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.

Google search suggestions have transformed into a never-ending source of entertainment and a candid peek into what people look for in the world. We've seen insecurities change with age and stereotypes of states in the US. Noah Veltman banked on the locality of suggestions for a country-specific view of the world. He shows suggestions for the same query for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

Writing over at International Security, Fletcher School professor Dan Drezner wades into the debate over U.S. military primacy. Though not billed as such, this appears to be the latest round in the running death match between proponents of offshore balancing and defenders of American supremacy. Well, insofar as international-relations scholars have death matches. Picture Greek and German philosophers milling around harmlessly on the soccer field in Monty Python's Flying Circus rather than Kal-El and General Zod pummeling each other in Man of Steel and you've got it.

When successful entrepreneurs come together, the ideas that emerge are nothing short of amazing. And when those entrepreneurs are also women who have fought gender bias and other challenges, the ideas have the potential to change the face of commerce for a continent. This week, we welcomed to Washington small and medium-sized business owners from 27 countries in Africa who spent the last two weeks meeting with U.S. entrepreneurs and CEOs in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, and Albuquerque, as part of the African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program (AWEP).

With U.S.-Russia relations getting increasingly tense, it comes as little surprise that U.S. President Barack Obama postponed his bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some people wished he would go, if only to send the strongest possible message to Mr. Putin directly about the need to end Russia’s crackdown on human rights. On the other hand, Mr. Obama still has that opportunity when he attends the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5 and 6.

In what a spokeswoman attributed to "an abundance of caution," the State Department decided late last week to close a host of American embassies in Africa and the Middle East, most of them in predominantly Muslim countries, due to concerns about possible terrorist attacks. This decision may have been prudent and was certainly based on extensive, if ambiguous, intelligence, but it should not become the norm.

One of the reasons for the success of social media’s Twitter platform is its ability to summarize a major issue in a few characters, while at the same time providing a link to give more details and credibility to the few words. This week a political activist used some clever research to reveal the hypocrisy and double standards of a politician. Twitter user @bunghan11h juxtaposed two quotes of maverick U.S. Senator John McCain regarding the situation in Egypt.