These musicians are a part of the 10 jazz, hip hop and American roots ensembles that have been chosen by The Rhythm Road to travel as cultural ambassadors for the 2011 season. Selected ensembles tour internationally with The Rhythm Road to foster cross-cultural understanding through their music.

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.

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 State Department has a "rigidly narrow" view of diplomacy that neglects religion's role in foreign affairs, a prominent Catholic ambassador charged on Sunday (April 17) as he announced his resignation.

In a speech at Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman, Sudan, on April 9, USAID Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg announced a new USAID global grant initiative to increase women’s participation in peace processes.