Paris plans to build a new Islamic center to address two issues, a dearth of mosques for the city's sizable Muslim community and a new law banning street prayers. In the interim, Muslims been invited to worship in an unusual venue - an old fire station at the edge of the city.

Today, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy released a Media Monitor Report on "Expo Shanghai 2010 - Flaunting Nations' Beauty through the Practice of Nation Branding".

For a country whose cuisine has been officially recognised by Unesco as a "world intangible heritage", it seems only right it should have its own festival, and that is exactly what will take place all over France for the first time this Friday, 23 September.

The world's eyes will be on Libya's interim Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil and interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jabril, as the "Friends of Libya" conference gives the NTC its first major platform to address the international community...

According to Schmachtel who has been nominated as the cluster President for its first year, “EUNIC was formed in 2006 and has a reputation as Europe’s leading cultural relations practitioner to create lasting partnerships between professionals and to forge greater understanding and awareness of various European culture and to encourage language study.

The impact of public diplomacy activities are crucially shaped by their context. What might be a good initiative in one situation will be totally ineffective in another. In the case of France’s work in the US context comes to the fore in at least three ways.

Paris – the city of love and irrepressibly haughty waitstaff – still has that je ne sais quoi, according to the report, released this week, which measures the the image of 50 cities with respect to presence, place and people, as well as more nebulous characteristics such as pulse and potential.

Twice in the past 40 years, French oyster farmers were saved by their colleagues on Japan's northern Pacific coast. After the March 11 tsunami, they decided it was time to return the favour. This week they kicked off an aid effort to help oyster growers who lost everything when the seabed quake sent a massive tsunami barrelling into Japan's north-east, destroying entire towns - and their livelihoods.