According to a recently released report, India is among the top-10 most powerful countries in the world. This is a first-of-its-kind study of "national power" by leading strategic experts and scholars from the Foundation for National Security Research (FSNR) in New Delhi. The study placed India at the eighth position among a group of the 27 most powerful countries in the world.

He may be no Black Mamba like Kobe Bryant, but Vice President Jejomar Binay unabashedly dribbled around Yao Ming, as if challenging the 7’6” former Houston Rockets center to a one-on-one. A shocked Binay welcomed Yao and his Shanghai Sharks to his Coconut Palace Monday morning, gaping at the giant and looking up to shake hands with the retired NBA player.

In an article in The New Yorker two years ago, reporter Ryan Lizza famously quoted an anonymous adviser to President Obama characterizing the president’s strategy in Libya as “leading from behind.” That’s not a bad way to describe the president’s foreign policy in general. Obama takes great pains not to lead too conspicuously, not to step on toes, not to offend allies or enemies. Libya, in fact, was the ideal: Let the Europeans and the Arabs take the lead, and we’ll quietly help out. Or not.

From hosting the world's top emerging powers to enforcing the Rwanda/DRC peace agreement and monitoring elections in Zimbabwe, South Africa is looking good on the world stage. But critics from within say Pretoria's diplomacy has lost its way. Gathered in the grand Oliver Tambo Building in Pretoria, South Africa's top diplomats were not expecting fireworks when President Jacob Zuma gave his annual pep talk on 11 April.

The persistence of anti-American views in the Arab world represents an important policy challenge and an intriguing puzzle for political scientists. In the new issue of Foreign Affairs, I use Amaney Jamal's fascinating new book, Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy At All?, to explore a range of competing arguments about Arab views of the United States (many thanks to the Foreign Affairs team for temporarily ungating the essay).

According to a recently released report, India is among the top-10 most powerful countries in the world. This is a first-of-its-kind study of "national power" by leading strategic experts and scholars from the Foundation for National Security Research (FSNR) in New Delhi.

This renewed effort starts with Secretary of State John Kerry's trip to Moscow this coming week for talks with leaders in Russia, the Syrian government's most powerful international friend.

A U.S. rights group warned this week that media repression is casting a chill over free speech in South Sudan, where a writer who was critical iof the government in Juba was killed several months ago. Senior Government Fellow at Human Rights First, Sonni Efron, said attacks on journalists, such as the unsolved killing in December last year of political commentator Isaiah Diing Abraham Chan Awuol, who frequently criticized the South Sudanese government in his writing, have a "chilling effect" on citizens' access to information.