/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-SOUTH AFRICA: Cape Town Looks to Exploit Slave History

The greatest monument to slavery in this city is the telephone directory, where the origins of many of its citizens can be seen in names given to their forebears by slave owners.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-CUBA: Ibrahim Ferrer Challenges Time, Yet Again

The British record label World Circuit has begun recording its second album in the Cuban capital with local singer Ibrahim Ferrer, who at the age of 73 won recognition in the United States as a "new artist."

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-JAMAICA: Reggae Aficionados Ready to Storm US Airwaves

With mass media in the United States still out of its reach after thirty years, reggae music is in line for its biggest break in that country with the advent of the satellite formatted XM Radio.

CULTURE-CHINA: Beijing Sings to the West to Push Olympic Bid

When Qing emperor Qian Long (1736-1796) rejected a British emissary's proposal for trade by saying 'We have everything we need,' little did he know that more than 200 years later, modern Chinese rulers would seek the cream of western operatic talent to push Beijing's bid to host the Olympics.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-CUBA: Archaeologists Find Biggest Taino Settlement

A team of Cuban and Canadian archaeologists have found more than 1,000 artifacts at a site located 460 kms east of Havana, presumed to be one of the biggest Caribbean settlements of the Taino, an Amerindian people who had attained a relatively advanced level of development at the time of the Spanish conquest.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/WEST AFRICA-MUSIC: Baobab Bounces Back

Back in the 1970s, when the Orchestre Baobaob was packing out concert-halls all over West Africa and in France and Belgium, the group would often fly into Conakry, Guinea.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/POETRY-COLOMBIA: Who’s Afraid of Medellin?

Some 100 poets from 70 countries and nine indigenous nations turned Medellín, Colombia's most violent city, into the world capital of poetry this month, attracting thousands of people to the plazas, parks and theatres to enjoy the readings of works in an array of languages.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-NEPAL: Fixation on Everest Draws Teenager to the Top

When Nepali schoolboy Temba Tsheri Sherpa said in 1999 that he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, his family thought it was just "small boy talk".

BOOKS-US: Impunity Just Ain’t What It Used To Be

A specialist in dethroning the mighty, Christopher Hitchens has pursuedand skeweredquarry ranging from the seemingly blameless (Mother Teresa) to the patently shameless (Bill Clinton).

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-US: African-Americans Celebrate Emancipation from Slavery

US citizens traditionally observe Independence Day on July 4 but an increasing number of African- Americans celebrate their emancipation on 'Juneteenth' - June 19.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/ MUSIC-JAMAICA: Tony Rebel Rekindles Struggle for ‘Positive’ Reggae

When Tony Rebel burst onto the reggae scene ten years ago, critics saw his humorous and uplifting songs as a refreshing change from the slackness that had dominated Jamaican dancehall music for over a decade. With a new album out, the Rastafarian sing-jay is being called on once more to clean up the music.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-MEXICO: Nightlife in the Political Crossfire

Nightlife in the Mexican capital is pitting the city's leftist government against the conservative opposition in a strange sort of role-reversal. The former is trying to clamp down on crime occurring in nightclubs while the latter defends citizens' rights to entertainment and the businesses that provide it.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-INDIA: Government Reinvents Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel

The humble spinning wheel that Mahatma Gandhi used to spin 'khadi' or handspun cotton as a symbol of resistance to British imperialism has come full circle.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-AFRICA: Launching Kenya’s First Ever Fashion Week

Every year, the glamorous fashion pack don their dark glasses and jet into the world's most chic capitals to scout out the season's latest styles. London, Paris, Milan. Nairobi?

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-US: ‘Pearl Harbour’ – A Hollow Wreck of a Cultural Symbol

There is something tiresomely formulaic and deeply unfair about 'Pearl Harbour', Hollywood's latest would- be blockbuster.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-COSTA RICA: A Mexican Enclave Cedes to Modernity

By day it was a family restaurant in the heart of the Costa Rican capital. By night it served as a gathering place for poets, an arena for heated political discussions and a stage for improvised musical shows in which singers - with or without a few drinks - were bold enough to belt out their off-key renditions of Mexican boleros and rancheras.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-JAPAN: Movie on Wartime Struggle Grates on Indonesians

Producers of a film about Japanese soldiers who helped Indonesians fight Dutch colonisers say it aims to acquaint Japanese with history, but critics say it is another way of deflecting attention from its wartime record.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/LITERATURE-INDONESIA: Parents up in Arms over Japanese Cartoon

He's only five years old and not even real, but to many parents here in Indonesia, Shin-chan has become The Enemy.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-ITALY/LATAM: Co-operation with a Rap Rhythm

Italian development efforts in Latin America have taken on the rhythm of rap, a musical genre born in New York's African-American and Hispanic neighbourhoods in the 1980s and later adopted by creative and outspoken youth around the world.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-BRAZIL: Psychiatric Dungeons a Persistent Reality

A film that reveals the truth behind psychiatric hospitalisation in Brazil has turned into a powerful weapon for the movement working to abolish the supposed mental health centres which they say are truly dungeons.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/ CULTURE-US: Black Circus Heads for Africa

The only African American-run circus in the world will make its first overseas pilgrimage this summer to perform in South Africa on Nelson Mandela's birthday.