A group of 17 North Korean taekwondo performers will visit the United States from late next month through early June to present the Korean traditional martial art to an American audience, according to the Voice of America, a U.S.-funded radio broadcaster.

Football authorities, from Fifa to the FA, are keen to argue that the sport is a benign force, an agent of positive social transformation even. They portray football as the universal game for a global world, an instrument of soft power and peaceful diplomacy and a device for overcoming social divisions.

A hulking sculpture meant to promote reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia became an accidental emblem of their historic enmity after workers erected scaffolding towers and began to demolish it this week.

A video of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev getting down to the 1990s Russian pop hit "American Boy" (sadly, not the Estelle/Kayne version with which most American viewers are familiar) has gone viral since being posted to YouTube Tuesday:

Tunisia and Ishinomaki, one of the hardest hit towns, have over the past two decades developed a strong bond, albeit an unusual one in being between a country and a small town. Ishinomaki has named three streets after Tunisia, and as one Japanese blogger put it, the relationship is like "true love between lovers hailing from different classes."

"Chinese film-makers are going to shoot a documentary about Baku, the soundtrack of which will be a Chinese song about Baku performed by [Azerbaijani singer] Rashid Behbudov," Valeriy Ruzin, president of the Eurasian Academy of Television and Radio and a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, told a press conference in Baku.

In their quest to accord further impetus to ties between Indian and Pakistan after cricket diplomacy somewhat thawed them, the hockey honchos of the two countries are mulling giving another push to the bilateral relations later this year.

The local government, though, is keen to promote Jeju’s other charms, from its lava caves to its beaches to its seafood, as it spearheads South Korea’s campaign to transform itself into a major tourist destination. “Visit Korea” is a two-year, government-sponsored promotion currently under way to push another side of the country...