Over four years starting in 2008, journalist Kim Ghattas logged 300,000 miles--without the sleep to match--as a member of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's traveling press corps with the BBC. She watched intimately Secretary Clinton navigate matters of foreign policy on the ground during some of the most tense periods of her tenure, but also some of her most human moments on the world's stage, both on the ground at town hall meetings, and at all-hours of the morning on an plane that badly needed an upgrade.

Salman Rushdie was recently asked for his opinion on contemporary Indian fiction. The celebrated novelist surveyed the landscape for his interviewer, offering nods of approval to what is now a well established range of Indian writing in English. But it wasn’t as attractive as what was happening across the border. “I actually think,” Rushdie said, “that the Pakistani stuff is more interesting.”

The “earthquake diplomacy” that sprang out of the ruins of the Istanbul and Athens earthquakes in 1999 was perfect proof for the effectiveness of public diplomacy... Since then, Greece and Turkey have enjoyed the longest period of peace in their history, having developed multiple channels of communication outside the continuing political dystopia.

For more celebrity CPPCC members, CCTV News correspondent Fei Ye sat down with former basketball player Yao Ming, a first time CPPCC member discussing Chinese politics and public diplomacy.

Speaking about Armenia’s diplomatic priorities, Minister Nalbandian said the efforts are first of all targeted at the reinforcement of the security component, the increase of the number of our friends in the world, active involvement of our country in different international processes, the development, deepening and reinforcement of our relations with our partner Russia,

Argo won for Best Picture, of course, but in my view it merited an additional Oscar. And so did the far more controversial Zero Dark Thirty. Consider that Hollywood hands out awards for everything from “Sound Mixing” to “Best Picture”. But over the decades no Oscar category existed to honor movies for intellectual or political integrity. Perhaps that reflects, to be cynical, the recognition that in any given year there’d be too few nominees to fill out the category. But this year that was not the case. It was a banner year for Hollywood integrity.

The advance of gay rights across the United States is spreading into Puerto Rico, making the island a relatively gay-friendly outpost in a Caribbean region where sodomy laws and harassment of gays are still common.

Dennis Rodman’s bizarre North Korean jaunt has dominated headlines in both countries for days, but the U.S. State Department has no comment on the matter — as deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell made very clear in his daily press briefing on Thursday.