’s final borders, a security agreement.

Analysts generally accept that, one day, the final arrangement will be: Jerusalem will be divided between Jews and Arabs with the holy areas under some kind of international supervision; Palestinian refugees will be absorbed in the future Palestinian state with a token few thousand coming into Israel based on family reunification; the final borders will be along the lines of June 4, 1967, with a land swap to take into account Israel’s settlement blocks on a meter-for-meter basis; security for both states will be guaranteed within a wider peace agreement that would follow an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough.

But, small question: when’s the breakthrough?

Is it within a year, as Obama is demanding, or perhaps desperately hoping? Israelis and Palestinians know that when an American president needs a foreign policy victory, Mideast peace will top their agenda. So they need to play along, keep their heads down, and blame the other side for any eventual failure.

Looming Iran
Each failed peace process brings Armageddon one step closer. Past major failures have swiftly been followed by violence. This time though a Palestinian uprising following a failed peace process appears unlikely; according to all Palestinian and Israeli sources. Palestinians just seem not to have the heart for another fight.

However, maybe Iran and its allies in the region do. The balance of terror is slowly shifting as reports multiply that Hezbollah in South Lebanon has 45,000 rockets with a vast long-range capability, putting Tel Aviv into its sights. Hamas in Gaza is also said to have advanced rockets that can hit Tel Aviv.

Then there’s Iran’s ongoing nuclear program.

This makes a peace agreement, or at least some kind of peace process that offers hope rather than catastrophe, all the more urgent.

There are positive signs on the ground. Apart from a few of tragic killings — on Tuesday, the Israeli military reported that a Palestinian gunman shot dead 4 Jewish settlers – there’s been little Palestinian-Israeli violence in the West Bank for 18 months. Economic growth is whizzing along at 8 percent, jobs are growing and foreign investment is arriving. The West Bank is one of the world’s few economic success stories these days. Strangely enough, so is Israel.

But while there is a real improvement on the ground in relations between Israel and the West Bank, is the time right for a rapid push for peace? After all, close to 1.5 million Palestinians live in Gaza under the control of Hamas, which rejects all moves toward peace with Israel.

Skeptics scoff, but at least Obama is offering a way forward, extending a branch for peace.

But judging by everything one hears in Jerusalem and Ramallah, politicians on both sides are still not yet ready to climb down from their tall, tall trees.

Martin Fletcher has covered the Israel-Palestinian conflict for over 30 years

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News

ST JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND — Blame Mother Nature.

An iceberg sank the Titanic. And now, a hurricane has chased the Titanic expedition back to shore.

The captain of the research vessel Jean Charcot informed team leaders days ago that he was uncomfortable with Hurricane Danielle’s track.

And his decision to return to port was smart as the seas are now kicking up at the site in the North Atlantic, and are expected to become 40-foot swells when the brunt of the storm hits.

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The return to port does provide the teams opportunity to re-group.

The main power supply onboard the ship failed in the final hours of work, and the ship’s onboard power system is not well integrated. This vessel was built in France and was once used by Jacques Cousteau. However, the power system in France is different that that of the United States, so you can’t just plug in this high-tech equipment without all sorts of complicated conversions.

The team also is using the time to consider where to look next.

The mapping equipment returned some stunning results. The The Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) nicknamed “Ginger” and “Mary Ann” used sonar to map a 5-by-3 mile area. It’s long been believed the wreckage sat in a 6-square mile area, but now these new maps reveal more wreckage that’s never been studied, photographed or documented.

When the team returns, in about a week, they want to see what is there, in 3D and HD.

Love at sea
The one thing the Titanic historians onboard say is unlikely: finding the necklace. If you saw the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “Titanic,” you remember the “Heart of the Ocean” jewel.

Sadly, the experts say that’s simply a Hollywood creation.

But then again, you never know what can happen on an expedition like this.

Case in point: MaryAnn Keith and Evan Kovaks are both researchers who met five years ago while floating at sea on a mission to Titanic.

This morning, they gathered on the bow with the captain and were married. So perhaps that is the “Heart of the Ocean” — their love for each other.

Meantime, NBC News editor Vince Genova somehow found a few minutes of downtime to put together a mini-movie of the last 7 days. Click below to view.

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