With a population of 180,000, Switzerland's third-biggest city after Zurich and Geneva straddles the River Rhine and sits right on the northern border with both France and Germany.

Basel's location played a major role in its growth and continental importance through the ages.

From May 11 to 17, it will be centre-stage in Europe again as it hosts Eurovision 2025, the pop music extravaganza that has become one of the world's biggest annual live television events and a giant international party.

The influence of the Rhine can be felt in Basel's historic centre, dominated by the twin towers of Basel Minster, where the Dutch thinker Erasmus is buried.

But Basel's modern emblems are the two Roche Towers, Switzerland's tallest buildings. Completed in the last decade, standing 205 metres and 178 metres (673 and 584 feet) high, they are the headquarters of the eponymous giant pharmaceutical firm.

The chemical and pharmaceutical industries now drive the city's economy.

- Carnival and the arts -

Basel is one of Europe's great centres of culture.

The first edition of Sebastian Brant's "Ship of Fools", one of the bestsellers of the European Renaissance, was printed in the city.

The Rhine spirit is vividly expressed every spring at the three-day Basel Carnival, which transforms the city streets into a river of painted lanterns, colourful masks and creative costumes, flowing to the sound of pipes and drums.

The world's biggest Protestant carnival features on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list and attracts thousands of tourists.

The city has world-renowned museums -- none more so than the Kunstmuseum, the oldest public art collection in the world dating back to 1661.

In a referendum in 1967, citizens decided to buy two paintings by Pablo Picasso, who, moved by the vote, would later donate several more works to the city.

Across the Rhine, the Museum Tinguely draws in thousands of visitors with its kinetic art sculptures, while just outside the city, the Beyeler Foundation hosts an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary artworks.

And every year, art lovers and gallery owners from around the world flock to Art Basel, one of the world's top contemporary art fairs.

In sports, Basel is home to tennis all-time great Roger Federer, while FC Basel are on the verge of winning their 21st Swiss football championship.

- Chemicals and quakes -

Besides its culture, Basel is now synonymous with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, home to globally important groups such as Roche, Novartis, Sandoz and Syngenta.

The psychedelic drug LSD was created at the Sandoz laboratories there in 1938.

Pharma and chemicals make Basel a major player in the Swiss economy, attracting researchers and students as well as cross-border workers.

Around 35,000 people cross over from France and Germany, attracted by higher Swiss wages.

Basel is the home of the Bank for International Settlements, considered the central bank of central banks.

The city is left-leaning, perhaps due to the influence of its university, the oldest in Switzerland, founded in 1460.

It has approximately 13,000 students from 100 countries, around a quarter of whom are studying for their doctorates.

The city has also lived through major disasters: the great earthquake of 1356 and the Sandoz chemical spill 630 years later.

The biggest quake in central Europe in recorded history, and the fires it caused, destroyed a city already ravaged by the Black Death.

The 1986 fire at the Sandoz chemical plant on the outskirts of Basel also left its mark due to the ecological disaster caused by toxic chemicals leaking into the Rhine, killing wildlife as far downstream as the Netherlands.

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Their every move is scrutinized by Havana for signs of support for critics of communist rule.

Cubans who meet with the representative of the island's arch-foe, which has toughened its six-decade trade blockade since President Donald Trump returned to power, also risk the ire of the authorities.

Yet the new US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, seems unfazed as he crisscrosses the country of 9.7 million, meeting with dissidents and splashing pictures of the encounters on social media since taking the post in November.

It's a sharp contrast to his more discreet predecessors.

Cuba, which restored ties with the United States in 2015 after half a century of hostility, has accused Hammer of an "activist" approach to his mission.

"I travel around Cuba because, as a diplomat with over 35 years' experience, I know... that it is very important to understand a country and its people," Hammer said recently in a Spanish-language video posted on the embassy's X account.

In the message he also invited Cubans to contact him to request a meeting and to suggest places he should visit.

- Church activism -

A former ambassador to Chile and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hammer arrived in Cuba in the dying days of Joe Biden's presidency.

In the past six months, he has met dozens of dissidents, human rights activists, independent journalists, church leaders and families of jailed anti-government demonstrators, most of whom are under close surveillance.

At every turn, the affable diplomat presses for the release of political prisoners, quoting Cuban nationalist hero Jose Marti on the need for a republic "that opens its arms to all."

In February, he travelled to the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to meet opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, who had just been released from prison under an eleventh-hour deal with Biden.

Cuba agreed to free over 500 prisoners in return for Washington removing the island from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

On his first day back in office Trump tore up the deal by putting Cuba back on the terrorism list.

