As John Kerry undertakes his first foreign trip as Secretary of State, the challenges before him are great — especially the war in Syria. He holds a town hall meeting Tuesday in Berlin, which will give us a look at his style and public-diplomacy skills — areas where his predecessor Hillary Clinton excelled.

For a brief moment on Tuesday, the nuclear dispute between Iran and the United States took a back seat to sport...Diplomatic ties between Iran and the United States have been cut since 1980 after Iranian students took 52 U.S. diplomats hostage in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution. But wrestling, one of Iran's most popular sports, has proven a rare arena in which the two countries have friendly relations.

The State Dept.’s public diplomacy corps will be glued to the TV on Oscar Night, rooting for the success of “The Bushkazi Boys” a 29-minute film that is nominated in the short film live action category.

The expansion of Turkish-African relations is also a way for Ankara to assert its position as a regional power and extend its influence. In doing so, it employs references to Ottoman times, mainly in opposition to the colonial past of Western countries (or "neo-colonialist" ones like China). "Ankara's interest for Africa...is opposed to that of the West", because Turkey "does not follow a colonialist logic that favours one party only, but wants to establish a long-term partnership based on mutual respect and usefulness"

The exchanges between Santiago Zabala and Hamid Dabashi published in Al Jazeera brings about one of the crucial issues of the 21st century: the increasing process of re-westernisation (the revamping of Western ways of thinking, from Christianity to Liberalism and Marxism), de-westernisation and decoloniality in all sphere of life, politics, economy, religions, aesthetics, knowledge and subjectivity.

Waiting for David in the concrete bowels of the Parc des Princes is a sweaty affair. More than 400 journalists have packed into a press room which can comfortably take 200 and usually attracts 20. The boy David – at 37, there is something still irresistibly boyish about Beckham – has been undergoing a medical at the hospital where Diana, Princess of Wales, died in August 1997.

The United Nations Club of Southern Oregon University and Ashland Peace House sponsored a two day conference Wednesday and Thursday entitled “Debunking the ‘Clash of Civilizations’: Understanding Islam, Islamophobia, and the Middle East,” a conference that featured speakers from a wide range of cultural backgrounds.

Israel’s greatest strategic challenge, its gravest strategic failure, its grimmest strategic danger is the (mis)conduct of its public diplomacy...It is difficult to overstate the gravity of Israel’s public diplomacy debacle, and to grasp the ongoing official disregard of the strategic dangers that its continued neglect is creating.