A video purporting to show British jihadists urging Western Muslims to join them in Iraq has been released on social media.  The footage - which has not been independently verified - apparently features Britons and Australians fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin once described writers as “the engineers of the human soul.”  “The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks,” he claimed. Stalin clearly believed that literature was a powerful political tool—and he was willing to execute writers whose works were deemed traitorous to the Soviet Union.

The inspection arm of China’s Communist Party this week took a break from its historic investigation into the country’s corruption problems to highlight abuse of power from a fresh angle: the fictionalized depiction of crooked Washington shown in the television program “House of Cards.”

Turkey’s exports of home-grown television dramas play a key role in wielding “soft power” across the region, a Turkish culture minister has said.  By creating a lasting influence on Turkey’s image in the region, popular dramas are among the country’s most well-known economic and cultural exports, said Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Ömer Çelik June 12.

As the Minsk History Museum in Belarus holds an exhibition celebrating the USSR, we look back at some of the best Soviet poster art.

Amid efforts to discredit negative foreign press coverage and counter with their own English-language take on the news, Turkish politicians found support in an advertorial from HSBC Holdings Plc.