Leadership of the Rome International Film Festival want to develop a greater year-round impact on Rome and Floyd County. Seth Ingram told members of the Rome Floyd Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Committee Friday that he’d like to see a local film commission created to actively recruit the growing amount of television and film production being shot in Georgia to Rome.

History shows that cities have tended to embrace international opportunities in waves and cycles. They rarely break out into global activity by themselves. Cities participate in collective movements or networks to take advantage of new conditions, and often their demise or withdrawal from a global orientation is also experienced jointly with other cities as circumstances change, affecting many at once.

The XXXII Olympic Summer Games in 2020 will be hosted by one of three candidate cities: Madrid, Istanbul, or Tokyo, following the 2016 games in Rio De Janeiro. The three candidates were selected by the International Olympic Committee out of a group that also included non-selected applicant cities Baku, Doha, and Rome (which withdrew its bid shortly before the applicant files were due). The International Olympic Committee will elect the host city on 7 September 2013. Here is a look at the logos of each of the hopefuls (and not so hopefuls).

Timothy H. Parsons in his book, The Rule of Empires, describes the Romans as “deft practitioners of soft power.” Rome preferred to rule the conquered and the potentially hostile through “semiautonomous client kings which the Senate euphemistically termed ‘friends of the Roman people.’

Washington, D.C. and Rome make what could be described as a historic “power couple.” Throughout world history, some of the most significant events have happened in these two cities. Moreover, both capitols are beacons of culture and diplomacy for their respective nations.