LITERATURE-CHILE: Coloane, Latin America’s Jack London

Chilean author Francisco Coloane, who has only recently won fame in Europe where he is considered "the Jack London of Latin America," celebrated his 90th birthday saying he will be aroundand writingfor at least another nine years.

/REPEATING/ /ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-BRAZIL: Rhythms and Musicians for Export

Biá has lived in France since adolescence, but is constantly travelling throughout Europe, Canada, Japan and other countries, bringing the songs of Brazil to growing and increasingly diverse audiences.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/ FILM-US: Surviving Black Panthers Tell Their Own Story

Ruthlessly crushed by the police and maligned by the white press, the Black Panthers remain one of the most misunderstood groups to emerge from the 1960s' civil rights struggles in the United States.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/ FILM-MEXICO: Out of the Ashes to Success on Screen

Filmmakers and critics alike declared the Mexican film industry dead in 1995, the victim of the country's economic crisis and the end of government protections. Now they are celebrating the recovery they have achieved with support from the private sector, though problems still linger.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-CHILE: Golden Year for Quantity, But Quality?

The year 2000 is set to be a record year for Chilean film production, with 20 feature-length movies scheduled to premiere, but the results so far have been questionable in terms of quality and the wave of criticism has reached even prize-winning director Miguel Littin.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-CUBA: Tour to the End of the World

An unusual tour of several months through Cuba took singer-songwriter Jorge García to La Máquina, an isolated village on the eastern tip of the island that other musicians have completely forgotten.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-PERU: Urban Alienation Hits Festival Circuit

The film "Ciudad de M" (City of M), a story of the dark side of city life, took second prize at the Havana film script festival and has been selected to represent Peru at Spain's Donostia-San Sebastian Film Festival.

BOOKS-US: Black Sci-Fi Collection Brings “Dark Matter” to Light

The current fascination with technology, from biotech to the Internet, has made science fiction films, novels and short fiction increasingly popular over the past few decades.

CULTURE-CHINA: Quest to Retrieve Historic Treasures Peaks

Standing in front of threbronze animal unlight against a replica of Beijing's Old Summer Palace, Chen Yanling couldn't believe they were worth a total of 4 million U.S. dollars.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-JAMAICA: A Hot Future for a Spicy Sauce

If the Maroon leader Cudjoe could have foreseen how lucrative the method his guerrillas used to preserve food would have become, he probably would have been one of Jamaica's first millionaires.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of a Cruel and Unjust World

Three collections of photographs by two celebrated artists, Sebastian Salgado and Robert Doisneau, in Rome and Madrid, give vivid testimony to the cruelties and injustices that persist in a globalised world.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/INDIA: New Clues to End of Ancient Civilisation

Were marauding Aryan horsemen responsible for the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation? Or did a prehistoric international trade depression finish off the Harappans?

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/URBAN PLANNING-VENEZUELA: In Search of the Lost City

A brief glance at the capital of Venezuela reveals a city without memory, where the tendency to chaos is one of the most outstanding traits, and a landscape that at the dawn of the 21st century has sparked several attempts at explaining what happened.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/EXHIBITION-US: Flight and Rescue: A Tale of Jewish Survival

As thousands of Polish Jews fled their homes in late 1939 to escape advancing Nazi and Soviet armies, a small number began a hazardous journey that would take them to the unlikely safe haven of Germany's ally Japan.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-BRAZIL: Insult Added to Injury in a ‘Nonviable’ Country

Packing all of Brazil's sore spots into a 100-minute film is apparently the objective of "Cronicamente inviavel" (Chronically Nonviable), a biting lampoon of the country's social deformations.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-JAMAICA: Stitchie: From Court Jester to Preacher of the Word

There was a time when Stitchie, the rapid- talking deejay, was seen as dancehall's court jester - the foil to the genre's tough-talking toasters. Three years ago, he got serious and now his songs offer praise to God.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/HISTORY-CHINA: Ancient Script Throws Light into Little-known Dynasty

The enigma of the Western Xia Dynasty, which ruled over much of Central China nearly 800 years ago and was wiped out by Genghis Khan's hordes, has fascinated scholars all over the world for centuries.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-VIETNAM: Caught Between ‘Progress’ and Cultural Finds

Hanoi authorities are unsettled: Should they allow archeologists to go on digging the site of an ambitious building project to continue to have a look at the Vietnamese capital's glorious past?

MUSIC-CUBA: Stars’ Solidarity Recording to Benefit Schools

Cuba's music schools, hard hit by the island's decade-long economic crisis, are soon to get a boost from Spain's Joan Manuel Serrat, Argentine Fito Pßez and Cuba's own Pablo Milanis, who have joined forces with other Spanish-language musicians in a solidarity recording project.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/ DANCE-PERU: Traces Remain of Church-Banned Dances

The Catholic Church of the colonial era banned three popular dances in Peru. The 'totarque' completely disappeared, swallowed up by time. The 'pava' is danced in secret on the northern coast. But the 'danza de tijeras' (scissors dance) is currently the star of folklore festivals in this Andean country.

/ARTS & ENTERTAIMENT/BOOKS-US: Law Student Calls World’s Richest Indian Tribe a Fraud

Princeton law student Tom Tureen knew American Indians were suffering. Having worked as a teacher to poor Sioux children on a reservation in South Dakota, Tureen wanted to see them rise out of poverty. This became his sole legal mission. And it took him about 30 years to turn one tribe into millionaire owners of the world's largest casino. Located in the Ledyard, Connecticut woods is a towering purple, blue and white resort hotel and casino called Foxwoods. It is literally in the middle of nowhere, sitting on the Pequot Indian reservation once owned by the state. That land, and Foxwoods, has made the Connecticut Pequot Tribe the wealthiest of all US tribes. Foxwoods was built in 1992 and takes in over 1 billion dollars a year. But there's a problem here, claims 34 year-old, Boston law student, Jeff Benedict. The owners of Foxwoods aren't Pequots.