For the first time in three days of covering the horrific events in Mumbai, I finally got carded.

What do I mean by that? I'll explain.

While terrorists and commandos tried to blow each other away inside the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, journalists and the general public were able to come and go as we pleased in this hotbed of danger.

We were all standing within 200 yards of the stand-off.  We listened to grenades exploding, bullets whizzing by and massive explosions so loud they rattled our ear drums.

We saw glass exploding out of windows, big flashes of light, fire in three places, police with automatic weapons and in the end, a body being pulled out of a window by the feet.

We were so close to the action that we changed our positions several times. There was nothing between us and the war torn hotel. No barricades, no police tape, no police.

On the second day of the siege I was able to get so close that I could have walked on to the steps of the front lobby of the hotel.

We were being told by authorities it was over. But it was not even close to over. There were still three terrorists inside but you wouldn't have known it from the lax security outside.

I know it's a bit late but I'm now well aware we were all simply too close.

Which takes me back to my first sentence: I was carded today by police who wanted to check my ID before I was given access to the same area.

The public is now being held back and a big rope has been put up to keep us back. But all the dangerous action is over.

I guess my question is why now? Maybe you have the answers out there because I'm not getting any here from the authorities.

MUMBAI, India - My heart is pounding. I have some knowlege of what is going on behind me but it doesn't register with my senses until I hear the sound: Bang. Rata tat tat. Bang, bang.  This is a hostage situation.

Ducking for cover outside the Taj Mahal Hotel.

I am standing just outside of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. The fabulous 105-year-old five star hotel has been raided by terrorists who police say have taken hostages, and killed and maimed across 10 sites in Mumbai.

As we go live outside describing the scene, that sound jolts my body forward. Bang. It doesn't matter who you are or where you are from, when you hear a sound like that you do what instinct tells you: Duck and run. In this instance I happened to be on the air.

These moments have a way of reminding those of us who cover stories how terrifying it must be for those who are living it up close and personal. Not talking about what is happening, but experiencing terrorism first hand.  All I can say is my heart goes out to the victims of terrorism around the world.

Watch footage of an explosion at the Taj Mahal Hotel

CHENNAI, India - This was by far one of the most difficult pieces that we have put together.

Caught short: Power supplies in Chennai are causing problems for companies.

For starters, it seemed like a simple task. Chennai, India’s fourth largest city located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, has been facing a shortage of power for quite some time now.

Yet this bustling city has seen an overflow of investors making a beeline to set up manufacturing units. With companies like Ford, Chevrolet, Hyundai and many more automotive industries setting up shop in this city, it’s no surprise that this place has often been called the Detroit of India. The big question for us was how do these businesses manage to get by with constant power shortage?

Our interest in power shortage was triggered when our Chennai-based correspondent Liz Neisloss was shown a letter addressed to one of the major car companies by the electricity board early last year.
It stated that companies would have to shut down on an assigned weekday “in order to tide over the situation on the temporary shortage of power availability”.

Liz also noticed that fathers were dropping kids to school because they were off from work due to “power holidays.”

What started as a relatively simple story to do turned into quite a challenge! Liz and I called over a dozen big businesses to try and get them to talk to us on camera about the power situation. Some gave us an emphatic no while others came up with a polite excuse. All this after they admitted that power shortage was a problem. It might seem a little wary but it is understood that the electricity board of Chennai is not going to be too happy to hear businesses complain about power cuts.

One of the small scale business managers for an auto parts industry said that one way to function with power cuts is to operate on a 24-hour shift. So when the power goes down, all is quite and you resume work only after the power is back up again. We were told that sometimes businesses are informed beforehand when power cuts are likely to happen.

After much searching we did manage to get a business owner to tell us how he functions with power cuts.
Watch Liz Neisloss' report.

ROME, Italy – It's quite amazing to read headlines about the Pope "forgiving" John Lennon for suggesting, 40 years ago, that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.In fact the Pope didn't forgive Lennon. Not because he holds grudges against the late pop star, but because he has more pressing issues to attend.

