On the last day of the Masters of Public Diplomacy delegation’s visit to Washington D.C., some of us had the opportunity to visit the Delegation of the European Union to the United States. The delegation included University of Southern California alumna and Senior Communications Advisor, Stacy Hope; Assistant Press Officer, Ren Althouse; and three Press & Public Diplomacy (PPD) interns.

In recognition of World Water Day 2012, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy would like to acknowledge not just the organizations, governments and international coalitions that provide aid and solutions to water problems, but more importantly the publics that are experiencing water crises around the world.

For the majority of Iranians, as Muslim Shias, Ashura has clearly been the meta-narrative. It has particularly been important since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran and one could surely see the footprint of this narrative in Iran's foreign policy

Public diplomacy received considerable attention, given that Al Jazeera’s creation was a public diplomacy effort by Qatar’s rulers to increase international recognition of the country’s aspirations in the Arab world and beyond.

Southern California has the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam, concentrated primarily in Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles Counties; so it’s a natural partner with this burgeoning Southeast Asian country in a number of areas. Why not start with traffic?

CPD continues its web site update with the redesign of the CPD Blog. Regular readers will notice new features, such as the tag cloud, in addition to the categorization of 'most popular' and 'related' posts.

The July/August issue of PDiN Monitor, the electronic review of public diplomacy in the news by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, focuses on the subject of Digital Diplomacy.