A couple of public diplomacy colleagues have asked me what we should think of the Pentagon memo issued earlier this month, the one that seems to say Strategic Communication is out. Over. Finished... Does this mean the end of MIST teams at embassies? No more military websites targeting foreign audiences? Is it the end of a fat foreign media analysis landing on your desk every morning? No more social and cultural adaptation training for troops deploying? Probably not.

Attention, Hollywood political donors: The Obama administration has begun the delicate post-election process of deciding which key supporters to reward with coveted diplomatic appointments, and THR has learned that at least four fundraisers with close showbiz connections are under consideration.

In 1994, Bashar al-Assad was appointed chairman of the Syrian Computer Society. It was the only official title he would hold before landing the country’s top job, president, in 2000, but the appointment seemed to speak volumes about the direction in which his country was headed. This was six months into President Bill Clinton’s first term, in the same year that Tony Blair was elected as the leader of Britain’s Labour Party. Modernization was all the rage.

If you want to join the State Department's Foreign Service, you need a solid resume, plenty of time on your hands and the patience of Job. When I joined the Foreign Service back in 2002, Colin Powell spearheaded the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative, which aimed to increase and streamline the hiring process. Ten years later, the Foreign Service selection process for generalists is even longer and more byzantine than it was before.

The Congress party would do well to have lessons in public diplomacy for its senior ministers. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is a fit case to be the first student, and as encouragement Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi should also grant him a scholarship so that there are little chances of him dropping out.

The murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three colleagues in Benghazi highlights the dangers and hardships our Foreign Service personnel face every day as America’s first line of defense. Our nation’s diplomatic and development personnel are present overseas before the U.S. military is deployed, supports them if they are engaged in combat, and remains in place when the military returns to the United States.

Gabourey Sidibe has a new gig: The Oscar-nominated actress will host a documentary series on public television starting next month. The show is AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, a series of independent films showcasing contemporary life, art and pop culture in the African diaspora, as the many communities of African-origin people around the world are known.

This past week, even as net users across the country were discovering that China’s Great Firewall has been upgraded and that many VPNs no longer work, China’s state-run Xinhua wire service was busy using Twitter. It’s the kind of frustrating irony that Chinese web users are used to by now; the nation embracing popular foreign web platforms to try to get its own message out while simultaneously working tirelessly to ensure that its citizens cannot access those same platforms.