More than 300 people were at the Show Me Center on Thursday night to hear former skating champion Michelle Kwan deliver her thoughts about "Aspiring to Greatness: What it Takes to Win." "I'm curious about her message of what it takes to succeed," said Rui Li, a sophomore at Southeast Missouri State University from Beijing, China, before Kwan's appearance. "I think it will relate to her success as a skater and to what she does now."

Could Rodman's visit achieve the same galvanizing effect? This seems implausible, given the record of the North Korean regime, with its continued testing of missiles and nuclear weapons. The most conceivable outcome is that Rodman will suffer be stigmatized even more than other anti-diplomats; after all, he applauded a regime that runs gulags amid widespread mass hunger, calling its leader "awesome".

Mumbai: American singer-songwriter and pianist Norah Jones performed live for the first time in India here. The Grammy winning daughter of late sitar legend Ravi Shankar gave her maiden performance during ‘A Summer’s Day’ festival in Mumbai.

Bangalore: America doesn’t seem to be the only option for Indian students; the attractiveness of degrees gained form U.S. universities has started to diminish, reveals a report by the GMAC World Geography Trend Report, as reported by Dailybhaskar.com. It is seen that Indians now prefer cheaper destinations such as Singapore, France, and China for higher studies.

Former basketball star Yao Ming has called for Chinese sports to get back to basics and not be viewed solely as a way of advancing national honour. The 2.26-metre-tall former Houston Rockets centre, who played in the United States' elite NBA competition for eight seasons and spearheaded a basketball boom in China, said he was feeling some pressure in his new role as a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

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.