Two-time Olympic medalist and five-time world champion Michelle Kwan will travel to Singapore January 9-15, 2011 on behalf of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Since then, Americans have had little interaction with Cuba and most know little about the Caribbean country or its culture. But a group of seven Cuban musicians is trying to change that - one New England school at a time.

Alena Adamkova, the Executive Director of the International Roerich Memorial Trust, has been decorated with the Russian order of Friendship for her contribution into the development of the Russian-Indian cultural ties. Slovakian Adamkova, who is a specialist in Indian Studies, lived for many years in the USSR and India.

Turkish soap operas have conquered the Balkans reversing Turkey's negative image with the Balkan nations from the time of the Ottoman yoke, according to Austrian paper Der Standard. Turkey's film industry is not only making money from the showing of its soaps in Balkan countries... but it is also helping out the Turkish diplomacy, the newspaper says in an article entitled "Ottoman Television Runs Like Clockwork."

Economic shortages and the U.S. embargo make it difficult to get most sporting equipment there. For skateboarders, it was nearly impossible. "We both said right away, 'We are going there,' " Lecour recalled.

With roughly 10,000 instruments from more than 200 countries, the place would have been cacophonous if they were all playing out loud. Instead, wireless headphones activate when you walk up to a display, which has the instrument itself as well as a video showing a musician playing it in its native setting.

What are your first thoughts about symbols of Chinese culture? The Great Wall, the Bird's Nest or Peking opera? A survey among 2,000 college students shows that Confucius, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and former chairman Mao Zedong broke into the top 10 Chinese cultural icons among the 270 candidates.

Americans bring some distinctively American perspectives to the employment of different instruments of power, hard and soft.