President Dmitry Medvedev was in California two weeks ago drumming up support for creating a version of Silicon Valley in Skolkovo, just outside Moscow. At the heart of the president’s push into the technology sector is the need to diversify Russia’s economy by developing new, innovation-based sectors.

A pair of Cambodian elephants arrived in Seoul on Thursday, possibly preventing the extinction of the species in Korea...After efforts by Seoul City and the Foreign Ministry, donors came from the Cambodian government as Prime Minister Hun Sen promised last month to send over a couple of fertile Asian elephants. “The Cambodian government accepted our request, in consideration of the ties between the two countries,” said a Foreign Ministry official.

A Taiwanese youth delegation is currently on a two-week visit to El Salvador to promote academic and cultural exchanges with students at the University of El Salvador, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Thursday.

The teacup diplomacy pioneered by Nancy Reagan and her Soviet counterpart, Raisa Gorbachev, in the mid ’80s, and formally reinstated as the “spouse’s program” in 2004 by Laura Bush, is archaic at a time political spouses are as professionally accomplished as their mates—and increasingly male.

China's hydropower plans are a test of its avowed good neighbourliness...

The Government is using "rugby diplomacy" - sending former All Blacks to China - to strengthen trade links...The initiative was the brainchild of Sports Minister Murray McCully, who calls it "rugby diplomacy". "In the context of our overall relationship with China, which is going places quickly, it's one of those areas where we can underpin the growth of trade and economic relations," Mr McCully said.

It was, indeed, a first for a US Secretary of State to visit Dzidzernagapert Armenian Memorial Monument. What was, indeed, puzzling about the visit was that it was dubbed a “private” visit by one of the most visible—public—officials in the world.

But no one, no matter how brilliant, can achieve the impossible. And the problem in Afghanistan is the impossibility of the mission. The United States is pursuing a nation-building strategy with counterinsurgency tactics – that is, building a nation at the barrel end of a gun.