by Rainer Sollich

23 Mar 2019; DW: The Balkans has become synonymous with endless disputes and fragmentation. Having emerged from the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires in the wake of World War I, the region's young nations suffered from weak economic and social development, as well as a lack of legitimate elites. Local politicians rarely represented the interests of their constituents and were desperate to consolidate their newfound influence.

ABC News ran a ‘story’ on Erdogan comments about NZ terrorist act on Friday worshippers.

Next day, ABC reported Prime Minister Scott Morrison who has slammed Turkey's President and threatened further action for "deeply offensive" comments besmirching Anzacs and threatening violence to Australians and New Zealanders following the Christchurch massacre.

by Sitaram Yechury

THE country has entered into the electoral battle for the 17th general elections.  This is not an ordinary election where the ruling party of the day is judged on the basis of its delivery of its promises made at the time of the last general elections alone. The balance sheet of its betrayals is often the main issue of electoral discourse. 

by Seema Khan

In 2014 a new India was promised by Mr Modi. “Vikas” was the buzz word. Miracles were expected.

by Andrei Kunnikov

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/ When a student at the Northern Arctic Federal University, Andrei Kunnikov could not imagine he would head a polar station and that lessons in high-latitude Arctic Geography would be outside classrooms, right in the Russian Arctic national park. He has been working for recent seven years on the Hooker Island, the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, far beyond the Polar Circle. There, he manages the polar station, welcomes tourists and gets along with polar bears.

by Prabhat Patnaik

by Brinda Karat

The recent developments on the Forest Rights Act reflect the ongoing undeclared war by the Modi Government against the tribals of India. It is not just the effect of the order of the Supreme Court but how in these five years the Modi Government has done everything possible to undermine, dilute and ultimately to put the Act in cold storage.

Supreme Court orders:

09 Mar 2019; DW: The Italian government is on the verge of endorsing China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the cornerstone policy of President Xi Jinping. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte confirmed late Friday that his government is working on a nonbinding deal with China.

by Prabhat Patnaik

WHENEVER the unemployment problem is under discussion a common response is that overcoming it requires an even higher GDP growth rate than we have been having. This completely misses the point.

06 Mar 2019; DW: A study from the University of Marburg in western Germany found that the traditional narratives around far-right voters may be more based in stereotype than fact.

Sociologist Martin Schröder blasted the widely held idea of the low-income, poorly-educated Alternative for Germany (AfD) voter as not being representative of the truth. The fact is, wrote Schröder in the August 2018 study, that only one category truly unites the right wing: xenophobia.

By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit reached its highest sum ever last year, defying President Donald Trump’s efforts and promises to shrink it through his economic policies. The irony is that those policies likely contributed to the deficit.

Trump entered office insisting that decades of trade gaps had crushed the U.S. economy and that he would forge new agreements that would diminish the deficits.

It hasn’t happened.