NEW YORK, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- In the 1980s, New York real estate developer Seymour Durst initiated the idea to install the U.S. national debt clock.

By highlighting the rising debt, he hoped the project would help the next generation avoid being crippled by this burden.

Durst's wish, however, seems still far from being accomplished.

BUJUMBURA, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to Burundi Li Changlin and Burundian Foreign Affairs Minister Ezechiel Nibigira on Thursday signed a handover document on the China-aided Burundian state house.

The handover is a sign of sincere friendship and cooperation between China and Burundi, Li said at the signing ceremony in the new state house in Mutimbuzi district, north of Burundi's commercial capital Bujumbura,

MADRID (AP) — Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called a general election for April 28 after his minority government’s budget proposal was rejected by lawmakers.

The election is Spain’s third in less than four years — a symptom of an increasingly fragmented political landscape and a sign of how Catalonia will remain a thorny issue for the next leader.

12 Feb 2019; DW: German authorities banned two media organizations it said were linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) following raids on Tuesday.

Police searched the Mesopotamia Publishing House and MIR Multimedia in the western states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony and seized material, the Interior Ministry said.

PKK is considered to be a terrorist organisation by the European Union and Turkey.

ANKARA; 12 Feb 2019; AA: French authorities should face the human rights violations and murders they were involved in from Cameroon to Algeria, Turkey's ruling party spokesman said Monday.

“Facing history is essential for France,” Omer Celik told reporters following a central executive committee meeting of his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party.

“What France should judicially face, from Cameroon to Algeria, are the acts of human rights violations and killings by the French authorities.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chemical compounds are all around you. They’re on many fabrics, rugs and carpets, cooking pots and pans, outdoor gear, shampoo, shaving cream, makeup and even dental floss. Increasing numbers of states have found them seeping into water supplies.

There’s growing evidence that long-term exposure to the perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, or PFAS, can be dangerous, even in tiny amounts.

LONDON (AP) — When mysterious operatives lured two cybersecurity researchers to meetings at luxury hotels over the past two months, it was an apparent bid to discredit their research about an Israeli company that makes smartphone hacking technology used by some governments to spy on their citizens. The Associated Press has now learned of similar undercover efforts targeting at least four other individuals who have raised questions about the use of the Israeli firm’s spyware.

by Prabir Purkayastha

by Harsh Mander

By requiring long-term residents of Assam to prove their citizenship by negotiating a thicket made up of bewildering and opaque rules and an uncaring bureaucracy, the Indian state has for the past two decades unleashed an unrelenting nightmare of wanton injustice on a massive swathe of its most vulnerable people.

by Harsh Mander

Six months have passed since the Supreme Court — anguished by what it described as ‘horrific acts of mobocracy’ — issued a slew of directions to the Union and State governments to protect India’s ‘pluralist social fabric’ from mob violence. The court felt compelled to act in the shadow of four years of surging hate violence targeting religious and caste minorities. It also urged Parliament to consider passing a law to combat mob hate crime.

01 Feb 2019; DW: The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF treaty, bans Russia and the United States from possessing, producing or conducting test flights of ground-launched cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,420 miles). It allows sea-based and air-delivered missiles at those ranges as well as research and development of ground-launched systems.

How did the treaty come about?

29 Jan 2019; DW: Researchers at Columbia University say they've translated brain signals directly into speech. This could help people recovering after a stroke. Ostensibly.

It was only a matter of time until we'd have scientists claiming they can read our minds. Certainly only a matter of time coming from the US, and especially the Zuckerman Institute at New York's Columbia University, which is renowned for research into neuroscience and the mechanics of the human brain.