Culture Vulture Kids on Argentine TV

A public children’s television channel broadcasting high quality fiction, animation and documentary programmes designed by the Argentine Education Ministry for the two-to-12 age range can now be viewed elsewhere in Latin America via the internet.

CULTURE-CUBA: Night of One Thousand and One Texts

The legendary Scheherazade has exchanged her enthralling tales of "One Thousand and One Nights" for a compact disc with 1,001 academic articles, essays and books, giving Cubans access to materials that would otherwise be very difficult to obtain.

CUBA: Urban Tribes Prowl Havana Nights

A different city emerges on the weekends in Havana. Young people, whose faces are as strange as they are common, take possession of the city and reinvent it. They are the "urban tribes," a global phenomenon that has made its mark on Cuba.

ARGENTINA: New Campaign Calls Dropouts Back to School

Convincing young people who have dropped out of school to resume their studies is no easy feat. Which is why a group of social organisations in Argentina are joining with the government to launch a different kind of campaign to bring young people back into the classroom in 2011.

CUBA: Drag Queens and Volunteers Promote Safe Sex

Margot Parapar gets plenty of laughs from the audience with this joke: "Now the human body is divided into five parts: head, trunk, upper and lower limbs, and condom." Using his female stage name, Cuban drag queen, comedian and health promoter Oliver Alarcón includes HIV/AIDS prevention messages in his shows.

RELIGION-CHINA: Buddhism Enjoys A Revival

Quan Zhenyuan discovered Buddhism by accident. After the owner of a vegetarian restaurant here in the Chinese capital gave her a book about the religion, she became hooked. Today, Quan is one of a growing number of urban Chinese who turn to Buddhism for spiritual fulfillment.

PAKISTAN: Death Sentence Revives Calls to Scrap Blasphemy Laws

What began as altercation among farm workers has become a full-blown nightmare for Pakistani mother Asia Bibi, one that points to her being led to the gallows.

Teaching Virtual Resistance to Violence

What if young boys were imbued with a sense of empathy and fair play to counteract a culture that victimises women? Could they grow up to become part of a generation that renounces gender violence once and for all?

Strong as China, Fragile as Porcelain

In times of inflationary pressures the price of patriotism too goes up. The news that an 18th century Chinese porcelain vase sold for a record-breaking 68 million dollars at a London auction to a mainland China buyer this month did not go down well either with Chinese government regulators fretting about asset bubbles or with a Chinese public angry about income inequality.

KENYA: A Brand New Constitution, But Can Women Enjoy Land Rights?

Mary Kimani wishes her husband were still alive. Holding her one-year-old son in one hand and a hoe in the other, she recounts with bitterness how she and her children lost their livelihood to her husband’s family.

CHINA: Magazine Closure Setback for Cultural Revival

When ‘Soho Xiaobao’ magazine suddenly announced in October that it was ceasing publication, it marked a huge setback for privately funded efforts to breathe fresh air into contemporary Chinese culture.

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Educated, Glamorous and Wearing A Hijab

They are young, educated, urban women who frequent cafes, shop at ritzy fashion outlets, and go to yoga classes whenever they have time off work.

CHINA: For Now, Old Beijing Community Gets a Reprieve

On a chilly but bright fall day near the Drum and Bell Towers, one of the Chinese capital’s top tourist draws, business is brisk for Boss Liu. Drivers working for Liu’s rickshaw business ferry dozens of foreign and domestic tourists through the historic alleyways of a treasured neighbourhood that, as recently as October, was slated for demolition.

Muslim Americans Foil Terror Threats

A new report on violent extremists in the United States finds that terrorism plots by non-Muslims greatly outnumber those attempted by Muslims, and that Muslim-American communities helped foil close to a third of al Qaeda-related terror plots threatening the country since Sep. 11, 2001.

ARGENTINA: Show Drives Home the Reality of Obesity

"I can't even walk because I run out of breath. Food is my drug," says a 31-year-old man who weighs 215 kilos. "I hide to eat; it's something I can't control," says a 21-year-old woman who weighs 152 kilos.

INDONESIA: Minority Religions Pray For End to Discrimination

Clutching bibles and song leaflets, members of a Protestant church flocked into a one-storey building here, situated next to a new shopping mall on one of the busiest streets in this municipality in Indonesia’s West Java province.

CHINA: And Why Not A Baby Girl

Although Li Xiaoxue and her husband, Dai Chunlin, are already happy parents to a young boy, they plan to skirt China’s one-child policy by having another baby. And like a growing number of affluent, urban Chinese, their fingers are crossed for a baby girl.

MIDEAST: Could Have Danced All Siege

"I'd planned to have my wedding party on a Thursday night, when more people could come, and stay later. But because the Dabke dancers weren't free then, I held it on a Tuesday," says Mohammed Ghronaim, 27, from Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.

ECUADOR: Diversity in Remembering the Dead

Tens of thousands of Ecuadorians are set to visit cemeteries on Tuesday, the traditional "Día de Finados" (Day of the Deceased). But while city residents tend to spend the day in mourning, for many indigenous peoples it is a day of celebration, of reunion with their ancestors.

RIGHTS-JAPAN: Motherhood Is A Choice, Say Activists

For years, Kanako Nashimura longed to have a child, but was diagnosed as having a blocked fallopian tube. Encouraged by her husband and in-laws, she tried various fertility treatments, but not one of them worked.

CHINA: As Tourists Come, Culture Goes

In 2005, the ‘National Geographic China’ magazine named this ethnic Tibetan village in western Sichuan province, sprawled over a valley wall amid snow-capped mountains, China’s most beautiful. Depending on how you look at it, that distinction was either a blessing or a curse.