India and the United States signed three science pacts, covering clean energy, disease surveillance and monsoon forecasting, during US president Barack Obama's Asia visit this week.

The power of culture can often be underestimated as a diplomatic tool, but cultural exchange can not only serve as a universal icebreaker, it can tear down walls and build bridges between the most hardened of enemies. It may not turn foes into instant friends, but it does allow nations to find points of commonality that transcend politics.

The power of culture can often be underestimated as a diplomatic tool, but cultural exchange can not only serve as a universal icebreaker, it can tear down walls and build bridges between the most hardened of enemies. It may not turn foes into instant friends, but it does allow nations to find points of commonality that transcend politics.

That China and the United States are in a race to gain sway over countries possessing vital natural resources, not only in Africa but across the developing world, is hardly news...Yet while the two powers approach the question of influence from different starting points, they are also increasingly overlapping in the way they develop their soft power—particularly in the use of their navies.

But invisible things such as oxygen, God and foreign affairs can still be consequential. And last week's election will have the scariest kind of influence on America's role in the world: massive and unclear.

Barack Obama, the US president, has arrived in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, for the second stop on his 10-day Asia trip. During his much-delayed homecoming of sorts to Indonesia on Tuesday, Obama will seek to engage Muslims and cement strategic relations.

It's the latest attempt at cultural diplomacy for two long-estranged neighbors with similar tastes in arts and entertainment. For two consecutive nights, Cubans packed Havana's Karl Marx Theater to watch more than 50 American dancers leap, twirl and float across the stage.

U.S. President Barack Obama was treated to a stirring cultural performance organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) at the Rashtrapati Bhawan here on Monday evening. The programme began with a five-minute recital by a renowned percussionist group led by Guruvayur Dorai and V. Raja Rao.