Arts & Culture

YouTube "Bawse" Lilly Singh.

Look out Hollywood. YouTube ‘bawse’ Lilly Singh is going mainstream.

Arts

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?

bangla lead

In Bangladesh, an app that lets women speak without fear

Development
K-pop girl group SNSD

Korea’s K-pop stars have to dance around… the censors

Berlin artist Kolja Kugler and his animatronic puppet Sir Elton Junk.

One man’s junk is another man’s robot

Environment
CCTV Spring Gala image

China’s ‘Super Bowl’ of TV — its New Year’s spectacular — disappoints the masses

Arts, Culture & Media

Another gang rape in India, with a complex twist

Global Scan

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.

Julie Gayet at Deauville

What the French president’s affair and separation say about love, politics and French culture

Arts, Culture & Media

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.

Congolese singer Tabu Ley Rochereau performs on stage at Afrika Festival on June 28, 2003 in Hertme, Netherlands.

Tabu Ley is the man who brought us Congolese soukous music

Arts, Culture & Media

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.

"Mañana Means Forever" by Tim Z. Hernandez

A novelist finds ‘the Mexican girl’ from Jack Kerouac’s book On the Road

Arts, Culture & Media

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.

Aysha el-Shamayleh reading one of her poems

Slam poetry brings honesty, and nervousness, to Jordan

Arts, Culture & Media

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.