Globe Trot 05.30

Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese activist who became the focus of a diplomatic wrangle between China and the United States, will deliver a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Thursday. It will be the first time the dissident has spoken publicly since his flight to freedom in the United States after 20 months under house arrest.

Remember China's remaining dissidents, like Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, writes freed dissident and friend of Chen, Yu Jie: "Contrary to myths and assumptions, economic liberalization and development will not inevitably lead to corresponding political liberalization and development [in China]."

Ex-president of Liberia Charles Taylor has been sentenced to 50 years in jail by an international court at The Hague. The Special Court for Sierra Leone found Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war.

International outrage over a massacre of more than 100 in Syria led 11 nations, including the United States, to expel top Syrian diplomats on Tuesday. In Washington, the State Department kicked out the Syrian chargé d'affaires, Zuheir Jabbour, giving him 72 hours to leave the country. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad maintains that armed terrorist groups are escalating attacks across Syria and called UN envoy Kofi Annan to bring the countries financing them to join a UN-brokered peace plan.

Journalists are discussing how journalists cover Africa, along with the problems of parachuting in and of understanding the culture, challenging the methods of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and others.

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