FRANCE: For Jazz Musicians, a Paris Tradition Continues

On a quiet side street in the Paris suburb of Louise Michel, jazz musician Bobby Few from the United States sits at his 120-year-old Gabriel Gaveau piano and reminisces about what he has seen come to pass in his nearly 40 years in France.

CULTURE-ZIMBABWE: &#39&#39It Is Unlawful to Speak the Truth&#39&#39

"If I am going to change anything in my script it will be punctuation marks. I am not changing anything else,’’ said Cont Mhlanga, a prominent Zimbabwean playwright and founder of Bulawayo-based Amakhosi Theatre Production House. He was responding to the banning of his play entitled ‘‘The Good President’’.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Pop Stars Belt Out Global Wake-Up Call

One person may not be able to save the world, but former U.S. Vice President Al Gore won't give up his quest to do so without a fight - make that a green revolution.

THEATRE-US: Class Dismissed? Not by These Playwrights

The United States is famous as a country that denies the validity of class. But you'd get a different idea at theatres across New York, where two new plays and a revival look head-on at the way wealth, status and power affect people's lives.

FILM: U.S. Military’s ‘Don’t Ask’ Policy and One Gay Marine

Jeff Key grew up in a small, conservative community in rural Alabama in the south-east United States. A large man standing well over six feet tall, he had already come out as gay to his friends and family, graduated with a degree in theatre, and moved to Los Angeles when, at age 34, he decided to join the Marine Corps.

BRAZIL: Floating House Made of Garbage – Art or Eyesore?

In a fetid canal filled with garbage from this Brazilian city, a bricklayer built a floating house and turned it into a symbol of recycling, leaving the authorities by turns applauding or frowning.

ROMANIA: Cannes Award Brings Back Memories

A Romanian triumph at the Cannes film festival this year has revived painful memories for thousands of women.

ARGENTINA: Psychiatric Patients’ Radio Station Up in the Air

La Colifata was the first radio station in the world to broadcast live from a psychiatric hospital, and has played a key role in the reinsertion of patients in the community. But now the Argentine station, which has inspired the creation of around 40 similar stations in Latin America and Europe, has run out of financing.

CULTURE-FINLAND: ‘Living Books’ Help Fight Prejudice

Books cannot talk back to a reader and answer all of their questions. So if one is seeking concrete information on, say, a gay person, the library is perhaps the wrong place to visit.

MEDIA: Young Journalists Explore What It Means to Be Muslim in Italy

With the help of a new monthly magazine, 'Yalla Italia' (Come On, Italy), some young second-generation Egyptian, Moroccan and Tunisian immigrants are attempting to explore and address the stereotypes considered an obstacle to their full integration in this predominantly Catholic European country.

HAITI-DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Film on Plantations Spurs Backlash

When a man stood up at the Paris screening of director Amy Serrano's "The Sugar Babies", demanding to know how one of the film's subjects, the Belgian priest Pedro Ruquoy, could afford such a large car on his priestly salary, Ruquoy was nonplussed.

MIDDLE EAST: Iranian Art Bridges Regional Divide

While Iran's leaders maintain a confrontationist attitude towards the international community, Iranian artists are playing a friendlier tune in the immediate neighbourhood.

EDUCATION-ARGENTINA: A Library Per Household

A novel programme aimed at fomenting a reading habit among low-income sectors was launched in Argentina: the "Books and Houses" campaign will deliver a bookshelf complete with 18 volumes to each affordable housing unit assigned to families this year through government assistance plans.

THEATRE: Making a Monkey of U.S. Fundamentalists

The international focus on fundamentalist Islam might obscure the fact that western nations have their own experiences with fundamentalist religion - among them the country whose government has most targeted radical Islam, the United States.

Q&A: "I Was Just So Relieved the Zombie Didn't Keep a Blog"

This week marked the second annual Lulu Blooker Prize, which recognises the emerging genre of books based on weblogs. With 110 entries from 15 countries, the winners included the account of a U.S. machine-gunner in Iraq, a whimsical fiction book about the doorbells of Florence, and a memoir recounting a mother's struggle with lung cancer.

VENEZUELA: Museums Throw Open Their Doors to the Disabled

"We drew a fat woman with little dots. I like learning to draw. Maybe I'll be an artist later on," Lisette, a 15-year-old mentally disabled girl who goes every Friday from her school in the south of the Venezuelan capital to the Alejandro Otero Museum, told IPS.

HEALTH-AFRICA: 28 Stories, 28 Million Victims

"Humans are predisposed to respond to individual suffering; they are overwhelmed by huge numbers," Henry-Paul Normandin, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, told diplomats, U.N. officials and journalists gathered at the Canadian Mission here Monday.

FILM-BRAZIL: Tortured Monks

A Brazilian man strides forcefully through a forest. His bushy beard hides any emotion on his face. Using a short ladder to mount a wall, he climbs on to a branch of an enormous tree. He ties a rope, carried under his coat, around the branch, and hangs himself.

THEATRE-US: Revivals Take on Wars Past and Present

Conflict historically has aroused playwrights' passions - think Aristophanes' famous "War and Peace" trilogy written more than 2,000 years ago.

Q&A: Do You Know Where Your Power Comes From?

In his new 10-minute documentary "Electroland", Gabriel London gives a crash course on the U.S. power grid through striking, often beautiful images of pounding oil derricks, spinning wind turbines and blazing coal-fired smokestacks.

MIGRATION-CHILE: Celebrating Multiculturalism

As a tangible way of appreciating diversity, tolerance and non-discrimination, and in order to launch a debate about migration policy in Chile, university students are organising the First Multicultural Festival to be held in the capital on the weekend of May 26-27.