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New Delhi: India and Russia are expected to sign some new agreements in science and technology, energy efficiency and standards during the visit of the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to Russia, but an agreement on this issue is unlikely to be signed as both the sides are still finalizing the techno-commercial feasibility.

KOLKATA: India started supplying power to Bangladesh from the 5th of this month. A 98-km dedicated transmission line has been set up between Baharampur in Murshidabad district of West Bengal and Bheramara in Bangladesh. Initially 250 MW of power will be supplied. By the end of the year it is expected to be stepped up to 500 MW. But there is a provision in the Indo-Bangladesh agreement on power to expand the capacity of this grid substation to 1000 MW.

The ending of the 16-day US Federal Shutdown, which disrupted normal life of citizens, under a eleventh hour bi-partisan agreement, which also removed the threat of default on America’s debt, can only be a temporary respite as more political battles are ahead when Democrats and Republicans begin the tough negotiations over the budget for 2014 with deficit cuts and tax reform claiming equal attention. The Treasury now gets the borrowing authority until the ceiling is revisited by Congress in February next.

The upcoming five state elections are generating an unusual interest from an unlikely quarter comprising stock, commodity and financial markets and domestic cum foreign investors. Among the popular topics discussed in most business get-togethers these days are the possible results of elections in the five Indian states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Delhi, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram – and, also, if the governance and corruption issues will override other local and national concerns, including communal divide, to garner votes by rival political parties. Even international media has been commenting on the possible impact of next month’s state election results on the country and economy.

Is the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) above law? By public belief, no one is. All laws, enacted by people’s representatives in a legislature, must find their root in the Constitution which is the supreme. CBI is not above the Constitution. But, its operational style over the years under political tutelage provides ample evidence of illegality and arbitrariness bordering on disrespect to the Constitution in dealing with sensitive cases, especially when it comes to shield, protect and promote the interest of the agency’s ultimate political masters. It uses character assassination and image destruction of the parties it is asked to investigate on as major tools to frame them, which often fail to stand the scrutiny of the law of the land in the end.

In the last one week, we have had two disasters – the cyclone in Orissa and the temple stampede in Madhya Pradesh. One was natural while the other was manmade. Why was tackling Phailin a success and the temple tragedy killing more than a hundred a disaster? How did Orissa get it right while MP did not? In fact, both the Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan have been heading stable governments for about a decade and are perceived as able men leading their states.

New Delhi: India and Hungary decided to hike the corpus of the joint strategic research fund for innovation in science and technology. Both the countries will provide two million euros annually.

New Delhi: In an effort to thwart the growing rate of cyber attacks in the country’s vital establishments, the public sector R&D institution in IT and electronics, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) signed an agreement with the US-based private sector Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for setting up of a Center of Excellence in Domain Name System Security in India.

New Delhi: India for the first time will display an array its latest indigenously developed state-of-the-art weapon systems at an international exhibition.

A novel kind of protest has begun in the United States from last Friday (October 11). Tear-out petitions are being printed in leading US national newspapers, namely, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal urging the partially closed US government to re-open, meet its loan dues and other obligations and pass a budget by the end of the year. The same petition copy will be available on all stores of Starbucks Coffee shops throughout the country, as well as online at Starbucks website, for citizens to sign. These will then be delivered to the US government.