Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will travel to Brazil to meet with underserved youth... As a Cultural Ambassador, Abdul-Jabbar will lead conversations with young people on the importance of education, social and racial tolerance, cultural understanding, and using sports as a means of empowerment.

Officials at Sweden's tourism board agreed to hand over control of their @sweden Twitter feed in December to a different Swedish citizen each week. The project -- billed as "the world's most democratic Twitter account" -- has so far been hugely popular, featuring a female priest, an advertising executive and an organic sheep farmer.

It is heartening to learn of the strong support for the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2012. The United States, through the State Department and USAID, is already doing good work in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector. This new act will improve the effectiveness, transparency and accountability of existing U.S. international aid programs.

When Secretary Clinton announced the launch of the first-ever virtual embassy for Iran, she made clear that the U.S. Department of State wants to communicate directly to the people of Iran and to support a more direct and robust engagement between our people, emphasizing the role of new media platforms to reach younger and more tech-savvy audiences.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to speak out, to say what we believe in. There are enough people who support us and they want to hear it from us. We shouldn’t be apologetic all the time. We should be strong and right, and that’s the message we’re sending from the Knesset.”

Art films and dance recitals no doubt do their bit to further cultural understanding, but a comic can, with one fell swoop and a calibrated punch-line, unite a contrastive crowd in laughter like nothing else can. The U.S. State Department has brought to India a stand-up act that will resolve any residual doubts about the south Asian immigrant experience.

For all its efforts to enhance the soft power, China has had a limited return on its investment. The development of soft power need not be a zero sum game. All countries can gain from finding attraction in one anothers’ cultures. But for China to succeed, it will need to unleash the talents of its civil society. Unfortunately, that does not seem about to happen soon.

Israel has changed its attitude toward the Diaspora and is more interested in a relationship of equals than it was before. Speaking at the Women’s International Zionist Organization’s Enlarged General Meeting, the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister boasted that the government not only accepts donations from Jews living abroad but also invests in them.