Featured stories
Latest stories
22 February 2019
Samoa arrested blogger ‘King Faipopo’ accused of defaming prime minister
"New legislation, based on old criminal libel laws from colonial times, forces Samoa leaders to look backwards, not forwards."
Kashmiri students face persecution in India after 46 soldiers were killed in terror attack
Kashmiri students face violence and discrimination after a terror attack that killed 46 soldiers.
Bangladeshi government targets world's largest Bengali blogging platform in porn censorship spree
The incidents of moral policing and the extension of the ban to a Bangla blogging platform and Google Books suggest that the authority's definition of “objectionable” may go far beyond.
Can Jordan offer some lessons to oil-dependent ‘giants’ on renewable energy?
Jordan is the only Arab country in the region with an attractive market for commercial-scale solar.
21 February 2019
A look at Syria's long history of feminist movements
"The 2011 revolution was a revolution against everything, and so the women had a role as revolutionary activists at the forefront of the revolution"
Hungary's Viktor Orbán is pouring cash into military sports and historical reenactments to boost patriotism
This approach matches the broader education strategy of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose government has rewritten the national curriculum multiple times to include military training and military history.
Female Brazilian legislator attacked on social media for revealing outfit
"The participation of women in society is so tiny that a neckline can become a huge issue."
20 February 2019
A Tibetan-Canadian student was attacked online after winning student council elections. She thinks Beijing is to blame.
Chemi Lhamo faced a barrage of threatening comments on social media from overseas students who appeared to be from mainland China.
150 years of Ceylon Tea: A day in the life of a plantation worker
The wages Sri Lankan plantation workers earn are nowhere near enough to bear the costs of living for the family, so many are forced to look for work elsewhere.
19 February 2019
‘Man returns to his native Xinjiang and disappears’ — a story too common for the headlines
Nurbolat Shalayit is one of hundreds of thousands of Xinjiang minorities whose current whereabouts are uncertain.
Azerbaijan leader gives first TV interview after 15 years in office. He could use more practice.
"My conclusion: the government is very worried!"
Three babies die from measles in Macedonia outbreak. Is anti-vax propaganda responsible?
Macedonia has one of the lowest rates for measles vaccination in Europe, according to the World Health Organization.
18 February 2019
DigiGlot Newsletter: App links refugees with volunteer translators
The DigiGlot Newsletter is a bi-weekly collaborative newsletter that reports on how indigenous, minority, and endangered language communities are adopting and adapting technology to change the internet landscape.
EU proposal pushes tech companies to tackle ‘terrorist content’ with AI, despite implications for war crimes evidence
AI tools can assess whether a video is violent or graphic. But can they determine the video’s intended purpose?
Haiti's current political unrest: Déjà vu or opportunity for meaningful change?
Protests have paralyzed Port-au-Prince schools, hospitals, and marketplaces, as well as other cities. Demonstrators demand radical system change: "tabula rasa" (clean slate), as they call it.
Censored on WeChat: As tensions in China-US trade conflict rose, so did WeChat censorship
The second installment in our series looks at the most censored topic in the 2018 WeChatscope dataset: the China-US trade war.
17 February 2019
Russian public sector workers ordered to ‘like’ social media posts promoting the 2019 Winter Universiade
This is not the first instance of Russian public officials acting as "human bots" to promote the government's agenda online.
Dapper former eye surgeon retrains sights on Afghanistan’s presidency
Few give 2014's runner-up Abdullah Abdullah a hope of winning and his entry into the race has given many a feeling of deja vu.
16 February 2019
Cameroonian justice minister rationalizes Holocaust on national television
The comments are distressing given how it feeds into the renewed reliance worldwide from far-right movements on the tired, racist trope that the Jewish community controls the finance world.
‘Space ventures can improve the quality of life on Earth’ — an interview with International Space University president
Today, the International Space University has more than 4600 former students, and of those, more than 80 percent are working in space industries.
