Bermudez is one of the two Cubans recently chosen by the National Institute for International Education (NIIE) for a six-month scholarship at Namseoul University. Along with Lorena Care Lim, who’s also from the capital of Havana, Bermudez is enrolled in a Korean language program for international students at the school in Cheonan, South Chungcheong. The scholarships are part of NIIE’s effort to promote the Korean language and invite foreign students willing to develop a deeper understanding of it to come to Korea. 

The creation of the prosaic-sounding Asian Infrastructure Investment Development Bank (AIIB) has landed the biggest blow to America’s superpower status in the post-war era.  Such is the verdict of former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, one of the West's foremost public intellectuals and a man whose voice reverberates around the corridors of the world’s chancellories.  

After triumphs abroad, President Barack Obama is finding stern challenges at home to his foreign policy breakthroughs, facing hard sells to skeptics over U.S. shifts, first on Iran and now Cuba. Obama returned to Washington early Sunday still basking in the attention from his historic meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro at a summit of Western Hemisphere leaders. But Obama is certain to find a lessappreciative crowd in Congress than the one he left behind at the Summit of the Americas in Panama.

Is Israel a superpower? The question comes up and meets a number of answers and reactions. Some would answer that it is a miniature superpower, while others feel Israel is treated like a vassal state of the US.

Certainly the impressive exhibit and its scholarly catalog aim to “open people’s eyes” and broaden Western recognition of the Kano painters. On the other hand, Fischer noted “even the Japanese have never seen some of these (fragile) works,” making the Philadelphia show even more consequential and significant.

Facebook is among companies teaming up with the South American nation on the program through its Internet.org non-profit organization, set to launch at the summit. Internet.org aims to bring connectivity to everybody, particularly to low-income communities that have traditionally been deprived of the technology.

Engaging with hostile governments while meeting core strategic needs would better serve American interests than unending sanctions and isolation, the president argues. The administration’s policies reflect his confidence in diplomacy and his trust that openly engaging with other nations will be effective.

The US government has used hip-hop as an unlikely foreign policy tool to reach youth and promote democracy abroad. In the mid-2000s, as the United States faced ongoing challenges in the Middle East, the State Department launched hip-hop tours and workshops throughout the Muslim world.