When President Barack Obama announced his trip to Israel, there was widespread speculation for the motivations. I thought it was a grab-bag of reasons, including for domestic political purposes, to connect (finally) with the Jewish-Israeli public, to improve personal relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to talk about Iran and Syria.

Turkish Foreign Ministry has kicked off an annual program to train 67 young foreign diplomats from 67 different countries. The training program, called “International Young Diplomats Training Program, will be held between April 1 and 24, a Foreign Ministry statement said on Sunday.

Public diplomacy is "badly needed" to open more communication channels between China and Japan, veteran Japanese diplomats told China Daily on Monday. The current relationship between the two countries is like a human body that is "bleeding", said Yuji Miyamoto, Japanese ambassador to China from 2006 to 2010.

Background

Week after week and month after month, leaders and officials from across the Middle East and North Africa, and beyond, come to the UAE. The leaders who come here, typically with government ministers and high civil servants in tow, are here for a reason. To be sure, the UAE is a prime diplomatic destination any time a crisis demands a quick transfusion of aid money, because this country has resource wealth and is known for its generosity in good causes.

The way the United States and Russia view each other has changed fundamentally in recent years, a difference reflected in the words of several former ambassadors who gathered Sunday to discuss how the two countries can address the diplomatic challenges of today.

The setback was so striking that President Vladimir Putin picked up the phone at 4 am on Thursday and ordered a surprise drill of 36 Russian Navy ships in the Black Sea. The political goal was to flood Russian TV news with images of pretend naval heroics in the Black Sea. Ideally, this would distract attention from Russia’s real defeat in the neighboring Mediterranean Sea last week, when the financial currency controls froze as much as $30 billion in Russian deposits on the island.

The deadline for cable TV digitization to complete its phase in 38 cities will end on Monday, even as cable TV operators in many cities hope for some leniency from the central government. According to The Hindu, many cities have still not switched to digital service and operators need time to complete the process. The delay in switching from analogue service to digital service is due to lack of sufficient set-up boxes and labour power.