Cuban-born trumpeter Arturo Sandoval is set to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom later this year for his contributions to the world of music. He's won nine Grammy awards and an Emmy. He's also collaborated with legends like Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis, and contemporary stars such as Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys.

The Southwest border is a place where people and cultures collide and inevitably blend into one another. For El Paso artist Peter Svarzbein it was the perfect setting to introduce a food experiment that compliments his latest project. He combined his experience as a Jew growing up on Mexico's doorstep to create a new twist on an iconic dish. On a July afternoon, the kitchen at Chabad Lubavitch in El Paso was hotter than a desert full of burning bushes. No surprise, considering the amount of cooking that went on that day.

Every day thousands of Indians leave their small towns and look for big cities to work in business outsourcing. Andrew Marantz spent a summer at call center in India and wrote about it for Mother Jones magazine. He details the reaction he got when he showed up, the accent that is encouraged - a neutral one, he says - and the classes offered to work at there.

Once, Adil Ibrahim worked as a translator with American soldiers, introducing them to Iraqi culture and the streets of Baghdad and trying to bridge gaps of understanding. Now, he’s one of them. Ibrahim, an Iraqi who came to the United States on a media scholarship in 2008 and then sought asylum, is now a U.S. citizen and member of the U.S. military. He’s even been deployed to Afghanistan.

Criticising cuts to arts budgets in Britain, Karl Jenkins said increased public funding was needed to invest in the “cultural future” of a country. Describing Government cuts to the creative sector as “tragic”, the 69-year-old Welsh composer, whose works include Adiemus and The Armed Man, said: "In Germany it's just the opposite - increasing funding.”

A collaboration between USC Annenberg, the David and Dana Dornsife College and Price School of Public Policy sent a group of USC students to study shifting political, social and economic landscapes in Cuba for the second consecutive summer. Under the direction of Journalism Professor Roberto Suro and USC Dornsife Professor Pamela Starr, 25 students from an array of disciplines — public relations, public diplomacy, specialized journalism, strategic communications and international relations — spent one month immersed in research and investigation of all things Cuba.

The first same-sex weddings have taken place in New Zealand after the country became the first in the Asia-Pacific region and 14th in the world to legalise same-sex marriage. Thirty-one same-sex couples had been due to marry on Monday, according to the Department of Internal Affairs. It comes after New Zealand's parliament passed a bill in April amending the country's 1955 marriage act.

On November 21, 2004, the first Confucius Institute opened its doors in Seoul, South Korea. The placement was by design, like every aspect of this public diplomacy endeavor by an increasingly confident Chinese government. The Korean peninsula, for example, has a long history of adhering to the Confucian system of thought, society and governance. Even more symbolically, before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, Korea was a part of China’s traditional cultural empire. In fact, it was the last part to fall.