BOOKS-US: Cloak-and-Dagger, Inc.

When Barack Obama visits the Virginia headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in the not-too-distant future, he might want to scan the room to see how many of them sport green badges, the telltale sign that they are contractors and not federal employees.

FILM-BRAZIL: “An Artist Only Bows His Head to Thank the Audience”

The first three times he saw the film he could not watch it through to the end; he was so overcome by emotion he burst into tears. The next five times he did manage to see the whole movie, but tears were constantly streaming down his cheeks. Brazilian Maestro Mozart Vieira was "extraordinarily" moved by seeing his own story on screen.

CUBA: Films that Tackle Touchy Social Issues

"Viviendo al límite" (Living to the Limit), a documentary by Cuban filmmaker Belkis Vega that follows the lives of five HIV-positive people, will be shown for the first time on Cuban television this week, four years after its release.

RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Children of the ‘Disappeared’ Tell Their Stories

For the first time, the life stories of children of people forcibly disappeared by Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship have been compiled in a book that sheds light on their experiences.

MEDIA: Sustainable Development in a Doomed City

The sea encroaching on the streets of this Caribbean resort city in northern Colombia dramatically underlines the challenges that 60 journalists, winners of awards from the Latin American Avina foundation, discussed over the weekend.

HONDURAS: Inventory of Mitch’s Cultural Destruction

When Hurricane Mitch thrashed Honduras and a large portion of Central America in 1998, the scale of the disaster clouded awareness that the winds and rains had also taken a heavy toll on cultural, artistic and historic heritage.

CULTURE-INDONESIA: Anti-Porn Law Reveals Growing Islamist Power

An exhibition of sculpture that opened here this month offers a stark reminder of the importance of the human form in Indonesian art.

CUBA: Foreign Aid Helps Fund Cultural Activities

In Cuba, international aid is promoting the advancement of cultural projects, adopting an approach that enriches the traditional perspective on development with a dimension closer to the needs of the human spirit.

GERMANY: Recreating the Experience of the Uprooted

The lighting is dim. The murmur of water can be heard, the ship’s horn blows and the gangway unfolds. The long journey of the German emigrant is about to begin.

BOOKS: Finding Humour and Tragedy in That Daily Ritual

We each spend, on average, three years of our lives going to the toilet - assuming we have one, that is.

FILM: Swazi Grandmothers Shore Up a Crumbling Society

In a country barely the size of the U.S. state of New Jersey, a disease has taken hold. Nearly 40 percent of Swaziland's population is HIV-positive, and the other 60 percent lives at constant risk for the disease.

ARGENTINA: Newspaper Brings to Light Abuses against Poor Farmers

Small farmers in the northern Argentine province of Santiago del Estero are publishing their own newspaper in an attempt to raise awareness about the constant abuses they suffer at the hands of wealthy landowners, who are encroaching on their small plots of land.

CUBA: Cultural Prejudice Still Lingers

Political convenience, generation gap or Stalinist influence? Nearly 50 years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, it is still hard to discern why this country decided that rock, fashion, long hair for men and homosexuality were counter-revolutionary.

ARTS-US: “I Wouldn’t Wish War on My Worst Enemy”

Artist Jim Lommasson hates war. His exhibit of 1,500 photographs, taken by soldiers who served in Iraq, brings the war home to the United States, in a way he hopes will help bring it to an end.

ARTS-US: Spotlight on 40 Years of Black Theatre

For decades, playwrights writing realistically about the black experience in the United States could not get their works produced, black directors didn't get jobs, and even the most successful performers were confined to roles as servants in plays about whites.

BOOKS-US: A Liberal’s Travels in “Flyover Country”

"What are they thinking?" is a question my mother screams at the television every election season. A union nurse in overwhelmingly liberal, Democratic San Francisco, she cannot believe that the presidential election is even close.

BOOKS: Is the Sun Setting on U.S. Empire?

The unlikely political journey of Andrew J. Bacevich has been one of the most potent symbols of the transformation in foreign policy debates wrought by the George W. Bush years.

ARGENTINA: Non-Sexist Language for Reporters

An organisation of over 100 journalists in Argentina has drawn up ten "commandments" for news coverage of gender-based crimes, which include avoiding expressions like "crime of passion" and incorporating terms like "femicide."

CULTURE: Rock Bands – Next Stop is Vietnam?

A recent rock concert in the capital attracted 1,600 fans and unusually, half were Vietnamese. With headlining Australian band ‘Regurgitator’ - one of the very first international acts for Hanoi - and the new star power of some of the country’s up-and-coming groups, change was discernible in this communist capital.

ARGENTINA: Rewakening the Ghosts of the 1970s Violence

Thirty-five years after the murder of prominent Argentine trade unionist José Ignacio Rucci, a book by an investigative journalist concludes that he was killed by the Montoneros guerrillas, as many already believed, rather than a right-wing death squad, as others argued.

BOOKS-IRAQ: Kurdish Jews Recall a Paradise Lost

It's become popular, when talking about ongoing violence in U.S.-occupied Iraq, for officials in Washington and the media to paint the Iraqi people as savages who can't help but keep killing each other.