A group of hungry college students crowded around the newest food stall in an upscale market here: the American Hotdog Factory. Its sign proudly announced, "real American hotdogs for the first time in India."

How do you sell a movie called “Captain America” to an overseas market? In South Korea, Russia and the Ukraine, apparently, the answer is you don’t even try... Those involved in the decision are being careful to frame the move as a matter of brand management and consumer awareness and not as a decision tilted by cultural or political winds.

Briefly, opening with “I got a hold of your show on the web and I was so impressed with the heart of it,” Jon Stewart began his interview with Kambiz Hosseini and Saman Arbabi, two U.S. Government employees – and U.S. public diplomats – behind “Parazit”, a Voice of America program aimed at Iran.

From the mid-1950s through the 1970s, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and other jazz greats served as cultural diplomats, touring the globe on behalf of the U.S. State Department... a collection of photographs and documents chronicling these tours will be on display at the Fowler Museum at UCLA from March 20 through Aug. 14.

Last Sunday, on the charter plane returning from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s six-city tour of Florida, music director Peter Oundjian took some time to reflect on the meaning of the orchestra’s visit to the Sunshine State. "...it was hugely important. The morale in this orchestra is good, but it is enhanced in countless ways by touring...by taking pride in representing Toronto and Canada to the outside world."

If I were able to travel back in time and tell my teenage self that I would one day be enthusiastically welcomed in Manhattan as a lecturer on Japanese anime, fashion and music, the younger me--a fan of films set in the Big Apple--would never believe it. But in October I did indeed speak as an invited guest at the New York Anime Festival.

It would seem then that the 23-year-old television actor was the perfect choice for host of On the Road, Afghanistan's first travelogue and one of the country's most popular television programs. Sponsored by USAID, the show has just entered its second season.

A new social networking site that aims to connect Bahraini and American entrepreneurs was officially launched yesterday. The Entrepreneurship Portal, known as e-pad (www.epad-bh.com), is an online portal dedicated to young Bahraini and American entrepreneurs, seeking broader access to growth markets, investors and mentors in the developing world.