Commission development aid should be used primarily for maintaining progress towards the MDGs, not for strategic or foreign policy reasons. The European External Action Service must be involved in development aid decisions, since aid is a powerful means of extending the EU’s ‘soft power’. But the decisions should continue to be taken by the Commission itself.

In 2010, C.C.A. Lagos introduced its International Art Program, which brought more than a dozen artists and curators from across Africa to Lagos for four weeks of lectures, seminars, workshops and projects. This year, the third edition of the program was held from May to June in Accra, Ghana, beginning what Ms. Silva called a “roaming campus” that she hopes could next stop in Senegal and Mozambique.

As a non-profit public institution, the Confucius Institute links up with worldwide universities, colleges and secondary schools providing teachers and materials for their Chinese education at different levels. The conference, held in the first higher-learning institute established in the Western world in 1088, gathered the heads of 72 Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms from all over Europe. The Old Continent can be considered "mature" for the institution's development, Xu said.

The Swedish media in the Baltic States, not being aware of it, often support the so-called soft power and do not promote the strengthening of European values in the Baltics, Defense Minister Artis Pabriks (Unity) emphasized during the "Security around Baltic 2013" conference in Stockholm yesterday, informs LETA.

This pattern of anti-Muslim violence in the wake of extremist attacks has become all too familiar in Britain over the last decade. The public has grappled with angry backlashes to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the London transport bombings of July 7, 2005 and now the murder in Woolwich.

When he was in Israel, Robert Rehak, then-Czech Republic cultural attaché to the Jewish state, practiced soccer diplomacy. Specifically, he organized a model Euro Cup competition for Arab and Jewish school children.

Germany is the most positively viewed nation in the world in this year's annual Country Ratings Poll for the BBC World Service...They were asked to rate 16 countries and the European Union on whether their influence in the world was "mainly positive" or "mainly negative".Germany came out top with 59% rating it positively. Iran was once again the most negatively viewed.

Nearly 40 European national associations have sent UEFA Pro license student coaches to the House of European Football in Nyon to take part in UEFA's coach education exchange programme and gain invaluable knowledge about what awaits them in future careers, UEFA official web page said.