View Articles

LUCKNOW: The political environment in Uttar Pradesh is now surcharged with the possibility of the Chief Minister Mayawati calling for assembly elections much before the scheduled time in May 2012. High level BSP sources indicated that the CM is seriously considering the option of early dissolution of the state assembly and holding of elections in the early part of 2012.

One need not take the verdicts of the credit rating agencies too seriously. Quite often, their judgements have been opportunistic in a situation when things have already gone bad. Most often, they fall way behind developments as it happened during the early phases of global financial meltdown when all credit rating agencies were gleefully unaware of the wretched net value of large amounts of derivative and other products held by banks and financial institutions.

Sonia Gandhi’s written instructions before leaving for United States to undergo a surgery for an undisclosed ailment that four leaders including Rahul Gandhi will look after party affairs in her absence signals a transition in which her son will play a dominant role in running the affairs of the party. Happily she underwent surgery successfully at New York’s Sloan-Kettering hospital but she is likely to remain out of action for quite sometime. Her stay may be more than two or three weeks in New York, she needs time for recuperation even after return to Delhi. Congress insiders’ guess is that she may be fit enough in six months time to resume her full responsibilities as the Congress president.

The dramatic announcement on Friday by the Standard & Poor’s downgrading the triple AAA rating of the world’s largest economy has led to a fresh global turmoil with the threat of another recession in the United States becoming real. Global stocks were already in deep plunge before the S&P decision and now the embattled US economy is sure to increase the woes of the euro zone sovereign debt crisis further.

New Delhi: India has described the recent downgrading of US economy by the global credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) as a “grave situation,” while the apex industry body, FICCI has said the US situation coupled with the trouble in the Euro Zone, slowdown in manufacturing and services sectors in China and contraction of Japanese economy would adversely impact India’s exports earnings.

New York: As thousands of desperately malnourished children from famine-wracked Somalia pour into United Nations refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, small sachets of a peanut-based paste are often all that stands between them and almost certain death.

New York: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, as a “City of Literature” in recognition of its efforts to preserve, disseminate and promote its rich literary heritage.

KOLKATA: Two Union ministries – of Home and Defence – are currently engaged in a turf war. Who would police the highly-sensitive Indo-Myanmar border – the Assam Rifles, or the Border Security Force (BSF)? The Assam Rifles, under the operational command of the Army, has been doing this job all through. But now the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) wants the Assam Rifles replaced by the Border Security Force which is under Home. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) is believed to be now seized of the matter.

Democratically speaking, how truly legitimate was West Bengal’s Left Front government and the composition of the party positions in the state legislature considering the fast changing political mood of the local people in 2010? A similar question may be asked also about Tamil Nadu before the 2011 Assembly election. In both the states, the ruling combination – Left Front in West Bengal and DMK and its allies in Tamil Nadu – were routed in the last assembly polls.

New Delhi: The Indian Government’s auditors have sharply indicted the Prime Minister’s Office and the Delhi Government headed by Sheila Dikshit for irregularities in hosting the XIX Commonwealth Games-2010 which involved thousand of crores rupees paid by the taxpayers.