What is tolerance and do we have it in our long-standing culture?   Do we learn to reject the other at an age where we know no better or do we base our presumptions on a need to identify with those “like us” – those that share our palates, familial obligations and patterns of …

China has banned websites from featuring 100 songs by artists from Lady Gaga to the Backstreet Boys, a statement on the culture ministry’s website said. The ministry said it aimed to regulate the "order" of the internet music market, adding songs that "harm the security of state culture must be cleaned up and regulated under …

Sometimes, it’s not about the food. Yes, I really do mean it. Sometimes it’s worth schlepping all the way to Alexandria on the train for the day to eat ice cream at Gelati Azza, because having two paper-thin wafer cones topped with gelati wrapped in butcher paper and served to you horizontally is worth the …

  CAIRO: A little over two weeks into Ramadan, and volunteers at Resala Charity are already wrapping up the Ramadan bags packing — as opposed to last year when the process continued to the end of the holy month.   The difference, which materialized in less food supplies distributed on the needy this year, is …

Top jewelry executive Erwin Huang is a respected power broker in Hong Kong’s business community, but he scored a failing grade when it came to rubbish collection. The 46-year-old got a hard lesson in low-paid work as part of a hit television show that turns some of the financial hub’s wealthiest business titans into its …

Sit back and enjoy readings of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde or Henrik Ibsen, sip a glass of wine — oh, and gaze upon the readers themselves: they’re naked. That combination of delights is on offer once a month in New York thanks to the enterprising group Naked Girls Reading. At a recent session, about 30 people, …

BERLIN: An Egyptian queen who died 3,500 years ago might have poisoned herself accidentally by using a carcinogenic balm to treat a skin complaint, German university researchers said Friday. This follows research on the dried up contents of a small flask belonging to queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Upper Egypt in the 15th century BC, and …

By Randa Habib / AFP Fifteen years after “Trekkie” King Abdullah II briefly appeared in an episode of Star Trek, Jordan is planning to construct a $1.5-billion-dollar park themed on the cult American science fiction series. The “Red Sea Astrarium” will be built in the country’s sole port of Aqaba, 350 kilometers (217 miles) south of …

In my mind, lentils are those that make up the steaming mugs of spiced lentil soup, warming my hands, sipped on gently while huddled under a blanket in the winter. They are the delicateness in koshary, a dish we rarely realize is built around lentils; but for the most part, lentils are ignored, almost on …

The late French designer Coco Chanel was indeed an anti-Semite who spied for the Nazis during World War II, her latest biographer insisted Wednesday, despite firm denials from her fashion house. In "Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War," US historian Hal Vaughan expands on long-standing evidence that the celebrated designer had a double …

Everyone here knows that the July 14 bridge, a convenient route to the US Embassy and government offices in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, marks a 1958 coup when Iraq’s last king was murdered. But not many know that King Faisal II lives on in the classic "Tintin" comic books. This includes his own cousin, the …

  Traditionally, on every family’s dining table come iftar time there would be a small offering of fuul, the most dependable and over-consumed of Egyptian staples. In my family, fuul — or what is known as broad beans in English though it’s never used — is now mainly offered for sohour. My mother’s reasoning is …

The cameras were rolling and a studio audience looked on but the emotional reunion of a daughter and her father, torn apart 30 years ago by Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime, was no act. Sem Savoeun sobbed as she embraced the father she thought was lost forever on the new Cambodian hit reality show "It’s …

After celebrating the fake tans and drunken antics of Italian-American youths, America’s reality TV machine this week unleashes its latest ethnic portrait: "Russian Dolls." And not everyone is happy. The series will focus on eight characters from New York’s Brighton Beach neighborhood, which publicists for Lifetime television call "one of the most interesting and mysterious …

Not so long ago, a dear friend of mine began to visit me regularly. This friend, one that you too might be familiar with, would make her spellbinding appearance at the most inconvenient of times. She would pace the length of my back, electrifying my extremities, sending shockwaves of energy to my heart, my brain …