Havana released the prisoners nonetheless but last month sent Ferrer and fellow longtime opposition leader Felix Navarro, whom Hammer also met, back to prison, for allegedly violating their parole conditions.

Hammer has also shown solidarity with Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White rights group, who has been repeatedly arrested for trying to attend mass dressed in white, which the government considers a dissident act.

On April 13, Hammer accompanied her to a Palm Sunday church service in Havana.

Soler, 61, was briefly detained afterwards, triggering condemnation from Washington of Cuba's "brutish treatment" of its people and its attempt to "intimidate US diplomats."

- Avoiding more sanctions -

Michael Shifter, senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, said Hammer's style signaled a change in tack under Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who is fiercely critical of the island's leadership.

"Ambassador Hammer has instructions to make visits with greater frequency and visibility," Shifter said.

Cuba's deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio last month lashed out at Hammer, accusing him of "being an activist that encourages Cubans to act against their country."

Another senior foreign ministry official accused Hammer of flouting the historic rapprochement deal struck by his former boss, ex-president Barack Obama with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro.

For Cuban political scientist Arturo Lopez-Levy, professor of international relations at the University of Denver, the problem facing Cuba is how to "keep the embassy open without it becoming a platform for subversive activities."

Shifter said he expected Cuba to show restraint.

The island is struggling with its worst economic crisis in 30 years, marked by shortages of food and fuel, recurring blackouts and a critical shortage of hard currency.

As a result, Havana has "an interest in avoiding even tougher sanctions," Shifter said.

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But now Air Force One -- like many other American institutions once considered sacred -- is getting the Donald Trump treatment.

- A name, not a plane -

Technically Air Force One is the callsign for whichever US Air Force plane, no matter how small, is carrying the US president.

But most people identify it with the two heavily modified versions of the Boeing 747-200 jet liner that usually shuttle the US president around the world.

The two current models, called the VC-25A in military speak, both entered service in 1990 during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.

With its classic blue and white livery the current jumbo jet has become so famous that it even spawned a Hollywood thriller named after it, starring Harrison Ford.

Sometimes presidents use smaller planes based on Boeing 757s for shorter flights, dubbed "Baby Air Force One."

- Presidential suite -

"Big Air Force One" boasts luxury features fit for a commander-in-chief.

The president himself has a large suite that includes an office with leather chairs and a polished wooden desk -- a space Trump used for a press conference to sign a proclamation renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

A medical suite on board can also function as an operating room, should the worst happen.

There are special cabins for senior advisors, Secret Service members and 13 traveling press. It has two galleys that can feed 100 people at a time, all on specially branded crockery.

- Special features -

But the plane's main role is keeping the US president safe.

Inflight refueling capability means it can stay in the air almost indefinitely.

A hardened electronics system protects against electromagnetic pulses -- whether from nuclear explosions or hostile jammers -- "allowing the aircraft to function as a mobile command center in the event of an attack on the United States," the White House said.

Those communications also keep Trump constantly in touch with the ground -- and able to send social media posts in mid-air.

The jet also has top secret air defenses, according to aviation specialists.

These reportedly include countermeasures that can jam enemy radars and infrared tracking systems, plus dispensers for chaff -- metal shavings that distract radar-guided missiles -- and flares that blind heat-seeking missiles.

- Historic roles -

Inevitably, Air Force One has also played its role in history.

The first specially-designed jets were brought in by John F. Kennedy in 1962, using modified Boeing 707s. One of those jets brought Kennedy's body back to Washington after his assassination in Dallas in 1963.

Then in 2001, George W. Bush took to the skies aboard Air Force One after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

- Trump obsession -

But Trump has long had something of an obsession with the presidential jets.

The Republican has consistently sought to upgrade them, agreeing a deal with Boeing in 2018 during his first term for two new models based on the newer 747-8 jet.

He also dreamed up a new color scheme -- replacing the one largely in place since Kennedy's time -- with a deep red stripe down the middle of the aircraft and a dark blue underbelly.

Trump likes the new look so much that he still has a model of it on his coffee table in the Oval Office, and showed it off at his inauguration for a second term.

But now he has repeatedly complained about delays and cost overruns.

"We're very disappointed that it's taking Boeing so long... We have an Air Force one that's 40 years old," Trump said on Monday.

"You look at some of the Arab countries and the planes they have parked alongside of the United States of America plane, it's like from a different planet."

One of those same Arab countries, Qatar, has now offered the United States a Boeing 747-8 from the royal family to use as a stopgap Air Force One.

But with ethical concerns and security worries about using a plane from a foreign power for such an ultra-sensitive purpose, it's unclear whether the scheme will ever leave the ground.

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