Lara Logan's Pick: A Relentless Enemy
The rockets started hitting the military base almost as soon as Lara Logan arrived. Lara was in Afghanistan in 2010 to report on the brutal fighting on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Foreign fighters stream into Afghanistan across this border, and they have only one goal: to kill American troops.
That day, Lara and producers Max McClellan and Jeff Newton were with the 101st Airborne Division at their base just inside Afghanistan, and the fighting they saw was more brutal than anything they'd seen in a decade of covering that war.
Continue Reading »Playing the odds
For the vast majority of adults, casino gambling is a perfectly safe and enjoyable hobby. But two to three percent of gamblers will develop a gambling problem. And, as Lesley Stahl reported this week on the "60 Minutes" broadcast, the increased speed of modern slot machines can make players more vulnerable to gambling addiction.
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Anderson Cooper's Pick: Kings of Congo
Thumping his chest, grunting loudly, and rising up on his hind legs, a 400-pound male silverback mountain gorilla charged at Anderson Cooper during a reporting assignment in central Africa in 2007. But Anderson kept his cool as this massive creature showed his human visitors that he was the boss of this forest family of 20 female and baby gorillas.
Continue Reading »Can this man save New Orleans?
Correspondent Byron Pitts has been covering New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the area in 2005. His very first "60 Minutes" report, in 2006, was about then-Mayor Ray Nagin, as he struggled to get the city back on its feet. While many say Nagin ultimately failed, there's a new mayor giving the city new hope: Mitch Landrieu.
Continue Reading »Anderson Cooper: An unguarded conversation
As a contributing correspondent for "60 Minutes," Anderson Cooper divides his time between his offices at CBS News and CNN's New York headquarters. For this week's Correspondent Candid, "60 Minutes Overtime" Online Editor Ann Silvio sat down with Cooper at his CNN offices overlooking Central Park, and talked to him about his report on the Afghan police force and other aspects of his wide-ranging career on the broadcast.
Continue Reading »Bob Simon's Pick: Mount Athos
"You have to understand, the words that we're saying in today's liturgy are the same words that Christ was saying," one Orthodox Christian monk told correspondent Bob Simon when he visited the monastic peninsula of Mount Athos in Greece. How better to make the point that very little has changed there in a long, long time.
Continue Reading »Bob Simon's wild kingdom
From wars to famines, from the Olympics to overthrown dictators, Bob Simon has covered just about every major international event in his 44-year career at CBS News. (He won a Lifetime Achievement Emmy eight years ago, and he's still going strong.)
Continue Reading »The Super Bowl: America's biggest bet
Legal sports gambling is all about playing the odds: checking the point spread in a game and deciding the team upon which to place your money. But, who sets those odds and how? It's a process of combining cold calculations with the occasional hunch.
Continue Reading »San Francisco on film: Days before the 1906 Quake
A blog post by David Browning, the producer of this week's "60 Minutes" story about a mysterious reel of film, known as "A Trip Down Market Street:"
My wife, I confess, comes up with some of the best stories I do. Last year she sent me a link from a friend to a Web site showing a badly scratched version of "A Trip Down Market Street," the remarkable movie made a century ago on San Francisco's main drag. It's a film guaranteed to mesmerize anybody who sees it, even with the scratches: a bygone time brought to life.
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