Japan’s public diplomacy hovers between the ludicrous and the sinister. In recent months, the country has specialised in foreign policy gaffes that seem designed to give maximum offence to its Asian neighbours while causing maximum embarrassment to its western allies. Last week provided another example.

In December 1988, when Ashok Bajaj opened the Bombay Club here, the city was gearing up for the inauguration of President George H. W. Bush. For Washington, that’s pretty much where the celebrating ended. That year the District of Columbia had surpassed Detroit as the country’s murder capital, with a record 372 killings. The city was not, to put it mildly, recognized for its hospitality, and it extended little welcome to the newly arrived Mr.

Community workshops dubbed "hackerspaces" originated in Germany more than a decade ago. After a slow start, they're now appearing in cities around the world, including United States. In North America, the word "hacker" most commonly refers to someone who illegally breaks into computer networks. But hackerspaces are social clubs for activities that include tinkering, machine tooling, and 3-D printing.

This month TPR sat down with Stephen Cheung, the Mayor of Los Angeles’ first Director of International Trade, to discuss the purview and capacity of the new position, which coordinates between the Port of Los Angeles, LAX, and City Hall. With trade being a central component of the LA regional economy, and with the infrastructure of trade constantly evolving, Cheung works for goods movement, logistics, storage, and transportation to operate as smoothly as possible to retain customers doing business in and through LA.

Why are the immigration debates in the United Kingdom and the United States going in opposite directions? Part of the answer is in the chart above: During a time of economic trouble, Britain saw a surge in foreign workers that the US did not. How did the US and UK part ways in the way they think about immigration? You can blame the difference on the European Union. Between 1995 and 2005, the US and the UK increased the foreign-born share of their population at about the same rate.

Before I get to the end of this post, I'll explain why the image you see here is not how the people of Holland, Michigan, would like their town to be understood. Yet it's part of a whimsical downtown series of public-art posters in which familiar paintings are given an a la Hollandaise touch. You'll see another below -- the first one obviously after Grant Wood, the second Manet. The fact that a city of some 35,000 people has a downtown commercially and culturally vibrant enough to support this sort of display is part of the story that seems worth figuring out and trying to tell.

On a sunny, crisp November day in 2008, three American civilians joined a platoon of United States soldiers on a foot patrol in Maiwand District, a flat, yellow patch of earth crowned by black-rock mountains in southern Afghanistan. The civilians were part of the Human Terrain System, an ambitious, troubled Army program that sends social scientists into conflict zones to help soldiers understand local culture, politics and economics.

The neighboring border states of New Mexico and Chihuahua are working together to build a binational community unlike any other in the Southwest. The plan is centered around an industrial complex arising outside the town of Santa Teresa in Southern New Mexico. In a joint appearance at the Santa Teresa airport Friday, Chihuahua Governor Cesar Duarte and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez announced their plans for the binational community.