A curated selection of public diplomacy-relevant news from a global cross-section of English-language media outlets, including independent, corporate-owned, and state-sponsored sources. The stories featured don't necessarily represent CPD's views nor have they been verified by CPD.
British Leader Says He Won’t Attend Opening Ceremony of Beijing Olympics
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday that he would not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games this summer...Along with leaders of other countries, Mr. Brown has been put in a difficult position over how to deal with increasingly vociferous public outrage over China’s human rights abuses and its policies toward Tibet and Sudan while also supporting the country’s athletes in the Olympics.
Don’t pack your prejudices
Tourism for understanding, tourism for peace - call it what you will - is not a gesture of politics but of humanity. If anything, it is a bypass of politics; it is a contact between countries made people to people, prizing both what they have in common and their differences. It requires a purging of prejudice. It means having as open a mind about our own countries, attitudes and behaviour as about the way of life and beliefs of the countries we visit. It is people’s diplomacy.
‘We need to recreate the EU excitement’
AK Party's Çankırı deputy, member of the Parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee: "The next thing we need is to re-create the excitement of 2003-2004, so the communications side has to take priority. The technical side, the negotiations, the surveillance process is continuing with low-level diplomacy. The people may not know this, but they are going on. What is needed is rather a public diplomacy that will tell our people what the EU is and tell the Europeans what Turkey is."
Americans go a-wooing
Dubbed the Africa Partnership Station, two American navy ships, the USS Fort McHenry and the twin-hulled USS Swift, are near the end of a six-month cruise that has taken in seven countries in the Gulf of Guinea (Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Liberia, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Senegal) with the aim of improving maritime security as well as winning hearts and minds in this oil-rich region.
Need More Soft Power
When the Kremlin applies hard power to relations with its neighbors, it only increases tensions and conflicts. Moreover, Moscow rarely uses soft power as a foreign policy strategy.
Germany’s Green Party Opens Chapter in Washington
Germany's Green Party is setting up a branch in the United States. The bottom-up initiative aims to bring a more international perspective to the party's work and combat anti-Americanism among some members back home...."This is not supposed to be a one-way street -- it's an exchange, it's about cooperation," Buetikofer said. "It will attest to the fact that the Green party is open towards exchange with the United States."
Pranks cannot resist the brilliance of Olympic sacred fire
With the blessing of the entire world, the sacred Olympic flame is being relayed by thousands of torchbearers across five continents. As the supreme image of Olympic spirit, the torch carries a shared dream of the humankind. Through its relay, people of different races in different regions with different beliefs share the civilized concepts of"peace, friendship and progress". It is also precisely for this reason that the 2008 torch relay has been welcomed and supported by nations and their populace in its global journey.
Tibet regional chairman: Situation in Tibet returns to normal
The head of Tibet Autonomous Regional government says the situation in Tibet has returned to normal after the riot of March 14th. Qiangba Puncog made the remarks today in Beijing, during a news conference on the situation in Tibet.
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