While there were signs on Monday that Hong Kong's protests might be coming to a low ebb, their visual impact looks likely to last for a while.

Mr. Baudry, the cultural counselor for the French Embassy, is presenting a gift in two packages to his adopted city. The first is a bookstore, Albertine, named after the elusive love object of Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.”(...)The second is Festival Albertine, a six-night celebration of ideas that begins on Tuesday, matching French and American thinkers and writers in a wide variety of fields (...)

The Association of Turks in Serbia has, due to the great interest of its members, launched an initiative for the introduction of the Turkish language in Serbian schools as an elective course starting in the fifth grade.

The showcasing of Japanese culture at the Courtleigh Auditorium in Kingston Saturday night had a greater impact in demonstrating the ties between the two nations, which are celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations, than speeches and product displays.

On Oct. 1, the Toronto District School Board became the latest high-profile North American educational institution to sever ties with the Confucius Institutes, a Chinese government-funded language and culture program. 

“With the exception of Vice News, ISIS has permitted no foreign journalists to document life under their rule in Raqqa,” Crabapple wrote. “Instead, they rely on their own propaganda. To create these images, I drew from cell-phone photos a Syrian sent me of daily life in the city. Like the Internet, art evades censorship.”