Japan and South Korea have very close alliances with the United States. They also have had diplomatic relations with each other for 50 years, not to mention considerable trade back and forth during that time. At a popular level, many Japanese are wild about Korean bulgogi and soap operas while many Koreans love Japanese sushi and anime. That doesn’t mean, however, that the two countries are particularly close. 

The link between the business of diplomacy and the diplomacy of business is as old as the link between trade and flag. More recent diplomatic history is replete with examples of businessmen building bridges between leaders of adversarial nations.[...] business has helped oil the wheels of diplomacy, just as diplomacy seeks to oil those of commerce.

In an idle moment between cocktail parties in the Arab capital where they served, a British and French diplomat were chatting recently about their respective countries’ legacies in the Middle East: why not commemorate them with a new rock band? And they could call it Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration. [...] It and the other wartime agreements are likely to feature in statements and public diplomacy designed to generate a “more nuanced understanding” of the UK’s controversial historical role.

Forestry Minister Veysel Eroglu told Hurriyet newspaper that "the plane tree was the symbol of the Ottomans, and we are launching a planting campaign on the orders of our president in the town of Sogut, where the Ottoman state was founded." He says President Erdogan will plant the first sapling there next year, with another 100,000 to follow in Istanbul - which as Constantinople was the last Ottoman capital.

Players as pawns in political games is not always a bad thing. Major League Baseball is about to visit Cuba on a "Goodwill" tour that marks the Dec 17 meeting last year between Barack Obama and Raul Castro when the two presidents agreed to start to "normalise" the relationship between the countries.

We are on the threshold of an historic opportunity to mend a badly broken relationship with our Caribbean neighbor, but Cuba is much more than a neighbor - she is a long lost relative, a source of wonderful culture, incredible artists and musicians, and several civic examples that we could all learn from. She could also become one of our greatest allies in the Western Hemisphere. 

Some of the world's most expensive and rarely seen modern art, including works by the Americans Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, went on display Saturday in a major exhibition in Iran.