Odds and ends

• On the eve of the Cartagena inter-American summit, Colombian President Santos said “it doesn’t make sense” that Cuba is not included in these meetings, and he sees a “degree of hypocrisy in the way [the United States] treats Cuba and does not apply the same standard to other countries.”   

• Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff says there is a “consensus that this is the last Summit of the Americas without Cuba.”

• From papal biographer George Weigel, here’s a critique of the way in which Pope Benedict conducted his visit to Cuba.

• The Wall Street Journal on Cuban activists’ use of Twitter via cellphones and those who add funds to their cell phone accounts from abroad, an activity supported “in the past” by USAID, and perhaps still.

• The Herald on Cuba’s new entrepreneurs in Santiago.

• IPS has an interesting report on how foreign assistance projects die in the Cuban bureaucracy.