The U.S. pavilion finally got built after a determined push by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton..."Establishing an American presence at this Expo worthy of our great country was quite a journey," she told an audience of U.S. corporate sponsors who had ponied up $61 million in a last-minute private fund-raising drive to build the pavilion.Having spent a day talking to Chinese visitors at the U.S. exhibit, I think the journey was worthwhile.

The Obama administration expects China to join in the international criticism of North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship. After U.S.-China discussions this week in Beijing, senior American officials say China will carefully move closer to South Korea's position that the North must be held accountable for the torpedo attack in March.

A year ago it symbolised Russia's victory over Georgia and its American backers. These days Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to NATO, talks of common values and the trustworthiness of America.

It is not just that the diplomatic business model has failed to respond adequately to the challenges of globalization or that foreign ministries are underfunded, hierarchic and risk-averse. These features compound the problem, but it is the particular difficulties in the field that define it.

The Obama administration's new outline of its top national security goals will say the United States should maintain its military advantage over the rest of the world while prizing other kinds of power, according to a summary obtained by The Associated Press.

Famed Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez will appear in Florida during his first U.S. tour since 1979 -- although not in Miami...Renowned throughout Latin America for his songcraft and artistry, Rodriguez is controversial among many Cuban exiles, who identify him with the policies and ideals of the Cuban revolution.

Beijing China and the US agreed to expand their students exchange programme to facilitate one lakh American students to study in this country and increase the number of Chinese doing research in the US over the next four years.

...RealClearWorld has teamed with Gallup to find out how the president has done abroad. Using Gallup's global survey data on ratings of U.S. leadership, we discovered that one region appears to be more supportive of American leadership abroad than all the others, and that region is Sub-Saharan Africa.