Reporters on the Job

• Silenced by Pirates: When Sara Simpson heard that pirates were attacking Nigerian fishermen, she went to the fishing docks in Lagos to see for herself (see story). She was struck by how eerily quiet it was.

"There are no trawlers going out, so there are no fish coming in. Usually there's a boisterous market packed with women who come to haggle over the price of the fish as they come off the boats," says Sara.

Instead, she saw scores of memorial posters of fishermen recently lost at sea – all killed during pirate attacks. She was told that now that the trawlers are staying in port, the pirates are raiding the smaller, dugout canoes used by traditional fishermen. "The pirates steal the outboard motors from these fishermen, abandoning them on the high seas with only paddles to make their way back to shore," she says.

• China and Tibet: Staff writer Peter Ford writes about the chasm between Western and Chinese perceptions of Tibet and of the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama. Below, a global survey notes how Chinese policies toward Tibet are perceived in various countries. Only in India, where the Dalai Lama lives in exile, do large numbers share China's view of events – but even there it's not a majority.

– David Clark Scott

World editor