British Deputy High Commissioner in Kolkata Sanjay Mark Wadhwani has underscored the need for steady and enhanced trade and investment, besides economic and cultural relations between the UK and India, considering the long stating relations between the two great nations.

Today's cultural diplomacy efforts look dramatically different than they did twenty or thirty years ago. In the post-Cold War, Internet, Twitter and Facebook era, government-sponsored cultural initiatives focus on fostering the types of cross-cultural encounters that can ultimately engender mutual understanding.

Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme says the creation of a European Union foreign minister — the job currently held by the U.K.'s Catherine Ashton — has freed him up to conduct what he calls "economic diplomacy."

Guests will have the opportunity to see firsthand some of the outstanding photographs of the original Jazz Ambassadors, part of the traveling exhibition – Jam Session: America’s Jazz Ambassadors Embrace the World. The reception will also feature performances by talented young jazz musicians – the jazz greats of tomorrow.

If it's not the Greatest Show on Earth, then the World Expo opening next month in Shanghai is surely the biggest, in keeping with China's striving to do everything on a gargantuan scale.

Members of Congress have urged China, which has set up 60 cultural centers in the United States, to allow more than the four American centers it says can operate in China. However, the State Department has no funds to match what China is spending on those projects, the officials say.

Recent public diplomacy reports and testimonies released by both congress and government policy makers in Washington indicate concerns over Iran's growing cultural influence. It was a year ago when Senate Foreign Relations Committee's report warned about the growing number of Islamic Republic's Cultural Centers.

Iranian and Turkish officials in a meeting in Tehran on Wednesday stressed expansion of bilateral relations in the field of media. The issue was raised in a meeting between Head of Turkey's state-run radio and TV (TRT) Ebrahim Shahin and his Iranian counterpart Ezzatollah Zarqami.