China's most expensive film, a bloody blockbuster about the Japanese army's massacre of civilians in Nanjing, will be released in cinemas across the country on Friday as Beijing steps up its efforts to project its "soft power" across the world.

Public sentiment here against China has worsened since the captain of an illegal Chinese fishing boat allegedly killed a Korea Coast Guard officer on Monday. Public anger further deepened as Beijing only expressed regret, falling short of offering an official apology.

Talk to Pakistani politicians, scholars... you are beyond the realm of politics and diplomacy and into the realm of hurt feelings. Words like “ditch” and “jilt” and “betray” recur. With Americans, they complain, it’s never a commitment, it’s always a transaction.

In official and political circles in Ottawa today, little or nothing is heard of PD. Diplomatic representatives can no longer connect directly with foreign populations unless their scripts have been pre-cleared, and even the use of the term has been discouraged...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton launched the Women in Public Service Project – a new initiative to increase the number of women in public service at the local, national, and international levels. A partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the Seven Sisters Colleges of Barnard College

Moscow is hosting a CIS youth forum of public diplomacy today...The main goals for discussions between young people are modern challenges and public youth diplomacy, main trends for cooperation of youth organization on the post-Soviet space, advanced methods and technologies of public diplomacy and social obligations.

...the Arab Spring could serve as an opportunity for Israel to re-think important aspects of its public diplomacy and political programs. In this respect, Israel’s relationship with one (albeit non-Arab) Muslim country could serve as a model to guide Israeli leaders as they redefine our relations with countries closer to home. That country is Indonesia.

“Sierra Leoneans have a lot of stories to tell,” says Ahmed Mansaray, the film school’s founding director. But today “most of the stories are being told [through] the binoculars of the white man”...For many in the West, Sierra Leone remains the land of blood diamonds and drugged-up child soldiers...