For years, Indians viewed their countrymen who emigrated abroad for better opportunities with suspicion – as if they’d somehow betrayed the motherland. (...)And the country’s new government is looking at the huge expatriate population – second only to China’s – as a valuable component of India’s foreign policy, in much the same way the Jewish diaspora in the US influences international opinion and policy on Israel.

On Sunday evening, Prince William arrives in Beijing at the start of a three day visit to China.  At state level, the objective is to promote brand Britain, and at a personal level, it's an opportunity to talk about his abiding passion: elephant protection.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Washington on Sunday ahead of his controversial speech to Congress."Today, on the eve of the Fast of Esther, I'm embarking on a historic mission," the prime minister said before boarding the plane. "I feel like the emissary of all the people of Israel, even those who don't agree with me. "I am profoundly concerned about the fate of Israel and our people. I will do everything in my power to guarantee our future," Netanyahu added.

After months of negotiations and reviews, Turkey and the U.S. have signed a train-and-equip agreement aimed at bolstering moderate Syrian opposition fighters. This agreement is likely to have diplomatic outcomes between the two NATO allies and provide answers to many questions currently in the air, however, if we analyze the situation objectively, the “train-equip agreement” is going to make very little change in the civil war situation – if any.

Last week, a report from a committee of the House of Lords offered a brutal judgement on British and European policy toward Russia. Europe went “sleep-walking” into the crisis in Ukraine, said the report, and Western countries had lost the “robust analytical capability” to understand Russia. The truth about UK policy toward Russia, however, is much worse.

In recent years, cross-border investment by business has expanded dramatically and is becoming an ever more powerful force for good in the developing world.

The plan, a part of the foreign office's "public diplomacy" initiatives, will start with a national, multi-stage essay-writing competition among the over 10,000 students at the central schools, but could then be expanded to other educational institutions as well, officials said.

The Havana excursion, which Team Coco’s editors are still furiously cutting together, represents a new form for him, an hour-long episode set to air March 4 where he is the perpetual “fish out of water” — an attempt to use comedy as a kind of diplomacy. “Maybe it's not a bad form of diplomacy. Maybe it's not bad to send a comedian over,” Conan said of the thawing U.S.-Cuba relations spearheaded by the Obama administration.