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KOLKATA: Mamata Banerjee took office as Chief Minister on May 20. A hundred days is too short a time to draw up a balance sheet of achievements and failures of a new government. Even so, some preliminary assessments can be made. For one thing, the immense fund of goodwill with which Mamata Banerjee came to power, heading an alliance of the Trinamool Congress and the Congress, still remains intact. She had promised that on coming power, her first two jobs would be to arrive at an amicable settlement of the Maoist problem in the jangalmahal area and the Darjeeling Gorkhas’ demand for a separate State.

KOLKATA: Ms Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal, is completing her first one hundred days in power on August 27.

LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samaj Party, the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh is fast losing its appeal to the masses and this is having its adverse impact on the legislators of the BSP on the eve of the assembly elections scheduled for early next year. BSP supremo and the chief minister Mayawati is deeply worried as her assurance to the party legislators about renomination is having little effect in preventing desertions.

England’s worst rioting in decades has ended, but not without leaving London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and other cities scarred and large numbers of people shellshocked at the intensity of the violent confrontation between the police and angry youth. The rioting, in particular, the looting of supermarkets and shops, has provoked angry condemnations.

Anna Hazare’s crusade against corruption has evoked massive response particularly from middle class youth who have hit the street demanding enactment of Team Anna’s Jan Lok Pal Bill. The issue has raised questions like: Will even a strong Jan Lok Pal as suggested by Team Anna be able to eradicate corruption? Can corruption at higher levels be contained without systemic reforms especially to ensure quicker justice delivery? and, Will the Jan Lok Pal be able to provide relief to the Aam Aadmi who has to pay bribe for getting even petty jobs done in government offices?

Notwithstanding faint signs of thaw on both the government’s and civil society’s sides, several disconcerting features of Anna Hazare’s campaign have become apparent. One of them is the arrogance which marks the behaviour of his supporters. Nowhere is this bellicosity more obvious than in cyberspace where they vent their anger against their opponents in abusive language.

SINGAPORE – Asia’s policymakers must take decisive steps to generate high quality, productive jobs if the region is to sustain and broaden the benefits of its economic expansion of the past two decades, says an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report published today.

New York: The International Criminal Court (ICC) today welcomed Grenada as a new State party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the tribunal, three months after the Caribbean nation deposited its instrument of accession to the accord, becoming the 115th signatory.

New York: The United States must do more to protect women from domestic violence after a regional body found it wanting in defending a battered woman and her three murdered children from her ex-husband, an independent United Nations human rights expert warned today.

New York: The United Nations has deployed an emergency team to south-eastern Ethiopia where 18,000 new refugees fleeing drought, famine and conflict in Somalia have recently poured in, compounding a situation already fraught with high mortality from malnutrition and measles.