On Saturday, after several weeks of preparation, six student poets from the D.C. Youth Slam Team and three adult poetry teachers are scheduled to leave the District, bound for Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, then on to the city of Tshwane, where they plan to participate in a two-week cultural exchange focused on poetry and social justice. The students and teachers are scheduled to meet youth poets, activists and writers in South Africa who are engaged in the movement to build a better society.

On May 30, the State Department submitted its annual report on terrorism (“Country Reports on Terrorism 2012”) to Congress, notably maintaining Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism along with Iran, Sudan, and Syria. Cuba was designated as a state sponsor of terrorism on March 1, 1982. It has remained ever since on the list of states that Washington accuses of repeatedly providing support for international acts of terrorism.

The State Department needs to "do a better job" of explaining to Americans what it does overseas, as well as the "return on investment" in America's diplomatic activities, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Tara Sonenshine says on this week's episode of "Conversations with Nicholas Kralev."

Increasing U.S.-Iran cultural exchanges could lay the groundwork for better relations between the two countries, believes a prominent think tank here, despite the prevalence of stereotypical memes of the United States as the “Great Satan” and Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil”.

Because of African sensitivities about the presence of foreign military forces on the continent, the White House has gone to great lengths to stress that the president's trip will focus on trade and investment, democratic institution-building, and reaching out to young Africans. But in many private discussions, counterterrorism partnership will also feature prominently.

If freedom, democracy and the rule of law are universal, Latin America can and must benefit from the regeneration of the Trans-Atlantic bond. If this does not happen, other models will spread, giving precedence to mercantilism and state capitalism. The news that Nicaragua has awarded China a 40 billion dollar contract to build a new canal across the straits confirms this country's increasingly important role in regional politics.

A former leader of U.S. international broadcasting Wednesday urged Congress to re-organize the journalistic agency so that broadcasters follow foreign policy directives. The proposal came during a U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing critical of the management of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the agency that oversees the Voice of America and other international broadcasters.

His integration into American life was helped by a group of Ethiopians, who invited him to join their game of football at a local park. He would meet them again at Jefferson High School, where his journey to MLS would begin in earnest.