Apparently having trouble driving traffic to its websites, in 2011, State undertook a major campaign to boost its numbers, including buying sponsored ads to increase its English-language Facebook page “likes” from 100,000 to more than 2 million and to 450,000 on Facebook’s foreign-language pages.

Aerial shots of Jerusalem filled the big screen, along with a giant concrete wall built along the Green Line. We saw security checkpoints at the entrance to Israel but in a very different context than the typical portrayal of checkpoints. These giant walls and security measures were seen as safety, salvation, and stimulated a positive feeling in the audience.

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman says that something is “seriously wrong” if he isn’t a top contender for the Nobel Peace Prize this year. The five-time NBA champion became the first American to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un earlier this year when he visited the country as part of a Vice trip to film a documentary. While there he struck up quite a friendship with the North Korean leader and urged U.S. President Barack Obama to call Kim upon returning home.

Football, contrary to many other banned fun activities and hobbies, was one of the most popular sports and was played all over the country even during Taliban government. The teams played nationally and regionally. After the collapse of Taliban rule, sport in general, but especially football, began to flourish and significant achievements in football were made both nationally and at international level.

Werbel's new book Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World's Most Important Rising Generation chronicles her experiences in and out of the classroom. The book captures Werbel's Chinese students in their own words as they grapple with America's tragic and transcendent past and, in doing so, inevitably reflect upon their own country's past, present, and future.

The Snowden affair provides a teachable moment for a great many things, not least of them the need for robust U.S. public diplomacy. Today more than ever, global public opinion matters. The U.S. cannot conduct itself with disregard for how its actions will be perceived by the rest of the world; even public diplomacy at its best cannot fix bad policy. But modern public diplomacy is not at its best.

Every mass protest is based on the same essential calculation: There's strength in numbers. And that certainly seems to be the assumption that's animating the astonishing numbers of demonstrators we've been witnessing in just the past few weeks, in places ranging from Egypt and Turkey, to Indonesia and Brazil, and even Bulgaria. The causes of discontent are myriad, though certain themes tend to resurface.

Officials from archrivals India and Pakistan say there is political will on both sides to take the often-contentious relationship to a new level. Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid met with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's special advisor on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Brunei on Tuesday, in the first such talks since the Sharif was sworn in as Pakistan's new leader.