Globe Trot 08.24

Mourning for miners killed in South Africa this week.

Ted Dagne is a long-respected expert on the conflict between North and South Sudan, and has become instrumental as a UN specialist and advisor to President Salva Kiir of South Sudan, which became an independent country in 2011. Now Dagne, an Ethiopian-American who worked for the Congressional Research Service for 22 years, is on the run: After drafting a letter accusing powerful figures in South Sudan of stealing $4 billion in government and overseas aid, Dagne was forced to flee to Kenya for his safety and now is not being allowed back in the country. Here, too, is a look at a small group of expert U.S. advocates, including Dagne, who have pushed for peace and justice in war-torn Sudan since the 1980s.

After a 10-day fact finding trip, Amnesty International reported this week details of how civilians are caught in the middle of fighting in Aleppo, Syria's largest city (see video below). This video is hard to watch, but the images correspond to what residents of Aleppo have been telling me.

WORLD reports in its latest issue on the conflict in Aleppo, the tragedy for Christians and ancient religious sites, and the continued misread of the Syrian civil war by international players, including the United States.

U.S. journalist Austin Tice is missing in Syria, his whereabouts unknown for more than a week. His July 25 post on Facebook is a must-read: "It's nice and all, but please quit telling me to be safe," he wrote. "Sometime between when our granddads licked the Nazis and when we started putting warnings on our coffee cups about the temperature of our beverage, America lost that pioneering spirit. … I went off to two wars with misguided notions of patriotism and found in both that the first priority was to never get killed, something we could have achieved from our living rooms in America with a lot less hassle."

For coverage of foreign policy during the upcoming GOP convention, former Mitt Romney advisor and former U.S./UN mission director Richard Grenell will be writing for Esquire. Here's his first piece on the Barack Obama "policy" on Syria and where it's taking us:

"Over the last 18 months, President Obama's administration has faced three double-vetoes from Russia and China on three separate occasions at the U.N. and failed to stop Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's violence that has left, by some accounts, 30,000 Syrians dead. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Syria 'a test of everything the United Nations stands for.'"

In Florida residents are remembering Hurricane Andrew on its 20th anniversary, and awaiting the arrival of Isaac, currently a tropical storm. We're watching Haiti more than Tampa at this point, where Haitians and aid workers are trying to ready for the storm's approach with about 400,000 still homeless from the country's 2010 earthquake.

The stakes in the Iran-Israel tension grow higher: "Today the threat of a U.S. attack [in Iran] is not taken seriously," writes Charles Krauthammer. "Not by Iran. Not by the Israelis, who therefore increasingly feel forced to act before Israel's more limited munitions … can no longer penetrate Iran's ever hardening facilities." His column includes a helpful breakdown of what U.S. policy should look like from military analyst Anthony Cordesman, who's worth listening to.

And do not miss the heart-warming story about the Ugandan Little League baseball team's visit to the Little League World Series-the first African team to ever participate in the annual even in Williamsport, Pa. It will be a great weekend read.