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Fossil fuel producers (the “Carbon Majors”) should pay for the loss and damage their product is causing on poor communities via a levy to the International Mechanism for Loss and Damage.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation honors with the Petra Kelly Prize 2014 four human rights activists from the Violations Documentation Center in Syria. A laudatory for the prize winners by Petra Stienen.

With fewer reporters willing to enter the killing fields of Syria, the coverage of the conflict is dominated by ideological types, hack reporters and embeded correspondents.

An international conference on the situation of Syrian refugees has been arranged for 28th October in Berlin. Yet in view of the magnitude of the crisis, this is a mere drop in the ocean. Western states keep concentrating on ways to ease the symptoms of the crisis which they cannot gain control over without political underpinning.

The Hungarian tax authority scandal is complicated and mysterious. One thing is clear, however: Fidesz came into conflict with the Obama administration – which took more effective action than the European Union against a corrupt and Russia-oriented government.

Ten billion US Dollars: One figure will be enough to judge the success of the first ever pledging conference for the Green Climate Fund on Thursday, November 20th in Berlin. Though, equally important will be in what form and how soon the pledge reaches the trust fund as an actual payment.

In 2003 the Indian government had launched an initiative to built 162 hydropower sites by 2017. The centrepiece of this scheme was to be the state of Arunachal Pradesh in the north east of the country. It seems highly unlikely however that even one of these projects will succeed in producing a single unit of power.

India's prime minister Modi tries to develop relations with important countries: In Japan, he marketed India as a ‘low cost manufacturing hub’ and tries to inject new life to U.S.-India relations.

The year 2014 was supposed to be a year of success stories for Fidesz in Hungary. But demonstrations against the internet tax have become a channel through which the people have been able to express their dissatisfaction.  

Narendra Modi campaigned on the slogan that “good days will soon happen”. His promised reforms did not happen yet. But it is too early to judge him.