With his just concluded visit to Washington marked by expansive public diplomacy and substantive talks with US President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has begun to put an imprint of his own on India’s engagement with the US.

Under pressure from Ecuador’s left-wing government, the United States Agency for International Development is shutting down its operations in the South American nation after 53 years.

What Share America is serving up is bite-sized nuggets of video, photos and text, all optimized to be as shareable as possible on the Web. The goal is to feed content aligned with stated American values -- "democracy, freedom of expression, innovation, entrepreneurship, education, and the role of civil society," reads the site -- in the ever-hungry maw of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks.

The Public Diplomacy Officer at the United States Consulate-General in Lagos, Mrs Rhonda Watson, said on Monday that no fewer than  4,000 Nigerians had,  so far, benefited from various US cultural exchange programs in the past 20 years. Watson told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that such Nigerians had benefited from the US Full Bright, Hubert Humphrey Programs and the International Visitor Leadership Program.

With the shared history of Australia and Malaysia stretching back to World War II, it is hardly coincidental that 16 young Malaysian diplomats were sent for an educational visit to Australia as they complete the last leg of their studies at the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations (IDFR). Parliament House in Canberra has recently witnessed many occasions that demonstrate the close cooperation between the two nations.

We must hold regular dialogue and seek common ground, even if there are issues that are onerous to resolve. We hope to see a return to this standard practice of diplomacy. Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung Se, have held talks in New York, where they agreed on “the importance of continuing and deepening high-level communication” for Japan-South Korea ties. 

Anthony Bourdain's television travelogue "Parts Unknown" goes to Iran to discover how people live behind the geopolitical smoke screen and to small-town Massachusetts to chronicle the heroin scourge. But even if the fourth season of his Emmy Award-winning CNN show fosters cultural diplomacy or raises drug awareness, this outspoken New York chef insists he is on no kind of socially minded mission. 

It is often said that "doing nothing is not an option". It always is, and it is sometimes the best option. As the forces of Isis continue their murderous, genocidal and misogynistic advance in Iraq, it is an option that should be seriously considered. In the end, however, only 43 MPs voted against the "something" that the Prime Minister proposed on Friday.