Here and there in downtown Budapest, the bullet holes remain. It was more than a half-century ago when Hungarian freedom fighters dared to take to the streets and do battle with the Soviet Union. Expecting help - apparently promised, but never delivered - from the United States, the Hungarians were quickly outmatched and paid a terrible price at the hands of the Soviet military.

A group of dancers from California left a lasting impression on an audience in India this weekend. The dancers from San Francisco performed gravity defying routines on the side of this landmark building and drew gasps and applause from the audience.

Susan Glasser, Foreign Policy's editor in chief, met Foreign Minister Celso Amorim in Brasilia for a wide-ranging conversation on Brazil's role as the rest rises. Below, the edited excerpts.

Looking for a sign of when the multipolar moment suddenly seemed real? You could do worse than mark the day when Brazil and Turkey -- two of the world's most avidly internationalist emerging powers -- joined together this May to announce they had stepped in to broker a nuclear-fuel swap deal with Iran that potentially -- though sadly not actually -- paved the way toward a peaceful solution to the standoff.

Australia is spending tens of billions of dollars to ramp up our naval power, chiefly to stand alongside our US ally in countering what strategists view as an expansionist China. But China is still working out the way it will work in the region, says Wang Yuzhu, a top international affairs expert in Beijing.

The capital is primed for a slot on the global cultural tourism map as it opens its doors to unique performances, fusion projects and artists from 18 countries in a mega showcase of arts and culture for 10 days beginning on Dec 3.

But some had grander hopes for the Expo – namely, that it would ‘showcase China’s soft power’... As it happened, the events that swirled around the Expo’s closing weeks showcased something quite else: Why China doesn’t have much soft power and why the West, broadly defined, still has it in spades.

PDiN Monitor Editorial Staff
Sherine B. Walton, Editor-in-Chief
Naomi Leight, Managing Editor
Marissa Cruz-Enriquez, Associate Editor