Arkiv-Global View

The government engages in the usual US-baiting rhetoric, laced with attacks on local fascists and some turgid chunks of Gramsci. The hard left consumes ideas such as those of the German Marxist Heinz Dieterich, who chides the government for its “fear of using state forces firmly and rapidly from the start to dismantle violent groups”. The opposition’s extremes are no better, refusing to recognise any merits in 15 years of chavistagovernment and finding their convictions richly fulfilled by the riot police who greet protesters in Caracas or Táchira.

Launching a television channel is a big deal. When Channel 5 did it in 1997 they booked the Spice Girls to sing a Manfred Mann classic in reverse: “1-2-3-4-5”. Fifteen years earlier, Channel 4 had launched with a different form of Countdown – the quiz of that name, then hosted by Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman, which is still on air 32 years later.

The head of the United Nations climate panel said he hoped its report on the rising threat of climate change would “jolt people into action”.

The report, released on Monday, is a 2,600-page catalogue of the risks to life and livelihood from climate change – now and in the future.

Rajendra Pachauri, who has headed the IPCC for 12 years, said he hoped it would push government leaders to deal with climate change before it is too late.

Turkey's Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has said that the situation in his country "is going from bad to worse and even towards terrible" following the government's attempts to block access to Twitter, as a phalanx of major writers, from Zadie Smith to

Russian troops massing near Ukraine are actively concealing their positions and establishing supply lines that could be used in a prolonged deployment, ratcheting up concerns that Moscow is preparing for another major incursion and not conducting exercises as it claims, U.S. officials said.

Such an incursion could take place without warning because Russia has already deployed the array of military forces needed for such an operation, say officials briefed on the latest U.S. intelligence.

As one former Barcelona player puts it: "It is the game of the century, even if there are eight of them a year." It is a comment not just on the excellence and the expectation that comes with Real Madrid v Barcelona but also on their eclipse of all else, on the dominance and potential dilution of a rivalry in which they have played each other 19 times in

Western countries and Japan have suspended their 16-year collaboration with Russia in the G8 group in response to the annexation of Crimea and have threatened sweeping sanctions in the event of any Russian military moves in the region.

A LITTLE light is slowly being shed on the mystery disappearance of flight MH370. The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 vanished 16 days ago during a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. Distraught relatives of the mostly Chinese 239 passengers and crew, increasingly angered by a lack of information, received a call and text message on March 24th from Malaysia's government: the plane and all aboard were lost "beyond all reasonable doubt". At a press conference shortly thereafter Najib Razak, Malaysia's prime minister, confirmed the sad news.

This is the Nirvana moment: the precise picture they envisioned when they boarded their planes back in still-frigid Boston, Chicago or New York. As Dutch DJ Afrojack raises a fist and the first beats pulse through their bones they too let fly, barefoot on the sand, pressed together in a miasma of sun-pinked flesh and swim-suits. Above, against a postcard Caribbean sky, black MTV cameras swoop and curve, a passing parasail adds a dash of yellow.

FOR Libération, it was a “slap in the face”. For Le Monde, another daily newspaper, it was an “earthquake”. The first round of voting in French municipal elections on March 23rd was a clear snub to François Hollande, the French president, whose Socialist Party did worse than polls had predicted in several towns. If there was a symbolic victor ahead of the second round of voting on March 30th, it was Marine Le Pen (pictured), the leader of the populist National Front.