While Modi has been raising the country's global profile for a while now with high-profile visits to Japan, the US and, most recently, to Australia, to be followed later with Russia and the UK, so far we have tended to dismiss each one of his visits as more hype than substance.(...)President Barack Obama's acceptance of Modi's invitation to be the guest of honour at the Republic Day parade is possibly the tipping point that separates pure atmospherics from reality. 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted Thursday that the six-power group negotiating with Iran is “not discussing an extension.” “We are negotiating to try and get an agreement. It’s that simple,” he told reporters in Paris before he left for Vienna to join the nuclear talks.

Never before has Australia been more at the heart of global affairs. Here in Brisbane we have finished our year as G20 President, with the G20 leaders presenting their communiqué.

US President Barack Obama took to the stage at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, on a day which had the soles of your shoes melting.(...) President Obama hit all the signature tenets of US public diplomacy and foreign policy - freedom of speech and internet freedom, democratic values, gender equality, minority rights, rights for LGBTI persons.

A pledge on Wednesday from President Xi Jinping of China to help fight climate change is expected to send a strong signal, since meeting global emissions-reduction goals will require sustained efforts from Beijing in curbing the country’s addiction to coal and greatly bolstering sources of renewable energy, analysts and policy advisers say.

Near the top of the list of issues Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping of China will discuss at this week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing is their cooperation on containing Ebola. 

After days of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. officials, Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed, as a gesture of diplomacy, to take a question at a news conference with President Obama. His answers, after being put on the spot Wednesday, were anything but diplomatic.

It's a shift in the administration’s approach to an offensive already under way in Iraq and Syria.