Filming has begun on the first ever television series jointly produced in China and Burma, bringing Burmese history to television screens across China before the end of the year. The story of a Burmese prince travelling to the Chinese imperial court to perform a dance is scheduled to be aired during evening primetime on Chinese national television in the second half of the year, producers from Yunnan Television said in a statement last week.

The crisis in Syria is developing new and acute symptoms which threaten the region on more levels than were previously thought, which should be of immediate concern, not just for the region itself, but for the international community as a whole. Many readers are already aware that the ‘al Nusrah Front’, one of the dominant ‘al Qaeda’ groups currently being supported by the US and Britain in Syria, is being funded and steered by Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency.

When John Kerry took to Twitter on his first day as US secretary of state, he joined an army of diplomats using social media to reach out and connect directly with people around the world. "Exhilarating to walk into @StateDept today and get to work with remarkable team. Dad on mind! -JK," Kerry wrote in his first personal tweet. In less than 140 characters, the new US top diplomat instantly signaled he intended to carry on and deepen a commitment to using social media begun under his predecessor Hillary Clinton.

Two years after the Arab Spring, questions still remain as to how much social media actually helped fuel and drive the uprisings that arose in Tunisia and swept across the region. But regardless of what happened during those Twitter-fueled revolutions, what's happened afterward? That's what social media analytics firm Crimson Hexagon and Sanitas International wanted to find out when it decided to analyze tweets coming out of Egypt, Libya and even Syria, where there still is a war going on.

Most North Koreans can’t access the Internet, and only foreigners can use the country’s brand-new 3G cellular network. But the country has still developed its own rudimentary social network — which you can now see for yourself, thanks to a SXSW panel the Associated Press’s Jean Lee gave this weekend.

Alec Ross, the State Department's first senior advisor for innovation, is leaving after nearly four years of spearheading the department's lunge into the twenty-first century...In a conversation with Mashable, Ross reflected upon helping to build what he and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton call "twenty-first century statecraft" and shared some advice for his successors.

Educators Overseas (EO), one of North America's premier international teacher recruiting companies, is expanding its commitment to fostering international cultural exchanges and opportunities to interact with other civilizations.EO has partnered with the Shenzhen Institute of Continuing Education and China's Shenzhen Ministry of Education, to sponsor an exciting new cultural immersion program for U.S. high school students to study in China for just 4 weeks.

With Xi Jinping's election as the new president, China has equalled the United States in a crucial area of soft power. For the first time, China will deploy its first lady, who happens to be a famous folk singer, to charm the world and build bridges.