Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has now clarified her recent action in sending back Sri Lankan football teams and pilgrims as a symbolic act to register her protest against the continued aberrations in Sri Lanka’s handling of Tamils. Sri Lankan pilgrims and others are welcome to visit Tamil Nadu she has added wisely, as a lakh of people come to Chennai from Sri Lanka.

Thirty-two public servants are flitting to Frankfurt for a controversial book fair, which New Zealand is attending as a guest at a cost of $6 million. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage is sending seven staff, and Treasury has two officials going. English will open the October 9 party.

Since the 1950s, when Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Brubeck embarked on State Department-sponsored tours around the globe, jazz has been a quasi-official part of U.S. diplomatic efforts. Jazz musicians were sometimes welcome in parts of the world where other Americans were not, and Armstrong was commemorated in a musical play as “the real ambassador."

Recently, the Confucius Peace Prize released the nominators for this year's prize, the awarding ceremony of which will be held on December 9. This prize has been sponsored by a Chinese non-governmental organization, the "China International Peace Research Center" since 2011.

The recent killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, along with three other Americans at the mission in Benghazi, now appears to have been a premeditated assault, not merely collateral damage from yet another anti-American protest.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has left for the U.S. to pursue a crowded agenda that focuses on connecting with mainstream Americans including those who are part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. For a seventh successive year, the Iranian President will address the General Assembly session, which commences on September 25. Mr. Ahmadinejad will also represent the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) as its rotating President.

The U.S. Department of State announced that Indonesian performance artists Nan Jombang will travel to communities across America as part of a groundbreaking cultural diplomacy initiative, Center StageSM, from September 21-October 14, 2012.

The anti-American protests raging across the Middle East and beyond are testing much more than the security at America's diplomatic missions, or even the ability of Arab leaders—many of them in nascent democracies—to address extremism.