KANO, Sep 6 (IPS) - While formal publishing companies in Nigeria languished through the economic crises that accompanied the structural adjustment programmes of the late 1980s and early 1990s, young Hausa writers began writing about their lives and contemporary problems they faced. Bypassing formal publishers, they self-published their novels, often with the help of a writers' cooperative.

WASHINGTON, Sep 5 (IPS) - Don't adjust your television set. There is no problem with your signal; it's just that all the colour was missing from the Republican National Convention, which concluded last night with Sen. John McCain's speech accepting the party nomination.

BANGKOK, Sep 5 (IPS) - On first impressions, Thailand’s political crisis appears to be an attempt to shape the future of democracy in a kingdom that has witnessed 18 military coups. But the anger that drives a protest movement to topple an elected administration has pitted it against the old media order.

HAVANA, Sep 4 (IPS) - After an interruption of over a year, the Criterios theoretical-cultural centre has resumed a series of lectures analysing the impact of the Cuban government's cultural policy on the arts, one of the tangible outcomes of the debate that shook society here in early 2007.

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 4 (IPS) - While perpetrators of human rights violations during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship have begun to be sent to prison, a new study has shed light on a less conspicuous aspect of the regime's legacy: the problems faced by the children of former exiles who are struggling to integrate into Argentine society.

NEW DELHI, Sep 4 (IPS) - "Anti-national" is the charge hurled in India at the usual radical suspects who argue for the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people.

HAVANA, Sep 3 (IPS) - Dissident groups in Cuba are attempting to open up a debate on the problem of racism in the country, in order to promote "full integration" of all the island's citizens, without discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity or skin colour.

SRINAGAR, Sep 3 (IPS) - Firefights between India's armed forces and separatist militants, a feature of life in Jammu and Kashmir state, have now given way to a different type of confrontation -- paramilitary troops facing mass protests by peaceful, unarmed demonstrators demanding freedom.

KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 3 (IPS) - Abandoning a decade-old promise to maintain Internet freedom, the government has closed down the popular and controversial ‘Malaysia Today’ web portal, known for consistently exposing the misdeeds of officialdom and the failings of individual leaders.

UPI, Mindanao, Sep 2 (IPS) - Amidst the raging conflict between government forces and Muslim rebels on the island of Mindanao, the religiously mixed population in the North Cotabato region looks to a community radio station as a beacon of peace.

NEW DELHI, Sep 2 (IPS) - Even as the Jammu region of the strife-torn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is settling down to normality and peace, a two month-old turmoil in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley shows no signs of abating.

SANTIAGO, Sep 1 (IPS) - "Mari, mari!" shout the excited group of 20 Chilean, Peruvian and Ecuadorean three- and four-year-olds, using the Mapuche language greeting to welcome a visitor to their intercultural day care centre in Santiago.

WASHINGTON, Aug 29 (IPS) - In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and gave a speech that went down as one of the greatest in U.S. history.

NEW YORK, Aug 29 (IPS) - As Muslims begin one of their most important holidays -- the month of Ramadan -- charitable organisations serving the American Muslim community are taking what some observers believe is a desperate last step to keep the U.S. government from shutting them down.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 29 (IPS) - A power-sharing agreement between the opposition Orange Democratic Movement and the Party of National Unity in Kenya has failed at healing ethnic divisions in the one-time politically-troubled East African nation, according to a new report by Minority Rights Group International (MRG).