A new report released on Thursday by the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that the growth of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has continued apace ahead of renewed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

Since the release of the last report by the IAEA’s Governor-General in November 2012, Iran has increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to a 20 percent level by about 43 kilograms. While Iran has restarted its conversion of some of that stockpile into uranium oxide gas and other forms that are difficult to further enrich to fuel medical research at the Tehran Research Reactor, the associated reduction didn’t counter new enrichment enough to show a decrease in overall levels.

The concern surrounding Iran’s uranium stockpile is not that it’s currently usable in a nuclear weapon — for that it would need to be enriched to 90 percent level, making it highly-enriched. However, the technology required to produce 90 percent enriched uranium is a small step from that required to reach the 20 percent threshold. Approximately 250 kilograms of 90 percent uranium is required to create one nuclear weapon, an amount that Iran has been careful not to reach.

Compounding misgivings about Iran’s nuclear program, however, is the news that its heavy-water reactor based in Arak is slated to become operational in early 2014. Unfortunately, the new reactor has the potential to produce plutonium as a by-product of its usage, which would only add to suspicions about the nature of Iran’s program. Plutonium can still be used in civilian reactors, but lower amounts are necessary to produce simpler — but lower-yield — nuclear weapons than those that utilize uranium. Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies still believe, however, that Iran has not made a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon at this time.

Adding to the unfortunate news contained in the IAEA report, Iran today announced that it has begun installing more advanced centrifuges in its main enrichment facility Nanatz. The Iranian government had previously informed the IAEA of its plans to do so weeks ago, but started the actual work of getting the equipment into place today. However, today’s IAEA report does indicate that the exact same number of centrifuges remain operational at Natanz as in November, despite an increase in the number fully installed.

All of this heightens the pressure upon negotiators from the P5+1 — the United States, United Kingdom, China, France, Russian Federation, and Germany — ahead of their restarted talks with Iran next week in Kazakhstan. Reuters has reported that the group will present Iran with a new package of “substantial and serious” offers to Iran during the negotiations, including eased sanctions on gold and other precious metals.

Emad Burnat — the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “5 Broken Cameras” — landed in Los Angeles yesterday ahead of Sunday’s awards ceremony to a less than pleasant welcome. Rather than the easy transit he had experienced during his previous five visits to the U.S., customs officials detained him, his wife, and six-year old son in a small room in Los Angeles International Airport and couldn’t believe that he was in town to attend the prestigious event.

According to Burnat, customs agents wouldn’t accept the scanned versions of the official documents that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sends its nominees. Burnat then texted documentarian Michael Moore to let him know that he was being threatened with being sent back to Turkey without more proof that he was attending the Academy Awards. Moore described what happened more fully in a post on his blog yesterday:

I told Emad to give the Homeland Security people my name and cell number and to have them call me ASAP so I could explain who he was and why they should let him go.

After being held for somewhere between one and two hours, with repeated suggestions that the U.S. may not let him into the country – saying that they may send him back home – the authorities relented and released Emad and his family.

Moore also documented the events in a series of tweets to his 1.4 million followers, not hiding his beliefs about the motives behind Burnat’s threatened deportation:

Apparently the Immigration & Customs officers couldn’t understand how a Palestinian could be an Oscar nominee. Emad texted me for help.

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) February 20, 2013

The holding of Burnat, director of the first Palestinian film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, remains puzzling as he would have had to go through the visa process before entering the U.S. on his previous visits and likely did so again. Burnat was also detained for six hours by Israeli security when trying to cross the border into Jordan to catch his flight to the U.S.

When asked about the situation during today’s press brief, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland deflected the question to the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which is a part of DHS — did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the detention of Burnat. “Travelers may be referred for further inspection for a variety of reasons to include identity verification, intent of travel, and confirmation of admissibility,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement to Reuters. “The United States has been, and continues to be, a welcoming nation.”

Security forces in the Mexican government may have been cooperating to facilitate hundreds of “enforced disappearances” of citizens as part of the failing struggle to rein in drug gangs, according to a new report.

Mexico has been steeped in a conflict with drug cartels for the last six years, resulting in the death of over 50,000 Mexican civilians. During the course of that conflict, hundreds of civilians have gone missing — or “disappeared” — and are presumed to be dead. Prominent NGO Human Rights Watch, in their report titled “Mexico’s Disappeared: The Enduring Cost of a Legacy Ignored,” alleges that the government of former Mexican President Felipe Calderón has not only failed to bring disappearances under control, but actively taken part in some instances:

Human Rights Watch has documented nearly 250 such “disappearances” that have occurred since 2007. In more than 140 of these cases, evidence suggests that these were enforced disappearances—meaning that state agents participated directly in the crime, or indirectly through support or acquiescence. These crimes were committed by members of every security force involved in public security operations, sometimes acting in conjunction with organized crime. In the remaining cases, we were not able to determine based on available evidence whether state actors participated in the crime, though they may have.

The report goes on to describe several of those disappearances in-depth, including the beatings by local police, detentions by federal police, and possible shootings ordered by the Navy. Calderon’s war on the cartels did not go as planned, with actions to rein in fighting between organized crime rings instead leading to greater bloodshed. By conquering all elements of crime and supplanting the government, the Zetas — the largest of the cartels — currently controls the third-largest state in Mexico.

In the end, Human Rights Watch urged newly sworn-in President Peña Nieto to take action to reverse the policies of his predecessor. “While disappearances may have started on Calderón’s watch, they did not end with his term,” Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco said in a release. In a visit to the White House in November, Nieto pledged to reduce violence within his country, without offering details on how.

Instability in Mexico is finally making its way into the politics of the United States, though in the context of border security and immigration reform rather than the war on drugs. During a town hall meeting, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) faced down a constituent who said invading Mexico was necessary to “clean up the cartels.” Despite the worries of many conservatives, the achieved nearly all of the targets for border enforcement in 2007, with 81 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border now meeting one of the top three levels of “operational control” by U.S. enforcement officials.