North Korea’s successful missile launch now presents Pyongyang as on the cusp of joining the elite club of nations with nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). That is quite a turn around for the young Kim Jong Un, suddenly thrust into power a year ago, whose first attempt at launching a three-stage missile...was a show that flopped before a global audience.

The State Department wants your opinion. No, not on weighty matters like the Arab Spring/Winter, relations with Russia, the state of NATO, or Chinese free-trade violations. The pressing question of the day is whether it should rename its blog DipNote.

I was heartened this week when I read former prime minister Paul Keating's comments that no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. As an Indonesian exporter, who for a long time has seen Australia as a partner rather than a market, I have felt for the first time real optimism regarding the relationship between our two countries.

Rice, beans, pork – and lots of it. That's a typical restaurant meal in Cuba, widely regarded by travelers as a culinary wasteland where the variety and quality of raw ingredients leave much to be desired.

George Little, the Pentagon spokesperson, appeared to make an important announcement last week, saying "strategic communication" had been banned from the Pentagon's lexicon. Sounded like a good thing; strategic communication was a brainchild of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in full flower of his moment when the Pentagon could not only "do it all," it should "do it all."

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs will host 392 Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants from 50 countries for an enrichment workshop in Washington, D.C. from December 13 to 15.

Here's my quandary: If I deliver, as promised, a warts-and-all account of how Agence France Presse's Twitter-based application the e-diplomacy hub came to be, I risk irritating our developer, getting rapped on the knuckles by my CEO, and provoking the good folks at Twitter who, make no mistake, can pull the plug on our ambitious little project, and others like it, with a digital flick of the wrist.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy added his voice to the growing calls to switch the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup to the winter when he made his first public speaking appearance since May today by addressing the conference here.