by Tanya Notley, The Guardian, UK - Digital technologies, such as mobile phones and the internet, provide the development sector with new opportunities to plan and co-ordinate activities, expose hidden truths, and mobilise and engage new audiences. But it's not all good news: new technologies introduce plenty of risks as well.

by Liliana Segura, Colorlines, USA - “Unique” is one way Warden Burl Cain likes to describe his prison, and it would be impossible to argue otherwise.

by Cecily Hilleary, VOA News, USA - Throughout the Arab Spring, the international community has been forced more than once to grapple with perhaps the most challenging policy dilemma of all: At what point should outsiders intervene in a country’s internal conflict and, more specifically, what does it take to bring down a determined dictator?

by Ulrike Putz, Der Spiegel, Germany - The trial of Mubarak is an historic event that should serve as a warning to the autocratic rulers in Egypt's neighboring countries. Mubarak is the first Arab leader to stand trial in person since popular uprisings swept the Middle East this year.

by Diana Lungu, Global Voices, The Netherlands - An incident of violence against a Moldovan journalist has brought about active online discussions regarding the long-protracted animosities between the Moldovan majority and the small Russian minority in the country.

by Amy Goodman, Truthdig, USA - President Barack Obama touted his debt ceiling deal Tuesday, saying, “We can’t balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession.” Yet that is what he and his coterie of Wall Street advisers have done.

by Eva Bartlett, IPS, Italy - "My father was a boat-builder and I learned from him, worked on boats all my life. Now there's no work at all." Abu Fayez Bakr, 64, is one of two boat-builders in the Gaza Strip, the last of a dying trade, despite Palestinians' penchant for the sea and its bounty.

by Nikki Stern, Salon.com, USA - I'd been imagining the 10th anniversary as a cleaver that, like the event itself, would sunder my life into before and after. Ten years after the attack that took my husband and left me an involuntary member of a group of grieving relatives, I would quit 9/11.

by Fiona Ehlers, Der Spiegel, Germany - Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing into eastern Kenya to escape hunger, drought and Islamist militias in Somalia. Their new home is the world's biggest refugee camp in Dadaab, which some of them will never leave. But the example of one man shows that it can still be a place of hope.

by Sara Silvestri, OpenDemocracy, UK - The deadly attacks in Norway are fuelling debate about multiculturalism, immigration, security and radicalisation. But more attention must also be paid to the behaviours and attitudes that underlie extreme political violence.

by Elayne Clift, Women's Media Center, USA - Condemned as vandalism or dismissed as a childish prank by some, Canadian academic Jane Gadsby describes graffiti as “a form of communication that is both personal and free of everyday social restraints.”

by Khadija Sharife, Al Jazeera, Qatar -The recent regulatory approval of Zimbabwean diamonds for sale reveals deep flaws in the system.

by Zubeida Mustafa, Dawn, Pakistan - One positive result of the fall of Rupert Murdoch’s empire in Britain is that questions are being asked about the integrity of his 200 or so outlets that span several continents. Mercifully, the first bubble to burst was in a country known for its respect for the rule of law and human rights. Had a misdeed of this nature been committed by a media outlet in a country like Pakistan where governance is weak and the law flouted with impunity it would have been hastily covered up. In fact, accusing fingers would have been pointed at those wanting to muzzle the media.

by Alison Bethel-McKenzie, Eurozine, Austria - Political repression of pro-democratic journalists throughout the Middle East and North Africa; serial murder of reporters caught up in Latin America's drug wars; constitutional attacks on the media in Europe: free speech faces adversaries worldwide, warns the director of the International Press Institute (IPI).

by Ellen Brown, Asia Times, Hong Kong - The United States debt ceiling crisis can be averted by enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, which mandates the government to pay its debts already incurred, including pensions. That means social security, which is an "entitlement", in the original sense of the word. We're entitled to it because we've paid for it with taxes.