When I visited the newsroom of the Vatican newspaper which recently praised the Beatles and "their unique alchemy of words and sounds" I met the newly appointed editor in chief. He must have been in his mid-fifties and admitted to being a Beatles fan. Clearly, that did not preclude him from getting one of the highest journalistic jobs inside the Vatican.

He told me the newspaper has changed a lot since he arrived a few months ago. In fact between a papal sermon and a prayer, the daily now has extensive coverage of foreign affairs and arts and culture.

The Beatles are not the first rock band to find room in it: Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley all got high marks in recent articles.

So how did the story come about? Simple: the editor and two other colleagues, all Beatles fans, found themselves one day humming "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da life goes on bra..." in the corridors of the Vatican-based newspaper.

The song was included in the Beatles' "White Album," which this November 22 celebrated its 40th anniversary.

What a good opportunity to write something about the band, the Vatican journalist thought. But what about that spat 40 years ago? Oh, that, yeah right... nah, not a big deal. The reporter got away writing it was just "just bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis and rock ‘n' roll and suddenly became famous."

Little did he know his story would make the world's headlines.

ROME, Italy – Vatican watchers had considered the possibility of a black pope long before Barack Obama stepped into the limelight announcing his candidacy. When it comes to a black cardinal who could be pope, one name that Vatican watchers often float is that of Francis Arinze of Nigeria, the only African who currently holds a top job in the Curia, as the Vatican's government is called.

When in April 2005 cardinals met in the Sistine Chapel to elect John Paul II's successor there was not just talk, but real hope that the first non-Italian pope in centuries would be succeeded by the first African pope.

Yet once again a white man from the first world got the job, and it's been that way for centuries.

Wilfried Cardinal Napier of Durban, South Africa, says that whenever there is a gathering of human beings you are going to find a degree of discrimination. "It might not be as obvious, it might not be even consciously done" he told me, but there is a perception that "candidates from that part [Africa], they haven't got a long tradition, so how could they possibly move up the line?"

In fact one of the first popes 1,800 years ago is believed to be from Africa. Victor I is often credited with being the first black pope, although historians disagree whether he was black or even born in Africa.

In the early 60s there was hardly a black cardinal; today there are 17 of them.

Catholicism has grown faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world and today 13 percent of the world's Catholic population lives in Africa.

So what's stopping the next pope from being a black man?

Well first of all popes serve for life, and talks of a papal successor are premature at best. Secondly most analysts and even some African cardinals admit that should the next pope come from the developing world he would probably be a Latin American, where half of today's 1.1 billion Catholics live.

Few cardinal agree to comment on the records about a papal successor. But individually they all agree that during papal elections it's neither race nor American politics that matter, but the Holy Spirit.

And HE is really unpredictable.  

NEW DELHI, India - Getting in was easy but getting out with the story was the tricky bit. When we first went to the West Delhi Kabari market (Kabari is Hindi for junk) to film it for India Means Business, it was all smiles and welcomes.

Pick the parts and name the price at New Delhi's junk market.

We went in without a camera just to talk to the people who own businesses there, the workers and customers to get a feel for the place. The entrepreneurial spirit was certainly evident.

At first glance it looks like a morgue for vehicles. Parts from all kinds line the dusty streets. There were even ship parts and old gutted gas pumps.
Decades-old Mahindra army jeeps sit in rows ready to be dismantled or dolled up, whatever the customer orders. The parts from all kinds of vehicles are put together in any combination you can afford.

If you want a Mahindra jeep to look like a Hummer the scrap mechanics will use the most recognizable parts from the Hummer and attach them to a Mahindra.

The owners of one shop told us the cost for a reconfigured jeep is about $2500, a car about $1,000 and they can get it done in less than two weeks.
Those who buy range from the poor who need simple transportation to those with money to burn.

