President Barack Obama met his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, on Tuesday at the United Nations — all smiles after both renewed their calls for an end to the US trade embargo against Havana.[...] “The president also highlighted steps the United States intends to take to improve ties between the American and Cuban peoples, and reiterated our support for human rights in Cuba,” it said. 

Of the nations that practice information warfare, the most persistent is Russia. In a recent article for the Institute for the Study of War, Maria Snegovaya describes Russia’s dexterity at using “reflexive control,” which she defines as shaping an adversary’s perceptions of a situation so that this adversary proceeds to act in the way Russia wants.

Public diplomacy (PD to its friends) is one of the less celebrated but more intriguing investments in U.S. foreign policy.  For decades, it has earned lasting allies for our country and helped multitudes understand and embrace our core values, including human rights, freedom of information, strong civil society and education for all.

The group, led by former U.S. envoy to the United Nations for management and reform issues Mark Wallace, as well as former Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend, former Sen. Joe Lieberman, and others, is hosting a summit on Monday that “will draw more than 100 youth activists and government officials to New York City from dozens of countries,” it says. The efforts are aimed at preventing young people from being lured into extremist ideology, particularly on the Internet.

Turning first to the question of whether the public is actually interested in climate change, Google web searches show that the countries searching most frequently on the topic tend to be those most affected by changing climatic conditions [...] This suggests that being affected by the phenomena increases public interest: it is not wealthy countries idly researching a topic they hear on the news, it is affected populations trying to understand more about what they are experiencing.

The first official visit since the 1950s to what was then a closed, even secretive Communist country, the tournament remembered as “Ping-Pong diplomacy” changed the course of history. It broke China’s deeply hostile relationship with the United States, and led to the momentous visit by President Richard Nixon the following year.

“China has conveyed kindness and goodwill to the world through the first lady’s public diplomacy”, and Peng has “enchanted local and foreign media”, according to a research from research by Renmin University of China, via CNBC.