President Obama’s initiative to begin normalizing relations with Cuba provides optimum conditions for CubaSkate, a D.C./L.A. based NGO which delivers skateboards to Cuban youth and promotes dialogue between the two countries with blessing from the Cuban government. 

The Department for International Development’s (DfID) extensive use of US organisations to strengthen parliaments in developing countries risks using British taxpayers’ money to promote “less accountable” American-style political systems at the expense of those based on the Westminster model, MPs have warned.

Another major voice in Pakistan questioning the national narratives has been that of the Ajoka Theatre group. Ajoka (meaning “dawn of a new day” in Punjabi) gave three performances in Washington, D.C., this past weekend, presented by the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics and the Department of Performing Arts at Georgetown University. These performances were part of the laboratory’s two-year Myriad Voices Festival that aims to expand awareness and understanding about Muslim societies through the performing arts.

President Obama, in India for a state visit, was chided by local press after he was spotted chewing gum during Monday’s Republic Day parade, which celebrates the day that India’s 1950 constitution went into effect.

The U.S. government plans to donate $1 billion over the next four years to GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, to fund immunizations for millions of children in developing countries.

A day after sending out a clear message to the world about India’s prime place in the United State’s vision for the Asia-Pacific and beyond, its President Barack Obama was today witnessed as chief guest on the country’s Republic Day Parade, a display of India’s both military might and its soft power.

In the Japanese government’s new budget, one small item stands out: a $5 million grant to Columbia University in New York to fund a position for a professor of Japanese politics and foreign policy.

India has long seemed unable or unwilling to become a major player on the world stage. But the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is looking to change all that. In order to compensate for a small and weak foreign service, he is tapping into India’s considerable soft power: its emigrants, intellectuals, and yogis.