A series of tweets by Iranian leaders over the past couple of days has students of diplomatic semantics — a sometimes exact science — wondering whether a mere greeting is an opening to the country’s adversaries. Both Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, and the new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, sent Rosh Hashanah greetings via Twitter to Jews celebrating the new year.

In conflicts and post-conflict zones all over the globe, UN peacekeepers play an essential role supporting peace and stability. Supporting these efforts is the United States’ Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI). Vietnam has been working closely with both the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Defense to begin building its peacekeeping capabilities, and through GPOI, take its first formal steps towards contributing individuals and units to UN peacekeeping missions.

"I am French," explains the young man in the YouTube video carrying a Kalashnikov and wearing a kufiya cotton headdress as he sits in front of a waving black-and-white flag of al Qaeda. "Oh my Muslim brothers in France, Europe and in the whole world, Jihad in Syria is obligatory," says the fair-skinned youth with sandy hair, wispy beard and southern French accent, imploring viewers to join him and his younger brother in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have reportedly plugged billions of dollars in arms over the course of the Syrian conflict, emerging as the main foreign powers bankrolling the revolt. But amid the West’s hesitation this week over launching a military strike to punish Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, indicators suggest the Gulf states have been shooting blanks. Analysts now believe a portion of Gulf finances could have been better spent on a global anti-Assad/ pro-intervention public relations (PR) campaign.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has left Beijing to attend the G20 summit in St. Petersburg and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, in what is his third overseas visit since he became president in March this year. His trip, which will also include visits to Central Asian countries, has attracted extensive attention. The Chinese and Russian leaders appear very close on the international stage, reflecting the special relationship between China and Russia and triggering the topic of a China-Russia alliance once again.

Leaders of G20 countries should take concrete action to show support for human rights and civil society during the G20 summit in St. Petersburg. They should meet nongovernmental organizations, for example. Russia set its priorities for its 2013 G20 presidency as growth through jobs and investment, growth through transparency and trust, and growth through effective regulation. It is hosting the leaders’ summit on September 5-6 in St Petersburg.

Yet Mr Carney’s more serious point was that UK productivity, which has been trailing other major advanced economies for decades, is no higher today than it was in 2005, when Mr Bugg got his first guitar. This appears to be the longest period of stagnation in UK productivity growth on record. Economists have widely described this phenomenon as a “puzzle”, a word they tend to use for any trend that breaks with past norms.

The National Security Agency's spy program targeted the communications of the Brazilian and Mexican presidents, and in the case of Mexico's leader accessed the content of emails before he was elected, said the journalist who obtained secret documents from NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist who lives in Rio de Janeiro, told the news program "Fantastico'' in an interview that a document dated June 2012 shows that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's emails were being read. The document is dated a month before Pena Nieto was elected.