Global Voices Online

The Far-Eastern Sweet Potato writes that the Presidential Office has excluded foreign reporters from monthly briefings on ECFA. The post includes a letter of protest from the President of the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents' Club to the Presidential Office.

“Yes carnival is here, the greatest show on earth. The music, the [mas], the freedom and…babies at fetes”: Media Callaloo is appalled at the irresponsibility of some of the parents in Trinidad and Tobago.

The Liming House is incensed by a campaign from Virgin Atlantic designed to “help the Caribbean”: “Both Virgin and the Travel Foundation appear to think that the only opportunities for ‘disadvantaged youth’ in the Caribbean are in ‘craft making, beekeeping and fishing.’ Gosh, development has just passed those backward-but-smiling natives right by!”

Underground Trini Artiste thinks that Facebook is the new radio.

In response to a statement that the arrival of Haitian refugees in Jamaica could be seen as a threat to public health, Long Bench republishes a Letter to the Editor that he wrote: “Haitian refugees are not criminals, and should not be treated by citizens or represented in the media as such”; Barbados Free Press is also critical of its country's response to helping Haiti: “It didn’t take long to cut through the Bajan veneer of sincerity about Haiti, did it?”

Greetings From Kyiv talks to a local friend on the possible outcome of the Feb. 7 presidential election.

CARICOM member states make donations to the Haiti earthquake relief effort: Repeating Islands has the details.

Barbados Free Press reports on a traffic death charge that took 11 years to reach to trial: “Meanwhile the accused…racked up almost two hundred traffic convictions and up until yesterday was still driving on our roads and endangering our friends and loved ones.”

YardFlex.com reports that Usain Bolt and Veronica Campbell-Brown are “the only Jamaican and Caribbean athletes” who made the prestigious Track and Field News magazine's Athletes of the Decade list.