All Blog Posts from World Watch

By CBS News' Robert Hendin and Marsha Cooke

(SHANGHAI, China) One of more interesting moments in today's first ever Presidential town hall in China, came when President Obama was asked about Twitter and freedom of expression over the Internet. China is the world's biggest user of the Internet, with more people online here than any other country in the world. But since July, the Chinese government has blocked the popular social-networking sites Twitter and Facebook, to tamp down on criticism after the riots in the Xinjiang province.

The question came, guess what, over the Internet to the U.S. embassy here. Ambassador Jon Huntsman read the question posed via the Internet: "In a country with 350 million Internet users and 60 million bloggers, do you know of the firewall?... should we be able to use Twitter freely?"

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This story was filed by CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk at the United Nations.

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The leak of information about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother and his alleged connection to the CIA and tribal drug lords is curious. Leaks always are. But in this case, the release of this sensitive information is troublesome and potentially game-changing in a dangerous war.

Ahmed Wali Karzai admitted to giving the agency information, but has denied receiving any money from the CIA, or being part of the lucrative Afghanistan opium trade – making him, at least in Washington-talk, that much more guilty.

The report itself will change the political and military landscape in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The insurgents will use it as proof of the U.S. meddling at the highest level of the Afghan government. In Pakistan, where the use of drones is already being questioned by the U.N. envoy for extrajudicial killings — and the Pakistani Parliament questions the strings on the $7.5 billion U.S. aid package — the equation of the U.S. government to the CIA is devastating.

So, the obvious, unanswered question is: who leaked the information?

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Eight more troops were killed today in Afghanistan, bringing us to 53 dead this month –the highest toll so far in the eight-year-old war. It comes in advance of yet another meeting the president is holding to decide about his Afghan war strategy. He'll meet with the joint chiefs, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, on Friday.

But while many in the blogosphere and the 24-hour media universe – as well as former White House officials – denounce the meetings as dithering, a group of servicemen here in Florida indicated they believe otherwise.

Addressing servicemen and women at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, President Obama said, "I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way. I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary." The remark prompted rancorous applause.

I sure didn't see it coming. But I should have. I've heard it enough from friends and contacts in the military and the diplomatic corps: "Let's not rush headlong into this like we did with Iraq. Not again."

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The White House has dismissed a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation that President Obama might announce an additional surge of troops — likely between 40,000 and 45,000 as early as next week.

The BBC's "Newsnight" program reported Wednesday night that Mr. Obama has already made his decision, informed the British government that a significant troop increase was coming, and that he may seek to make the announcement publically ahead of a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Slovakia next week.

Newsnight, a well-regarded hard-news magazine show, did not name sources for its report.

The White House was quick to tell the BBC that the claim was incorrect, and that the Mr. Obama was still in the highly publicized decision-making process about how to alter the American war strategy in Afghanistan.

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This story was filed by CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk at the United Nations.

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Eight years ago this month, the war in Afghanistan began, and in the coming weeks, President Obama will decide, after intense deliberation with his war council, what to do next.

The most puzzling, and troubling aspect of the deliberations, is how many genuinely basic questions remain unanswered. What are the goals? Who is in charge of the country where 100,000 troops are serving under U.S. and NATO command (and Mr. Obama is considering a dramatic increase)? And, of course, why?

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The sound you could hear this morning was of heads being scratched around the world.

Very quickly, the Nobel Committee found itself having not just to explain its choice of President Barack Obama for the Peace Prize, but to defend it.

There have been controversial selections before, but rarely one that caused this much puzzlement.

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Pakistan's influential army on Wednesday came out in a rare public criticism of a recent U.S. aid bill to the country, citing its "serious concern" on provisions which have prompted a wave of criticism from hardcore Pakistani nationalists.

The controversy has erupted just as U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to finalize a plan for stabilizing Afghanistan, Pakistan’s next door neighbor, where an insurgency led by the Taliban and supported by al Qaeda has gathered momentum in the past year, causing a growing number of U.S. and NATO military casualties.

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Saudi Arabian King Abdullah Bin Abdullaziz arrives in Damascus Wednesday to take Saudi-Syrian relations to new heights after years of bitter tension; a landmark shift in diplomacy which analysts predict may push Lebanon's political elite to find consensus on a national unity government.

The visit is the first of its kind since 2005, when bilateral relations hit rock bottom in 2005 following the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri, who was close to Riyadh. Syria was accused of the murder and, under intense regional and international pressure, withdrew the troops from Lebanon it sent to end the civil war there. Damascus denies any involvement in Hariri's murder.

A sweetening in that relationship could have significant repercussions for the region. Washington is hoping to engage Syria in a new round of peace talks with Israel. The Obama administration and its Arab allies want to diminish the influence Iranian-backed groups Hezbollah and Hamas have over regional affairs. Syria wields influence over these militant organizations, classified by Washington as terrorist groups.

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Going into Thursday's high-stakes negotiations with Iran, President Obama will soon see for himself the corner into which the Islamic Republic has thrust his predecessors.

Iran has the world over a barrel, literally. The country's vast oil reserves will undermine Obama administration efforts to increase U.N. sanctions, and Iran knows it.

U.N. sanctions only work when they are airtight. Despite the White House's message that the veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council (the P5 as they are called: the U.S., Russia, France, China, and the U.K.) and Germany are unified in their response and that the Iranian missile tests of last week were a game changer, they are dodging the harsh reality that China is not even close to being "on board" for tough sanctions.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned President Obama on Friday not to press Tehran on the disclosure of a second uranium enrichment plant, Time Magazine reports.

"If I were [President] Obama's adviser, I would definitely advise him to refrain making this statement because it is definitely a mistake. It would definitively be a mistake," Ahmadinejad told TIME in an exclusive interview.

Mr. Obama and the leaders of France and Britain demanded Friday that Iran fully disclose its nuclear ambitions "or be held accountable" to an impatient world community. They threatened new sanctions after the disclosure of a secret Iranian nuclear facility.

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