Fifty-three heads of state and government have so far confirmed attendance at upcoming memorial events for peace icon Nelson Mandela, South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said Sunday. The dignitaries will include U.S. President Barack Obama, along with three former American presidents, Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff, French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The Prime Minister's official Twitter account has marked a highly offensive tweet as a "favourite" on the social networking site. The tweet, from a user mocking former Tory chairman Lord Tebbit, was posted in response to the Prime Minister's message of condolence for victims of the Nairobi terror attack.

The president of Myanmar has promised to release all political prisoners by the end of this year and said he thought a nationwide ceasefire was possible in the coming weeks for the first time in six decades...Activists had protested his two-day talk with British Prime Minister David Cameron, taking issue with the Asian nation's human rights record.

...that task fell to none other than British Prime Minister David Cameron, who, in September 2011, launched a “Britain is GREAT” promotional campaign. Coordinated by multiple government departments and foreign consulates, with events in 17 cities worldwide, the £37 million image project is designed to use the Games to jumpstart tourism and increase inward investment and job opportunities in the UK.

“We need to combat terrorism with all the resources we’ve got, with the smart power, with the aid budget, with the diplomacy, with political moves, with bringing together and forming great networks and alliances,” Cameron said. Adding further, he said, “Britain has a lot to offer on that front.”

David Cameron was branded a warmonger today for advising the United Nations to embrace Nato-style military interventions to rid the world of "oppressive" governments. Revelling in his "victory" in Libya, the Prime Minister said that the international community needed to use a combination of military action or "hard power" and "soft power" like diplomacy and financial aid.

Some analysts see the strings of visits as a battle for influence in the region, a rivalry between those countries to exert soft power in the post-war country. "Strategically speaking, France is competing with Turkey. Both countries consider this region as a natural influence zone," Dorothee Shmid, a researcher at the Paris-based think-tank IFRI told Xinhua.

On Monday morning, David Cameron – in his first major initiative in development diplomacy in the UK – will chair a summit for pledges to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi). There's a shortfall of £2.3bn, and it's being seen as a litmus test of how well aid can survive in the age of austerity.