Everything is done out in the open. There are hundreds of workers doing by hand what commercial car manufacturers automated years ago.

So it seemed like an easy enough story to do. Everything that needed to be photographed and all the people that we needed to talk to were outside in plain daylight. No lights, no security guards, no problem.

But that wasn’t the case.

The junk market has a shady side and we found out all too quickly once we walked along the streets with a camera. At first no one wanted to talk to us even after meeting several people who had given us a tour the first time we were there.

Twice, men surrounded us and demanded we turn the camera off and leave.

We did.

Well, we walked down the street and around the corner and finally talked to a businessman who told us in no uncertain terms that a criminal element existed in the junk market.

Basically, because many rules and regulations are broken, including dangerous working conditions, some of the business owners pay off police and officials to continue to operate. And it’s also a cash business so tax evasion is also part of the equation.

The junk market is part of a vast area of employment that operates under the radar. It’s part of what the government of India calls the “Unorganized Sector”.

The latest study said 93 percent of India’s workforce is employed in this informal sector. It typically pays dirt-cheap wages and affords no rights to workers. It does however create jobs where there is a desperate need.

In the end we got our story but again found ourselves surrounded by angry business owners when we tried to get one last shot as we walked out of the market.

We didn’t get the last shot but we did leave with our camera and tape intact, and no one got hurt.

Watch Sara Sidner's report on India's "unorganized sector"

ATLANTA, Georgia – Lately, I feel like Alice in Wonderland, peering through the looking glass.

I just paid half of what I used to for a tank of gas.

Great deals beckon at the malls, just in time for the holidays. But why am I uneasy? Nothing is as it seems these days. Even good news is a bad sign.

Lower prices mean businesses are in trouble. Big discounts at sales are not making people buy. More and more are losing their jobs. Last week, 542,000 people applied for unemployment benefits, a 16-year-record for new jobless claims. Many others fear they could be next. No wonder they're not spending money.

When people stop buying in America, there's deep trouble, because spending drives 70 percent of the economy.

But business is being hit from another source as well. Banks are still not lending like they used to, freezing up operations.

I heard one small business owner say he was forced to close shop when he couldn't get credit to finance his tree import business from Brazil. When he couldn't pay for his orders, he couldn't get the trees his customers ordered. Now his Brazilian exporting partner is in trouble too.

Experts say it's going to get worse; they just don't know how much worse. It's hard to judge how it's all going to play out. We can only brace ourselves for what we still don't know.

MOSCOW, Russia – It's long been suspected Vladimir Putin wanted his old job back.Since stepping down after eight years from the Russian presidency in May, in favor of his hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, the former KGB agent - now Russian PM - has rarely been out of the public spotlight.

But who could have imagined he'd be muscling his way back into the Kremlin so soon?

Over the past two weeks, sweeping changes to Russia's constitution have been rushed through the country's rubberstamp parliament.

They include an extension to the presidential term from four years to six – undemocratic, say critics. But the possible consequences of the amendments are more far-reaching than that.

The changes still have to be approved by Russia's upper house, the Federation Council, and regional parliaments. But once they're adopted, expected to be soon, it could mean fresh elections in which the still overwhelmingly popular Mr. Putin could stand and likely win.

So what's the big hurry? Well, speculation is rife that the financial crisis has panicked the Kremlin. They had been expected to wait until the next scheduled presidential elections in 2012 to stage a Putin comeback.

But the economy is so bad, there's a growing chance the popularity tables could have turned against the leadership by then, making it hard for Putin to be re-elected with the resounding mandate he would want, if at all.

With every day that passes, high inflation and low oil prices are sinking Russia's economy deeper into crisis.

Expect early elections, and a return to the Kremlin for the man who never really let go of power.

BANGKOK, Thailand - It's almost three months since anti-government PAD protesters in Bangkok swarmed into government house - the official seat of Thailand's prime minister - and staged a sit-in. They are still there and since their demonstration began a lot has changed, but the underlying issues remain unresolved.

