Much current analysis of Russian influence in its neighbourhood focuses on its use of ‘hard power’ tools. However, analysing Russia’s soft power efforts is no less important for understanding the full nature of Moscow’s power strategy in its neighbourhood.

Visitors from the Middle East have topped a ranking of tourist spending in the UK, with the average family likely to shell out a staggering $42,000 per trip.  People from the UAE, Egypt and other regional countries spend more in the UK than all other foreign nationalities, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

When David Cameron was here last week to call on Scots to reject independence from theUnited Kingdom, he did it by promising more powers for the devolved Scottish parliament. Scots could have the “best of both worlds,” the prime minister argued. 

Christine Cumming of the New York Fed joins Andrés Rozental from the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations to discuss current economic trends and the role of the Fed in the financial regulatory system. Cumming expresses her concern that the financial system is failing in its mission to efficiently allocate capital to the most productive investment opportunities. She is optimistic about future growth prospects in the United States and explains why the current gradual approach to the tapering of monetary stimulus is appropriate.

Two bombs killed 10 people and wounded 70 others Friday, at a market in Kenya’s capital, while hundreds of British tourists were evacuated from the coastal resort of Mombasa after warnings of an impending attack by Islamic extremists.  President Uhuru Kenyatta, appearing at a previously planned news conference soon after the bombings, offered his condolences.  But he dismissed the tourism warnings from the U.S. and Britain that led to the evacuations, saying terrorism is a common problem and not unique to Kenya.

A group of 24 students from Hoesbach, Germany, and two of their teachers spent the past three weeks in Hudson experiencing American culture and education.  For the teens from Hanus-Seidel Gymnasium (the German name for a college preparatory school), it also was a reunion with Hudson High School students who visited Hoesbach for three weeks last June.

As the last of the thirty-seven participating countries weighed in (Israel, the Netherlands, Iceland, Slovenia), a dark-horse winner emerged: Conchita Wurst. A glamorous drag queen, the Austrian candidate was decked out in a long, glittering dress and sported a full beard.  “It’s a firm and clear rebuke against Putin’s anti-L.G.B.T. legislation and people who support it,” William Lee Adams, the editor-in-chief of WiwiBloggs.com, the Internet’s most-read Eurovision Web site, said.