The Olympics brings together athletes from countries with vastly different attitudes and laws for LGBT people. The event has in recent years become a site for diplomacy around global LGBT rights. The increasing number of athletes who are comfortable publicly discussing their sexuality is an indication of how successful that campaign has been.

Netanyahu presented a color-coded world map and discussed Israel’s relations with a number of strategic states.  “First of all” he exclaimed, “there is a huge change.”  He pointed out that Israel is negotiating a free trade agreement with China, the second largest economy in the world. Israel’s exports to India increased by 30%, and with Japan, Israel has a defense and investment protection agreement.  

Over the past two decades, Russia's efforts to regain its Soviet-era influence in Africa have achieved little success because "times have changed significantly, for example, a new economic and political environment, new emerging challenges, new competitive conditions and new bases for cooperation," according to Nataliya Zaiser, a Public Policy Advisor at Squire Patton Boggs Moscow office. 

An FBI probe will tell us more about the current email intrusion, although it will take time before we know exactly who (and if Russia) is potentially behind hacking into the DNC's network. But one thing is certain: The Russians have been perfecting the art of manipulating information in recent years to sway public opinion within Russia and around the world in the hopes of building up the stature of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

OSSSO Fusion Musical Experience "Sound of the Nature" - a special Asia - Europe music experience with the unique combination of folk music, light music and symphonic music was first performed abroad in the cultural exchange festival of Vietnam from July 11th 2016 to July 15th 2016 at the cultural capital Saint Petersburg, Russia, which brought the cultural pride of Vietnam to the Russian music lovers.

Soft power – broadly a country’s ability to persuade other nations to cooperate without recourse to force – has long been a tool of Western foreign policy,  but in recent years Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has introduced his own much less benign variant of the initiative.