The International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) announced the 17th edition of the most spectacular celebration of Indian Cinema worldwide that will occur in the capital city of Madrid, Spain from June 23-26, 2016. This year, the IIFA Rocks stage will include noted music director-composer-singer Pritam who is performing with Spanish artistes as a once-in-a-lifetime on-stage production.

Joseph Nye has been the preeminent thought leader on the issue of power dynamics and relationships connecting global actors. [...] What is the future of this American century? My guess is that among the range of possible futures, ones in which a new challenger such as Europe, Russia, India, Brazil or China surpasses the United States and precipitates the end of the American centrality to the global balance of power are not impossible, but not very likely.

Undeniably, the use of soft power has become an important element of China’s contemporary foreign strategy, and has been embraced in its foreign policy over the last two decades. In this case, although China becomes increasingly optimistic concerning its future growth, there is growing discomfort in some parts of the world regarding the implications of the nation’s rise. 

India has organised a week-long Indian culinary week here to showcase the country's wide ranging food habits as part of cultural interaction with Israel. The programme by the Indian Embassy here in collaboration with Israel's leading hotel chain Dan Hotels was inaugurated on Sunday. Celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor, 52, is showcasing the wide ranging food habits prevalent in India. 

The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) may well be a signature initiative of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, designed to create for himself a dynamic, if not dubious, humanitarian legacy, but it could hardly have been more heartily welcomed than in Turkey, the country where the 2016 WHS will take place later this month.

If there's one thing on which Europeans agree with Donald Trump, it's that the U.S. is gradually losing to China. The Middle Kingdom is working hard to improve its image in Europe and investing lots of money along the way. The queen of England may think Chinese officials are "very rude," but outside Buckingham Palace they are winning influence and friends.

Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, has expressed deep skepticism about the value of U.S. alliances. His is a very 19th-century view of the world. [...] The real problem for the United States is not that it will be overtaken by China or another contender, but that a rise in the power resources of many others – both states and non-state actors – will pose new obstacles to global governance. 

In an extraordinary act of culture and courage, a Russian orchestra performed in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra recently liberated from the Islamic State, but Western media mocked the event, notes Gilbert Doctorow.[...] The orchestrated performed a concert of Bach, Shchedrin and Prokofiev in the Roman Amphitheater to celebrate the return of culture to a UNESCO site desecrated by its Islamic State occupiers.