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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.

There is well known proverb – people in glass houses should not throw stones at others. The United States and the European Union should bear this in mind before pointing fingers to India’s food subsidy and public stockholding of food meant to feed millions of hungry mouths.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: October 8, 2013 would go down as a Red Letter Day in the history of Kerala’s trade union movement. The memorable Tuesday saw the trade unions in the State scoring a significant victory when the Kerala High Court set aside a State Government order exempting the BrahMos Aerospace Thiruvananthapuram Limited (BATL) from the provisions of the Kerala Registration of Trade Unions Act.

When Arvind Kejriwal launched Aam Aadmi Party to join electoral politics, people took him lightly. When he announced that his party would fight Delhi Assembly Elections, most of the political analysts were of the view that he would only spoil the chances of BJP and facilitate the victory of Congress by splitting anti Congress votes. Congress leaders were happy over it and BJP leaders were feeling threatened by the presence of Aam Aadmi Party.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has succeeded, as expected, in scuttling the odious ordinance, which would have negated a recent Supreme Court judgment and enabled lawmakers to hold on to their seats despite being sentenced to jail for two years or more. It took the union cabinet mere five minutes to withdraw the ordinance.

For the world’s finance ministers gathered in Washington to tone up the global economy’s recovery, it was a bizarre spectacle of the Federal Government in shut-down for two weeks with a more alarming threat of a potential default of US debt that a sharply divided Congress posed. The Obama Administration had sought raising by October 17 the debt ceiling earlier set at 16.7 trillion dollars.

Even if the Congress did not initially want it, there is every possibility that next year’s general election will see a direct confrontation between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. The reason for the Congress’s earlier disinclination to field the heir apparent in a straight fight was never wholly clear – unless Rahul was deemed too diffident - just as there is no plausible explanation about why the perception has changed even if there hasn’t been any formal announcement.

Country’s weathermen deserve a pat for the timely forecast of the severe Phailin hurricane that could save the lives of thousands of people. The official weather forecaster, India Meteorological Department (IMD) took the wise decision for exchange of information and cooperation with the agencies in different countries.

The India-ASEAN summit in Brunei (October 9-10) usher a better future for India’s shift from west to east. While the west is grappling to revive their growth, ASEAN is gung-ho on growth trend. The summit attached significance in bolstering India-ASEAN economic relation as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh committed to sign a free trade agreement in services and investment by the end of 2013. India has FTA with ASEAN on goods, which is operative from January 1st, 2010.