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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.

The Congress leadership is at last getting ready to face the 2014 elections. It is pulling up its socks on both fronts, the government as well as the organisational, as both need some surgery if the party intends to do a hat trick.

Director-General of WTO, Pascal Lamy, in his report on G-20 trade measures issued on 31 October 2012, said that “there has been a slowdown in the imposition of new trade restrictive measures by G-20 economies over the past five months”. However, “at a time of continuous economic difficulties, trade frictions seem to be increasing”. He urged G-20 governments “to redouble their efforts to keep their markets open, and to advance trade opening as a way to counter slowing global economic growth”.

NEW DELHI: Vindhyachal Super Thermal Power Station of NTPC, the largest power station in the country, completes 25 years of its successful operations on November 1 this year. During this period, this power station has emerged as a jewel among the NTPC plants, winning many awards and consistently ensuring steady supplies of power to a large number of states of the country like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Daman and Diu as also Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Two of the world’s largest democracies, separated by half the globe, are surely inching close to each other. An atmosphere of bonhomie and understanding marked the last meeting of the India-US Partnership in Bombay last week. The participants were comfortable with each other’s points of view, a stark contrast from the days when John Kenneth Galbraith was the American ambassador to India.

Never before has Indian media come under such heavy fire simultaneously from high-profile billionaire businessmen and powerful politicians holding high offices at the Centre and states.