Despite the perception that cultural programs constitute the softest aspects of soft power, their impact should not be underestimated. Because cultural diplomacy is perceived as nonthreatening even by many totalitarian regimes, it can do much to advance the foreign policy priorities of sponsoring states.

The U.S. should send a lower ranking diplomat, such as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell. His presence would much more accurately reflect the present U.S. commitment to the region; sending the right signal to regional partners.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will speak at the 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington...With the theme of "Turning the Tide Together," AIDS 2012 aims to increase global awareness through convening a group of scientific experts, community leaders, and policy leaders.

Cultural diplomacy has avid supporters partly because this facet of public diplomacy usually is not controversial and has a high feel-good quotient. Sending an orchestra to China or a dance troupe to Algeria has value because each such venture opens doors and minds. Reflexive resistance to cultural diplomacy is far less than occurs when more blatantly political efforts are undertaken.

Prof. Alexander Alexiev, Bulgarian Director of the Confucius Institute in Sofia, told Xinhua he and prof. Gu Weiping, the new Chinese Director of this institute, have decided to introduce this gymnastics in Bulgaria..."Ideally, this gymnastics should be practiced twice a day, like a person brushing his teeth: the same way one has to do exercises in order to be healthy," Alexiev said.

These are safer, portable alternatives to the crude stoves used by hundreds of millions of women in the developing world at grave risk to themselves, their children and the planet. Not long after becoming secretary of state in 2009, Clinton took up the cookstove cause, which she describes as one of the "smart power" issues - though sceptical veterans of American foreign policy tend to deride them as soft more than smart.

A push to get more AIDS treatment to the world’s poorest, hardest-hit countries is paying off as deaths inch down — and new infections are dropping a bit, too, the United Nations reported Wednesday. “I personally believe it is a new era, new era for treatment, new era for prevention,” said Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS.

Earlier this week, a group of ten of the nation’s top scientists including James Hansen, James McCarthy, and Raymond Pierrehumbert, sent a letter to the State Department calling for “a serious review of the effect of helping open Canada’s tar sands on the planet’s climate.” They are rightly asking that this happen as part of the environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry polluting tar sands into the United States from Canada.