The Korean dumplings in your grocer's freezer, the new Thai restaurant on the corner and that Burmese curry you ate for lunch are doing more than satisfying your craving for an exotic and flavorful meal. These foods are also helping to foster international relations.

Sports was acknowledged as a catalyst in bringing peace in the face of adversities around the world at the Peace and Sport Dubai Forum2013 which began on Tuesday. IOC Vice President Nawal El Moutawakel congratulated UAE for hosting such a great event, the first event in the Middle East. “Sports diplomacy is the tool that protects the society,” said Mahash Saeed Salem Al Hameli.

The Korean dumplings in your grocer's freezer, the new Thai restaurant on the corner and that Burmese curry you ate for lunch are doing more than satisfying your craving for an exotic and flavorful meal. These foods are also helping to foster international relations. A new diplomacy program -- called gastrodiplomacy -- is giving food a seat at the negotiating table.

Philip Seib is the director of the Center for Public Diplomacy and spoke to PM from Los Angeles. PHILIP SEIB: He realises that the more Westerners, particularly Americans, who go to study in China, the greater the trade relationship between the two countries will be, but also the more stable the relationship will be. And stability is a good thing in diplomacy and in international economics.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum announced that it will join the US Embassy in Buenos Aires to create an educational program highlighting the works of Georgia O’Keeffe. The program is part of the Embassy’s public policy initiative called ¡Exprésate! designed to teach English to Argentinean students with a concentration on American culture and history.

So what can $300 million buy you in China? Perhaps, the Chinese version of the Rhodes Scholarship. That's what the Chinese and American private equity mogul Stephen Schwarzman are hoping. The Blackstone Group founder is doling out $100 million of his own money and raising another $200 million to set up an international scholarship program at elite Tsinghua University in Beijing. Alumni include business leaders as well asa China's president, Xi Jinping.

In the first three months of this year, ticket sales for American-made films in the world's second-largest cinema market took an unexpected nosedive. Hollywood's revenues fell by about two thirds in China, compared with the same period a year earlier, to about $A195 million, as big-budget titles such as The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey failed to impress.