Russian President Vladimir Putin began a six-day Latin American tour aimed at boosting trade and ties in the region with a stop Friday in Cuba, a key Soviet ally during the Cold War that has backed Moscow in its dispute with the West over Ukraine. The two countries signed about a dozen accords in areas such as energy, industry, health and disaster prevention. Russian companies will participate in petroleum projects around Boca de Jaruco on the island's north coast, and that cooperation will extend to offshore oil deposits, Cuban government website Cubadebate said.

Ireland’s overseas aid programme has come out top in an international comparison of how richer countries help poorer nations. Irish Aid’s performance was declared a “stand-out” after earning top four places in all categories under which the programme was evaluated. It was ranked first under the heading of fostering institutions which means supporting recipient countries to strengthen their state institutions and structures so that they can better nurture their own development as a way out of poverty.

The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo) plan to present a draft version of Russia’s “soft power doctrine" (entitled “Integrated Strategy for Expanding Russia’s Humanitarian Influence in the World”) to President Vladimir Putin before the end of summer.

For a country that staked its political future on projecting soft power by using the World Cup as a means of promoting national unity, that decision now appears to have been misplaced. Brazil must now assume the risk of letting its citizens decide how best to create a nation that provides opportunities for all with greater public security and less inequality for those who really want to create a zone of peace in South America. 

As the Brazil team has come spectacularly undone in the World Cup, the pain for the host country has been compounded by the prospect that its hated rival, Argentina, could still lift the championship trophy on Sunday in Rio de Janeiro’s fabled Estádio do Maracanã, after Argentina won a tense semifinal against the Netherlands in a penalty shootout on Wednesday afternoon. The tens of thousands of Argentine fans who have invaded Brazil to cheer for their team, and taunt their hosts, brought with them a song that predicts not just triumph for Argentina, but deep humiliation for Brazil. 

Over the past decade or so, something disturbing has been happening in the Chinese community media in this country. The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda bureau has been buying up radio stations and newspapers across the country and channelling the voice of Beijing into them from editorial offices in China. Increasingly, topics on which press discussion is forbidden in China have vanished also from the Chinese language media in our own country.