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New Delhi: India has assured that it will not allow a situation where the global prices of life-saving drugs would shoot up. It would continue to supply innovative, adaptable and affordable life-saving technologies to Africa.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is to help thousands of poor households in remote mountainous areas of Nepal gain more income from the production and sale of valuable agricultural produce.

KOLKATA: There is something unique about the high-stakes in West Bengal Assembly elections in 2011: the process of political polarisation has now extended from the political arena to the media and the intelligentsia.

KOLKATA: When the Trinamool Congress in Assam announced that it would field candidates in all the 126 constituencies in the next month’s Assembly elections (even the Congress is contesting 118 seats only) everyone sat up in surprise. Here was a party without an organization, without a band of workers, without even a known State-level leader – far less a charismatic leader like Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal - that was trying to be a big player. A random survey in Guwahati showed that the voters did not know who the party’s leader was. Asked about the party’s prospects, a respondent’s instant reaction was: “It would be surprising if all their candidates do not forfeit their security deposits.”

In the world of convergence, mergers and acquisitions are commonplace, but there also has to be legal compliance attached to any M&A. This has become quite clear in a recent case involving a series of seemingly harmless sales of assets from one company to another that has now turned into an ever-changing rollercoaster ride for two of the world’s biggest telecommunications players.

New York: The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Timor-Leste on Sunday handed over policing duties to the country's national force, which will be fully responsible for maintaining law and order nationwide beginning tomorrow.

KOLKATA: According to conventional wisdom, the uglier a pre-poll campaign between the ruling party/coalition and the opposition, greater is the possibility of a power shift.

Why should anyone, leave alone the Prime Minister or for that matter the head of the government of a country, resign from the job on the basis of some private and confidential third-party wire-chats, involving foreign governments, diplomats, military brass or secret agents and their local recruits? Such cable-talks are not only unauthorized, but also officially unclaimed. They can’t be easily substantiated before a court of law. Some of the correspondences tracked are dated as well referring to not-so-recent events or situations. This makes WikiLeaks appear more like interesting gossips or sometimes as ‘weak leaks’ for those involved.

LUCKNOW: Is Chief Minister Mayawati going ahead with early assembly polls to take advantage of divided opposition? This is the question now uppermost in the minds of the opposition leaders as all the parties are gearing up for preparing for the assembly elections next year.

The assembly elections in Kerala, known as God’s own country is interesting this time because for the first time, the division in the CPI-M is glaring. Although there were rumblings in the party in the 2006 polls, the fight is in the open between the chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan and the state party chief P. Vijayan. It had reached to such heights that the party leadership went to the extent of denying a ticket to the chief minister. The 87-year old Achuthanandan was given a ticket after a dramatic turn of events. The party state committee, which decided not to give a ticket to the chief minister, had to reverse its decision after the intervention of the Politburo, which took note of the revolt in the party. Realising a possible electoral devastation in the absence of the chief minister with a clean image, the party was forced to field him.