The men’s titleholder, Viswanathan Anand of India, successfully defended the championship in May in a grueling match against Boris Gelfand, an Israeli grandmaster. Still, there are signs that Anand’s time at the top is coming to an end. Magnus Carlsen, 22, is now the world’s top-ranked player, and he will have a record high rating when the next rankings are released on Tuesday.

Regimes like Putin's can't survive on repression alone. To be stable and successful, they also need, for lack of a better term, soft power -- the ability to win not just the public's obedience, but also its consent; to rule not just through fear, but also through inspiration. During Putin's first stint as president, from 2000-2008, the Kremlin excelled at this. It doesn't anymore.

Part of American Music Abroad, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced that Kensington, Maryland-based folk group Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, with Barbara Lamb, will tour Asia and the Pacific Islands. The trio will tour China Dec. 30 - Jan. 6, Malaysia Jan. 7-17, Vanuatu Jan.18-23 and Papua New Guinea January 23-27. Tour activities will include public concerts, lectures, demonstrations, workshops, media outreach, and collaborations with local musicians.

Taiwan is “the only force on Earth that may have an impact on the future political development of China,” said Steven S.F. Chen, formerly the island’s envoy to the United States and now an adviser to its president. “Not, I’m afraid to say, the United States, not Japan, not any another country. Only Taiwan.”

We are all well aware that both India and China are rivals for supremacy in Asia and both are fishing for new strategies to tap to forge the alliances needed to strengthen that supremacy. If India and China nations that once put Buddhism aside for other priorities are now realizing that their answer for supremacy lies with Buddhism why has Sri Lanka’s policy makers not utilized this power which is under their very nose?

The “soft power” phase of Canadian foreign policy tended to produce “soft” results; R2P foundered on the lack of any noticeable international political will to apply it. UN Resolution 1973 on Libya deliberately avoided reference to R2P because it wouldn’t have flown.

Google and the Spanish Network of Jewish Quarters (Red de las Juderías) made news in Madrid last week when they unveiled a joint project promoting the once-lost Jewish heritage of 24 Spanish cities, from Ávila to Tudela.

John Cha Poong started giving children in Zambia disposable cameras three years ago to record their daily lives. The results they sent back were unexpected: their extreme poverty should have been depressing but the pictures that came back were so happy. The next year, the Korean Catholic priest did the same thing in Mongolia and Burundi. Then it was Laos in 2011 and Sri Lanka this year. It was the same story, the pictures were not the sort charities might use to raise money.