At a time when the government has taken a lot of heat in parliament and the media - on tax, welfare and Europe to name but a few issues - one issue has escaped high-level political scrutiny: ministers' plans for the future of the BBC. Ask yourself this: who is sticking up for the corporation’s funding and who is fighting for its independence? 

Advisor to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz Friday said in international relations, Pakistan needs to use the persuasive approach of ‘soft power’ to promote its image in the world community. [...] Aziz said instead of ‘hard power’ based on coercion, the soft power associated with culture and economy was more effective to attain the preferred results.

The secret to successful public diplomacy for a state may sound like a surreptitious potion whose recipe lies with the magicians. However, it is the art of devising and executing strategies, just in the accurate proportion, to transform the way the local and international public perceives a certain state. So, where does this recipe come from? It comes from the human mind.

Kuwait is one of the masters of soft power in the Middle East. As I was having dinner with two Emiratis, two non- Kuwaiti Arabs were having dinner at a table beside ours; the two non-Kuwaiti Arabs were stuck to one phone watching the second episode of “Swar Shuaib,” Kuwait’s Shuaib Rashed’s popular talk show. 

A recent Brookings Institution survey presented at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. indicated a growing American partisanship toward Israel and the Middle East. 

The historic meeting between Pope Francis and Russian Patriarch Kirill, which took place in Havana on Friday, could act as a soft force contributing to the resolution of the Syrian crisis, experts told Sputnik.

In the two years since Germany’s president, foreign minister, and defence minister signalled that their country would take on a larger role in international affairs, the country’s leaders have received a crash course in geopolitical realism.

Seeking “soft power,” in the Arab world, China is setting up some educational collaborations to invest in the Arab world’s scientific and technical workforce. These aims were outlined in what is being called the Chinese government’s first Arab policy paper, published earlier this month.