Pakistan's New President

Nic Robertson was back in Pakistan this weekend to cover the election to choose a new president. As he explained in a blog post, he has been unable to get a visa to enter the country for the past year after criticizing former president Pervez Musharraf:

Stakes high in Pakistan’s battle against Taliban

But before the voting began, the Taliban attempted to assassinate the leading contender, Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benizir Bhutto:

Nic also did a behind-the-scenes piece for CNN.com about the scramble to chase the story:

Another blog post the morning of the election told how local citizens were understandably not very wrapped up in the outcome -- in a country where corruption and coups are more likely than not to decide who is in power, local economics and security concerns are much more on the minds of the residents:

Storm clouds gather over Pakistan vote

Following the announcement of the election, Nic walked the streets of Islamabad as people celebrated the news:

In his final blog post of the week, Nic described the actual voting itself, the changes in press freedom over the past decade, and perhaps a bit of the cynicism of those who recognize when the cameras are rolling:

The job facing Pakistan’s new president

On Sunday, Nic appeared on Fareed Zakaria GPS to discuss various aspects of the Pakistan issue:

Also, Nic was in Atlanta a few weeks ago and appeared on Newsroom to talk about the situation in Darfur. I had promised to post this before Gustav changed our plans and wanted to catch it up:

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Elsewhere this week, Cal Perry was back in Damascus and scored an exclusive interview with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad:

Barbara Starr did a very interesting piece last week on the way the Pentagon is studying vets who are living with pieces of shrapnel in their bodies when doctors decide that removing them would be too dangerous. This piece also was included in Dr. Sanjay Gupta's House Calls this past weekend:

And yesterday, the Pentagon sponsored Freedom Walk to commemorate the upcoming 9/11 anniversary. Jamie McIntyre profiled an Air Force Colonel who was returning for the first time to the room where he was sitting when the plane struck seven years ago:

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A couple of programming notes... First, Newsroom debuted a new line-up of anchors today (all times Eastern):

9a-11a — Heidi Collins
11a-1p — Tony Harris

1p-3p — Kyra Phillips  (Betty Nguyen was on today, Kyra is in Anchorage)

3p-4p — Rick Sanchez

According to the original report: Rick joins our weekday lineup following his great work on the weekend edition of CNN Newsroom. Don Lemon will become our prime-time weekend anchor for Newsroom, which allows his award-winning reporter talents to be used as a correspondent on the weekdays.

Also, some apparently unfortunate news for non-US viewers of CNN International -- it seems that Anderson Cooper 360 has been removed from the new schedule!

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