Culture and Information Minister Abdul Aziz Khoja will open on Tuesday a weeklong cultural event in Berlin coinciding with the Saudi National Day celebrations.  A major event in the festival will be a comprehensive exhibition showcasing the past and present of the Saudi culture. 

The fundamentalist militant group ISIS has capitalized on the power of social media to spread its message and recruit new followers, but social networks and governments are fighting back. On Thursday, VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, announced it will ban accounts affiliated with the ISIS terrorist group.

In a matter of days, Europe's leaders have dropped the early assessment that the crisis in Iraq was principally humanitarian.  Germany has agreed to ship weapons to the Kurds.  Italy, too, stands ready to send machine-guns and anti-tank rockets.  So, as a first step, Europe's four largest nations have decided to put their confidence in the Kurds even if it eventually increases the chance they will push for a state of their own.

With its image battered by the conflict in Ukraine, Russia is accelerating its push to rebuild, modernize and expand its Soviet-era foreign media apparatus. One country of focus is Germany, the European economic powerhouse that has both close ties to Russia and rising public resentment of the U.S. 

A little focus on branding could do a miracle at the economic front as it would not only change an ordinary product into special one but also attract the buyers. This was upshot of the speeches delivered at a seminar on “Branding Pakistan” organized by the LCCI Standing Committee on National Outreach Program. 

The German ambassador's lecture was part of an EU public diplomacy program, titled "EU Goes to School" under which the ambassadors visit schools to give presentations about the regional bloc and their home countries to students.

Despite their hardening views on economic ties, neither Brits nor Germans are ready to switch the carrot for the stick just yet when it comes to diplomacy. Only around a third of Brits and a fifth of Germans think that their countries should break off diplomatic relations with Russia. Although this has risen since the Malaysia Airlines crash, it seems that people want their leaders to keep working with their counterparts in the Kremlin.

Foreign ministers from France, Germany and Italy have condemned antisemitic violence at protests against Israel's invasion of Gaza and pledged to do all they can to combat it. While the majority of pro-Palestinian protests in Paris, Berlin, London, Vienna, Amsterdam and other cities have taken place peacefully, some have descended into verbal and physical attacks on Jews and Jewish property, including synagogues and shops.