The State Department, which is ultimately charged with approving or denying TransCanada's plans to build a 1,700 mile pipeline from Canada and through the U.S., has released a draft report that details the potential environmental impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline.

A screening and reception for the Hollywood film "Argo" at the Canadian embassy in Washington last fall was such a hot ticket, people complained afterwards about not getting invited...Documents obtained by The Canadian Press reveal the film company Time Warner considered the October event a "Canada love-in" which helped mitigate some of the bad press the movie had received.

Students of the Excelsior High School in Kingston yesterday engaged their peers from the Samuel W Shaw School in Calgary, Canada, in a friendly debate on ethical food... The debate took place via a live videoconferencing link connecting students of both schools. The schools are part of an exciting cultural exchange programme with students in Canada as a result of an International School Twinning Initiative (ISTI) spearheaded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

A Korean wave is sweeping the world. The secretary-general of the United Nations is Korean, the head of the World Bank is a Korean-American. “Gangnam Style,” a song by the Korean rapper Psy, has become the most watched video on YouTube.

Canada’s foreign affairs department is reportedly taking steps to ensure its diplomats can really punch above their weight on the world stage. The Globe and Mail reports on its website that the department is looking for martial-arts instructors to train its envoys. A public tender says ambassadors sent to certain higher-risk countries must know rudimentary “reactive techniques to manage confrontations in potentially dangerous situations.”

The “soft power” phase of Canadian foreign policy tended to produce “soft” results; R2P foundered on the lack of any noticeable international political will to apply it. UN Resolution 1973 on Libya deliberately avoided reference to R2P because it wouldn’t have flown.