  It is incredible how connected our lives are today. Increasingly sophisticated wireless devices are becoming common every day tools, leading us to expect — and as business people be expected — to be connected wherever we are. We do not work from a desk, buy things off the shop floor, or move money at …

Famous French author Albert Camus, who died in a car accident in 1960, may have been the victim of a Soviet plot, new research suggests. Italian academic Giovanni Catelli, an eastern European specialist, put forward the theory in the pages of the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera. On Monday it was greeted with skepticism …

I am the most spoiled foodie in town. I have, for the past three years of my life, been sent to sample, taste, test, gorge and guzzle on the best food this city has to offer. Yet this column, which runs throughout the month of Ramadan, will be about anything but food snobbery. In fact …

CAIRO: By 2020, Alashanek Ya Balady Association for Sustainable Development aims to graduate 10 million underprivileged Egyptians above of the poverty line. In a press conference Tuesday, the NGO launched a campaign named “Foq El-Khat” or “Above the Line,” whose strategy is to provide loans for establishing individual, group and medium sized enterprises in various …

CAIRO: Syria is heading to a "point of no return" and national reforms must be implemented to avoid foreign interference, Egypt’s foreign minister said on Tuesday after almost five months of protests and forceful efforts by Syrian authorities to suppress them. Mohammed Kamel Amr, appointed last month in a cabinet reshuffle, said "the situation in …

Yoko Ono has an idea for her disaster-scarred country Japan — abandon nuclear energy for renewables and tap the geothermal energy beneath the unstable ground of the volcanic island nation. The artist and widow of John Lennon is in Japan for the first time since the March 11 quake and tsunami sparked a nuclear crisis, …

Within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge lies another landmark cherished by a small but fervent group of travelers: a life-sized replica of Yoda, George Lucas’ master of the Force. Since the statue of the Jedi sage went up amid the Presidio’s landscaped lawns in 2005, Star Wars fans have made a pilgrimage to take …

The abandoned site looks more like a quarried mine than a pop superstar’s multi-million-dollar dream to groom girls into Malawi’s next leaders and doctors. But the bleak, leveled terraces of gravelly sand near Malawi’s capital are the only evidence of Madonna’s $15 million academy that was ditched in a cloud over misused funds and disgruntled …

CAIRO: In a time where they are particularly at risk, most bloggers do not understand the online security measures necessary to protect themselves, a Harvard University report said. The report, conducted by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, surveyed 98 bloggers in the MENA region. Twenty-six of these were Egyptians. “Digital communication has become …

By Jung Ha-Won/ AFP South Korea’s pop music industry is eyeing Europe after taking East Asia by storm, with promoters using the power of the internet to lure distant fans. K-pop over the past decade has established a devoted fan base in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, with heartthrobs like Rain and boy bands like TVXQ …

  For the past 20 years, Vietnamese cinema has been predominantly identified with one filmmaker: Anh Hung Tran. The three films Tran directed between 1993 and 2000 put Vietnamese cinema on the map, opening the door for other “overseas Vietnamese” filmmakers such as Tony Bui (Sundance winner “Three Seasons,” 1998) and Minh Nguyen-Vo (“The Buffalo …

Punk rockers once wanted to smash the state. Now they’re helping preserve stately homes. The National Trust charity, which oversees Britain’s castles and historic houses, has released a fundraising album of punk classics. "Never Mind the Dovecotes" — a play on the title of the Sex Pistols album "Never Mind the Bollocks" — includes tracks …

Former Beatle Paul McCartney said Thursday he would contact police over his ex-wife’s claim that the couple had been spied upon by a British newspaper. In comments to US television journalists delivered via videolink from Cincinnati, Ohio, McCartney said that he would be in touch with law enforcement as soon as he was finished with …

In our house, we have a problem with leftovers. That problem is as simple as this: we don’t like them. Having spent many years in our parents’ homes being taught not to waste by coming home from school and barging into the kitchen to be greeted by reheated leftovers, we rejoiced at the idea of …