(CNN) -- International envoy Kofi Annan said Tuesday he sees Iran as a factor in diplomatic efforts to forge peace in Syria, a stance not shared by the United States. "I think Iran can play a positive role," Annan said during a news conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran. His remarks came a day after he met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Annan said al-Assad agreed on "an approach" to ending the 16 months of bloodshed in his country. World powers have deplored al-Assad's government for its assaults against civilians. But the diplomatic wranglings, such as Annan's recent Action Group meeting in Geneva and the U.S. and Arab-backed Friends of Syria initiative, have failed to stop the killings of thousands since March 2011.

"And so, of course, Kofi Annan in
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Tehran, to the extent that he can stress to the Iranians the importance of cooperating with the plan, that's a good thing.


(CNN) -- Accusations of lies and counter-lies dominated the intensifying November election campaign Thursday, with surrogates and spokespeople for President Barack Obama and certain Republican nominee Mitt Romney trying to cast the other as dishonest and secretive. While neither candidate engaged directly in the political back-and-forth, their teams and supporters launched new attack ads and criticized the opposing contender with increasingly sharp rhetoric. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Romney couldn't be confirmed as a dogcatcher because he refuses to make public more of his past income tax returns, while Romney adviser Ed Gillespie labeled as a lie some Obama ads that accused the former Massachusetts governor of outsourcing jobs when he headed Bain Capital.


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Barack Obama got some good news Thursday, with the number of people filing for initial unemployment claims falling to a four-year low.


(CNN) -- Heads bowed, solemn, they filed by. The rich, the powerful. The famous and the family. All of them bidding goodbye to anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela on Wednesday, the first of three days his body will lie in state at the seat of South Africa's government. First was South African President Jacob Zuma. Then came Mandela's widow, GraÃ§a Machel, and former wife Winnie Mandela, both wearing black turbans. In near silence, dozens of family members passed by as military honor guards dressed in white flanked the coffin on each end. There were others in Pretoria, too. Former South African leaders Thabo Mbeki and F.W. de Klerk, the country's last apartheid-era president and Nobel Peace Prize winner. U2's Bono also paused for a moment before moving on. So did Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.

"This is not the
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Mandela who was in control of things that were happening around him, inspiring people.