Global Voices Online

Bien Vu posts (FR) a rant about people who build houses without permits and the government inspectors who look the other way.

Onnik Krikorian paid another visit to the Armenian Yezidi village of Alagyaz and has a report and pictures from the village school

Does the media have the right to publish everything they capture on their camera? The death of the abducted engineer in Afghanistan plunged his family into grief. Pictures of his family coping with their grief were flashed on various news channels. War for News reports “There's a peculiar elitism that shrouds television journalists. They imagine, sometimes correctly but not always, that print journalists cannot ever appreciate the value of pictures. This is not about censorship, nor is it the least about self-regulation.”

Sepia Mutiny on the bias (or ignorance) that seems to fill up review columns in US newspapers as they review a film on Indian Hindu widows - Water.

Drishtipat on investment in Bangladesh by Tatas - one of the most respected corporate houses in India.

Jeyaraj at Transcurrents comments on the irony of a Tamil journalist being arrested on World Press Freedom Day. “It is learnt that she was detained initially by ministerial security division personnel in charge of Foreign Affairs minister Mangala Samaraweera who suspected her of being a woman suicide bomber targetting the minister.”

Even as we just finished covering some of the aspects of labour issues in Bangladesh, Safia from People Tree, a fair trade fashion company blogs on textile factory tragedies in the country and the direction of activism.

Yuri Mamchur of Russia Blog posts an update on Mikhail Khodorkovsky's prison stay.

Maidan International has posted translation of the notes on the protest in Minsk written by Yevgenia Kudyanova, a 21-year-old blogger activist: My Revolution.