This Christmas is far from merry for some in Cameroon. Traders are grumbling over lagging sales, families say inflation and lagging wages are stifling their holiday and religious authorities complain the season has become too commercial. Christmas is...
For sheer drama and poignancy, real life stories sometimes outshine fiction. Consider the case of piano virtuoso Leon Fleisher. In 1966, at the height of a phenomenal international career, a medical condition called focal dystonia cost him the use of...
Stan Lee is the creative force behind some of the world's greatest comic-book super-heroes. He created iconic characters such as Spiderman, the X-men, Incredible Hulk and Captain America. For 70 years, Lee has led fans into a world where heroes with...
Nyau is a secret society whose membership is usually open only to the Chewas in central Malawi. The tribe is mainly known for Gule wankulu, or Nyau -- literally its big dance, performed by masked men called spirits. It's restricted to the men of the...
Winter Holidays. This is the time of the year when many movie goers crave lavish productions. And holiday movies echo that spirit. Hollywood shines with glitz, over-the-top special effects and expensive film productions. Three fit the bill: Black Swa...
Released late in 2009, Lady Gaga's Bad Romance reached second place on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Chart, while earning a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. More significant, however, was the accompanying video. The...
As American Roots music is difficult to define, it might be easier to just let you listen to some of the year's best ... like Robert Plant's Band of Joy. His latest album finds the 61-year old singer mixing old time country and bluegrass sounds with...
In major cities across the globe there's a new kind of urban guerilla. They're not handling rifles and guns. They're planting flowers. It's called Guerrilla Gardening and it's a new kind of urban graffiti, environmental style. It's Saturday night and...
The Washington Humane Society got some help from a familiar figure this year, as the Christmas holidays approached. The Humane Society is the only open-access animal shelter in the Nation's Capital, and cares for nearly 30,000 animals a year. It rece...
Christmas is a festive time, especially for children. Families gather to celebrate the holidays with delicious meals and wrapped gifts. But for children whose families have no home of their own, Christmas can be a sad time. To put a smile on homeless...
Some 30 years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, stigma and discrimination continue to take a toll. For example, in South Africa, some young, HIV positive mothers can find themselves homeless and shunned by their families. But there is a place where they ca...
Images of Belarus police clubbing presidential candidates have drawn condemnation from around the world. What does the future hold for Alexander Lukashenko? Western observers called his election to a fourth term on Sunday fraudulent. The Obama admini...
In U.S. politics, both sides in the ongoing domestic policy debates are taking a break over the Christmas holiday, following an unexpectedly productive final session of the outgoing Congress. When they return in January they will face the new politic...
The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday urged a 50 percent increase in the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia. The Security Council unanimously approved a resolution requesting the African Union to maintain its peacekeeping force in...
Congress has passed sweeping legislation aimed at making the U.S. food supply safer. The bill gives the government broad new powers to inspect processing plants, order recalls and impose stricter standards for imported foods. And, rather than having...
