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This is a very bad case of déjà vu. It’s all the more horrible because an entire country seems to have accepted gun massacres as mundane and routine occurrence. America is becoming a serial mourner of a nation; it’s lamenting the loss of lives oh so theatrically. Their president is choking on his own (genuine) tears, as the shell-shocked parents put their little ones to their final sleep, knowing that no lullaby can wake their darlings up ever again.

The European Commission has sanctified an agreement among finance ministers of the 27-nation EU for placing some 200 large and systemically important banks under a single supervisory body under the European Central Bank. Under the new dispensation and rules, the larger European banks and eventually all banks in Europe, will have to work under same rules and regulations. This thus paves way to banking integration of the continent.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. It seems life is never easy for those who become Chief Ministers of West Bengal. After the late Ajoy Mukherjee, now it is the turn of Ms. Mamata Banerjee to declare her utter helplessness as the ruling Chief Minister.

The Reserve Bank of India, in its mid-quarter policy review, as 2012 winds down, has left all key rates of interest unchanged but provides a clear indication of a shift to easing policy to support growth, if current pace of moderation in inflation is maintained going into 2013. A tangible move in this regard is likely in RBI’s Third Quarter Policy Review on January 29.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Factionalism in the Congress in Kerala is set to acquire a sharper dimension with Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s rejection of the demand from K Muraleedharan, MLA, for action against the police officers who probed the infamous ISRO espionage case.

It has taken the prime minister eight years to admit that preference for “outdated ideologies” has been stalling the reforms. What Manmohan Singh left unsaid, however, is that this choice has been a regressive feature of his party’s policies ever since the reforms were introduced in 1991. Right from that period, the belief in the Congress was that the abandonment of Nehruvian socialism for the sake of market-oriented “pro-rich” policies was a mistake and was responsible for its 1996 defeat.

Largely unnoticed by the media and her political opponents, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee has introduced a new idiom to Indian politics. The name of her latest game: how to check inner party dissidence at public expense!

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh is on fire, thanks to the bitter fight amongst major political parties on the issue of promotion quota for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in view of 204 Lok Sabha polls.