This month, the Brazilian government announced plans to employ some 6,000 Cuban doctors as part of an effort to strengthen Brazil-Cuba bilateral ties. In an email interview, John M. Kirk, a professor at Canada’s Dalhousie University...explained the history of Cuba’s medical diplomacy and its importance to Cuba’s slowly reforming economy.

Coupled with our concerns about human rights are our concerns about the well-being of the Iranian people. Every day, we hear from the Iranian people directly through our public diplomacy programs and Farsi-language social media platforms. The Virtual Embassy Tehran, launched in December 2011, has over 2 million hits and our Farsi-language Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube channel have also been enormously successful.

Economic prosperity, an aging population and stark gender imbalance have combined to turn Korea into a major destination for Asian migrants. But Asia’s fourth-largest economy appears to lack institutional systems to keep pace with the change. To better manage the gushing inflow of foreigners, experts call for more vigorous, open discussions over immigrant policy and a multicultural Korea, as well as reinforced public diplomacy and know-how exchanges with other countries.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus and Michael O’Hanlon are correct that we should protect funding for the State Department and USAID, because doing so enhances our national security. But neither Gates nor Petraeus and O’Hanlon are willing to reduce defense spending in order to provide additional funds for the soft power supplied by State and USAID.

India has sought academic collaboration with various US institutions to leverage the full potential of the education sector to meet the increasing needs of both the countries, particularly in the fields of information and technology. "Our academic institutions have been slow to leverage the potential of technology for education. Knowledge networks that link research in the grand challenges of the world have also been slow to develop," Minister of India for human resources development, M Pallam Raju said yesterday.

“The styles of public diplomacy are now constrained by our fear,” says Richard Arndt, a veteran U.S. diplomat and the author of The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century. ”Which after all is what terrorists try to produce, and which they've amply succeeded in.” Arndt says as the United States reestablished diplomatic relations with European countries after World War II, the goal was to build the most beautiful embassies possible.

These are the images of the Syrian conflict, the first war in which the prevalence of camera phones and Internet access has allowed hundreds of gruesome war crimes to be broadcast, spreading hatred and fear. They are defining the war that is spilling across Syria’s borders and making reconciliation an ever more distant prospect.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is pleased to announce the release of the free “American English” mobile application for lower-tech feature phones and Android devices. Developed in partnership with English Education Alliance (E2A) members, biNu and Worldreader, the application provides new audiences worldwide with “anytime, anywhere” English language learning resources on the mobile devices they already own.