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People around the world want the same thing from their doctors. First, do no harm. Second, take a look at this weird bump and tell me if I should get worried.

The job is basically the same in many countries around the world. But the pay is wildly different. The median salary for U.S. doctors is about $250,000 a year. In Western Europe, it's less than half that. In developing countries, the salaries are even lower.

Through insurance and out of our own pockets, we pay for doctors' services, just like we pay for all other kinds of goods and services.And yet, with lots of other things we buy, we often turn to imports to save money.

"We should think of doctors the same way we think of shirts," says the economist Dean Baker. "If we can get doctors at a lower cost from elsewhere in the world then we could save enormous amounts of money."

The big difference, of course, is that a bad t-shirt won't kill you.

So, in the name of protecting patients, we put a lot of barriers up to make it harder for foreign doctors to work in the U.S. Even for fully qualified doctors practicing in countries very similar to ours, it can take years of extra training to get licensed to practice in the U.S.

Many U.S. states recognize Canadian medical schools, and have tried to streamline the process for Canadian doctors to work here. But it can be complicated. Every state has its own bureaucracy and license application and requirements.

A Canadian critical care doctor I talked to moved with his wife to California, where he planned to practice. After nine months of paperwork and bureaucracy, he gave up and went back to Canada.

For doctors from other parts of the world, the process is guaranteed to take even longer. Foreign-trained doctors — even those with advanced skills, who have been practicing medicine for years — are required to repeat years of the basic residency training that doctors go through right after medical school.

"The process may be seen as perhaps cumbersome to practicing physicians," says Dr, Humayan Chaudry, President of the Federation of State Medical Boards. "But... the goal at the end of the day is to protect the public."

Chaudry says there simply isn't a way to evaluate the quality of medical training in every country around the world. And clearly, he says, it doesn't deter doctors from coming. Chaudry says that 22 percent of all the licensed doctors in the United States went to medical school outside the country.

But, Dean Baker argues, there should be even more foreign-trained doctors than there already are. A lot of poor and rural areas in the U.S. don't have enough doctors. And foreign-trained physicians are much more likely to specialize in primary care and go to work in such places.

Baker says that rather than have professionals spend years redoing their training, the U.S. should try to make the process more simple and transparent. He says we should tell young, aspiring doctors:

Here's what you have to do. Here are the courses you have to take. Here's is the test you have to pass. If you pass those tests you get to come to the United States and be a doctor just like anyone who was trained in the United States.

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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The Two-Way

'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.