'Three cups of tea' has entered the U.S. troop lexicon as shorthand for a trust-building chat with locals. It is drawn from the bestseller by Greg Mortenson, who sets up girls schools in the region.

While voices in China continue to be raised against American naval exercises near the China coast and asserting Beijing's increased influence in global affairs, other voices are now being heard questioning the wisdom of China's increasing assertiveness.

India and Mexico today agreed to promote cooperation between the two countries in the tourism sector and look at renewing the agreement they signed in this regard in 1996.

The Obama administration is focused not just on health-care reform in the United States – but also on improving health care systems around the world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on Monday.

The Obama administration is planning to expand opportunities for Americans to travel to Cuba, the latest step aimed at encouraging more contact between people in both countries, while leaving intact the decades-old embargo against the island’s Communist government, according to Congressional and administration officials.

On March 30, 1949, in its first semi-annual report by the US Advisory Commission on Information, the predecessor to today's Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, recommended an "immediate and broad expansion of the world-wide information program being conducted by the State Department, including the activities of the Voice of America."

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice and her staff moved this morning into the new U.S. mission to the United Nations, a 26-story solid concrete tower that is designed to protect America's diplomats from a suicide car bomb or chemical or biological weapon attack. Its completion is two years behind schedule.

China is set to overtake Japan as the world's second largest-economy in a resurgence that is changing everything from the global balance of military and financial power to how cars are designe