Forget dropping names or slipping the hostess a bill or two.It's luck that's important in snagging a reservation at Dhaba,an average-priced Indian restaurant that has become such amust-go place for Tokyo residents that guests are limited to amaximum stay of two hours.

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.

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

A different city emerges on the weekends in Havana. Young people, whose facesare 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 onCuba.

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

Quan Zhenyuan discovered Buddhism by accident. After the ownerof a vegetarian restaurant here in the Chinese capital gaveher a book about the religion, she became hooked. Today, Quanis one of a growing number of urban Chinese who turn toBuddhism for spiritual fulfillment.

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

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

What if young boys were imbued with a sense of empathy andfair play to counteract a culture that victimises women? Couldthey grow up to become part of a generation that renouncesgender violence once and for all?

In times of inflationary pressures the price of patriotism too goes up. The newsthat an 18th century Chinese porcelain vase sold for a record-breaking 68million dollars at a London auction to a mainland China buyer this month did notgo down well either with Chinese government regulators fretting about assetbubbles or with a Chinese public angry about income inequality.

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

When‘Soho Xiaobao' magazine suddenly announced in Octoberthat it was ceasing publication, it marked a huge setback forprivately funded efforts to breathe fresh air intocontemporary Chinese culture.

They are young, educated, urban women who frequent cafes, shopat ritzy fashion outlets, and go to yoga classes whenever theyhave time off work.

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

A new report on violent extremists in the United States findsthat terrorism plots by non-Muslims greatly outnumber thoseattempted by Muslims, and that Muslim-American communitieshelped foil close to a third of al Qaeda-related terror plotsthreatening the country since Sep. 11, 2001.