Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey must work to attract cargo to be transported through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, which is under construction, the Minister of Economic Development of Azerbaijan Shahin Mustafayev said during a speech at the trilateral Azerbaijani-Georgian-Turkish business forum in Gabala on Saturday. READ MORE

At the beginning of April German Chancellor Angela Merkel spent her vacation in the island close to Naples. She was visited by the Campania region governor Stefano Caldoro who afterwards posted a video on his website where he urged her to look at the difficult areas including youth unemployment rates 10 times those of Germany. It is not the first time when Germany is criticised by South European countries complaining that they have to apply strict austerity measures in exchange for financial assistance.   READ MORE

North Korea has offered to return to talks on nuclear disarmament, in a move designed to keep their Chinese allies happy. READ MORE

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's statement at the Astana Economic Forum has become significant for world expert circles, executive director of the Centre for Political Science North-South, director of the Centre for the Study of Socio-Political Processes in the Post-Soviet Space of the Moscow State University and member of Trend Expert Council Alexei Vlasov told Trend today. READ MORE

An international conference on European security opens on Thursday in Moscow with Russia hoping to discuss approaches to the new pan-European security architecture in an open dialogue with the European Union and the NATO. READ MORE

Offers by the Ukrainian side on Azerbaijani gas supplies to Ukraine are sounding more insistent each time. This is understandable: the times are changing, no alternatives are expected to hydrocarbons as an energy source in the foreseeable future, the demand for gas promises to grow in the future, and with it, the growth in prices is projected as well. Azerbaijan, once importing gas, now itself is a reliable supplier. The route for supply of Azerbaijani gas to Europe is about to be chosen, while Ukraine is still dependent on energy supplies. READ MORE

The debate between advocates of austerity and supporters of stimulus still rages across Europe. Our experts assess whether backing for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s economic policies—the “Merkel way”—is starting to wane. READ MORE

During the visit of the President of Turkmenistan Berdymukhamedov in Kazakhstan (May 10th -11th) an opening of Kazakhstani-Turkmen part of the railway Uzen – Bereket – Gorgan took place. The accomplishment of the railway project of three-party character in recent years has been contradicting. The first terms of the railway commissioning in a finalized Kazakhstani-Turkmen-Iranian way was planned for the end of 2011. Then they were postponed till December last year. But the parties didn’t manage to fit the reconsidered time frames of the railway commissioning. READ MORE

Iran's Guardian Council, the powerful vetting and oversight committee of the Islamic republic, announced Tuesday its list of eight approved candidates for the June 14 Iranian presidential election. A total of 686 presidential hopefuls had submitted their names for approval, though in recent days dozens of politicians and clerics had withdrawn their candidacies in support of better-known figures. Chief among them were former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's right-hand man, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. READ MORE

Recently announced gas pipeline project “Yamal – Europe 2” has already obtained scandalous color. The decision of the Prime-Minister of Poland Donald Tusk to fire the Minister of State Treasury of Poland, who was responsible for fuel-energy complex – is the first clear reaction of Europe on this project. The reason for such decision was the signing of the memorandum between “Gazprom” and ”EuRoPolGaz” on the intention regarding the construction of  the gas pipeline “Yamal-Europe-2”. The experts state – this project is of propaganda and blackmailing character. The objective is to force Ukraine to cooperate in gas-transporting sphere on the conditions of “Gazprom”. However, there are also other reasons to lobby the new project –  growing energy and political significance of Russia for Europe.  READ MORE