Facebook’s big stock offering on Wall Street must be followed by an intensive debate on Main Street about social media’s powerful impact on children, an expert on the topic says. Jim Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, a think tank focusing on media and families, said the technology that Facebook represents is having “an enormous impact” on youngsters, families and schools worldwide.

Kudos to the House Appropriations Committee for protecting U.S. international broadcasting against the eviscerating cuts in language services and personnel contained in the President’s proposed fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget. If the budget passes—a big “if,” of course—it could reverse a direction that can only be described as self-defeating for American foreign policy and public diplomacy.

Ukraine is still being referred to as a country “between Europe and Russia” not only in ordinary public discourse and media but by top officials and diplomats, those in the US, EU and Russia, first and foremost, but also in Ukraine itself. Why there is such an “in-betweenness”, two decades after the end of the Cold War?