Brazil enjoyed one of the biggest jumps in this year’s soft power survey, marking the end of an impressive year for the country. While Brazil is now well-established as one of the world’s leading economies, a main player on the global stage and one of the all-powerful BRIC nations, it’s impressive spike on the soft power survey indicated that it is also having a very real effect on the culture of the world.

The national religious faction within the ruling party Likud is set to launch a new elections campaign this weekend, targeting the country's religious population. The campaign will begin several days before the Likud-Beytenu list launches its main campaign, geared toward the general public.

An investigation into the State Department's preparations for and management of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, has concluded that "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies" within the department played a major role in the devastation that took place there last September.

With public diplomacy emerging as a crucial tool of statecraft, Park will have to shake off her out-of-touch image and engage peoples at home and abroad. Her vision for an “era of diplomacy by the people” includes broader opportunities for the Korean youth to take part in development programs, more overseas Korean language schools and support for cultural exports. She has also pledged to scale up official development assistance and house at least five more international organizations here.

‘The higher the budget often the lower the impact of e-diplomacy projects,’ was the first counter-intuitive insight by Ambassador Alexandre Fasel, Swiss Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva. Combining his rich experience from corporate and government sectors, he outlined a few e-diplomacy law/principles.

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.