The short answer is: somewhat positive.

The longer, but still broad-brush, answer starts from noting that two important documents have been issued in the last few days: the In-depth reviews following the so called AMR (Alert Mechanism Report) from the European Commission and the World Economic Outlook from the IMF. It is useful to look at these two documents from a specific perspective, namely to find elements to answer the question whether the balance between good and bad news about the euro area is positive or negative. Equivalently, one can use the information and the assessments they provide to conclude how the healing process from the euro area crisis is progressing. An assessment in the same vein, concentrating on the growth problem in the euro-area, is offered by the recent Bruegel Policy Brief by Zsolt Darvas, Jean Pisani-Ferry and Guntram B. Wolff.

Let´s follow the scorpion approach - in cauda venenum - and begin with the good news.

What is the status of the situation in Syria?

Syria's civil war continues unabated in early 2013 amid an enduring international deadlock over how to mediate the two-year-old conflict that has killed more than sixty thousand people and displaced some seven hundred thousand more, according to the United Nations. In recent weeks, the United States and its allies have expressed heightened concern over allegations of chemical weapons being used in clashes near Aleppo. If such use is confirmed, President Obama has said it would represent a "game-changer" in U.S. involvement in the civil war. The unrest has also proved a magnet for global jihadists, including al-Qaeda-linked groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, fighting for the establishment of an Islamist state.

In his presidential campaign in 1928, Herbert Hoover promised to help impoverished farmers by increasing tariffs on agricultural products; after the election, he also asked Congress to reduce tariffs on industrial goods. In April 1929, well before Black Thursday, U.S. Representative Reed Smoot, a Republican from Utah, introduced a bill that passed the House in May. The bill increased agricultural and industrial tariffs at levels that had not been seen for a century. This was a relatively benign beginning of what would become one of the most tragic policy measures of the 1930s. Within a few months of the bill being passed in the Senate as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, other countries in response raised their own trade barriers, which started a vicious circle of contracting world trade flows and economic activity, and rising unemployment from 1930 to 1933.

It is impossible to say whether the recent threats from North Korea constitute a clear and immediate danger or whether the strong threats are just bluster in order to extract food aid and technical assistance from the international community. 

Sometimes, it seems that all stories now connect to Qatar. Last week, it was David Beckham signing for the super-rich club Paris Saint-Germain, owned by the Qatar Investment Authority. Earlier last month, it was revealed that al-Jazeera, the hugely powerful Qatari broadcaster, was launching in America, where it was once known as "terror TV". Why has this tiny Gulf state – the richest country in the world per capita, largely thanks to natural gas – become so active, so attention-grabbing?

Based on its regular economic and monetary analyses, the Governing Council decided at its meeting on 7 February to keep the key ECB interest rates unchanged.

TOKYO – While the world focuses on the gathering of cardinals in Rome to choose a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, a similar conclave is underway in Tokyo to choose the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) next governor. And, as with the deliberations at the Vatican, politics, not doctrinal debate, is underpinning the decision-making process in Japan.

MEXICO CITY – For a glimpse of the average American’s understanding of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, one only has to watch the critically acclaimed television series Breaking Bad. Set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a few hundred miles from the border, the series chronicles the rise and fall of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a methamphetamine tycoon.