When you think about diplomacy and the U.S. State Department, you probably don’t think about jazz singers or pop idols. Yet cultural, and specifically musical diplomacy, is not a new phenomenon – way back in the 1950s Louis Armstrong was described as America’s most effective ambassador. What American diplomats could not do, the New York Times said, Armstrong and his jazz music managed to do.

U.S.-based fashion powerhouse DKNY has launched a Ramadan Summer 2014 collection styled by two women from the Middle East and available in the region.  Yalda Golsharifi, fashion editor of Styles Magazine; and Tamara al-Gabbani, a fashion designer in Dubai, created the collected geared towards women.

Lee Chizmar had to tell a story about his piece of America – namely the Lehigh Valley -- but he wasn’t using words or pictures in his performance space. He was using the real thing – local farm-fresh ingredients -- and labeling his nine-dish menu creation, “The Craft of Lehigh Valley.” For the Bethlehem chef, it was a night for him and seven of his chefs to shine in his first solo dinner presentation at the historic James Beard House in New York’s Greenwich Village.

One way to the world’s heart is through its stomach. That’s the thinking behind Brand USA’s Discover America campaign. The agency has launched a tasty marketing campaign inviting tourists from all corners of the globe to experience America “one dish at a time.”

The lines between the World Cup and diplomacy have always been blurry. On Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry wrote an opinion piecein the Washington Post about the need to reach a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran, as the 20 July deadline to reach a final agreement rapidly draws near. Perhaps with sport on his mind, he wrote: "There may be pressure to put more time on the clock."

As negotiators from Iran and the P5+1 nations meet behind closed doors in Vienna in a final push for a comprehensive nuclear deal, a separate round of negotiations is taking place online. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, traded accusations, praise, and hopeful words in advance of the final round of nuclear negotiations. The two sparred in a pair of op-eds published in the The Washington Post (Kerry) and Le Monde (Zarif), and in a video Zarif made available on YouTube. 

By escaping from the Group of Death at the World Cup, the United States finally gave the lie to the notion that Americans were bad at soccer. Except Americans were never bad at soccer. The good soccer players just didn't know they were Americans.