North Korea on Saturday rejected the idea of resuming talks to end its nuclear program, saying previous such attempts ended in failure, and reiterated its demand that the US come to the table to negotiate a peace treaty.

Global youth are tackling the root causes of extremism. Over 70 youth leaders from around the globe met recently in New York, developed an action agenda, and shared it with President Obama at the Leaders’ Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism.

President Obama took to Facebook Thursday night to comment on a photo of an Iranian father and son posted by the popular photography blog Humans of New York. The comment had received more than 120,000 "likes" as of Friday afternoon. The photo itself had been liked by nearly half a million people.

The Israeli campaign could be seen as classic public diplomacy – a government reaching out directly to a foreign public – or it could be seen as inappropriate interference that could produce an anti-Israel backlash. This is a line public diplomats should be wary about crossing. Even in the world of hardboiled foreign affairs, subtlety and restraint have value.

Hardliners on both sides have ramped up their efforts to sabotage the deal, while both governments are trying very hard to defend the deal and present it as a historical victory, which it truly is. The publicity that the Iran Deal debates has gotten has allowed both the Iranian and American governments to portray their countries as pragmatic, pro-diplomacy, and pro-peace—thereby enhancing their soft power, as opposed to repellently boasting about their hard power.

Despite decades of U.S. sanctions against Iran, change came when the U.S. worked with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the EU to forge the diplomatic agreement. The glue holding those relations together is U.S. credibility.

One state media take veered dangerously close to racism: on July 24, the day Obama arrived in Kenya’s capital city Nairobi, the English language website of state-run outlet Global Times ran a cartoon titled “Homecoming,” portraying the president wearing what appeared to be tribal attire and carrying a spear near a herd of zebra on an open plain.