Rupert Murdoch has warned China that it will encourage piracy and limit opportunities for its own booming movie market if it does not open up to foreign films, in the latest sign of western media owners' frustrations with Chinese restrictions.

South Korea and Europe appear to be engaged in a bit of mutual admiration musically these days. In both cases, the news stories were about one nation’s culture rubbing off on another. And both got more attention in the country that was proud of its influence and less attention in the place where the action was happening.

CPD University Fellow Nicholas Cull has most recently published a chapter in the new book Trials of Engagement: The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy with a chapter on "Karen Hughes and the Brezhnev Syndrome."

Then in early June, Li Congjun, president of the extraordinarily important Chinese global news service, Xinhua, published a statement in the Wall Street Journal as part of the process of being more public... Li declared a set of principles that, he thought, should govern information flows in the next several decades.

Under the State Department's Whatchamacallit for Public Diplomacy are... Arabic-speaking members of the Digital Outreach Team who respond to blog posts in the region... the State Department has developed its own Twitter and Facebook accounts in Arabic, Persian, and other languages.

CPD Assistant Director for Research and Publications, Naomi Leight, participated on a panel, organized by BINA LA, to discuss the impact of film and culture in Israel’s public diplomacy strategy.

I’ve been tracking elements of China’s complicated and ambitious policy of expanding its information sphere to a possibly waiting world. In late May, I heard Dr. Hu Zhengrong, one of China’s most distinguished ambassadors to the international academic world, give a talk on this “going out” policy to the International Communications Association in Boston.

Youssef created mock Arabic newscasts of the Egyptian revolution for YouTube. The comedy clips were such a hit that they led to a production deal with Egypt's ONTV.