YouTube has given a generation of diverse superstars a place to start their careers. But can they find a place in the far less diverse Hollywood scene?
This weekend, French President François Hollande confirmed that he is separating from his partner Valérie Trierweiler. The French seemed to shrug at the news of Hollande's affair with actress Julie Gayet, seeing love and politics as separate. But France's neighbors and its former colonies don't necessarily agree.
A woman was sentenced by elders to a public gang rape in her village in the West Bengal area to punish her for an affair. India's Supreme Court is investigating. A signal room in London's Underground gets flooded, with quick-drying cement. And an artist is painting and placing cut-outs of immigrant workers around LA. All that and more, in today's Global Scan.
The inventor of Congolese soukous music has passed away. Tabu Ley Rochereau died Saturday in Belgium. The World's host Marco Werman talks about Tabu with Chris McCarus, a radio reporter from Detroit who went to Congo to meet the stars of soukous and wound up in Tabu's home.
Author Tim Z. Hernandez went on a quest to find Bea Franco, the woman described by Jack Kerouac as his Mexican lover in "On the Road." Now she's in Franco's new novel.
There's a slam poetry underground in Amman, Jordan, and it's mainly filled with women. A Jordanian woman brought the art form home after studying in the US and winning slam poetry contests there.
1963 was a momentous year in many ways, from the Beatles to James Bond, and from African independence to Vietnam.
The World Chess Championship is underway in Chennai, India. Norway's Magnus Carlsen has taken an impressive lead over local hero and reigning champion Viswanathan Anand. And in Norway, people are getting pretty stoked. So the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has challenged the rest of the world to play Norway — all of Norway.
How do you make an instrument relevant that hasn't been heard for hundreds of years? A French ethnomusicologist is recreating Cambodian instruments that vanished centuries ago.
Ethiopia embraces the spoken word, in a big way. When the Beat Making Lab arrived there earlier this year, it found a community of aspiring young poets.
Syria is, in many ways, a nation of poets. So despite the country's long-running civil war, poetry remains important. And the war can certainly be felt in the poetry coming out of the country now.