Before leaving for Washington on Sunday to meet with US President Barack Obama, President Shimon Peres held an emotion charged meeting at Beit Hanassi with Esther Pollard the wife of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

At the beginning of the year, few would have predicted that Britain and the United States would be involved in another military intervention. Britain, the United States and European nations were – and still are- cutting their defence budgets.

The Israeli parliament’s Immigration, Absorption and Public Diplomacy Committee held a hearing last week to determine whether an American Jewish organisation that favors a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conundrum could call itself “pro-Israel.”

While protests in Syria are increasing in size and scope, the Syrian regime does not appear to be taking chances by parsing out political reforms that could further embolden the opposition. Instead, the Syrian regime is more likely to resort to more forceful crackdowns, which is likely to highlight the growing contradictions in U.S. public diplomacy in the region.

Larry Klayman, founder ofFreedom Watch,has announced that he has launched a lawsuit against Facebook and its founder,Mark Zuckerberg, for allegedly facilitating jihad against Israel. It seeks damages of up to $1 billion.

Education and exchange have long been staples of U.S. public diplomacy efforts—longer even than the term ‘public diplomacy’ has been in use. Loyola University--Chicago (Loyola) has taken education and exchange diplomacy where no other foreign university has gone before: Vietnam.

Japan is increasingly turning to other countries for help as it struggles to stabilize its tsunami-stricken nuclear plant and stop radiation leaks that are complicating efforts to recover the bodies of some of the thousands swept away by the towering wave.

The arrest of Juan Ortiz Lopez, an alleged drug kingpin in Guatemala, may mark the beginning of increased cooperation between the US and Central American nations dogged by increasing drug-related violence...On his recent tour of Latin America, President Obama announced $200 million in funding to combat drug trafficking and insecurity in the region.