Deng Fei, a renowned Chinese journalist and social activist, is conducting an interesting survey over Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. He’s asked a simple question: “What is the river like in your hometown? While celebrating Chinese New Year at home, please take a photo of your river and upload it to Weibo for us to see.”

India will launch its first space mission to Mars this year, President PranabMukherjee said on Thursday. "Several space missions are planned for 2013, including India's first mission to Mars and the launch of our first navigational satellite,"

Newly confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry is now the face of America to the world -- a pervasively religious world. With more than 80 percent of the global population affiliated with a religion, Kerry's ability to engage religious issues and actors will be vital to the success of his diplomacy.

American director Sam French helped make history this year when his film "Buzkashi Boys" became the first movie shot in Afghanistan to receive an Oscar nomination. But the 29-minute film holds another unusual distinction: It was funded almost entirely out of a $150 million State Department campaign to combat extremism, support Afghan media and burnish the U.S. image in Afghanistan.

Nordic Ministers of Culture and representatives of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland met with Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine on February 20 at the U.S. Department of State to mark the opening of the Nordic Cool 2013 festival.

Nicholas Cull’s second book on the history of the United States Information Agency (USIA) concludes his years of thorough research into what happened to America’s former foreign public diplomacy entity...Indeed, from today’s vantage point it may seem that, once deprived of its Cold War sense of purpose, USIA was destined to be shuttered.

A screening and reception for the Hollywood film "Argo" at the Canadian embassy in Washington last fall was such a hot ticket, people complained afterwards about not getting invited...Documents obtained by The Canadian Press reveal the film company Time Warner considered the October event a "Canada love-in" which helped mitigate some of the bad press the movie had received.

Here's what's worth reading: Richard Neu, "U.S. 'Soft Power' Abroad is Losing Its Punch." RAND. My take: When he writes "The most potent instrument of U.S. soft power is probably the simple size of the U.S. economy," I get the sense that Neu doesn't entirely get what "soft power" means. And the whole "U.S. debt is sapping perceptions of U.S. power" shtick sounds very 2009. Still, as a read of the conventional wisdom of American thought on this issue, it's a good precis.