Global Voices Online

Onnik Krikorian has the latest updates on the 2007 Armenian parliamentary elections, including the news that a popular war hero got arrested for allegedly plotting a coup d'état.

Sean Roberts posts the transcript of his recent speech on clan politics in Central Asia, and James adds his two cents.

Ukraine List posts “four perspectives on World War II (The Great Patriotic War) from Ukraine. One is from a French priest, another is from a film director, yet another is from a cave explorer, and the last is of an amateur archaeologist.”

LEvko of Foreign Notes believes that Ukraine's president Victor Yushchenko “is strengthening a team around himself in anticipation of early [parliamentary] re-elections next year.”

Everybody I Love You reports on how difficult - or even impossible - it is for his Russian wife to get a Blue Shield of California medical insurance - because they require copies of her “medical records”: “And what, Dear Sir, Mr. Senior Underwriter, constitutes medical records? Can't say, can I? Isn't defined. Would it be every form filled out by every doctor she's ever seen? Would you like that translated and in triplicate? Where would you like me to leave the file cabinet?”

Both The Registan and neweurasia report on a new landmark to be built in Kazakhstan's capital Astana - a 150 meter high transparent tent designed by star architect Norman Foster.

Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar writes about Hungary's Chinese community.

The beatroot writes what the martial law in Poland felt - and tasted - like: “Martial Law, Poland, December 13, 1981 […] tasted like plastic. There is an evocative free gift with this week’s edition of Newsweek Polska. It’s a little box of chocolates. Inside the period looking box are two chocolates: one is made of real chocolate; the other is made of the ersatz chocolate (czekoladopodobny) that was all most Poles could get hold of during Martial Law, a period of rationing of food stuffs.”

The controversial Polish Catholic radio station - Radio Maryja - is 15 years old, reports the beatroot.