On the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Sri Lanka to take part as the chief guest in International Vesak Day celebrations — the most significant day in Buddhist calendar — Chinese President Xi Jinping was giving final touches to the first Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a super-massive infrastructure project connecting China with Europe and Middle East. 30 world leaders have flown to Beijing to take part in Sunday's maiden forum.

Using emojis to help shape the nation's image is a playful, but not frivolous approach to foreign policy. Finland is a highly educated country where tech is an important industry. The selection of emojis appears to be a way to highlight Finland's values and Arctic presence, while also demonstrating its tech expertise.

Speaking during his formal oath-taking ceremony on Wednesday, Moon pledged to work for peace on the Korean Peninsula amid growing worry over the North's expanding nuclear weapons and missiles programme. "I am willing to go anywhere for the peace of the Korean Peninsula," Moon said. "If needed, I will fly immediately to Washington. I will go to Beijing and I will go to Tokyo. If the conditions shape up, I will go to Pyongyang."

Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and its suspected hacking of French President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign servers, should surprise no one, given President Vladimir Putin’s (mis)understanding of soft power. Before his re-election in 2012, Putin told a Moscow newspaper that “soft power is a complex of tools and methods to achieve foreign policy goals without the use of force, through information and other means of influence.”

Concerns are growing the diplomatic strains may spill over into sociocultural and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries despite their deepening economic interdependence. [...] But in the eyes of Park Euna, ambassador for public diplomacy at the Foreign Ministry, now is time for Seoul to step up efforts to reach out to citizens of not only China but other countries around the world, helping promote their understanding of and eventually reach its foreign policy goals.

'Hard power' can no longer stop conflicts nor the rise of violent extremism and “ancient hatreds” such as antisemitism and racial discrimination, the head of the United Nations cultural agency said today, insisting that “we need 'soft power' of education, knowledge, culture, communication, the sciences, to strengthen the values we share and recognize the destiny we hold in common.”