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Musician Dom La Nena's debut album fits her diminutive name

Singer-songwriter Dominique Pinto goes by Dom La Nena, ‘Dom the Little Girl.’Like Lil’ Wayne before her, the name refers unironically to her delicate stature. Unlike Lil’ Wayne, La Nena makes music...

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China's copycat town emblematic of Chinese passion for look-a-likes

China may be the world’s most prolific copycat. It’s brought us pirated DVDs, fake iPhones and even entire fake Apple stores.But what about knock-off architecture?The city of Suzhou has a version of...

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Richard Wagner's 200th birthday passes with little notice in the U.S.

Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday was earlier this month, on May 22.Classical music institutions love round-number anniversaries for the great composers, and in Europe, major concerts and events are...

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Turkey's Creationist TV channel uses women described as 'Barbie-like' to...

Turkey’s Islamic creationist guru Adnan Oktar is a regular fixture on his TV channel A9 — for hours and hours, day after day.On one recent day, as he often does, Oktar was talking about one of his many...

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In Pakistan, no one admits to being a Burger

It may be hard to imagine, given the pervasiveness of McDonald’s these days, but hamburgers were virtually unknown in Pakistan before 1981.Arshad Jawad is the manager the first fast-food chain in...

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Brazilian rap artist earns high praise from country's music scene

When Brazilian rapper Criolo’s parents were in their early 20s, they left the northeast of Brazil, to search for a better life down south.But when they made it to São Paulo, all they could afford was a...

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Iona Rozeal Brown creates Afro-Japanese art mashup

The defining medium of our time has to be the mashup.There are mashup videos, mashup songs, mashup literature — wherever there’s a will to combine disparate bits of entertainment or art, there’s a...

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Spanish town reminds dog owners to pick up after their pets ... with special...

A small Spanish town has launched a citizen-awareness campaign that many town halls might want to adopt.It has to do with dog ... doo.Sidewalks covered with dog doo, in fact.Who hasn’t seen it? Or,...

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Tech entrepreneur starts online service to connect travelers with home-cooked...

Jay Savsani says he’s no gourmet cook. He thinks of himself as just a few steps above instant ramen or mac-and-cheese.But that doesn’t matter. It was Global Sharing Day, an effort to break the world...

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Buffy, Firefly creator Joss Whedon takes time to make a more conventional movie

Joss Whedon is successful by any measure: a critical cult darling for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a mega crowd-pleaser with The Avengers.But family can be hard to please.“There’s an argument I’ve had...

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Turkish protesters turn slur around in protest against government actions

When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the protesters in his cities recently çapulcular (pronounced cha-pul-ju-lar), he wasn’t paying them a compliment.The term translates roughly to...

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Ancient Hellenes religion makes comeback in Greece

The summer solstice, June 21, is one of the most important dates in the calendar for many followers of ancient religions, and it's a special time for people in Greece who worship the country's...

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Weird Al more popular than ever, branching out into children's books

Al Yankovic grew up in the ‘60s wanting to play in rock and roll cover bands.To his surprise, the other kids just didn’t take the accordion-playing teenager seriously.So Yankovic ditched the serious...

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Some Turks reconsidering Arabic connection to Turkish language

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, seven students sit in a darkened classroom on the campus of Bosporus University in Istanbul.They squint up at a projection of a 100-year-old, handwritten letter.The...

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Painter Eric Fischl bares his soul in new memoir

When Eric Fischl was first described as a painter of the suburbs, it wasn’t really meant as a compliment.But he says he's grown to embrace it, even, "wear it proudly.”Fischl grew up on Long Island,...

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Songwriter David Lowery lashes out at rates streaming radio pays

The title of David Lowery’s blog post says it all: My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale!Lowery, the singer and...

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Israeli-born Ethiopian Jew embraces ancestry in her music

When famine struck Ethiopia in 1983, Ester Rada’s parents were forced to flee.They traveled by foot to Sudan, only to find themselves packed into a dangerous refugee camp. But the couple managed to get...

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Jerusalem shopping mall at center of culture war in Israel

One of the biggest conflicts in Israel doesn’t involve the Palestinians.It’s over a shopping mall in a Jerusalem suburb of Ramot that’s at the center of a culture war. But the saga started even before...

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Italian band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino sings to exorcise financial demons

The band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino hails from Salento, in the southernmost part of Italy, on the heel of the Italian boot.Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino is modeled after a traditional ensemble...

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Swear words shift meaning, importance over time

Back in 1939, the Production Code Administration required that David O. Selznick defend the use of the word "damn" in his film “Gone with the Wind.”Fast forward to present day, and basic cable programs...

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