With the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set to have chosen Paris over Los Angeles as the site for the 2024 Olympics, it is timely to ask: Is hosting the Olympics good for a nation’s brand, and do they provide a good financial return on investment? [...] He also noted that the concept of nation-branding pervaded China’s handling of the 2008 Beijing games. “In China their goal was broad recognition as a leader on the global stage.” He said that China was largely successful, but that in terms of political reputation, the country was thrown into a negative light.

A trio of Shepparton Ace College students is looking forward to the opportunity of a lifetime after being selected by Westside Circus to be a part of the National Treasures youth exchange program. Telaah Donnelly, Adam Eleftheriou and Kyrone Black will be training under the best acrobats at a week-long youth exchange in Melbourne in November, before travelling to York in the United Kingdom for another exchange experience. The students will also meet young people from Brazil, Sweden and the UK during the program and learn about their cultures.

Representatives from Guyana and twelve other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will be in Vitória, Brazil from May 16 to 18, to learn about the Brazilian experience of School Feeding Programmes and purchasing from Family Farming, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a statement. The visit is an international exchange mission promoted by the Internal Cooperation Programme between the FAO and the government of Brazil.

The symbolic gesture of picking São Paulo for the grand opening of Japan House hints at the value attributed by Japan to its strategic global partnership with Brasília. [...] unless Tokyo and Brasília decide to go for a thorough re-evaluation of the terms upon which their dysfunctional bilateral cooperation was structured over time, and think of innovative ways to carry it through in the future, Japan House will be of little help in making the ties that unite the two countries even bolder.

Marcello Dantas, a renowned Brazilian curator celebrated not only for producing exhibitions, but also involved in filmmaking and opera production, talks about Japan House Sao Paulo and his plans as its director of programming and chief curator. [...] Japan House is a place to inspire people with the contemporary ideas that Japan has developed. Those ideas can be artistic, design-focused, architectural, technological, environmental, social, political or traditional. 

Tunisia plans to enhance trade with Brazil, but it also hopes for cooperation from Brazilians to address unemployment among its youth. The goal is to harness Brazil’s experience in startup businesses and technical education.