The Government is using "rugby diplomacy" - sending former All Blacks to China - to strengthen trade links...The initiative was the brainchild of Sports Minister Murray McCully, who calls it "rugby diplomacy". "In the context of our overall relationship with China, which is going places quickly, it's one of those areas where we can underpin the growth of trade and economic relations," Mr McCully said.

...Initiatives in Education, Science and Culture Towards Enhanced US-Muslim Countries Collaborations aimed to focus on concrete projects and initiatives in those three areas, and not on divisive political issues such the Israeli-Palestine conflict and Iraq.

The University Linkages Programme at Cairo University represents the unique collaboration between BG Egypt, Cairo University and the British Council. It provides much-needed English language tuition and professional skills to the university's Petroleum Geosciences students.

The UK is stepping up its activities in Bahrain with increased investment in arts and education. British officials also hope to almost double the number of Bahrain schools linked with those in the UK.

As the host country of both the Olympics and the Expo in the same year (1992), Spain clearly sees the Shanghai Expo as an instrument of public diplomacy and national image projection. Pavilion Communication Director Pedro Molina discusses how the country tells the story of “From the City of Our Parents to the City of Our Children” in three scenes.

Around 1987, I noticed a funny thing about aerial photos of African villages: they look a lot like fractals, the repetitive shapes from computer graphics. Rectangular architecture had nested rectangles within; circular houses were in circles of circles, sometimes down to very small scales. A Fulbright fellowship gave me a year of travel in west and central Africa...

Ideas and good writing may be fun, good music can be soothing, the cinema and theater are certainly entertaining, and sports and video games are heart-racing. All that is good and well, and all are the flesh and blood of the soft power that many countries try to build and whose management the United States has possibly mastered.

The new American ambassador to the Philippines, Harry Thomas, is an avid sportsman. Thomas, an African-American, used to play football, track and field, softball and baseball, considered as the United States’ national sport.