The Empowering Women and Girls through Sports Initiative aims to increase the number of women and girls involved in sports. From June 17- 27, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) will bring ten teenage field hockey players and two female coaches from Pakistan to the United States for an international sports exchange. This program builds on the U.S. global commitment to advance the rights of women and girls around the world.

As Israel engages in a tumultuous debate over what to do about African migrants, other conversations, more personal and friendly, are taking place between Israelis and asylum seekers. As part of a social art project called Sihot Mitbah (Kitchen Talks), which takes place every weekend in Tel Aviv, African migrants give cooking workshops to groups of curious Israelis.

From June 16 to 23, the city of Shanghai will be host to the 16th annual Shanghai International Film Festival, an international platform for foreign filmmakers to connect with audiences in the world’s fastest growing film market. The festival’s main programs will include an awards ceremony, a professional film trade gathering of international producers, distributors, and buyers, a forum featuring lectures by industry professionals, and international film screenings.

Whether or not whoever is chosen as the new president is a soccer fan, Dorsey said, he will not be able to ignore the sport. “It is too big an Iranian passion,” he said, “too much of an opportunity to miss to wield soft power and enhance personal and national prestige.”

In 2010, C.C.A. Lagos introduced its International Art Program, which brought more than a dozen artists and curators from across Africa to Lagos for four weeks of lectures, seminars, workshops and projects. This year, the third edition of the program was held from May to June in Accra, Ghana, beginning what Ms. Silva called a “roaming campus” that she hopes could next stop in Senegal and Mozambique.

May Chau Chung-man is set to become the first Chinese pianist to perform in Italy's renowned Mantua opera house tomorrow, but what's foremost on her mind is how to share her exposure on the European stage with her fellow musicians in Hong Kong. And among her big plans for the city's talents include bringing a group of Hong Kong children and aspiring artists to Italy for a cultural exchange next summer.

As a non-profit public institution, the Confucius Institute links up with worldwide universities, colleges and secondary schools providing teachers and materials for their Chinese education at different levels. The conference, held in the first higher-learning institute established in the Western world in 1088, gathered the heads of 72 Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms from all over Europe. The Old Continent can be considered "mature" for the institution's development, Xu said.