culture

Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi has been sentenced to death in Iran.

Iranian rapper receives death sentence for his work and support of human rights 

Justice

The work of 33-year-old Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi is as poetic as it is technically challenging — covering topics ranging from government corruption to the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, he channels the voice of Iran’s disillusioned youth. This week, a revolutionary court in Isfahan overruled a previous court decision granting leniency for Salehi, and sentenced him to death.

A local soda is making a comeback in Turkey

Food
Smoke in front of a man, with remnants of firecrackers on the ground

Why a medical interpreter was surprised to see Vietnamese immigrant patients at California hospitals around Lunar New Year

Culture
Idris Elba

Why Idris Elba is not ‘too street’ to be James Bond

Culture
mariachi

LA’s master mariachi tailor says sewing started out like a game for him

Culture
Safi Haso, about 70 years old, from Girik village of Kobani. "We are probably the last generation that has tattoos," she says. "All Kurdish women had them." In addition to facial, hand and neck tattoos, Haso has tattooed her own breast with circles around

These Kurdish refugee women are proud owners of facial tattoos

Culture

Photographer Jodi Hilton visited a Syrian refugee camp last fall. And she came across something unexpected: beauty. Kurdish women there have facial tattoos, also known as “deq.”

A student of Khmer descent learns Kinh language (the official Vietnamese language) at the Lac Hoa Primary School in Soc Trang province.

The language apocalypse is coming, and many tongues are already all but dead

Culture

Humans speak 6,000 languages, but half of them will disappear within the next 50 years. Even today, some ancient tongues have only one remaining speaker. The new PBS film, “Language Matters,” looks at the languages that are struggling to survive.

The World

Veterans display their wars through ink and art

Culture

A tattoo often comes with a story. And with many American veterans unable or unwilling to tell their stories in words, a pair of veterans have started collecting the stories behind the tattoos to help people understand the wars they fought.

An Iranian couple rests in a park in central Tehran.

More young Iranian couples are living together before marriage

Culture

Many young Iranian couples are choosing to live together before marriage, and the rise in such “white marriages” has Iranian officials worried. But there are also some good reasons why young Iranians don’t want to tie the knot.

Fan death theories are so ubiquitous they've turned up as logos on t-shirts.

Why every Korean kid knows not to keep the fan on over night

Culture

There’s a superstition that Korean parents tell their kids: If you go to sleep with an electric fan running in your room, you might die.