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 Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded in Oslo, Norway on Friday at 11 a.m. local time – that's 5 a.m. in New York – and while there is no clear frontrunner, a few names have emerged as the top contenders.

Among them are two Chinese dissidents, Hu Kia and Wei Jingsheng, whose victory would likely draw vocal protests from the Chinese government. Hu, as the Wall Street Journal reports, is a human rights and AIDS activist who went to prison for three-and-a-half years for "subversion," while Wei spent 17 years in prison and eventually moved to the United States.

Such an award would have particular resonance as 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, as well as 60 years since the the People's Republic of China was created. But there are reports that the Nobel committee is wary of challenging a major power such as China or Russia; some speculate that Hu and Wei, along with other activists like Gao Zhisheng, could thus lose out, as they did last year.

The leading candidate according to the oddsmakers at paddypower.com is an Afghan: Human rights activist Seema Samar, who is listed at 9/2. A medical doctor, Samar has seen her husband arrested, had to flee the country for her safety, and has been threatened with death for questioning sharia law. The U.N. special envoy to Darfur in Africa, Samar has been an outspoken advocate for women's rights.

Another top candidate is Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba, tapped by CNN as the frontrunner; Cordoba, the head of Colombians for Peace, has tried to end the conflict between her country's government and the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. She has secured the release of 16 hostages and was kidnapped herself in 1999; critics have complained, however, that she is too close to rebels.

Among the most familiar names on the list is Morgan Tsvangirai (pictured at top), the Zimbabwean opposition leader and prime minister who has faced arrest and intimidation at the hands of President Robert Mugabe; Tsvangirai worked out a tenuous power-sharing agreement with Mugabe following the disputed 2008 election.

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Parents, schools and doctors across the United Kingdom were on alert Tuesday after a 14-year-old English girl died from what appears to have been an extremely rare, severe reaction to the now-common cervical cancer vaccine.

The girl became ill soon after receiving the injection to prevent sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) on Monday at her school in Coventry, central England. She died in hospital just hours later.

She was given a vaccine called Cervarix manufactured by British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline.

CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton says that is not the shot commonly given to American girls, who are usually immunized with a drug made by Merck.

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China may be leading the global economic recovery, but the country's domestic dating market is sluggish.

"I've been single for four years straight, and I really want to get married," complains Dong Chun, an eligible 28-year-old Beijing resident with a Master's degree.

Dong has achieved significant career success working long hours in her top position with a prestigious media company, but despite her good fortune, she's worried about the future — specifically, about whom she will spend it with.

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He would never publicly acknowledge it, but Osama Bin Laden has to miss George W. Bush terribly.

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Some Taliban leaders are initiating third-party talks that could lay the groundwork for progress between the U.S. and Afghan governments and the Taliban insurgents. In the video below, Charles Sennott of international news site GlobalPost.com reports on how moderate Taliban leaders are engaged in shuttle negotiations, and have been in contact with Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban.

An agreement would call for a halt of Taliban attacks on schools and on those engaged in reconstruction projects, and the Afghan government would agree to release detainees and halt U.S. military attacks on civilians. Watch the video:

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Twenty years ago – before Twitter, before Facebook and even before the Internet was widely used at all – anti-government protests broke out in China. Though the grievance was different, the participants were similar: students, intellectuals and young people who took to the streets to demand reform. And in Beijing, as in Tehran, some of them ended up dead.

There are no clear numbers on how many died in the Tiananmen Square massacre, but it is believed to be in the thousands – far more than have been killed so far in Iran. Yet the government was essentially successful: The regime stayed in power, dissidents were arrested, and limits on free speech became even more deeply ingrained in the culture.

Could they have done the same today? The Iranian government has similarly tried to censor media coverage, yet the world has had access to an intimate and immediate accounting of the protests, the subsequent killings and the palpable anger in Tehran's streets. And while the situations are not identical, it's certainly notable that after initially backing the election results, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei changed course and said there would be an investigation.

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CBS News national security consultant Juan Zarate weighs in on the reported death of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Sri Lankan rebel group the Tamil Tigers and the group's announcement that they will lay down their arms.

While it is too soon to tell whether the Tamil desire for greater representation and autonomy will take on a new violent form in Sri Lanka at some point, the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is hugely significant in ending one of the most violent and longstanding terrorist/insurgency movements in the world.

There are two additional strategic points for folks to keep in mind regarding the rebel group's demise.

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A disturbing video that aired last month on ABC News depicting what appears to be the torture of an Afghan grain farmer by a member of Abu Dhabi's royal family may represent just one of many instances of torture involving Sheik Issa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, a brother of the crown prince.

The ABC report on the video is here. It shows a man identified as Sheik Issa "mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails." A man in a United Arab Emirates police uniform assists with the torture. The victim – reportedly an Afghan grain dealer – also has salt poured on his wounds and is run over with a Mercedes SUV.

In parts of the tape not aired, Sheik Issa reportedly pours lighter fuel on the victim's testicles and lights them on fire and inserts a cattle prod into the victim's anus.

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the UAE, one of the world's leading exporters of oil. The Nahayan's are its ruling family. The tape was reportedly made by the brother of Bassam Nabulsi, an American businessman and former partner of Sheik Issa who is now engaged in a lawsuit against him, at the request of the Sheik.

After the report aired, the UAE government said it would investigate the incident, with the Abu Dhabi Justice Department vowing to "conduct a comprehensive review of the matter immediately and make its findings public."

But the tape might just be the first piece of evidence in a wider scandal. The Guardian reported on Sunday that the lawyer for Nabulsi, Sheik Issa's former partner, claims to have "more than two hours of video footage showing Sheikh Issa's involvement in the torture of more than 25 people." According to the newspaper, police are believed to be seen participating in the attacks and some of the victims are thought to be Sudanese immigrants.

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This post was written by CBS News Producer Jeff Goldman.

On Tuesday, when President Obama made his "surprise" detour to Iraq, I was one of the eleven journalists in the press "pool."

Members of the pool, the members of which rotate more-or-less daily, are charged with covering the president's every move and reporting back to the larger media community. My job was to represent all five television networks. Our video was to be shared for all events that President Obama participated in that day.

The other journalists in the pool included a reporter representing the wire services, one newspaper reporter, one magazine reporter, one radio reporter and agency still photographers.

Conscious of the likelihood of a surprise stop on the way back from Europe and Turkey to Washington, D.C., we all chatted that day about where we might end up flying. The vast expanse of the Middle East seemed the likely spot due to close proximity to our last stop, in Turkey.

When we took off from Istanbul, we were scheduled to fly non-stop to Andrews Air Force Base outside of D.C. I knew within a few minutes that we were heading to another destination - one that was east of where we started.

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