North Korea has reacted defiantly to a new round of United Nations sanctions, saying it will boost its military power and nuclear program. Korean specialist Dr. Leonid Petrov from the Australian National University says the UN Security Council's touch approach on North Korea is a mistake. He told Radio Australia's Connect Asia that instead of making threats, the international community should use soft power on Pyongyang.

A US academic has said it was imperative for youth exchanges to take place between the US and Pakistan so that unfounded stereotypes could be erased. Dr Michael Hannahan, director of the University of Massachusetts Civic Initiative, said 25 young people from Pakistan were visiting the US every summer. “These travels change people’s lives.”

Mystery of missing tycoon shows how how Latvia – a small Baltic nation of 2 million people on the doorstep of Russia – has become a playground for Russian interests: business, political and, above all, criminal. But many see evidence of Russian soft power at work.

APDS Blogger: Frank Cheng

BEIJING. On the first day of our trip, the MPD student delegation to China visited Peking University (PKU). We met with Professors Wang Dong and Yu Wanli as well as students of international relations to discuss the U.S.-China Bi-National Commission Report on Mutual Trust and their perspectives on Chinese public diplomacy.

Soft power, a concept conceived by Havard University Professor Joseph Nye, is the ability to attract, convince and include others through persuasion rather than force or other means. Football has a special place in South Africa as the sport of the everyman. While cricket and rugby are two sports still dominated by the country's white community, football was the game that took deep root within the black majority.

The oldest Chinatown in the world is not in New York or San Francisco or even Yokohama. It is in Manila, a fact that comes up often when Beijing talks about its longstanding connection to the islands that lie about 600 miles to the southeast. Similarly, China boasts of its three Confucius Institutes in the Philippines where Filipinos can learn Mandarin and appreciate the many facets of Chinese culture.

Ten new movie screens open each day in China as the popularity of cinema soars in the country, but the appeal of Chinese films has failed to maintain the pace.

In its rapid transformation from quiet backwater to emerging global player, the tiny Gulf nation of Qatar has embraced many aspects of western culture. For some traditionalists, jazz music is one of those vices. Nevertheless, Doha has recently opened a jazz venue in partnership with legendary trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.