A Venezuelan army plane carrying 7.3 tons of humanitarian aid arrived in Havana on Tuesday, becoming the first foreign relief to arrive in Cuba after Hurricane Irma battered the island over the weekend. The Chinese-made Y-8 plane touched down at Jose Marti International Airport with a message of solidarity from the people and government of Venezuela, Havana's main political and economic ally in the region.

The United States will provide an additional $91 million in humanitarian aid for Ethiopia to cope with a third straight year of drought, the top U.S. official in charge of assistance said Thursday. The extra funding brings U.S. aid for food and medical care in Ethiopia to $454 million this year, said Mark Green, the new administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. Another $210 million in U.S. aid has gone to development projects.

A Chinese Red Cross foreign aid medical team has carried out screening for the children with congenial heart disease (CHD) in Afghan capital of Kabul to register eligible kids for providing them with medical treatment. 

The total amount of soft loans that India has committed in the past 14 years is about $24.2 billion, in over 60 developing countries. [...] The fact that India has loaned out capital amounting to nearly 1% of its current GDP is a clear indicator of  the primacy of ‘aid’ as a diplomatic tool. “If you are seen by most people as playing a benign developmental role, then you strengthen your credentials of contributing to global good…If you want to be seen as a leader, then you must act like one,” said a senior MEA official.

Women-focused aid groups welcomed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unapologetically feminist foreign aid policy. [...] In five years, 95 per cent of Canada’s overseas development assistance will be devoted to programs that target gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. Fifty per cent of the development budget will go to sub-Saharan Africa and the amount of funding going to health and reproductive rights will double. [...] “The research shows beyond a doubt that investment in a girl’s education is the most effective investment we can make in international assistance.”

German Foreign Minister pledged 3.5 million euros of extra refugee aid for the conflict-ridden state struggling to emerge from the throws of civil war. The money will be used to improve the catastrophic conditions seen in the refugee camps across the country, with systematic sexual abuse and violence reportedly widespread. In the first five months of this year, 60,000 refugees have come to Europe via Libya, a rise of 26 percent compared to the previous year. Approximately 1,700 people were killed as they attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea from January to May 2017.