All Blog Posts from World Watch

Longtime fugitive Luis Armando Pena Soltren is expected to be arraigned Tuesday in a Manhattan courtroom after his arrest Sunday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport more than 40 years after he allegedly hijacked a plane and diverted it from Puerto Rico to Cuba.

Cuba remains somewhat of a safe haven for other people wanted by U.S. authorities for hijacking planes, ABC News reported Tuesday. In 1968, more than 30 planes "were hijacked or attempted to be hijacked to Cuba," the network reported, and those who succeeded live as fugitives on the tiny Communist island 90 miles off the Florida coast.

The United States even formalized an agreement with Cuba in 1971 in an effort to retrieve some of the alleged hijackers but yielded the return of only a few fugitives.

"Most of these guys have been there for a long time," Wayne Smith, former chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Cuba, told ABC. "Many of them, like Soltren, hijacked planes, sought refuge and have been living there ever since. By and large, they've been accepted and live normal lives. They have housing and have been assigned jobs."

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The New York Times reported Friday that the company that used to be known as Blackwater has taken over from the Central Intelligence Agency the job of arming the agency's Predator drones that patrol over Afghanistan.

Contractors for Blackwater, now formally known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, assemble and load Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs onto the pilotless aircraft in secret bases in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, the Times reported. Although CIA employees fire the drones' weaponry from the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., the Times reports this development reflects how much the agency "now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments."

"The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise," one government official told the Times. "It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue."

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A senior Western diplomat speaking to CBS News strengthened this morning's report that Osama bin Laden's son Saad has died.

"Intelligence information suggests Saad bin Laden has not been in communication with anyone for a few months now. That strengthens speculation over his death," a NATO-country ambassador said to CBS News' Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday night.

Speaking to CBS News on condition of anonymity, the ambassador said, "So far, there is no indication that he was anywhere near his father if and when killed. Osama bin Laden is apparently still alive."

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