UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and global education advocate Shakira visited the Max Rayne ‘Hand-in-Hand’ School for Bilingual Education in Jerusalem yesterday, meeting with students to talk about the power of education.

Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. left the country Monday night, bound for Turkey on a weeklong trip seeking a "sister city" relationship with the municipality of Kahramanmaras....The cultural exchange trip is sponsored and paid for by the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians, city spokesman Chris Mims said.

It's a country known for its stunning safari landscapes, long beaches and towering Mount Kilimanjaro. And according to documentary film-maker Nick Broomfield -- Tanzania is also the perfect natural film set. But though it has its own film festival, Zanzibar is paradoxically without a cinema. Broomfield is pledging his support for the renovation of a dilapidated art deco cinema in Stone Town.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced today a partnership with USA Volleyball that will bring 50 volleyball coaches to the United States from Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Trinidad and Tobago. The delegation will will meet with their U.S. counterparts and participate in coaching seminars and clinics.

Screenwest, Western Australia's screen funding and development agency and the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) announced two cross-media projects. The two projects aim to encourage producers in the two territories to co-develop visual narrative concepts for emerging new media channels. These include interactive television, web and mobile devices.

A Ramallah art museum has become the first in the West Bank to take delivery of an artwork by Picasso, which will go on view to the public for a month, beginning on Friday. The 1943 canvas, "Buste de Femme," was loaned by the Van Abbe museum in Eindhoven, Netherlands, as the centrepiece of the "Picasso in Palestine" project in which local artists will lecture on the late Spanish painter's work.

As part of an ongoing initiative by the British Council to explore how people all over the world can live peacefully amidst growing diversity- the Middle East's first Belief in Dialogue conference will focus on the convergence of science, culture and faith and will engage participants in a meaningful way about how these distinct yet linked forces are shaping the future of the region.

Since the fall of communism, nations around the globe have worked not only to distinguish themselves, but to market themselves as well. Now cities are the new nation-states, and competition for markets and dollars is fiercer than ever. Urban centres face enormous opportunity – and pressure – to sell what makes them unique.