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MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is extending a $122 million grant to expand and modernize Tajikistan's electricity transmission system, which will help it boost energy trading with neighboring countries to meet winter shortages.

One of the most urgent and vexing problems in the developing world, more so in India, is how to finance and provide health care for more than a billion persons, most of whom are impoverished or belong to low income group. In most Asian countries, health care is financed by out-of-pocket (OOP) payments by individuals. These expenditures result in jeopardizing an equitable health system in developing countries. In the absence of financial risk pooling, the poor have to meet the costs of health care from their own pocket, pushing them further down the abyss.

When the UPA government won the trial of strength on July 22, 2008, after the Left deserted the alliance, prime minister Manmohan Singh had famously said: 'I am liberated.' Ten months later the main ruling party had further humbled his former tormentors by winning the 2009 elections with impressive gains. The PM's personal triumph was so stunning that many of those parties that had contested against the UPA unilaterally announced their support to the UPA. This had made a confident PM to boldly setting forth his government's policies. This was the time when the UPA's PM seemed acting as a prime minister.

BHOPAL: The provisions of the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act are not being properly implemented in Madhya Pradesh.

Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have commended the authorities for their sound fundamentals and forceful countercyclical policies, which helped Malaysia emerge from the global downturn with a strong forward momentum. A broad-based recovery is underway and policies are returning to more normal settings. The challenge now is to make progress toward the authorities' target of economic growth and structural transformation.

New York: United Nations independent human rights experts have urged the repeal of all laws discriminating against people affected by leprosy, which has been eliminated as a public health problem in most countries but still carries a strong social stigma.

Guess who is complaining about the fiscal dominance of the monetary policy. Duvvuri Subbarao is not the only Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor to be unhappy about the interference of the North Block, the home of the union finance ministry, in the central bank's exercise of the monetary policy making powers to control inflation. Several of his predecessors in RBI had felt the same way but could do little to ensure independence of the central bank in fixing interest rates and control the inflow of private equity (PE) and excessive unaccounted foreign funds in the stock market from dubious sources through circuitous routes creating additional pressure on money supply.

KOLKATA: It is time that senior UPA Ministers like Mr. P. Chidambaram or Mr. Pranab Mukherjee start calling a spade a spade: the sooner they concede that the Trinamool Congress has close links with the CPI (Maoist) party, the better it would be for the image of the Congress (I).

New York: The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that Madagascar is at risk of a crop-eating locust plague, potentially jeopardizing the livelihoods of 460,000 rural families.

Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have commended the authorities of Latvia for undertaking difficult fiscal and financial sector reforms, which have helped stabilize the economy and contributed to a rebound after last year's deep recession. Although near-term vulnerabilities have declined substantially, the recovery is still fragile and significant medium-term challenges remain toward the goal of euro adoption. Directors underscored the importance of sustained fiscal adjustment, restoration of financial sector health, and continued structural reforms aimed at reorienting growth toward the tradable sector, boosting employment and competitiveness, and improving the business environment.