CULTURE-CAMBODIA: 'We Don't Have a Film Industry'

Internationally acclaimed director Rithy Panh remembers how, as young boy in pre-war Phnom Penh, cinema played a central role in his family life.

POLITICS-US: Hip-Hop Stars Tap Potentially Huge Youth Vote

In 2004, hip-hop mogul Sean P. Combs, known as "Puff Daddy", accompanied by R&B megastar Mary J. Blige and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, told thousands of students at Wayne State University in Detroit it was time to elect a new president.

POLITICS-US: Cartoonists Enjoy a Rollicking Race

In spite of budget cutbacks, the challenge of learning to do their work with ever-changing computer software and other pressures, U.S. newspaper editorial cartoonists are thriving in the closing months of the 2008 presidential election.

THEATRE: The Singer Who Defied Nigeria’s Generals

The scene is 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria. Film projections show people racing frantically to escape the thousand troops who have surrounded and invaded Kalakuta, the communal living space and recording studio of musician-songwriter, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

BRAZIL: Amazon Art Institute Helps Recover Indigenous Roots

Dhiani Pa'saro came to Manaus, the bustling city of 1.7 million people in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, eight years ago, after wandering from one village or town to another. At the time he planned to become a dentist, but at 33 he is now a renowned artist.

BRAZIL: 'Social Circus' Turns Young Lives Right Side Up

Standing on your head, walking on stilts, juggling and doing balancing acts - life often seems like a circus metaphor. And for one Brazilian social organisation that is exactly what it is.

LATIN AMERICA: Quotas Alone Won’t Give Women Equal Power

A collection of studies published in Argentina shows that quotas for women on electoral candidate lists have been successful in achieving a certain level of gender balance in the parliaments of many Latin American countries. However, it says that more tools are needed to accelerate the process.

ARTS-US: Iraq War Vets Transforming Trauma

By using the written word and art, veterans of the U.S. occupation of Iraq are transforming their trauma into a message of both healing and resistance to the failed U.S. adventure.

CHILE: Salvador Allende – Greatest Chilean, by Popular Acclaim

The late socialist President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by the armed forces on Sept. 11, 1973, was elected the "greatest Chilean in history" in a viewers' poll organised by a television programme that stirred up controversy.

CULTURE-NIGERIA: Writers, Film-makers Defy Censors

"I don't sell cocaine," says the video vendor in Kano's Rimi market when I ask for Adam Zango's music video CD Bahaushiya. He is not referring to the white powder, but instead a new illegal substance - Hausa films that have not passed through the Kano State Censors Board.

BOOKS-US: "A Policy of Deliberate Cruelty"

Perhaps the most thorough and informative book about the George W. Bush administration's approval of the use of torture and "extraordinary renditions" of alleged terrorists to third countries has continued to stay on bestseller lists.

CULTURE-CUBA: The Debate Continues

After an interruption of over a year, the Criterios theoretical-cultural centre has resumed a series of lectures analysing the impact of the Cuban government's cultural policy on the arts, one of the tangible outcomes of the debate that shook society here in early 2007.

BOOKS-US: Revelations of an Abu Ghraib Interrogator

Few people have thought as much about the morality of the U.S. occupation of Iraq than Joshua Casteel, a former U.S. Army interrogator who served at Abu Ghraib prison in the wake of the detainee abuse scandal there.

ARGENTINA: Children of Exile – Strangers Still

While perpetrators of human rights violations during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship have begun to be sent to prison, a new study has shed light on a less conspicuous aspect of the regime's legacy: the problems faced by the children of former exiles who are struggling to integrate into Argentine society.

CUBA: The End of the Long Olympics Reverie

Cuba has had a rude awakening from a three-decade dream as undisputed Olympic games leader in Latin America and the Caribbean, turning in the worst performance since Mexico City in 1968.

ENVIRONMENT: Conservation as Artists' Muse

Pulled-together socialites and not-so-sloppy artists recently gathered for an atypical art exhibition in San Diego that combines art with wilderness conservation, using contemporary art to investigate vanishing worlds and the people that inhabit them.

CHILE: Exhibit to Celebrate Indigenous Art

More than 100 artists from Chile’s nine indigenous groups will take part in the second biennial exhibition of indigenous art in the capital Oct. 17-Nov. 2, which hopes to draw at least 30,000 visitors.

SOUTH AMERICA: Architecture Students Visit 50 Cities in 40 Days

A group of advanced architecture students and graduates from Argentina will tour more than 50 cities in their own country, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay to discover common characteristics in the architectural heritage of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) countries.

BRAZIL: Spreading the Cultural Tentacles of Inclusion

"Negro F" tells how the Manos Grafite (roughly, "Graphite Hands") group started. In 1996, he and his friend Alex were walking along a street in the outskirts of the capital of the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, when they were struck by the colours and forms painted on the walls.

BOOKS: ‘Descent Into Chaos’

News coming out of Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent months has unsettled many assumptions about the U.S. war on terror. To most casual observers of the war on terror, Afghanistan served until recently as a reassuring contrast to the grim and bewildering conflict in Iraq - - the "good war" as opposed to the "bad war".

Q&A: "Longing for the Past Yet Belonging to the Present"

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, thousands of intellectuals, activists and poets have left Iran, many fleeing to Europe and the United States. A new book brings together the work of 18 Iranian poets from this diaspora to share their experiences with a wider audience.