It’s a long way from Timbuktu to Lincoln Center, and not just geographically. For the musicians performing on Wednesday in the Festival au Désert as part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors series at the Damrosch Park Bandshell, the path from there to here has included an Islamist takeover of their Saharan homeland, followed by a religious war on music and then a French-led military intervention.

Qatar is buying modern and contemporary art by Western artists for record prices. Last year, the Qatar Museums Authority purchased “The Card Players” by Paul Cezanne for $250 million. That’s the highest known price ever paid for a painting. You might ask, how much is too much to spend on art? That’s not a question the royal family of Qatar seems to be asking itself.

In a Senate confirmation hearing this afternoon (July 30), Evan Ryan, President Obama’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), said that exchanges “capitalize on American strengths and appeals,” and that ECA is “the lifeblood of public diplomacy." Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ryan underlined the powerful role people-to-people exchanges play in advancing U.S. public diplomacy and foreign policy goals.

The Kosovo-Iowa partnership should be a proud collaboration for both citizens of Kosovo and the denizens of Iowa. Given Kosovo’s short lifespan as an independent country, it is remarkable to see such a small nation establish links across trans-continental borders. To understand the monumental leap Iowa has made, one first has to understand a little about the state of Iowa itself. Iowa is not a state teaming with diversity.

One of the questions newly sworn-in gay Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell got at a meet-and-greet at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center last Tuesday, July 23, was from the Center’s Chief Public Affairs Officer, Jim Key. “You've probably heard about the horrible anti-gay crackdown in Russia, and know that St. Petersburg—which passed the ‘anti-gay propaganda law’—is a ‘sister city’ to Los Angeles. We don't think L.A. should be affiliated with such a city,” Key said.

There is a traditional African proverb that warns, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” The grasses of Rwanda have known suffering. But while the elephants grew tired of fighting, the grass continued to grow. After the genocide in 1994, the national strategy for recovery was based upon the tenets of reconciliation, repatriation, and remembrance. In order to make sure “never again” became a reality and not just a mantra of genocides past, the government of Rwanda took reconciliation into their own hands through the tradition of Umuganda.

For the second year, Americas Quarterly has ranked Latin American countries and the United States based on social inclusion, sifting through multiple data sets for 16 nations, including variables like access to education, housing, and employment, as well as basic political, civil, and human rights... The social inclusion index – which ranks countries based on how they score on each of the 21 variables – seeks to provide a picture of progress that goes beyond economic growth and poverty figures.

While Thailand’s youth are generally accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) individuals, older Thais are less open-minded to the idea of same-sex marriage. Kalayasiri’s bill faced strong opposition at its inception, partly due to the fact that most lawmakers in Thailand fall on the other side of the generation gap.