The Obama administration is hosting defense and foreign ministers and representatives from over 40 countries Wednesday in an effort to get more help fighting ISIS. A day after the anti-ISIS coalition announced it had dropped its 50,000th bomb in the nearly two-year campaign to root the terror group out of Iraq and Syria, the US sought to raise over $2 billion in funding to bolster Iraq and seek other help from allies to stabilize the region.

Virginians may not know it, but for the month of July, the state is hosting a select group of future world leaders. The Mandela fellowship, started by President Obama, is a prestigious program that brings some of Africa’s best and brightest young leaders to the U.S. This year, Virginia Commonwealth University is one of just four colleges hosting 50 Mandela fellows for six weeks.

The annual J-Pop Summit, hosted by Superfrog Project, will be held from July 22 to 24. This Japanese cultural festival has been held in San Francisco every summer since 2009. By introducing the latest in Japanese music, fashion, film, art, games, tech-innovations, anime, and food, as well as niche subcultures, the festival has become a landing platform for new trends from Japan. 

The group will cement their bond today at a ceremony in Council Bluffs formalizing a friendship between Afghanistan’s third-largest city, Herat, and the Bluffs. The two cities will become “sister cities” as part of a decades-old citizen diplomacy program called Sister Cities International. The program pairs up cities from different countries to promote mutual understanding. 

In collaboration with leading global organisations, the Abu Dhabi Festival, organised by the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation, ADMAF, enables the creation of cultural initiatives that bring countries together and enable societies to better understand each other. The latest cultural diplomacy endeavours by the Abu Dhabi Festival also seek to further strengthen Abu Dhabi's position on the global cultural map.

European powers are trying to develop better means for pre-emptively spotting "lone-wolf" militants from their online activities and are looking to Israeli-developed technologies, a senior EU security official said on Tuesday.

Eight Pakistani women visiting Los Angeles County for a women’s empowerment trip and cultural exchange funded by the U.S. State Department will be in Pasadena on Thursday, July 21, to take part in a panel discussion about “Creating Urban Green Spaces: From California to Islamabad.”

Paúl is one of 10 DACA beneficiaries who spent this month visiting Mexico as part of a cultural exchange program co-sponsored by the Dallas-based Latino Center for Leadership Development and the Mexican government. It’s an ongoing program that seeks to reconnect young DREAMers with their native country, in a way similar to how Jewish advocacy groups sponsor youth trips to Israel.