Twelve months ago the economists were predicting that 2014 would be the Year of Recovery. One year later nobody seriously maintains that vain illusion. The bourgeois economists do not understand the crisis and have no solution. It is a case of the blind leading the blind. Alan Woods analyses the state of the world economy at the dawn of the New Year.

We publish here an article by Jorge Martin, written at the end of 2014, which analyses the latest developments in the case of the disappeared Ayotzinapa students. Over three months after the police attack on teacher training students in Guerrero, Mexico, details have emerged that cast even more doubts on the official version of events and the level of complicity of the state in the affair.

The United States has admitted that its attempt to bully Cuba into submission had failed. This should be seen as a victory for the Cuban Revolution and its resilience against the relentless onslaught of the most powerful imperialist power. However, US imperialism has not given up on its aims: the restoration of the rule of private property and the destruction of the gains of the revolution; it has just changed the means to achieve the same result.