Two bills aiming to increase the coordination and support for US science diplomacy in developing countries are unlikely to be passed by the US House of Representatives this summer, according to insiders. A "financial cliff" is looming at the start of 2013, "and there will be massive cuts of all government programmes", said Daly.

Fostering that kind of eye-opening cultural exchange was the point of the State Department's initial push of artists, academics and business leaders into nations undergoing transformations after the Arab Spring uprisings. And it's also what's at stake as the Obama administration issues travel warnings and yanks personnel from its besieged diplomatic missions across the Muslim world.

Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim has proposed an exchange programme among Malaysian and Indonesian journalists, art practitioners and students in an effort to enhance people-to-people ties between the two countries.

After his unexplained two-week absence from the public eye, China's presumptive president-in-waiting looks to be undertaking a campaign to prove he's healthy and fit to lead, starting with a meeting this week with U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

The Pew Research Center is out with a new poll on American reactions to last week’s attacks on the U.S. embassies in Cairo and Libya. Contrary to speculation that the attacks would hurt President Obama politically—speculation that likened Obama to Jimmy Carter and the Iranian hostage crisis–Pew’s results suggest that at least among people following the story—the attacks have done more to hurt Governor Romney.

The murder of U.S. diplomats in Libya as an alleged reaction to a YouTube posting brings into focus serious differences in culture and values with many societies in the Muslim world. Acknowledging this fact is an essential step in tackling the gaps in the value of human life and religious symbols.