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She covers her hair with a hijab, or a stocking cap, or sometimes a helmet. She has sharp eyes and a sly smile. But probably the most striking thing about Noor is how calm she is in the face of chaos.

As we got out of the car in a bombed-out neighborhood during that first trip, she led us around like we were on a tour. We started to hear shelling and gunfire, but Noor was unfazed.

"We're not even close to the front line yet," she said.

She walked us to what she called the back of the front line. It was the backside of a building. The only thing separating us from the front line was the building.

We started asking questions about a guy who was killed the day before. Turns out Noor knew him. He had been part of a team of rebel fighters, known as the Free Syrian Army, which helped pull the body of an old man out of some rubble. A government sniper had shot the man in the chest and killed him.

Noor says the rebel fighter provided cover by shooting at the government sniper. "At the same moment, two rebels ran into the street, dragged the body, and that's it."

Noor photographed the whole thing — the body of the old man being dragged out and the rebel who was shooting to provide cover. Now the rebel shooter is dead.

As we walked through the rubble of the ruined streets, she remembered him — her voice showing no emotion.

"He went to see his family last Saturday ... and then he came back here the next day. And he died," she said.

An Accidental War Photographer

It's this kind of experience that gives Noor credibility with the rebels in Aleppo. It means they give her access, and good access means good pictures.

When the Syrian uprising started nearly two years ago, Noor was a recent college graduate teaching English in a private school.

Protests kicked off around the country, but not the northern city of Aleppo, Noor's hometown.

That's because the business-minded city was more concerned with survival than politics. Noor says she'd go to protests that lasted only five minutes.

Then some in the protest movement took up arms, and last summer those rebel fighters brought the fight to Aleppo. At first, Noor did what she calls "woman things" — cooking for the rebels.

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It's been a rough voyage for the cruise-line industry in the past few years.

The engine room fire, power outage and ensuing problems aboard the stricken Carnival Triumph in recent days is far from the first recent major problem aboard a cruise ship. In 2010, for example, a similar fire, with a similar outcome, occurred aboard the Carnival Splendor. A year ago, there was the Costa Concordia disaster. And just this week, a lifeboat accident aboard a Thomson Cruises ship killed five crew members and caused the company to cancel the cruise and fly the passengers back home.

Ross Klein, a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland who tracks cruise-line mishaps on his website CruiseJunkie.com, makes a direct connection between the growth of the cruise industry and the spate problems. "I think we are seeing more incidents because there are more ships," he says.

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'Cruise From Hell' Was A Mix Of 'Survivor' And 'Lord Of The Flies'

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has put the state on what he calls a "glide path to zero" income tax. But that glide path is far from being clear or smooth.

On the face of it, Brownback seems to enjoy a remarkably strong political position. He's a conservative Republican, flanked by GOP supermajorities in both legislative chambers. His allies helped purge moderate Republicans from the state Senate in last year's election.

"I think the road is open," Brownback says. "I think we do provide an alternative model. I think we do provide a red-state model."

In 2012, Kansas eliminated the state income tax for about 190,000 small businesses and cut the rate substantially for high-income individuals.

"We're going from the highest-tax state in the region, to the lowest-tax state in the region," Brownback says.

“ I think the road is open. I think we do provide an alternative model. I think we do provide a red-state model.

The proposed marriage of American Airlines and US Airways announced Thursday may be the last in a series of industry mega-mergers, but history suggests combining two big carriers isn't easy.

"The history of airline mergers in the U.S. is good, bad and ugly," says Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at the consulting firm Hudson Crossing. He and many others point to the 2008 union of Delta and Northwest as the best merger in recent memory.

"Delta and Northwest had already been cooperating on a number of different issues," Harteveldt says. "They were members of the same airline alliance, they cooperated on certain international flying; they had a complementary route network; they had similar cultures; they had a similar approach to doing business."

Dealing With Pilot Seniority

Delta hired a former head of Northwest to lead the combined airline. And Daniel Kasper, a consultant at Compass Lexecon says, Delta did something else that was very smart. Pilots from both airlines wanted a deal and Delta told them it wouldn't happen unless they could agree in advance on how they would merge their seniority lists.

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How The American-US Airways Merger Might Affect You