Diplomats representing major western powers have strongly condemned human rights violations by South Sudan's government and rebel forces and protested the obstruction of U.N. operations and threats to U.N. personnel in the war-torn country.

Tags: south sudan, human rights, diplomacy, united nations, sudan, africa, conflict, unmiss, european union, humanitarian law, international law, african union

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters marched through the streets of Thailand’s capital Saturday, reviving their whistle-blowing, traffic-blocking campaign to try to force the resignation of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

Tags: thailand, anti-government, protests, conflict, yingluck shinawatra, bangkok, thaksin shinawatra

Screams rang out Saturday night across the Los Angeles Sports Arena as Taiwanese band Mayday brought its brand of Asian stadium rock to an all-Chinese audience for a show celebrating its 15th anniversary.

Tags: taiwan, china, united states, los angeles, music diplomacy, Cultural Diplomacy, mayday, the beatles, weibo, taipei

Have sex to save the country. That's essentially the meaning of the "Do It For Denmark" campaign sponsored by travel company Spies Rejser. One of the ads (seen above) frets that Denmark's birthrate is not looking so hot these days and is at its lowest level in decades. 

Tags: denmark, europe, tourism, advertising, do it for denmark, spies rejser, campaigns, birth rate

So held federal District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan in yesterday’s Zhang v. Baidu, Inc. An excerpt (one paragraph break added): In this suit, a group of New York residents who advocate for increased democracy in China sue one of China’s largest companies, Baidu, Inc…. Plaintiffs contend that Baidu, which operates an Internet search engine akin to Google, unlawfully blocks from its search results here in the United States articles and other information concerning “the Democracy movement in China” and related topics.

Tags: china, united states, internet, digital diplomacy, censorship, baidu, google, first amendment, values

Halfway through an otherwise coherent conversation with a Georgian lawyer last week—the topics included judges, the court system, the police—I was startled by a comment he made about his country’s former government, led by ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili. “They were LGBT,” he said, conspiratorially.   

Tags: russia, ukraine, united states, rhetoric, propaganda, nato, values, western values, lgbt, georgia, vladimir putin, soft power, diplomacy, anti-americanism, anti-western, crimea, soviet union, cold war

“The best possible birthday gift for Brazilian and global web users” is how Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the world wide web, which turned 25 this month, described Brazil’s “internet bill of rights” in an open letter on March 24th. The next day legislators in the lower house of Congress duly approved it.

Tags: brazil, internet, digital diplomacy, tim berners-lee, south america, surveillance, united states, dilma rousseff, european union, national security agency

Moscow has no intention of sending troops into Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said. His comments came after the US and Russian presidents discussed a possible diplomatic solution to the crisis. The US-backed plan calls for Russia to halt to its military build-up on the border with Ukraine and withdraw its troops in Crimea to their bases.

Tags: russia, ukraine, united states, john kerry, sergey lavrov, crimea, conflict, europe, vladimir putin