All Blog Posts from World Watch

One year ago, Beijing was full to the brim. Athletes from all over the world filled the airport, tourists clutching maps crowded the subways and, of course, Chinese police watched over the capital from every street corner.

Rumors about the opening ceremony swirled around office water coolers and down onto the city's traditional alleyways ("There will be fireworks in the shape of dragons!"). The 2008 Summer Olympics was about to start, though no one knew whether the Chinese government would be able to pull it off.

365 days later, few can argue the Olympics weren't a huge success for China's organizational mavens. The two-week event broke television ratings records. Dire warnings of heavy pollution failed to come true as the city basked in blue skies, allowing athletes like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt to break records of their own.

But how is life for those still living in Beijing, a city that was radically overhauled for the Games? Depends who you ask.

Read full post…

Cuban President Raul Castro was short on details as he implied difficult economic times were still here for Cubans. The world economic crisis, and particularly a reduction in income from exports, means Cuba cannot meet its projected growth index, Castro told an early Sunday morning rally in the eastern Cuban city of Holguin.

From Havana, CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum reports that in his short, 34-minute speech at the traditional July 26 rally marking Cuba's Day of National Rebellion (the 1953 armed uprising against the Batista dictatorship that six years later brought his older brother Fidel to power), Raul Castro reiterated the urgent need to increase agricultural production to replace food imports. (At present, Cuba buys 80% of the food it consumes from international suppliers.)

Castro, who stepped in to run the country when Fidel Castro was sidelined by illness in 2006, reiterated his call for more people to return to the land. On July 26, 2007, he had announced a plan to provide free leases to land parcels to those interested in growing fruits and vegetables. That program, he told rally participants, is moving along "satisfactorily."

An expert in U.S.-Cuba relations noted that among the surprising elements of Castro's speech was that, not only did he focus almost exclusively on domestic issues but that — despite the economic hardships facing the island — the U.S. embargo was barely mentioned.

"Instead of blaming the embargo for our problems, he talked about what we have to do to overcome its impact," noted researcher Carlos Alzucaray.

Read full post…

Fidel Castro is once again demonstrating that he knows how to stir up controversy.

An online essay penned by the former Cuban president Tuesday evening seemed to throw a wrench into the apparent thawing in U.S.-Cuba relations. But some analysts question whether that is really the case.

It's a "script that has repeated many times before," says Nelson Valdes, a Cuban-American sociologist at the University of New Mexico.

Read full post…

Earlier this week, President Obama announced that he was lifting curbs on travel and money transfers, and he challenged Cuba to make improvements in the areas of human rights and freedoms.

Thursday, from a summit in Venezuela, Cuban President Raul Castro made a bold response: "We have sent word to the U.S. government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything — human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything."

The dialogue-in-soundbites was an unusually direct exchange between an American president and a Castro. It's a poker game between a young, popular president and an old fox; President Obama called out Raul Castro with an offer to negotiate, and Castro upped the ante by putting everything on the table.

Read full post…

We still don’t know exactly what illness befell former Cuban President Fidel Castro, but in a column posted Thursday evening, the 82-year-old makes it clear he's sick of being referred to as a convalescent.

Castro chides "some agencies and publications" for depicting him as “the old man, the convalescent from a serious illness or some other description."

Read full post…

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro says he's received an "immediate response" from the White House to a column he posted online Wednesday evening, and he's clearly disappointed with what he heard. Apparently America's new leader isn't embracing the tiny neighbor to the south as warmly as Castro had hoped.

Read full post…

Rumors that Cuban leader Fidel Castro is dead or close to death seem to surface every few months.

But a longtime Castro watcher in the intelligence community says the latest bout of rumors "smells a little different," reports CBS News' David Martin. The source says that they are coming in from so many different places that he gives more credence to them than usual.

Read full post…