Global Voices Online

En Tu Ciudad [ES] reflects on the hardships suffered by many of the city's residents during the recent cold temperatures in Santiago. He also doesn't see anyone taking concrete steps in providing comfort or shelter for these individuals.

Hoja de Bijao [ES] writes about a Honduran film festival sponsored by a local university and the Honduran embassy that will take place in Panama.

Christian Espinoza summarizes the use of interactive and participatory media in Ecuador's online newspapers. On his blog Cobertura Digital [ES], he also writes about the newspaper Diario El Comerico's new feature “I Was There,” which allows readers to send information about events that they may have witnessed.

Richard Barrow at Thai-Blogs.com has pictures from the Thai Wai Khru Ceremony. I think one of the highlights for us during the first semester in schools in Thailand is the Wai Khru Ceremony. This is when the students pay respects to their teachers and present them with flowers or jasmine garlands.

Bangkok Pundit has a post on Thai prime minister's plans of launching petrochemical projects in the restive south of Thailand to improve the economic condition of people living in the area. There are some interesting comments below that talk about how much oil and gas project help the locals.

British American Tobacco (BAT) is leaving its North Korean joint venture and a Singapore based group is taking overs BAT's place reports dprkstudies.org. South East Asian and Chinese companies often fill the gap left by western companies who leave North Korea and Myanmar due to public or government pressure in their home countries. SE Asian and Chinese companies answer their critics by saying that they offer employment and their investment benefits the people in these closed economies.

At Blogrel, Harmick wonders whether or not a shared sense of pain resulting from the experience of genocide is the glue that gives Armenians around the world a shared sense of identity, and worries whether or not that sense of shared identity would vanish if the community decided to put the genocide behind them.

Cuttino's Georgian Life covers the outbreak of African swine fever in Georgia and says that this threatens a centerpiece of Georgian cuisine.

neweurasia and Non Pon say that Vladimir Putin's proposal for the US to put a missile defense system in Azerbaijan is a rare opportunity for cooperation in Central Asia and the Caucasus.