The inflation in India, the second most populous country in the world after China, has reached a thirteen year high at 12.4% which has raised alarm bells in the Government quarters. The government is indeed really worried since the high inflation is expected to badly impact its poor finances and it may not be able to come back to power in the ensuing general elections unless something drastically happens in the next few months.

Russian government has formally accepted the rebel territories within Georgia country and this has irked the European Union and the US really badly. The European Union is said to be reviewing the option of slapping sanctions against Russia for its blatant act. Russia seems to be little bothered about this, since it feels that the EU has little head room due to its high dependence on it for their Gas requirements.

The Indo-US civilian nuclear deal was cleared by the Indian Parliament only after a heated debate and charges of corruption in buying out MPs by the ruling coalition partners. Now the deal is likely to be delayed because the Nuclear Suppliers Group of countries which heared the Indian side of the story in the last two days, has insisted that there has to be more inclusions in the draft agreements to approve the agreement. This might put both US and India in an embarassing position, since US government has only few months left out, and so is the case with India.

Georgia acceded defeat silently by pulling out its troops out of the trouble Ossetia town, but reports say that Russian troops are still advancing to the nearest towns with a view to oust the Georgian President who is a staunch supporter of US. The ousting of the President will send strong message to all other erstwhile Soviet Union member countries around Russia to come under indirect control of Russia sooner than later.

The military conflict between Russia and its neighbor Georgia is on for the last few days with severe aerial bombing witnessed in the last two days. Also with more Russian land troops barging into Georgian city there is over 2000 casualties reported by media. There are reports emanating today that Georgia is voluntarily pulling out its troops out of the troubled town.

The controversial Indo-US civilian nuclear deal is coming up for approval by the NSG group of nations. With US , Russia and China backing the deal, experts are feeling that the NSG group approval is only a formality. While most of the Indian public are of the opinion that the deal is not favorable to India, and in fact it is tilted towards US , the IAEA and NSG group experts feel that there is too much in favor of India.

Crude oil prices went up by around two dollars to around 125 dollars yesterday, due to militant attack in Nigeria disrupting supplies, and also due to reports that Iran is going full speed with its nuclear program. The Iran issue is set to come up for discussion in the UN forum this week and experts feel that the confrontation between Iran and US is expected to flare up in weeks to come. And this is expected to have a big impact on the oil prices.

The congress party lead Indian Government scraped through the confidence voting in their Parliament this week, with lot of fighting and behind the screen scams reported widely among the media. The congress party which became minority government, with the supporting left parties withdrawing support two weeks back, did a tremendous job in cobbling up the support of many interested smaller parties and Members of parliament to win the confidence vote.

Crude oil continued to slide yesterday also with the price touching 125 dollars, nearly 2 dollars down from previous close, due to the hurricane in the gulf of mexico changing course for the good. Also the waning demand from US , the largest consumer in the world, aided by increase in their inventory , resulted in downward pressure on crude oil prices. This is expected to start moving upward from next week, once the Iran tension mounts when UN council meets for sanctions.

The talks between US and Iran on nuclear research, has proved to be inconclusive with Iran saying that it will not be able to stop its research of Nuclear energy at its plants. With this, the western world has provided Iran with two weeks time to confirm to UN on stopping its nuclear ambitions, failing which UN committee will meet to decide on sanctions on Iran.