Brazilian readers of Caros Amigos magazine and social activists were astonished by the electoral result, which gave a small margin of votes to President Maduro in the last Venezuelan elections.

Forty years have passed since the Chilean president Salvador Allende died in La Moneda Palace in Santiago, attempting to defend himself with an AK-47 he had been given by Fidel Castro.

Here, in a piece from the New Statesman published in March 1974, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez explores Allende’s record in Chile, his rivals’ dealings with the United States and the rise of his successor – the army general Augusto Pinochet.

The World Social Forum 2013 kicked off this year on 27th March with tens of thousands of people marching through the heart of Tunis.

Newsclick remembers the revolutionary Hugo Chavez.

Socialism is no longer what it once was. Is its new face more Latino? Bio-socialism, bio-power, buen vivir1 and other paradigms are being debated on various political stages. A conversation with René Ramírez opens up new channels in this dialogue and marks its major milestones with wide-ranging reflections.

I’m as cynical as the next policy wonk, but sometimes even I am surprised at the perverse outcomes of some of those policies. Take the bizarre scenario outlined in the new agricultural outlook report from the FAO and the OECD regarding the projected rise in ethanol trade – ethanol traded for ethanol – between the United States and Brazil.

Syria continues to be in the public eye with a bomb blast that killed three senior public functionaries (now four) and the west-backed UK resolution vetoed by Russia and China. The one-sided UK resolution called for the withdrawal of Syrian Government forces from population centres but said nothing about armed opposition groups. It was also under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter that allows sanctions and if necessary, military action by the UN and its member states.

Most of what was said at the summit of BRICS and in its Delhi Declaration, was hot air, as one has come to expect of such meetings. However there are at least two significant developments that set this summit apart.

Aijaz Ahmad discusses with Newsclick the current stand-off between the US and Iran after the current round of sanctions that includes Irani Central Bank. He believes that the US policy is regime change and no solution can take place unless other countries such as India, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, China, etc intervene.

Two of the largest countries in the western hemisphere – Brazil and the US – had their elections recently. While in Brazil, the centre left candidate Dilma Rouseff won against Serra, the centre right candidate – the far right in US made considerable gains against the centrist Democrats. I am not sure whether to call the democrats as centre right or just centre, considering the shift of this centre to the right in the US.