Rendezvous regular Mark McDonald asked for fresh U.S. embassy stories. Here is an old one from back when America waded into Vietnam, China was a forbidding foe, and Cold War rivals could have easily blown each other off the map.

An exhibition titled ‘World of KIRIGAMI: A Hundred Flowers & Words’ featuring art works by Japanese artist Kanako Yaguchi will be held at the Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Hanoi from September 22 to October 21.

Thirty-two public servants are flitting to Frankfurt for a controversial book fair, which New Zealand is attending as a guest at a cost of $6 million. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage is sending seven staff, and Treasury has two officials going. English will open the October 9 party.

Since the 1950s, when Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Brubeck embarked on State Department-sponsored tours around the globe, jazz has been a quasi-official part of U.S. diplomatic efforts. Jazz musicians were sometimes welcome in parts of the world where other Americans were not, and Armstrong was commemorated in a musical play as “the real ambassador."

Recently, the Confucius Peace Prize released the nominators for this year's prize, the awarding ceremony of which will be held on December 9. This prize has been sponsored by a Chinese non-governmental organization, the "China International Peace Research Center" since 2011.

The recent killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, along with three other Americans at the mission in Benghazi, now appears to have been a premeditated assault, not merely collateral damage from yet another anti-American protest.

The U.S. Department of State announced that Indonesian performance artists Nan Jombang will travel to communities across America as part of a groundbreaking cultural diplomacy initiative, Center StageSM, from September 21-October 14, 2012.

The anti-American protests raging across the Middle East and beyond are testing much more than the security at America's diplomatic missions, or even the ability of Arab leaders—many of them in nascent democracies—to address extremism.