President Obama took some time Monday out of his busy schedule to shoot some hoops with 22 Russian kids who are in town to fulfill the cultural part of his "reset" in U.S.-Russia relations. The Russian youth spending 11 days in Washington as part of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission's Education, Culture, Sports, and Media Working Group, one of the many such working groups set up by the two sides last year.

More than 200 editors, journalists and publishers of Russian media around the world, as well as Russian government officials,visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, as part of the 12th Annual World Conference of the Russian language press.

Somehow, the United States has ended up with the worst of two worlds, in public diplomacy terms. China is billing the Shanghai World Expo as the biggest World Expo ever – a public diplomacy extravaganza on par with the Beijing 2008 Olympics in its symbolic messaging. While the U.S. media has just about ignored this international event...

The film Don't Burn (Dung Dot) has been selected to be screened at the opening of Viet Nam Film Week in Havana, Cuba, from June 1-5. The week is part of this year's cultural activities to mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Viet Nam-Cuba diplomatic ties on December 2.

India has the cultural strengths that are ideally suited for the country to take on a global leadership position, according to Indonesian ambassador to India, Andi M Ghalib.

Now, more than a half-century later, the Soviet Union has disintegrated, the Kennedy Center has recently featured dozens of Russia's top opera, ballet and musical superstars and, perhaps more to the point, Russia has been chosen to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.

The US was once the undisputed global powerhouse. Now it is under threat from contenders who use the influence of culture and lifestyle to fight for global economic and political dominance. This political manipulation is referred to as soft power – achieving what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your customs - thriving on control, not force.

Facing an uphill diplomatic struggle to win China's support for penalizing its ally North Korea over the sinking of a South Korean warship, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday highlighted the benefits of U.S.-Chinese co-operation at the World Expo in Shanghai.