Twenty leading Russian scholars urged Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister, President-elect Vladimir Putin to step in and take the ongoing Bhagavad Gita trial in the Siberian city of Tomsk under "personal control", saying it "discredits Russia's cultural and democratic credentials in the eyes of the civilized...

Anyone following online citizen media closely this month, would inevitably have come across the heated global debate over the Invisible Children viral campaign to stop Ugandan war criminal and rebel army leader Joseph Kony. While the Kony 2012 campaign certainly received the attention it sought, many Ugandans and Africans...

By Lois Beckett in ProPublica. Instead of picketing outside company headquarters, an advocacy group is using Facebook ads to try to influence people whose profiles identify them as employees of Freddie Mac or JPMorgan Chase. The anti-foreclosure ad campaign, which launches today, asks Freddie and Chase employees to talk to ...

By Lena Groeger in ProPublica. Environmentalists have repeatedly pressed regulators to compel oil and gas companies to report what chemicals they use in the drilling and fracking process. According to a 2011 congressional report, many of the chemicals used can pose a serious health risk. No one knows the exact makeup of the...

Young women calling on co-enthusiasts to rip off their clothes for Putin last summer, seemed to have disappeared from the scene after making the headlines for a couple of weeks. As the election season draws to a close in Russia, now, it is worth taking a look back at how that movement evolved, and how it inspired other women...

Iranians are overjoyed with the news that Asghar Farhadi's film “A Separation” was awarded an Oscar for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards in Hollywood on February 26, 2012. It is the first Iranian film to win an Oscar. Iranian bloggers participated in an outpour of celebration, and some fans also created posters...

By Justin Elliot in ProPublica. Earlier this month, a group of three young Bahrainis arrived in Washington to talk about reform in the small Persian Gulf nation, which has been rocked by Arab Spring protests for the last year. The delegation, including an NGO worker and a tech entrepreneur, both Western-educated, represented...

Since early February 2012, a series of global vigils have taken place in all over the world to express solidarity with Tibetans, following a call from Kalong Tripa Dr. Lobsang Sangay. As February 22 is the Tibetan New Year, activists are calling for another round of solidarity action. Lobsang Sangay's statement can be...

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has described a possibility of a new cold war in the Middle East due to the Iranian nuclear programme. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggests negotiating with Iran by asking it to disprove the allegations of developing nuclear weapons. "If [the Iranians] obtain nuclear ...

Standard & Poor's downgraded Egypt's currency rating for the second time in four months based on the country's shorfall in foreign reserves and shaky political transition. It's the latest development for a nation facing mounting economic diffuclties. Egypt's foreign reserves fell by over 50 percent last year to about US$16...