Protesters have barricaded themselves inside Bangkok's Government House.

Thailand has slowly but inexorably, slid downhill. One prime minister has quit, another has taken his place and the issue of cronyism and corruption in politics has become ever more heated.

Last night there was another grim milestone on this slow descent into chaos. A bomb went off at the protest site, killing one and wounding 21 others.

We don't know who planted it or why, but taken together with the other recent blasts, clashes and street battles, it is a sign of just how volatile this situation has become.

The other grenade attacks and bomb blasts of recent weeks have been disturbing, but last night's was the first to kill a PAD protester.

I went to see the protesters today and they are shocked, but determined; many busying themselves by reinforcing their fortifications around government house.

Sandbags block the streets, the stripped carcasses of several buses have also been used as barricades and netting has been strung up to stop other explosives being lobbed into their complex of tents.

It feels as if they are preparing for battle - and I fear last night's fatality is unlikely to be the last in this struggle between those who want to expunge every trace of Thaksin Shinawatra and his allies from the machinery of government and those who feel he was the best prime minister Thailand ever had.

The billionaire former premier himself remains a fugitive; found guilty of corruption here, his visa revoked in Britain, he's thought to be in Dubai trying to find a new home.

He is no doubt following these troubling events in Bangkok closely. What's happening in Thailand now is a struggle for its political soul and Thaksin remains a key player even while abroad.

Profound questions about whether democracy works and whether the majority can be trusted to make the right decisions are being thrown up by a noisy minority who have paralysed the government and are determined to overthrow it.

The current Prime Minister, Thaksin's brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat, appears weak and helpless.

The army have refused to disperse the protesters and he's been forced to put on a brave face and try and ignore the fact he can't get into his own office.

This may go on for another three months, or even three years, but sooner or later a decision will have to be made. Who should run this country? A cabal of the Thai elite ruling for the benefit of the people, but refusing to hold free elections for fear they'll lose, or the majority of Thais who have repeatedly voted for Thaksin, and who are susceptible to corruption and vote buying?

It's not a new dilemma - can you really trust people to elect the best leader and if you can't who should decide who runs the country?

It reminds me of a quote by Sir Winston Churchill: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

BEIJING, China – China's leaders regularly talk of their fear of "social unrest." For anyone here who has become used to translating for the translators, that means a lot of really unhappy people marching on Beijing with burning torches and pitch forks demanding justice.

Apparently one of the big factors leading to "social unrest" is unemployment. In theory, the social contract that keeps the Communist Party in power is this: the farmers and factory workers will hand over absolute power to the Communists, providing each year they earn a little more money and their kids will have a better life.

But the flip side of the contract is: When you lose your job or no one is buying the stuff from your farm, then the Communist Party is seen to have reneged on the deal and everyone starts sharpening their pitch forks.

Urban unemployment right now is around 4 percent. Pretty good, I hear you say, and in the West that might be true.

But, in reality, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao face enormous challenges, including simmering discontent.

Compared to the West, wages here are very low, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that unemployment could skyrocket if economic growth continues to slow as we have seen in recent weeks.

Visit a supermarket in Beijing and you'll see lots of workers in each aisle. One very helpful assistant was kind enough to point to the big box of laundry soap. "Big," she told me, and then the smaller one: "Small."

There's the helpful man who points to the automated ticket dispenser at the parking lot near my daughter's school.

The Hohot hotel in Inner Mongolia where I recently stayed had many workers in the foyer, who would often inquire if I was sleepy or hungry.

I was usually fine, but I would draw a blank when I asked the hotel for an electrical adapter for my laptop.

My point is, of the 800 million people "working" in China, there seem to be quite a few in jobs that might not seem that productive. And if the economy slows, they may be the first to be fired.

Then, the shopping center and parking lot pointers and hotel foyer greeters could all become part of "social unrest."