Tomorrow marks the third International Day of the Girl Child, designated by the U.N. to highlight the need to create a better world for adolescent girls.

Non-government organisations and community groups fear their voices won't be heard during next month's G20 leaders summit in Brisbane because their access to the event will be much more restricted than previous meetings held in Russia and Mexico.

China may not be threatening the United States militarily, but it is certainly engaging U.S. companies in a costly cyber war, FBI director James Comey told 60 Minutes on Sunday, and no major business is immune.

That K-dramas have bolstered South Korea's cultural capital is quite established. In May 2013, Park was invited to Los Angeles to participate in the Leaders' Meeting for Creative Economy. The meeting brought together South Korean government and entrepreneurs to discuss Korea's economic growth on the world stage. Park was there to discuss how DramaFever and similar initiatives were helping to bolster South Korea's global influence.

The Chicago-based Manual Cinema puppet troupe recently returned from a week in Iran at the Tehran Mobarak Puppet Festival, where their performances were welcomed with multiple standing ovations. Drew Dir, one of the US troupe's artistic directors, says the experience was a bit of shadow-puppet diplomacy. “Right before our first show, we were handed a note that told us this was the first time since 1979 that an American flag had been flown in the central city of Tehran - in our honor for participating in the festival," he says. 

We asked State Department veteran Tara Sonenshine to watch the premiere episode of the series, which centers on an unconventional secretary of state, a former CIA analyst played by Tea Leoni, with us to see how accurately the show gets Washington and the world of Foggy Bottom diplomacy.

In the US, where rules on the disclosure are stricter, technology groups report far higher spending on lobbying. Google, for example, spent $8.85m in the first half of 2014 alone in the US – nearly four times what it said it spent lobbying the EU for the whole of 2013. Google declined to comment on this article. But its efforts in Europe are part of its “soft power” approach towards influencing policy makers.