Fox News aired doctored photos of two New York Times journalists who criticised the channel. After commenting that the right wing news source was losing viewers, the paper's reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe appeared on the channel with distorted features. See the video.

A relatively unknown jazz singer has caused outrage in the U.S. after unexpectedly singing the "Black National Anthem" in place of the Star-Spangled Banner at a council event in Denver. Read more and see the video.

Poland's political community has been thrown into turmoil over allegations that the country's former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa collaborated with the Communist-era secret police and spent years trying to cover it up. Read more...

When the Colombian authorities announced that Ingrid Betancourt had been freed, one of our Observers was travelling through Bogota airport. He tells us about the wave of emotion that followed the news as it spread through the crowds. Read more..

One of Our Observers for China alerted us to these photos of Qingdao, the town that will host the Olympic sailing events in August. To say the least, it doesn't look promising. Read more...

While Mugabe's thugs continue to terrorise Zimbabwe, the abduction and brutal beating of a white farmer has reignited another of the country's long standing polemics - what to do with the country's wealthy white settlers. A friend of the victim explains why white farmers are refusing to leave Zimbabwe. Read more.

One of our Observers for Italy recently alerted us to the news that as part of a major clampdown on "gypsy" communities the government plans to compile a fingerprint database of the country's entire Roma population, including children. Read more...

This CCTV video, taken in the psychiatric ward of a Brooklyn hospital on 19 June, has caused outrage in the US. The footage shows a woman collapsed on the floor while staff choose to ignore her. When help is finally called after an hour, the woman is already dead. Read more.

Journalists from British Channel 4 directly challenged Mugabe on Monday, publicly accusing him of "stealing an election". His reaction says a lot about his personality. See the video.

When vandals destroyed pieces of modern art in an exhibition in Moscow, it wasn't the perpetrators who got into trouble. According to the law, their actions were justifiable. Museum director Yuri Samodurov however, is now facing several years in prison for putting on another of the "Christianity-offensive" shows. Read more...

Blogger "Pink Tentacle" has written about the discovery by a Japanese reporter that you can trick newly introduced age-verifying scanners on cigarette vending machines by holding up a picture of somebody older. Read more...

The Chinese authorities momentarily lost control over public information this weekend when their desperate endeavours to cover up the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl lead to violent riots in the south-western Guinzhou province. Web users destroyed officials' attempts to downplay the enormity of events by continuously posting images and accounts of the protests. Read more...

Zimbabweans are voting today in what's being labelled a "one-man election". Despite opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulling out of the competition on Sunday, President Robert Mugabe pushed ahead with the run-off between the two men. The opposition has accused Mugabe's ZANU-PF party of using violence to scare people into voting for Mugabe. One of our Observers went to the polls; another dared to stay at home. Here are their accounts of the day's events, told anonymously. Read more...

One of our Observers in Egypt received this image in a forwarded email. The message to women: Cover up to protect yourself. We ask our Observers if whether covering up really deters unwanted attention. Read more...

Three weeks after his arrest on June 4, a Burmese comedian known as "Zarganar" remains in an interrogation centre in Rangoon. The junta has as yet given any explanation as to why they arrested Zarganar, but it is assumed that his critical attitude towards the government in the aftermath of the Nargis cyclone has something to do with it. Read more...