Xi Jinping’s three-day stopover in Prague on his way to Washington [...] Xi’s visit to the Czech Republic deserves some attention as it indicates Beijing’s approach towards the EU in general. It also offers insight into the limits of Beijing’s soft power, relying mostly on economic incentives and undermined by its own sense of insecurity.

Who would have thought that Tintin would so easily become a social media star? [...] Tintin remains dear to many Europeans, inside and outside Belgium. And if you think about it, there is no reason why he shouldn't be, since he has embodied the continent's values for half a century.

Omar Souleyman, a 49-year-old farmer-turned-wedding-singer from north-eastern Syria and a father of 9, is an unlikely electronic music star. This month he drew big crowds to KOKO, one of London’s most iconic music venues. Donning the jalabiya andkeffiyeh, traditional Arab garments, along with his signature aviator shades, he performed to a packed out venue full of white middle-class youth. 

According to Matthew Barzun, U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, diplomats in the digital age have a lot to learn from the story of Encarta, Microsoft’s ill-fated digital encyclopedia. […] Instead, he suggested, managing relationships between countries in the 21st century will be most successful when it focuses on “analog diplomacy in a networked world”—what Mr. Barzun jokingly called “Wikiplomacy.”

Volunteers from Greece, Syria, Spain, the Netherlands, England, the United States, Finland, Germany, Australia, Ireland and Iceland gather at the Hermes laundry in Anaxos, on Lesbos island. They glove up and sort through the wet clothes [...] discarded after aid groups provide the newly arrived refugees and migrants with the warmth and dignity of clean, dry clothes.

A famous Belgian statue has become a symbol of defiance in the wake of the attacks in Brussels that took place Tuesday morning. The Manneken Pis is a well-known bronze sculpture in Brussels of a small child urinating into a fountain.

Many studies have shown that global-terrorist threats cannot be solved solely by an individual state. In this sense, the practices of dialogue and cooperation, both through government-to-government and people-to-people contacts, should be maintained by Indonesia and Egypt.