The statue is the most visible part of an exhibition put on by the British Council, a cultural-exchange outfit, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight. The exhibition is modest, filling a room in the Council’s offices with artefacts, pictures and documents from the Soviet space programme.

Funding for the REAL New Zealand Festival music programme has come from the NZ2011 Festival Lottery Grants Fund, the international cultural diplomacy programme, local government festival organisers and private sector promoters.

Back in 1990, an overly excited Gavin Owen, along with his San Mateo Little League teammates, hopped on an airplane and traveled to Toyonaka, Japan as part of a Sister Cities cultural exchange program.
At that time, the program was in its 23rd year of introducing young boys to the Japanese culture using the power of baseball as a means to this introduction.

The first Taiwan Education Center in India was inaugurated on Monday to promote learning the Chinese language, the latest step in the government’s campaign to project Taiwan’s soft power overseas.

The American image now faces several new and worrisome challenges: doubts about its superpower status, a decline in favorability among some of the closest allies, and giving more and more consideration to the People’s Republic of China as superpower.

Then there are quite different voices in the Muslim community — in Britain, and elsewhere. One example is Inspire, a women’s organization that before the Norwegian horror declared what it called a “jihad against violence.” The group aims to support and empower Muslim women...particularly to educate them so they can counter the arguments of children radicalized by reading on the Internet.

Today the significant opportunity in brand building is to maximize one idea across the globe, to create an inspirational rallying cry for a global consumer movement. It isn’t easy to communicate across different cultures and countries while having one overall brand that really makes an impact.The digital revolution is about getting people to love your brand, no matter where they are in the world.

Few Americans know, or much care, about the opinions foreigners hold of the United States. This was displayed during the ignorant and solipsistic debate over when or whether the United States will pay its debts, which concluded Tuesday with a promise that it will soon be renewed.