Latvia is joining Lithuania in banning Russian state television broadcasts because it found that several programs about the Ukraine crisis were tendentious and not in the Baltic nation’s security interests.

Hamas is having a hard time these days. Animosity with the military regime in Cairo has led to the closure of Gaza’s vital smuggling tunnels. According to Monocle, the tunnels act as a vital supply route and Hamas says the current impasse is costing the Gaza economy about $230 million a month.

Mainland academics argued that China was the first to discover the disputed Diaoyu Islands and insisted this be taught in schools, days after Japan declared the contrary in its elementary school textbooks.

Let’s hand it to the U.S. government: At least this disastrous attempt to overthrow the Castro brothers did not almost lead to nuclear annihilation. But its impact on activists around the world who use digital tools to organize against repressive regimes feels devastating enough.
 

The revelation that a US government-funded program set up a cellphone-based social network in Cuba is likely to pose new challenges for independent bloggers and exile groups that work to increase access to technology.

"I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever," read a tweet from “The Colbert Report”last Thursday — in what New Yorker magazine commentator Jay Caspian Kang called a “comedic sin of delivering a punch line without its setup.”

As one of the most bankable stars on the planet, Johnny Depp has the luxury of keeping his PR obligations brief. But he was jumping through press hoops this week as he made his first trip to China to sell moviegoers on his new sci-fi film, "Transcendence," which opens here April 18.

The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on dozens of high-ranking Russians in retaliation for Moscow's seizure and annexation of Crimea. The idea, of course, is that imposing asset freezes and visa bans on these individuals will make them think twice when contemplating, say, further military moves against the rest of Ukraine.