Odds and ends

• From Stars and Stripes, “Guantanamo Bay – outside the wire” – a look at the base and its 7,265 residents on “an isolated edge of an island they can never explore.” The photo gallery shows the topography, the bay, the desert-like vegetation, the big iguanas, and a museum created on the base, with a collection of crafts that Haitians and Cubans have used to get there. And this sidebar tells of the monthly meeting at the gate between the base commander and a Cuban officer – “very formal, very scripted” – but the only contact between our two military institutions.

• Senator Jesse Helms, author of the Helms-Burton law, died last week. R.I.P.

• From an independent journalist in Cuba, a story on preparations for the tests UNESCO used to measure elementary school achievement.

• The New York Times on the competition between Brazil and Venezuela, with Brazil taking the upper hand.

• U.S. 1, Cuba 0, in the Netherlands.

• The Sporting News recounts how the Atlanta Braves shortstop Yunel Escobar and five other players came to the United States in 2004, and how they have fared since.