Vice-President Xi Jinping's recently concluded three-nation tour of Latin America is likely to further enhance China's relations with the region, experts said. Beyond its economic ties with Latin America, China is also interested in promoting its image internationally...China's infrastructure projects in the Caribbean are examples of non-economically motivated relationships in the region.

Latin America is blessed with a wealth of natural resources and seeks investment and loans to capitalize on them. China needs the commodities to keep its economy growing. Those interests have come together in an unorthodox partnership, as China lends and invests billions of dollars in countries around Latin America in return for a guaranteed flow of commodities, particularly oil.

In the last two decades, Canadian investors have been taking advantage of the dramatic changes in Latin America. This existing relationship emerged at a conference which drew leading actors in the Canada-Latin America relationship from academia, business, government, civil society and NGOs.

Interest in China is a recurrent theme in Latin America...Close ties specifically with the Asian giant are encouraged not only by Colombia’s status as a rising world power, but also by China’s use of “soft power.”

The news transmitted by the U.S. government to Cuba via Radio/Television Martí is keeping pace with the times in its use of social networks and multimedia platforms. Internet, Facebook, Twitter and text messaging are the latest media being used to aid the free flow of news to the island.

Cabinet ministers of 11 Central and South American nations will arrive in Seoul this week for a two-day investment and trade forum to be held from Wednesday. The business gathering featuring high-profile participants is taking place several months after Seoul unveiled a plan to bolster ties with emerging nations and beef up energy diplomacy.

A floating hospital longer than the Washington Monument is tall has begun its mission of medical diplomacy in Jamaica, its first stop among nine Caribbean and Latin American countries. The converted oil tanker known as the United States Naval Ship Comfort is 894 feet long and carries more than 600 personnel.

Conductor and University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music professor Rodney Winther has been honored by the state of Táchira in Venezuela for his contributions to music there.