Andrea Wenzel takes us to meet an openly gay couple who decided to start an Algerian-American restaurant in Elkader after 9/11. This story charts the restauranteurs' adventures with cultural adaptation, American identity and small town politics.

While America's image through much of the Muslim world has been dominated by war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the music that sprang from its inner city black populations in the 1980s is popular everywhere from the West Bank to Kabul.

Earlier this week, the global climate campaign 350.org launched "Radiowave." It's designed to take a single powerful song, and use it as the focus of a campaign that will sweep down Africa, one country at time, for the next few weeks, finally landing in South Africa just as the UN's climate conference begins.

Alice Waters' celebrated Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, was transported to Beijing last week as part of a four-day U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture. Berkeley and Beijing don't have much in common...But to replicate the Berkeley experience in Beijing? It wasn't just a matter of flying the ingredients from California. Waters' philosophy centers on eating local and buying directly from the farm.

The American Corner...was assembled by the American Embassy here and is an example, writ small, of the sort of cultural programs — “soft power,” in the diplomatic nomenclature — that the State Department will emphasize after the last troops leave. Even in this arena of cultural and educational links, United States diplomats say they hope to gain leverage over Iran.

Chinese film industry insiders have concluded that Chinese movies are facing three major problems in their attempts to gain worldwide recognition. As one of the major forces within China's cultural industry, the quality and output of movies are considered an important manifestation of the soft power and influence of national culture.

Many Chinese are fascinated by the United States, and it remains a top destination for China’s young people to study. Some American programs do send musicians or speakers to China and invite Chinese opinion makers to see the United States firsthand. But the four-day U.S.-China Forum event highlighted how unusual it was for the United States to provide broad access to American culture beyond pirated Hollywood movies.

Two years ago, one of the most-cited signs of a Korean food craze in the United States was the success of Kogi BBQ, a restaurant on wheels in Los Angeles that sold Korean-style barbecue in Mexican-style tacos from trucks that sent their location out via Twitter. Now, the Kogi concept has ricocheted to Seoul.