See all those languages? The Lingua project at Global Voices works to bring down barriers to understanding through translation.

Learn more about Lingua  »

1 September 2005

Stories from 1 September 2005

Azerbaijan: Mountain Jews

Carpetblogger visits the home town of the Mountain Jews of Azerbaijan, and discovers that most of them live in Moscow, Tel Aviv and New York.

Written by Luisetta Mudie
1 September 2005

Brazil: Baile Funk

Atari in Rio recounts his her first Baile Funk, a type of dance party in Rio de Janeiro's favelas.

Written by David Sasaki
1 September 2005

Uzbekistan: Orphanage horrors

Registan guest-blogger David Walther's eyewitness account of starvation, abuse and deprivation in Uzbekistan government orphanages makes harrowing reading, and backs up his argument for an embargo on Uzbek cotton.

Written by Luisetta Mudie
1 September 2005

Kenya: Catholic insurance

Bankelele flags a financial services tidbit with a twist; the Nairobi Catholic Church has been licensed to start an insurance company.

Written by Luisetta Mudie
1 September 2005

Sudan: Student tortured

The Passion of the Present reports on the kidnapping and torture of a student at Sudan's Alahlia University by security guards and student militia members after he called for the...

Written by Luisetta Mudie
1 September 2005

Ethiopia: Angry of Addis Ababa

Meskel Square reports on a 13,287-word letter to the state-owned Ethiopian Herald newspaper from the Ethiopia's prime minister, wondering if this is the longest ever letter-to-the-editor ever.

Written by Luisetta Mudie
1 September 2005

Mama Africa Film Fest

Black Looks misses London, as she casts a wistful eye over the line-up for the British Film Institute's Mama Africa Film Fest, which aims to “champion the growing strength of...

Written by Luisetta Mudie
1 September 2005

Freedom of Speech News

The latest developments on threats to Freedom of Speech over the past week. With Reporters sans frontières China: Two cyber-dissidents put under surveillance during UN human rights visit The Chinese...

Written by Julien Pain
1 September 2005

Sept 2, 2005: International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day

Tomorrow, Friday September 2, is . Why? Because it needs to be done. If you have a blog, here's what you can do. Sometime tomorrow, take a break from whatever it is you usually blog about, and post something constructive related to disaster relief. You can keep it topical to your blog; or, you can just dedicate blog space to listing websites where people can donate money (maybe even challenge people to match your donation). Or, share a story of a hurricane survivor. This goes for photo bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers as well - there's no reason why this should be text-only. Though this is inspired by Hurricane Katrina, the goal is to deal with disaster relief efforts worldwide, posting about a disaster relevant to your community. Post lists of supplies needed for victims of yesterday's stampede in Baghdad. Post an update on how your family is recovering from the tsunami. Post multi-lingual resources for African families in Paris displaced by the recent apartment fires. Blog about whatever you choose, as long as it supports some kind of disaster assistance in a constructive way. When you've posted to your blog, be sure to include a link to this Technorati tag: . That way, when people follow that link, they'll be able to find a collection of all relevant postings published throughout the blogosphere. There will also be an RSS feed on that page, which can be used to aggregate all of the postings and display them on a single webpage. I plan to aggregate them on my Katrina Aftermath blog; you can do the same. (Later, I'll post a javascript on my Katrina blog to make it easy for anyone to do this - more soon.) One collection of disaster relief resources, countless bloggers. That's the power of the blogosphere. So please join me tomorrow and participate in . Take a break from whatever it is you normally blog about - even if it's just for one post - and give back to the Net. -andy

Written by Andy Carvin
1 September 2005

This site is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Please read our attribution policy to learn about freely redistributing our work Creative Commons License Some Rights Reserved