All Blog Posts from World Watch
Inside the plans of Capitol bomb suspect
CBS This Morning senior correspondent John Miller, a former assistant director of the FBI, wrote this piece for CBSNews.com on the arrest today of Amine El Khalifi on charges of attempting to suicide bomb the U.S. Capitol.
Undated photo of Amine El Khalifi
(Credit: CBS)Sidi Mohamed Amine El Khalifi came to the United States on June 27, 1999 with his parents on a trip to Orlando, Florida. The baby-faced, brown-eyed Moroccan teenager would overstay his tourist visa and remain here for more than a decade, moving from Kissimmee, Florida to Northern Virginia. He worked at odd jobs and had occasional minor scrapes with the law, including a marijuana charge and traffic infractions.
Khalifi stayed illegally, never applying for citizenship; he flew under the radar of law enforcement and immigration officials until the early days of 2011.
Continue »Iran offers to fund pipeline through Pakistan
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, center, holds the hands of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a trilateral summit on Afghan stability Feb. 17, 2012.
(Credit: AP)Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has quietly offered to finance the Pakistani portion of a multinational gas pipeline project opposed by the United States, in a strong signal of Tehran's intent to build closer ties with its neighbor.
Ahmedinejad left Pakistan Friday after meeting with Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan president Hamid Karzai, a trilateral summit seeking a formula to stabilize conditions in Afghanistan.
A joint statement issued by Pakistan's foreign ministry after the meeting said the three countries agreed to "develop mutually beneficial cooperation in the energy, mining and minerals, agriculture and other sectors" without providing further details.
Continue »China seeks "peaceful" resolution in Syria
China's Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun in pictured in January 26, 2008 file photo in Lilongwe, Malawi.
(Credit: AMOS GUMULIRA/AFP/Getty Images)Before leaving Thursday, Zhai Jun said his country does not approve of armed intervention to force regime change in Syria, adding that his two-day trip was intended to end the violence in "peaceful" ways.
The visit comes only days after Beijing said the United Nations should tread carefully in the strife-torn country or risk worsening violence in the government's crackdown on opposition groups.
"He will exchange views with the Syrian government and parties concerned in Syria on the current ... situation to push for a peaceful and proper resolution" of the crisis, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Weimin told a regular briefing on Wednesday.
He added that the Chinese will play "a constructive role in mediation."
Report: U.S., Taliban, Afghans in secret talks
Former Taliban militants hold their weapons during a joining ceremony with the Afghan government in Herat, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday Jan. 30, 2012.
(Credit: AP Photo/Hoshang Hashimi)In a bid to end the 10-year war effort in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said his country has begun facilitating secret three-way talks with the Taliban and the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reports.
Karzai told the Journal he believes the Taliban are "definitively" interested in a peace settlement.
"There have been contacts between the U.S. government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including the Taliban," Mr. Karzai said in the interview Wednesday in his office at the Arg Palace in Kabul.
Continue »Syria's Assad calls referendum on new constitution
A pro-Syrian regime protester rides his scooter with his two sons, while holding a Syrian flag bearing a picture of Syrian President Bashar Assad, as other protester in the background wave a Russian flag during a demonstration where a number of anti-Syrian regime protesters and supporters of the Islamic group Jamaa Islamiya were also protesting, in front the Russian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon, Feb. 5, 2012.
(Credit: AP)
Syrian President Bashar Assad on Wednesday approved a draft for a new constitution that would end his ruling Baath party's monopoly on power in the fraught nation and open the door for all political parties to compete.
In announcement carried on state-run television aimed at quelling an 11-month uprising which has posed the greatest threat to his family's rule in decades, Assad declared that a national referendum on the draft would be held on Feb. 26.
Presidential sources say Assad, who met this week with the newly-established 29-member constitutional charter committee, "wanted the people to have their say on this move, the first step on a democratic Syria," with a simple "yes-no" vote.
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Iran to announce new nuclear projects Wednesday
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attends the 25th International Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran Feb. 8, 2012.
(Credit: AFP/Getty Images)IRNA did not specify in its Tuesday report what the projects would be. But an independent news website that regularly reports on nuclear developments said the ceremonies are likely to include the formal inauguration of the underground Fordo uranium enrichment site in central Iran, and starting operations on two lines of centrifuges there.
Irannuc.ir said that the president is also likely to announce the final stage of production of nuclear fuel rods to be used in a Tehran research reactor.
Russia's RIA news agency, quoting senior Iranian official Ali Bagheri, said Ahmadinejad would attend the event at a reactor which is running out of nuclear fuel originally provided by Argentina in the 1990s, Reuters reported.
Syrian unrest resembling Iraq sectarian violence
Syrian supporters of President Bashar al-Assad hold his portrait as they wave their national flag during a pro-regime demonstration at Sabe Bahrat Square in Damascus, Syria, Feb. 12, 2012.
(Credit: AFP/Getty Images)
This post, written by Hugh Macleod and Annasofie Flamand, originally appeared on GlobalPost.
BEIRUT -- Homs is now a war zone, a city under siege by the army of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. It is a city where rebel soldiers are being joined by jihadis to fight a guerrilla insurgency, and where once mixed communities have begun to split along religious lines as the seeds of a civil war take root.
"We're working by candlelight because there is no electricity and our generator is running out of fuel," a doctor known as Abdel Rizk from Homs' easterly Karm Zeitoun neighborhood told GlobalPost.
Special Section: The Arab Spring
Russia, China mull Arab League's Syria proposal
Arab League wants UN peacekeepers in Syria
Pakistan PM vows to fight contempt charge
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani waves upon his arrival at the Supreme Court for a hearing in Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 13, 2012.
(Credit: AP)
(CBS) ISLAMABAD - Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was charged with contempt by the Supreme Court on Monday in a move which raises the specter of further instability across a country considered vital to U.S. security interests across the border in Afghanistan.
Justice Nasirul Mulk formally charged Gilani with contempt of court for his refusal to comply with an earlier court order stating that he must formally request Swiss authorities reopen an investigation into alleged corruption by President Asif Ali Zardari.
The issue goes back to accusations against Zardari for having allegedly received kickbacks from two Swiss companies, as well as money laundering allegations.
After Monday's hearing, the government indicated its intent to fight the charges rather than see Gilani step down and peacefully end the high profile legal battle.
"The prime minister is in no mood to step down. He will contest this case to defend himself," a senior leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), of which both Zardari and Gilani are members, told CBS News on the condition of anonymity.
Continue »Diplomat: U.N. cannot keep quiet on Syria
NEW YORK - Qatar led the 22-member League of Arab States in negotiations to draft a proposal calling on the United Nations to demand Syrian President Bashar Assad step down, and it was the first Arab nation to suggest sending troops to end the bloodshed in Syria.
In a report broadcast last month, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Arab troops should be deployed to Syria to stop the killing that has claimed the lives of more than 5,400 Syrians since protests began nearly a year ago.
Now, the President of the U.N. General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, told CBS News that peacekeepers may in fact be the solution to the Syrian crisis: "If Syria will not be stable, or in a civil war, that might lead to really a very bad situation, not only in Syria, but for the region."
Al-Nasser said the Emir's proposal to get the Arab League involved - in an effort to bring stability and security (and perhaps a political solution) and thus end the violence - means "it would be the Arab League's responsibility to send peacekeepers," noting that the Syrian government has already rejected that suggestion.
Can the U.N. keep Israel-Palestine talks going?
During his Middle East trip, Ban Ki-moon focused on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The U.N. Secretary-General was met with protesters in Gaza, who attacked his convoy with sticks and shoes, but was applauded by schoolgirls at a U.N.-run school in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
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