Representatives of Jewish and Roma, or Gypsy youth groups from eight countries are meeting in Hungary. The week long encounter, called "Volunticipate," begins Monday. The youth are gathering to discuss how to build partnerships, plan joint initiatives, and exchange experiences about minority identity and grass-roots civil activism.

Americans' confident belief in the uniqueness, yes the exceptionalism, of their country, rested on an essential faith in liberty, and individualism and anti-statism at home, and in the power of our example, and muscle now and then, in foreign lands. Mr. Obama is ill-at-ease with that worldview. Our country has had pessimism on offer and has invariably rejected it.

Dainius Rutkauskas came up with a novel way of rebranding his little country. Lietuvos Kvapas is Lithuania's "national perfume" ...Developed by Rutkauskas and two other Lithuanian entrepreneurs and produced by the French perfumery Galimard, Lietuvos Kvapas – literally, "the scent of Lithuania" – is an attempt to create a positive national brand.

As his country is ripped apart by a bloody civil war and rebels fight to topple him, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is trying to hire a public relations firm to improve his image. Gaddafi is looking for a spin doctor to issue daily press briefings on his 'moral' and 'legal' claims to power, as hundreds die trying to end his 42-year regime.

In an unusual project, Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio, a photographer and writer, traveled the world collecting photos and stories about what people eat in a day. The photos...have been selected for an unusual exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston. The result is an anthropological exploration of the culture of eating that is by turns mouthwatering, repulsive and surprising.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera has not gained distribution on any major cable or satellite systems in the United States. On Monday, the channel will be carried in New York City for the first time, though only by subletting space from a channel owner...it is finding out that cable and satellite distributors wield an enormous amount of control over the channels that viewers in the United States can and cannot see.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is part think tank, part open-air forum, part community center. New York will be the first stop for the lab on a worldwide tour that will also include Berlin and Mumbai. In each city curators will invite leaders in fields including architecture, art, design, technology, education and science to participate in programs: lectures, workshops, games, performances and film screenings.

...Singapore is also investing in the soft power of maritime supremacy as much as the hard power of metal boxes. The city is becoming a centre of maritime architecture and green maritime technology to complement its lead in terms of the legal and financial aspects of maritime technology.