...Dickinson State College in North Dakota became the most recent university to turn down a Confucius Institute — a cultural outpost of the Chinese government that already has 350 branches on campuses around the world, from Paris Diderot University to Penn State University, and from Argentina to Zimbabwe.

This Government has put painstaking effort into rebuilding Ireland's reputational capital in Europe, in the USA and the emerging global powerhouse that is China. There are some indications that this effort is bearing fruit, notably in the confirmation by leading international companies that Ireland continues to be as much a magnet for inward investment as it was a decade ago.

K-pop is part of a broader trend known as the Korean Wave and called “hallyu” in Korean. The Taiwanese were among the first to notice the invasion of Korean soap operas in their television programming in the late 1990s and gave the phenomenon its name. Until then, the term had referred to the cold winds blowing down from the Korean Peninsula.

Although aid and charitable organizations that “criticize the current authorities” are perfectly permissible, “the activities of ‘pseudo-NGOs’ and other agencies that try to destabilize other countries with outside support are unacceptable,” according to Putin.

Indian foreign policy discourse is hardly Pakistan-centric; its major pre-occupations are the rise of India, its soft-power promotion, UN reforms and India’s role in a reformed UN, relations with the United States etc.

In the Middle East, there was little receptivity to Obama's public diplomacy...Given Israeli fears over Iranian nuclear weapons, Obama found himself walking a fine line between possible conflict with Iran and allowing events to take their own course.

Chinese firms investing overseas should focus more on public diplomacy..."They lack in-depth and comprehensive knowledge of the international market, practices and rules, and they are not skilled at conducting public diplomacy with the local communities," said Zhao.

Soft-power, the Middle East and the leadership change have all been hot topics in recent months. This is especially the case in light of China's growing economic clout as its involvement grows in terms of financing a bailout package for debt-stricken Europe.