President Obama urged the world Wednesday to help Ukraine as it faces economic challenges, Russian threats and separatist violence in the eastern and southern regions. "We're confident that Ukraine can, in fact, be a thriving, vital democracy that has strong relationships with Europe and has strong relationships with Russia," Obama said after his first face-to-face meeting with Ukraine President-elect Petro Poroshenko.

This U.S. leadership in cultural diplomacy is now decaying, in part because international partnership programs are on the fiscal chopping block. For example, the Fulbright scholarship, the United States’ flagship international exchange program, is facing more than $30 million in congressional budget cuts.

Two U.S. lawmakers will introduce legislation on Tuesday to end restrictions on international food aid programs, which they say would free up hundreds of millions of dollars per year and get aid to some 9 million more hungry people around the world. U.S. Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware, chairman of the Africa subcommittee, are jointly introducing the "Food for Peace Reform Act of 2014," according to a copy of the bill obtained by Reuters.

Taiwan has launched a new program in which students and young professionals from the United States will visit Taiwan to learn more about the country through engaging with their Taiwanese counterparts and meeting government officials, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

Twenty-five years ago, weeks of student led, pro-democracy demonstrations in China ended when tanks rolled in to Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.  The events at Tiananmen grabbed the American public’s attention and seemed to shift Americans’ views of China within a short period of time.

India shares traditionally warm ties with Afghanistan. After shunning Afghanistan during the Taliban regime, India become a friend and a strategic partner to the Afghan government. Indian culture, including Bollywood, as its film industry is known, is hugely popular in Afghanistan and India sees an opportunity to win economic influence, boost security, and gain a trade link to Central Asia through Afghanistan.

In isolated, largely indigenous communities like Chokisis, child malnutrition rates can reach 70 or 80 percent, severely hindering kids' ability to grow, learn, work, and lead healthy lives for years to come. These dubious distinctions make Guatemala a laboratory of sorts for innovations in the production and delivery of micronutrient-fortified food.

U.S. secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker will travel to Vietnam, the Philippines, and Myanmar with American chief executive officers in early June. Her visit is important because for Asia the heart of sustained engagement and indeed the very concept of security is economics.