Hillary Rodham Clinton ran a presidential campaign notoriously insular and unhappy, managing a group of egos and backstabbers whose dysfunction may have cost her the White House.

The dialogue is being held at a crucial juncture, when Pakistan is poised to play a critical role in Afghanistan where US-led international troops are battling a determined Taliban insurgency.

While few see any evidence of an actual rivalry between the two sides, it's possible that the combined damage to the relationship caused by the 2003 Iraq War and then the global financial crisis in 2008 has altered the way the major players view each other.

Researchers from Stanford University and a consortium of nonprofit organizations have been working side by side with colleagues from the North Korean Ministry of Public Health...to help set up the isolated nation's first laboratory capable of growing the mycobacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB) and detecting drug-resistant strains.

As suggested by the above remarks, most sadly and importantly, the Peace Corps is not a bilateral program. In essence, "we" (the U.S.) are telling "them" (the "foreigners") what to do (in a gentle way) -- a twentieth-century Cold War one-way-communications propaganda model, granted on an perhaps laudable human level.

If our big bet in Europe is that speaking with one voice will make our norms-based, soft power approach work, what lessons should we draw when Mr Obama's outstretched hand of friendship is smacked away?

Hillary Clinton's a great public diplomat and administrator, but not much of a strategic thinker. Hillary would serve as a great "face" for America to the world; she would invest time and energy in public diplomacy. But at the same time it was hard to expect much from her from a strategic standpoint.

The United States is studying whether it can legally challenge Chinese Internet restrictions that hurt Google and other U.S. companies operating in China, but direct talks with Beijing might yield faster results, the top U.S. trade official said on Tuesday.