Talking points

World Health Organisation chief Dr Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun returns to her home town to give a talk at the Asia Society on the challenges of fighting global infectious diseases in an increasingly interdependent world. Chan, who spent nine years as Hong Kong's director of public health, was reappointed to a second term at the top of the WHO earlier this year and will stay in office until 2017.

Yunnan's provincial High Court will hear the appeal of the six people convicted of murdering of 13 Chinese sailors aboard two cargo ships on the Mekong River in Thailand in October last year. Four men, including notorious Myanmese militia ringleader and drug lord Naw Kham, were sentenced to death by Kunming Intermediate Court in Yunnan last month. Another man received a suspended death sentence and a sixth man was jailed for eight years. The men are from Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, with one being listed as having no nationality.