Planning a trip to Cuba? These days, Americans who want to visit the island can book a room on Airbnb.com, the home-stay website, and browse flights on CheapAir.com. These are options unimaginable six months ago, and they reflect the growing range of travel choices borne of the détente between the two countries.

History will be quick to remind us that China, India, and the Middle East had rich and refined cultures while Europeans were still struggling through the material and intellectual poverty of the Dark Ages and before the existence of the Americas was even known to them.

New warnings from U.S. officials and lawmakers over tactics used by Islamic State online are putting renewed focus on the terror network’s activities. FBI Director James Comey warned Thursday that ISIS is increasing their reliance on social media to spread their “poison” message.

Two years ago, the Obama administration announced a new strategy to curb online espionage.(...)The White House said it would increase public awareness of the threat, encourage the private sector to increase its defenses, focus diplomacy on protecting trade secrets overseas, improve trade secret theft legislation and make investigations and prosecutions of corporate and state-sponsored trade secret theft a top priority.

The US State Department is asking for more than $6 million to convert its Interests Section in Havana to an embassy and $528,000 for a new program called “Cuba Outreach Initiative,” budget documents show.

Havana-born Cueto’s permanent domicile is two connected apartments in Northwest Washington that he has transformed into a private museum and archive of all things Cuban. Visiting scholars and diplomats come away stunned by one of the most significant personal collections of Cuban culture in the world. 

Brand USA, the destination marketing organization for the United States charged with increasing international tourism into the United States, announced it will launch its culinary tourism strategy in conjunction with its participation at the James Beard Foundation Awards Ceremony and Gala Reception on Monday, May 4, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. 

The AIIB is an international financial institution whose founding was proposed in 2013 by the government of China. The general purpose of this multilateral development bank is to provide finance to infrastructure projects in the Asian region. Analysts of international affairs and finance in China, the United States, and Europe say that the unexpected success of the bank represents a major turning point in an undeclared contest for global influence between Washington and Beijing.