The agency is using social media to circumvent established news outlets in order to take its stories straight to an eager audience. That’s especially important at a moment when the general perception is that U.S. budget troubles, friendly relations with former space-race foes, and the Space Shuttle’s retirement have left the agency struggling for a new raison d’être.

"Our cause is to advance the Government's Economic Diplomacy", the Foreign Minister told the delegation when he formally received them yesterday at his Foreign Ministry office on Capitol Hill...In response, the Foreign Minister added that the Ministry's support to the initiative was not in isolation of the Government's action plan of actualizing its Economic Diplomacy.

Today, the American Security Project released its report on the strategic necessity for strong American public diplomacy. The New Public Diplomacy Imperative examines many of the issues in contemporary public diplomacy, and recommends best practices for policy makers and public diplomacy practitioners.

According to the State Department, the first project, known as 'Networks of Diasporas in Engineering and Science' (NODES), "seeks to leverage existing collaborations while facilitating and supporting a variety of new collaborations" between diasporas in the United States.

Diplomats in all parts of Canada's Beijing embassy are being encouraged to learn how to use China's version of Twitter. The embassy launched a "weibo" microblog account on Chinese Internet portal Sina.com in June 2011. But internal Foreign Affairs documents show that not all Canadian diplomats rushed to type out 140-Chinese character updates when the account went up.

The ongoing drought in the Midwest has affected approximately 80 percent of the U.S. corn crop and more than 11 percent of the soybean crop, triggering a rise in global food prices (RFE/RL) that CFR's Isobel Coleman says may fuel political instability in developing countries. The United States produces approximately 35 percent of the world's corn and soybean supply, commodities that are "crucial in the food chain, because they are used for feed stock for animals," Coleman says.

"What has been the whole outcome of these drone attacks is that you have directly or indirectly contributed to destabilizing or undermining the democratic government. Because people really make fun of the democratic government – when you pass a resolution against drone attacks in the parliament and nothing happens. The Americans don't listen to you, and they continue to violate your territory," he said.