A curated selection of public diplomacy-relevant news from a global cross-section of English-language media outlets, including independent, corporate-owned, and state-sponsored sources. The stories featured don't necessarily represent CPD's views nor have they been verified by CPD.
Diaspora students taught how to make Israel’s case on campus
These potential future leaders of the Jewish people are being trained by an organization called The David Project to be faithful advocates of Israel...With the experience they have gained, the young men and women hope to arrive on college campuses in America, Britain and South Africa to engage in hasbara, or public diplomacy.
Limbering up for the games
No one dismisses the security concerns. With the ever-present threat of terrorism and a number of foreign leaders, among them George Bush, expected to attend the games' opening ceremony, China has no choice but to take security seriously. But the clampdown now under way suggests the government is just as concerned about preventing anything -- from political demonstrations to unsightly beggar -- that reflects poorly on it, however slightly. The risk is that heavy-handed precautions will take the fun out of what is supposed, after all, to be a sporting event.
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China rights questioned weeks before Olympics
China promised to make improvements to human rights ahead of the Olympic Games but its record may have actually deteriorated in the run-up to the events in August, a human rights activist and writer says. In its bid to host the 2008 Olympics, China promised such improvements as greater press freedoms but author Minky Worden says the opposite has been true.
Olympics add to security misery in China’s far west
Residents and rights groups say the last few months in the lead up to the summer Games, which open on August 8, have been marked by an increasingly heavy crackdown and an ever more onerous public security burden. Local people say they were told to stay at home for the Olympic torch relay, and were even barred from watching the torch's passage from their balconies. Shops were ordered bolted shut, prompting quiet yet cautious complaints from residents long used to tough restrictions.
China Focus: Tibet ready to geet Olympic torch
Tibet is to greet the Olympic torch with flowers and distinctive folk dances, when it arrives in the regional capital of Lhasa on Saturday. The images of five Fuwas, mascots of the Beijing Olympics, are displayed in flowers in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. The city's main streets are decorated with signboards carrying slogans, such as "Light the Passion, Share the Dream," "Bless the Motherland, Joyfully Greet the Olympics," "Great Ethnic Unity" and "Welcome to Lhasa."
Tight security for Olympic torch in China’s Xinjiang
Heavy security accompanied the Olympic torch through China's restive west, offering a preview of the heavy-handed measures expected when it travels through riot-torn and still sequestered Tibet later in the week. Shops and roads were closed and people were kept off the streets Wednesday in a security clampdown to safeguard the torch as it wound its way through predominantly Muslim Kashgar in China's far western Xinjiang, where separatists have waged a low-level insurgency against Chinese rule.
China makes “kung pao chicken” official for Olympics
As it readies for an influx of visitors for the August Games, the Chinese capital has offered restaurants an official English translation of local dishes whose exotic names and alarming translations can leave foreign visitors frustrated and famished. "Bean curd made by a pock-marked woman," as the Beijing Youth Daily rendered the spicy Sichuanese dish, is now "Mapo tofu." And "chicken without sexual life" becomes mere "steamed pullet."
As Olympics near, China punishes 128 firms over drugs
Trying to show that they are determined to host a clean Olympic Games, the Chinese authorities have revoked licenses for three drug makers and punished 125 other companies for making, selling or distributing performance-enhancing drugs. The vast majority of the companies punished were retail pharmacies, the government said in a statement released through Xinhua, the official news agency.
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