A yearlong digital training course for Irish high school teachers started in 2014. A fund to help European news outlets adapt to the web popped up in 2015. And in March, a virtual reality exhibition began at a Belgian museum to showcase a Renaissance painter. All these projects are aimed at supporting European culture and education, helping the region embrace the fast-changing online world. And all are financed by Google

Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn urged the Ethiopian Tourism Transformation Council (ETTC) to utilize resources of the country and make the nation one of the best tourist destinations in the world.

Soft power – broadly a country’s ability to persuade other nations to cooperate without recourse to force – has long been a tool of Western foreign policy,  but in recent years Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has introduced his own much less benign variant of the initiative. 

The “soft power” of shows such as Downton Abbey and Sherlock can help the UK bounce back globally from the shock of Brexit and help Britain remain a cultural international powerhouse, according to a former ambassador and foreign policy adviser to David Cameron. [...] he is “pretty confident” that “there will be a group set up specifically” to promote Britain and its creative industries around the world.

When Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI) President Choi Jung-wha became an international conference interpreter in the late ‘80s, many foreigners either knew nothing or new very little of Korea. For instance, and when somebody finally recognized the country's name, he or she would say that the late Kim Jong-il, father of Jong-un, was the country's president. Choi's newly published book "K-Style" is not your typical geographical guidebook ― it does not feed readers with the usual information about Korea.

Media can only become regional or global in a broadcasting regime that enables content to move freely beyond national borders. Regional broadcasting, which was restricted in the 1980s in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, now allows for the legitimate transfer of content across national borders. Within this framework, Japanese interaction with its East Asian neighbours can be viewed from two perspectives: politics and popular culture. The two are not mutually exclusive, but are driven by different forces.

Italy is on show at the Olympics and Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro with two important exhibitions and exclusive coverage of the games by state broadcaster RAI. [...]  "We are faced with the double challenge transmitting the importance of representing ourselves to our country and communicating the culture of the Country system. It is essential that the public service broadcaster speaks to those who are interested in Italy," 

South Africa was one of the high-priority visits for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, not just because of the shared partnership on multilateral fora but also because of historic ties that connect the two nations. This is the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister in the last 10 years. [...] The Indian media, along with a sections of the American press has billed this visit as another effort by New Delhi to counterbalance Beijing’s influence in the continent.