WASHINGTON -- Last month, NBC announced it had bought the Voice of America, as we noted at the time. NBC planned to use the name for a weekly musical series that will premiere on the network in a few months to compete with "American Idol."

America's companies, products, universities, and philanthropists are active in every corner of the world. When we think of American foreign policy, we should think not only of what the government does, but what Americans do, whether through dot.gov, dot.com, dot.org, or dot.edu entities. America's footprint around the globe is far greater than that of the State Department.

The US has revoked the visa of Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, in retaliation for President Hugo Chavez's rejection of a nominated US envoy, Larry Palmer, who is critical of the Venezuelan government, the US State Department said Wednesday.

President Barack Obama has bypassed the usual process of confirmation by the Senate and directly appointed four new U.S. ambassadors whose nominations had been stalled or blocked by lawmakers for months.

America’s influence has dwindled everywhere with the financial crisis and the rise of emerging powers. But it seems to be withering faster in the Middle East than anywhere else. Two decades ago, when America marshalled a daunting force to toss Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, it stood unchallenged in the region.

The northern West Bank village of Masaha received a special book donation to its library from the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem on Tuesday. The donation included 40 books from Scholastic Books' My Arabic Library, in addition to a selection of 100 books produced by the United States Government's Regional Book Office in Cairo and Amman.