The Obama administration is taking its fight against ISIS to Hollywood, consulting with some of the world’s best storytellers for tips on how to win the battle for hearts and minds. [...] The outreach is part of a revamped administration strategy to counter ISIS’s magnetic pull for some young people in the Middle East and beyond, working with local partners, establishing a new Washington-based communications center and, now, drawing on the deep well of movie maker experience. 

The hip-hop musical based on the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton got its start with playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2009 performance of the then-in-the-works “Hamilton Mixtape” at the White House and has evolved into a global phenomenon. [...] In a time of uncertain power shifts in a changing global order, Hamilton quietly asserts America’s best qualities without glossing over the worst, sending a message of optimism about the country’s future. It thus has the potential to further American ideological appeal among foreign audiences.

160 years of Bangkok-Paris diplomatic relations are being celebrated this year. Life caught up with new French Ambassador to Thailand Gilles Garachon to discuss food, the AEC and cultural exchange. Political and economic diplomacy may be the core business of his job, but the ambassador puts emphasis on understanding culture.

American documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer has spent more than a decade of his career attempting to lift the veil of forgetfulness hanging over one of the postwar era’s worst mass murders—the killing of as many as a 1 million Indonesians in 1965 and 1966 by military and right-wing forces, ostensibly reacting to a failed communist coup.

Reflecting a move of 33 percentage points in the past 10 years, a majority of Americans — 54 percent — currently see Cuba in a favorable light, according to Gallup. The nation's favorability rating went up across the U.S. political spectrum, but by far the biggest gain was among Democrats.

Benin's Angelique Kidjo has won the best world music album of the year at this year's Grammys in Los Angeles. The New York-based singer won the award for her Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg collaboration, Sings. "I want to dedicate this Grammy to all the traditional musicians in Africa, in my country, to all the young generation," Kidjo said.

In a Mass sprinkled with indigenous languages and customs, Pope Francis on Monday gave recognition to the "misunderstood" and "excluded" native peoples long repressed by Mexican power.

It’s Saturday evening February the 13th and the Royal Danish Embassy in Bangkok has opened its garden for a night with Jazz on the Grass. An event that took off last year as an initiative by music lover and Danish Ambassador in Bangkok, Mikael Hemniti Winther.