The U.S. government has even run ads in various newspapers in Myanmar showing crashed World War II aircraft and posting a phone number (09-541-9569) where locals can call and share information, stories and coordinates. The World War II-MIA card will be played close to the vest by the ruling junta in the ensuing years, just has it has in the past.

“The British Council has responded to challenging financial conditions since the 2010 Spending Review and we are glad that the Committee has recognised that we have continued to successfully deliver our work and be “a major instrument of UK public diplomacy and ‘soft power’”.

“The Indonesian government has always been active in various international forums to push other countries to do the same thing, including ASEAN. We also discussed the issue in the Palestine Committee [in Tehran] during the Non-Alligned Movement meeting,”

China’s efforts to project its soft power in the West are widely seen to have fallen flat. Not so in Taiwan, where concerns over the mainland’s cultural influence have flared once again after some local TV stations abridged their regular news programming on Friday to broadcast a Chinese singing competition.

The financial city will see participation of over 300 global experts, policy makers and marketing gurus all come together to deliberate on the theme “The New Economic Order and World Trade Centers” at the noteworthy event that ensues from Apr 21 to 24.

Russia declared an Estonian diplomat persona non grata two weeks after the Baltic nation’s prime minister visited the country for the first time. Franek Persidski, Estonia’s consul general in Russia’s second-biggest city of St. Petersburg, has returned home, Minna- Liina Lind, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said today in an e-mailed response to questions.

In Indonesia, smart power is also increasingly gaining in attraction and popularity. On several occasions, the Indonesian Military (TNI) elite has used the term to explain how the defense force must cope with future multidimensional threats and challenges. Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro, for example, asserted that, “the concept of smart power is principally the potential synergy of civilian and military”.

This week will see the Korean Association of International Studies and the Korea Foundation host an international conference on the role of middle powers in the 21st century. The significance of the conference being held in South Korea is twofold ― it marks Korea’s prominence as a source of innovative and influential scholarship on middlepowerism, and it marks Korea’s growing acceptance of middlepowerism as a national role.