Nowadays, the news about Russian-Iranian arms deals and fueling the Bushehr nuclear power plant might overshadow the less spectacular information about cultural activities, but they are happening, nevertheless.

What makes better headlines? Is it numbing figures such as the 8,000 Palestinian rockets fired at Israel since it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and the 42.5 percent of Israeli children living near the Gaza border who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Or is it high-resolution images of bombed-out buildings in Gaza and emotional stories of bereaved Palestinians?

Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine will travel to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey November 27-December 1, 2012. In Sarajevo, Under Secretary Sonenshine will meet with LGBT community activists, discuss women’s empowerment with NGO leaders, and talk about U.S. foreign policy with media representatives. The Under Secretary will also meet with Youth Leadership Program students who recently returned from four weeks in the United States.

More than 200 Russian-speaking young Jews who are living in Western Europe gathered in the Netherlands for a Jewish Agency conference about Israel. Participants in last week's four-day conference, which the Jewish Agency co-organized with Israel's Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry, participated in workshops on “fighting the de-legitimization of Israel.”

Following news last week that Andrew W.K. -- America's self-declared unofficial King of Partying -- would be visiting Manama, Bahrain, as a cultural ambassador to participate in a cultural exchange, the U.S. Department of State has rescinded its offer... Plans for Andrew W.K. to visit the Middle East country were first announced on his website, where he drew a parallel to mid-20th century's American Jazz Ambassadors.

A recently unearthed video shows that President Obama has greatly shifted his views on how to address terrorism, advocating for a “soft power” approach in 2004, to employing drone strikes and targeted killing of terror suspect during his Presidency.

In bizarre news of the day, the U.S. Department of State of has named Andrew W.K. the Cultural Ambassador to the Middle East. "This is a tremendous invitation," W.K. said in a statement on his website. "I'm very thankful to the Department of State for giving me the opportunity to visit a place I've never been before."

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid released a statement Tuesday night in which he boasted about his efforts to help Israel explain Operation Pillar of Defense to the international community and accused Avigdor Liberman’s Foreign Ministry of failing to cooperate with him. “I am trying to help in the public diplomacy effort with the foreign press,” Lapid wrote. “But despite my request, the Foreign Ministry did not agree to give me its message sheet so I could coordinate my positions with the official spokesmen.”