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MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The Government of Norway will provide an $850,000 technical assistance (TA) grant to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help Myanmar update its 1984 Electricity Law so that it reflects current international standards, and creates the right conditions for establishing an electricity regulator, expanding rural electrification, and promoting off-grid solutions.

Even as prospects seemingly brightened for India to displace Thailand as world’s top rice exporter, forcing some furious economic adjustments by the Thai authorities, Myanmar has announced plans to reclaim its earlier domination as a major producer.

If there were a Ministry of Love Affairs, I would happily put Shashi Tharoor in charge of it. Because unlike Indian diplomacy and its elephantine lovemaking, Tharoor’s love often fetches immediate results. His art of rhetorical persuasion, his glib talking, do more than just befriend you to him, especially if you belong to Delhi’s political super elite, or Mumbai’s glamour and public relations world, or if you want to come across as suave and polished. Being seen with Shashi Tharoor might be your passport to manufacturing instant pedigree and inject some blue blood of class into your system.

Poll in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat are not ordinary elections for they will set the tone for the battle of hustling in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi next year scheduled to be held at almost the same time. Himachal Pradesh may be a small state with only 68 seats but the debate there has come to represent larger issues—the use of land, forests, infrastructure, employment etc.

KOLKATA: With the commissioning of the long awaited Palatana thermal power project in south Tripura, a joint initiative of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the State government, the energy scenario has improved in the Northeast region.

If former petroleum minister Jaipal Reddy’s note to Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati as to how the gas production from the KG Basin by Reliance Industries (RIL) has been choked to create a supply crisis to extort higher price is true, the opposition can’t be blamed for calling it an outright blackmail - holding the entire nation to ransom. Reddy was opposed to the RIL demand as it meant a loss of US$ 6.2 billion (about Rs. 35,000 crore) in government revenue.

The funny thing, but also the grand thing, about New York is that it somehow manages to live perennially on the brink of catastrophe, tiptoeing on the thread of its threshold limits, its capacity to absorb disasters and calamities, prepared beforehand by nothing other than the spate of Hollywood films that convert the Big Apple to a post-apocalyptic setting at the drop of a hat.