Google China appears to have removed a feature that warned users of the search engine that they were querying words censored by the government. The change to the Google.cn homepage is speculated to have occurred sometime early last month. Read More

A new interactive map from the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran will track rights violations in the country by region. The Mapping Iran's Human Rights project geographically situates violations in four categories — perpetrators, victims, prison corruption, and regional trends — while generating new knowledge about corruption from sources in Iran. Read More

A Facebook page for Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini,appeared online last week. The apparently state-sanctioned page has garnered over 18,000 likes, though the popular social network has effectively been banned in the country since dissidents gathered online to power protests after the 2009 reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Read More

The Russian government booted USAID out of the country following accusations that the well known aid agency had been "meddling in internal affairs," as Vladimir Putin put it. He was referring to Golos, a group that mapped balloting fraud in the Russian election. A Russian journalist provides the background and some valuable insight into the circumstances surrounding this incident. Read More