An avalanche of criticism of FC Bayern Muenchen, a leading soccer brand and Germany's most successful club, for playing a commercially driven friendly against Saudi Arabia's FC Al Hilal amid a crackdown on dissent in the kingdom ... highlights the increasing risk autocratic Gulf states run in employing the sport to polish tarnished images and project soft power.

This comes as part of Egypt’s penchant toward using all types of soft power on various levels in an attempt to regain its lost role in Africa and rectify the widespread perception on the popular level in all upstream countries that depicts Egypt as stealing Nile water.

Speaking to Daily Sabah, Joseph Nye said that contrary to many opinions, the power held by the U.S. is not declining. Instead, other actors in the world are becoming more visible as they join the power struggle.

Evidence from the Middle East suggests a mixed record of benefits and challenges to American higher education arising out of the recent trend in creating branch and satellite campuses. (...) This projection of "soft power" as a tool of public diplomacy is particularly resonant in a region of the world where the impact of United States policy has, on occasion, been perceived as far from benign.

Shakespeare is booming in China. But translating the Bard’s greatest works isn’t as clear as a summer’s day.(...) Already a phenomenon in China, William Shakespeare — known locally as Shashibiya or even Old Man Sha — is about to get a major boost. In September, the Royal Shakespeare Company announced an initiative to translate the Complete Works, all 37 plays and 154 sonnets, from Elizabethan English into modern standard Mandarin, the world’s most-spoken mother tongue.

A BBC News Radio presenter and correspondent mocked US Secretary of State John Kerry for bringing musician James Taylor to Paris, evidently to make amends for missing last Sunday’s unity march. 

Designed to attract more visitors to sights, and sites, along the ancient Silk Road which linked China to the countries of Central Asia - and to Rome from about 100 BC - it is particularly hoped to draw more people to China's western provinces.

He doesn’t soft-peddle his approach. In another airplane press conference on an apostolic journey abroad, Francis called out anyone who commits violence in the name of religion. And while he emphasized the importance of free expression, he admitted it necessarily has limits.