let's head live to london and round the world with zain vergee. zain. >> good morning, carol. the president of syria, bashar al assad gave an interview to the daily telegraph here in the uk. he said syria's not like egypt or tunisia or yemen in that it really is a hub, the center of the middle east. and that any kind of an attack on syria would destabilize the entire region. he called it -- he said it would be like an earthquake. but he also likened it to afghanistan. he was also asked questions about the early protests that went on, as you can see on the streets, the syrian government has brutally cracked down on. he said mistakes were made early on by his security forces but now they're moving forward and targeting the terrorists. he said, that are causing these disturbances. carol? >> let's talk about the world population, because the planet earth is fast reaching a milestone. we could do it what, sometime today? >> sometime today. there are reports just moments ago, already out that says the 7 billionth child in our world has been born. some re

let's head to london and check in with zain vergee. good morning, zain.ears over the former libyan leader's death but there are a lot of questions. but there's something new about to happen. what are you hearing? >> there are so many questions about the circumstances of his death. even though we've all seen the gruesome video of some of his final moments, there's a question still being asked by the ntc as to who specifically killed him. now, what they're looking for, carol, is some kind of an investigation into what exactly happened. they're saying that whoever was responsible for killing him should go on trial. that having been said, officials in the ntc say that they want to move forward. it's important to have some sense of reconciliation within the country. many analysts i've spoken to really point to one thing that can be worrying. they say if ntc officials can't control different militia groups, revolutionary fighters, what does the future of libya look like? but this is the situation right now. they want to investigate and put on trial those who ki

let's head round the world with zain vergee. she's reporting live from london. ng, zain. >> reporter: good morning, carol. this is a disturbing new strategy and basically it's coming out of the fact that a lot of these cartels think they can give a minimal amount of money to teens and they'll take it, something like $50 for an operation to get them involved in something like that. and also, the laws are more lenient with minors. so that's become attractive as well. what happened earlier this month actually was that a 12-year-old boy was caught in a stolen truck with something like 800 pounds of marijuana. that just gives you an idea of how young the people they're going for are now. here's what the former u.s. drug czar had to say about this development. >> the dominant criminal enterprise in the united states, more than 260 cities, i was just in portland, oregon, talking to their police department, is elements of mexican cartels. they're moving hundreds of metric tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, marijuana across that border. >> the u.s. border

. >>> i'm zain vergee at cnn in london. here rlt headlines. >>> it's day two of a general strike in greece that's paralyzed the nation. it's also the day on which the parliament is expected to approve another round of harsh austerity measures. we'll have more in just a moment. >>> u.s. secretary of hillary clinton aexpected to meet with the afghan president, hamid karzai to talk about the relationship between his country and pakistan. clinton just left libya. the visit there was the first by a cabinet-level official since the overthrow of moammar gadhafi. >>> there are reports that turkish forces killed 15 militants in iraq. they were in pursuit of kurdish rebels. the fighters have waged a campaign for a separate state for several decades. >>> france's president and first lady welcomed a baby girl wednesday night. a close family friend says she is doing well after giving birth to the first baby born to a sitting french president. nicolas sarkozy visited his wife and new daughter in a paris hospital a few hours after the gir