Tune in to the main television channel of our national broadcaster on many nights of the week and you could be forgiven for thinking that you’re in the home counties of the United Kingdom. Sitting as I am, in the middle of a conference of Asia-Pacific arts centres in Taipei, it is encouraging for me and my Asian counterparts to see that the White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century recognises the value of cultural engagement in a comprehensive approach to our relations in the region.

During the September 11 riots outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo, a staffer's sarcastic response to a tweet from the Muslim Brotherhood led to an exchange that was widely covered by the mainstream media. The tweets came on the heels of a controversial statement that the embassy published on its website shortly after an Egyptian salafi television show broadcast The Innocence of the Muslims, a crude U.S.-produced YouTube video that portrayed the prophet Mohamed as a womanizer and charlatan.

World leaders, ministers and high-level officials from 54 countries across the Asia-Pacific region will participate in the fifth Bali Democracy Forum (BDF) to discuss aspects to better promote democratic principles and values on Nov. 8-9 in Nusa Dua, Bali.

What are your impressions from Azerbaijan and what do you think about future of this country? Azerbaijan made impressive changes since I am back to the country 20 years later. Baku is a rich western city with all high live standards and variety of people.

Signs of China’s pervading influence in the area are everywhere in the Golden Triangle, from the tourist ferries docked nearby to the massive Chinese-owned and operated casino complex, called Kings Roman, that sits a few hundred yards from where Bounmy stands.

As she visits Algeria and the Balkans on what may be one of her last overseas trips as the nation’s top diplomat, Clinton is also confronting her legacy, and whether it will be framed by the Benghazi tragedy or her vision that American foreign policy in the 21st Century must utilize social media, coalition- building and export promotion as well as military power.

...the kinds of things that the Algerians have been working on more recently in order to get ahead of the Arab Spring or to make themselves less vulnerable to the Arab Spring, they saw that as an opportunity or a time that they really should work on some of the political reforms that we had been advocating for a long time.

Washington is a vocal proponent of intellectual property rights in Vietnam as it is around the world, and a site like Zing would be shut down in the United States. But with space with for public diplomacy limited in Communist Vietnam, the American embassy uses its "Zingme" account to reach out to young people in Vietnam as it seeks to build closer ties with its former enemy.