America's public diplomats face the formidable challenge of undercutting radicals' support by helping improve the lives of the vast majority of Arabs. Their concerns are similar to those found elsewhere in the world: jobs, housing, education, health care, and the other basics of a decent life. Helping to build the foundation for that kind of life should be the driving force for American public diplomacy.

Lee says Taiwan’s soft power, accumulated in the past few decades, has surpassed its politics and economy as an advantage worth using and a language for dialogue. She says many Hong Kong people find this aspect of Taiwan to be among its most interesting.

Signs of China’s pervading influence in the area are everywhere in the Golden Triangle, from the tourist ferries docked nearby to the massive Chinese-owned and operated casino complex, called Kings Roman, that sits a few hundred yards from where Bounmy stands.

As she visits Algeria and the Balkans on what may be one of her last overseas trips as the nation’s top diplomat, Clinton is also confronting her legacy, and whether it will be framed by the Benghazi tragedy or her vision that American foreign policy in the 21st Century must utilize social media, coalition- building and export promotion as well as military power.

...the kinds of things that the Algerians have been working on more recently in order to get ahead of the Arab Spring or to make themselves less vulnerable to the Arab Spring, they saw that as an opportunity or a time that they really should work on some of the political reforms that we had been advocating for a long time.

Washington is a vocal proponent of intellectual property rights in Vietnam as it is around the world, and a site like Zing would be shut down in the United States. But with space with for public diplomacy limited in Communist Vietnam, the American embassy uses its "Zingme" account to reach out to young people in Vietnam as it seeks to build closer ties with its former enemy.

DUBAI --- From boil to simmer and back again. It never ends. Political passions in the Middle East do not cool.

I have been visiting Arab countries frequently during the past five years, which certainly does not make me an expert. But I have been here often enough to pick up on the change in mood during the past few months. The cautious hopefulness that flowered after the Arab uprisings of 2011 has withered, replaced by a fearful fatalism about what lies ahead.

The Israeli instrumentalis Avner Hodorov is expected in Luanda on October 31 to be part of “Ponte Cultural” project of the Angolan music house. This was said to Angop this Sunday by the promoter of the event Giyora Arbiser. According to him, the visit of Avner Hodorov will contribute to the cultural interchange between Angola and Israel.