Asked at a media forum in St. Petersburg about Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, storing its data on servers outside the country, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Internet was originally a "CIA project" and "is still developing as such."

This month, Brazil marks a particularly grim moment in its history. Fifty years ago, the country’s military took power in a coup that ushered in two decades of brutal dictatorship. President Dilma Rousseff, who as a young leftist guerrilla fighting the generals was jailed and tortured, marked the occasion with a speech at Rio de Janeiro’s Galeão airport earlier this month.

This CPD Photo Essay explores the role of non-state actors, acting both as ambassadors between countries and as ambassadors of sport to both domestic and international audiences. These photographs were taken on a recent trip to São Paulo, Brazil. 

For obvious reasons, many Paulistanos still consider this megacity’s decrepit old center a no-go zone. Carjacking and kidnapping gangs preyon motorists at stoplights. Squatterscontrol dozens of graffiti-splattered apartment buildings. Sinewy addicts roam through the streets smoking crack cocaine in broad daylight.

If you are a soccer fan, you will not want to miss the FIFA World Cup™ Trophy Tour by Coca-Cola event at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. on Monday, April 14, 2014.  During its 267-day duration, the World Cup™ Trophy Tour will visit nearly 90 countries, including the United States, and will give the public an opportunity to see what is arguably the world's most coveted symbol of soccer.

In April 2013, I had the opportunity to accompany the Hawaiian slack key guitar ensemble Keola Beamer and Jeff Peterson, with Moanalani Beamer, as tour manager as the group toured Brazil with the U.S. Department of State's American Music Abroad program.