In the run up to Sunday's presidential election, the Tunisian minister of justice and foreign affairs told FRANCE 24 that democracy in the country is working. One of our Observers in Tunisia, who lives under police surveillance, reacts to what he says is a joke. Read more...

How often does your MP attend parliament? And when attending, does he or she do anything? A French website has been designed to answer precisely those questions, and spare constituents the hassle of having to frisk government records. Read more...

We've added a comment by Rick Edmonds.

The editorial that appeared in the International Herald Tribune on Monday morning is certainly not going to please the global blogosphere. The author raises concerns over the potential death of newspapers, flooded by increasing numbers of online publications which, ironically, only comment on material produced by others. We ask our Observers specialised in new media to comment on the critique. Read more...

Known as Europe's last dictatorship, Lukashenko's Belarus was promised better relations with the West if they could demonstrate fair elections on Sunday. They didn't, and YouTubers say they've got the proof. Read more and see the videos.

A pair of political activists from Shenzhen (south China) are using the Olympic Games to protest against the authorities despite a crackdown on free speech in the run up to the event. Li Tie and Zou Tao publish newsletters and organise protests, and have even prepared for their seemingly inevitable capture by the police. On Chinese New Year's Eve (6 Feb.) they organised a peaceful protest in Shenzhen City. The pair displayed banners reading ‘2008, looking forward to the Olympic Games and, even more so, a democratic China'. Read more...

Material from Team Observers.

In a country where the media is completely state-owned, this young Cuban blogger is extremely brave. In this post, she talks about the release of the Academy Award-winning German film, ‘The Lives of Others'. Set in Communist East Germany in the mid-1980s, the film tells the story of a Stasi agent assigned to monitor an East-German playwright suspected of subversive intellectual pursuits. The film details the alarming efficiency of the East German snooping machinery, including bugs planted in apartments and around-the-clock monitoring of a suspect's private life.

But for Yoani, the film is not so much about ‘the lives of others' as it is the lives of people she knows - as well as her own - in Castro's Cuba. Read more.

Post your questions to Yoani Sánchez.