There was an empty chair at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony Friday for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who is imprisoned for calling for democratic reforms in China. He is the first winner to be absent in 74 years of the prize's history. Calling the prize an attack on its legal and political system, the Chinese government put Xiaobo's wife and family under house arrest to prevent them from picking up the prize, and the BBC and CNN went black in Beijing at 8 p.m., when the ceremony started.
