All Blog Posts from World Watch

Group of Eight leaders said they deplore the violence in the aftermath of Iran's disputed election last month and remain "seriously concerned" about the situation.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the statement by G8 leaders "shows the unity of the G8 against the situation in Iran."

The G8 statement, seen by The Associated Press, said G8 leaders "deplore post-electoral violence, which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians." The leaders also "condemn the declarations of President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust."

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Hoping to revive the cooperative spirit of the early 1990s, Americans are coming to Russia to end a decade of mistrust.

President Barack Obama is expected in Moscow next week to discuss a wide range of issues with his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev and personally press the "reset" button on U.S.-Russia relations.

Hopes for a breakthrough are running high. Both sides have been unhappy about how low relations sank during the Putin-Bush era. Now, the two young presidents need to prove that cooperation on global issues is more than just words.

"Russia could be a partner, a country that would collaborate and make for better prospects for Obama's policies in both places, in Afghanistan and Iran," Dmitry Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center told CBS News. "Again, there is nothing more serious, nothing more important at this point for the administration than this."

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The United Nations' three-day Head-of-State Summit on the global financial crisis had promise. The goal was to convene a summit of world leaders at U.N. Headquarters in New York to assess the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression. Over 100 million people per year, the summiteers noted, will fall into extreme poverty.

On the first day, the message was clear: developing countries are the victims of the financial crisis and they need money. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, "surely, if the world can mobilize more than $18 trillion to keep the financial sector afloat, it can find more than $18 billion to keep commitments in Africa."

Security ahead of the "United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development" was tight. New York City Police blocked the perimeter of the U.N., and plans were readied for the red carpet treatment of presidents arriving at the General Assembly.

The problem was, almost no one showed up. Of the 140 nations participating, only a dozen presidents and prime ministers are attending, and it was postponed from early June because the "outcome document" – a set of proposals for the reform of the world financial system – had no consensus.

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On March 23, 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez described President Obama as "ignorant," saying that he needs some schooling on Latin America. What a difference a few weeks makes. At the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad today, Chavez and Obama shook hands but didn't come out fighting.

According to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, Mr. Obama walked across the room and introduced himself to Mr. Chavez. Photos made available by the Venezuelan government show the two presidents smiling, and Obama touching Chavez's shoulder during their brief encounter. The Venezuelan press office said that Chavez told Obama, "With this same hand I greeted Bush eight years ago. I want to be your friend." The White House isn't commenting on the encounter.

The AP reported that Chavez characterized the meeting as follows: "We shook each other's hands like gentlemen, and it was predictable this would happen."

The recent changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba, such as lifting curbs on travel and money transfers, is contributing to a thawing effect, but don’t expect Chavez’s trash-talking to abate as he goes about resetting relations with the U.S. He gets a lot of mileage in his region from his anti-American stance and accusation that the U.S. is out to steal Venezuela’s ample oil reserves.

What if you have a global summit but there's no media to cover it? Like the tree falling in the forest, does it make a sound if no one's there to hear it?

Some, perhaps hundreds, of the journalists at the G20 were perilously close to not getting into the ExCel Center — the site of the meeting — because of a printing house problem.

Okay, I can confirm the meeting is going on. But it seems a pretty apt metaphor for the times.

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How many people does it take to host an eight-hour meeting of world leaders? In short, thousands.

But how many would it take to bring the entire event to a grinding halt, or to tarnish its image on the pages of history? Just one.

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The upcoming G20 summit in London, and the first face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents, will become Dmitry Medvedev’s most important foreign policy event yet, reports CBS News' Alexsei Kuznetsov.

Medvedev’s summit with Mr. Obama is expected to provide a historic opportunity for the U.S. and Russia to re-establish trust and work toward a genuine strategic partnership on thorny issues like missile defense, non-proliferation and the war in Afghanistan.

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A week before President Barack Obama joins the largest developing and industrialized countries’ finance ministers and heads of state in London, the U.N. has issued its economic recommendations.

The bottom line: A drastic overhaul will be necessary to pull the world out of the recession, according to the Commission of Experts on Reforms of International Finance and Economic Structures, chaired by Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics. But that's easier said than done.

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