As part of the active use of pop culture in public diplomacy, the International MANGA Award was established to share Japanese pop culture and to help promote understanding of Japan among overseas cartoonists.

Yep, it seems that Pakistan's new 34-year-old foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, has accomplished what years of tense diplomacy haven't been able to -- create some genuine goodwill between the two constantly sparring nations.

A long-planned exhibition of nearly 70 pieces of Buddhist art from Pakistan will finally open at Asia Society on Aug. 9, after political intrigue in Pakistan and a breakdown in American-Pakistani relations delayed it for six months. Anti-Americanism, which soared in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, helped put the show in jeopardy.

In the cases of Indonesia and Pakistan, panelists argued that humanitarian aid appears to have a had a positive correlation with public views of the donor nation among citizens of the recipient countries.

Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani...urged the Pakistani envoys designated at various countries to work for facilitating people to people contacts with the countries of their accreditation to open up new avenues of cooperation.

When outsiders think about South Asia, they typically picture a region that’s wracked by violent religious extremism, a place where groups like the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba are active and deadly. Then there’s the image of clandestine nuclear proliferation...

"The problem with the Pakistanis is if they take away support from the Taliban they fear it will come back to haunt them," the diplomat said. But as weariness with the war grows, public diplomacy aimed at making a settlement more palatable to Western voters has been ramped up in recent weeks.

While religion can be a cause of conflict, it carries political leverage that many say makes it a source for solutions and a tool for peace building. "We are giving a whole government effort to put religion on the table," said the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook...