Nelson Mandela is officially "improving," though still in critical condition at a South African hospital. His long battle with a lung infection has South Africans anxiously contemplating their "post-Mandela" future in a still racially divided country. In a unique strategy, one man is hoping to help heal those divisions with a pair of barbecue tongs. Jan Scannell is a 32-year-old former accountant with a dream: To establish a national holiday in South Africa like July 4 called Braai Day.

Before traveling to Oman on the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange & Study (YES) Program, Dylan Hoey had never left the United States. Yet through this YES Abroad experience, Dylan proved he could not only live in another country but thrive there. “I think what I’ve taken from Oman is a newfound sense of confidence,” says Dylan. “I have a clearer sense of what I want to do in my life, what I want to achieve career-wise, and what truly makes me happy.

Patrick Chew felt devastated at his grandmother's funeral 27 years ago because he had never learned her mother tongue, Toisanese, a dialect in southern China. Today Chew, 44, uses two to 10 languages every day as the international-community manager for Change.org, a website that conducts online advocacy campaigns in 196 countries. Before that, he traced the source of spam in 33 languages at a network-security firm in San Bruno, Calif.

Every time I travel for work in Indonesia, I'm tempted to describe the journey. The road to (insert destination) was smooth or twisting or pockmarked and broken. I passed roadside stands selling fruit and fried snacks. The traffic was horrendous, more stop than go, or people passed us like maniacs, swerving at 75 miles an hour on snaking back roads. Such details give a sense of place and remoteness. They also convey the vastness and contradiction that is Indonesia, the world's largest island country by population, and the dysfunctional state of its infrastructure.

On Saturday, Yemeni artist and activist, Murad Sobay, launched the '12th Hour' campaign, a series of graffiti murals that will be displayed across the walls of the capital Sanaa to address 12 issues facing Yemenis today. Sobay, 25, said that while art was once thought to be religiously forbidden or 'haram', many Yemenis now join him in painting the walls of their capital. In the first hour, Sobay tackled gun ownership. According to 2012 figures, Yemen has the second highest rate of gun ownership in the world, with nearly 55 guns for every 100 Yemenis.

Tourism has evolved over the past decades into one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world and a transformative force in global development. More than one billion people travelled the world in 2012. Tourism represents today up to 9 percent of global GDP in direct, indirect and induced impacts), 30 percent of service exports and employs 1 in 11 people around the world.

So China — as in, the People’s Republic of — is really into the Little Mermaid, and not that saccharine Disney cartoon we feed our tumescent American children. The Hans Christian Andersen fairytale is apparently a huge deal in China, so much so that Denmark has been able to establish a strong diplomatic relationship with China almost entirely through the famous bronze Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen.

The first hotel specializing in the music of Cuba, the Blue Salsa Club, will open its doors in November with a new idea in cultural tourism in the resort community of Varadero, the most famous on the island, local media reported Sunday. The project hatched by Spain’s Blue Bay group and Cuba’s Paradiso cultural tourism agency will promote musical genres like salsa, guaracha, bolero and the Caribbean island’s traditional dances.