The rap star from New York flew briefly to the Somali town of Dolo along the Ethiopian border to visit a refugee camp run by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. Rap and rock stars, action heroes, and yes, even comic book characters...do their job well, raising public awareness about world crises. But some critics have begun to ask whether any of this attention does any actual good.

For the first time – ever – Afghanistan today played an international cricket match against...top-ranked neighbor Pakistan, with whom it has a relationship that is sometimes fraught with uneasiness, sometimes full of professions of brotherhood. The historic cricket match...both illustrated the love/hate relationship and helped fans on both sides of the border to forget, at least for a while, the tensions that exist between their countries.

Language and educational exchanges have always been a defining feature of the U.S.-China relationship. Meet Jessica Beinecke, a Voice of America journalist who decided that she could leverage all the web 2.0 tools at her disposal to create a show that taught Chinese youth American slang.

Brand USA, a non-profit, public-private partnership, is to launch a global advertising campaign next month, as part of the country’s concerted effort in marketing tourism to the world. As its core mission, the organization, created in 2010, is to “encourage and inspire travelers to explore America’s boundless possibilities.”

Sun Media Group has set up a new private equity fund aimed at pouring up to $800m into Hollywood films. The venture is the latest move aimed at exploiting Hollywood studios’ hunger for the fast-growing but closed Chinese movie market and Chinese ambitions to play a meaningful role in the global film industry.

The growing ranks of other Korean American performers recruited by management companies like SM Entertainment and JYPE in U.S.-based talent searches — aren’t just a random act of globalization. They’re the secret weapon in Korea’s next push for worldwide youth-culture domination.

Miami collector Ella Fontanals-Cisneros...said she's planning to send around 85 pieces from her vast art collection to be exhibited in Havana's National Museum of Fine Arts in May. Collaborations between Cuban museums and collectors from the Miami diaspora are rare, but Ms. Fontanals-Cisneros said she wanted to "build bridges" with Cuba's art lovers and give them a chance to see "art they rarely have access to."