US REVIVAL WILL START WITH MEN SAYS SOUTH AFRICAN EVANGELIST, ANGUS BUCHAN

He spoke to 10,000 men at the second Mighty Men Conference at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. (Port Elizabeth, South Africa)—"Faith Like Potatoes" South African evangelist Angus Buchan says he has a hope to see "total revival" in the United States "starting with the men and spreading to the family, communities, and nation as a whole." Buchan arrived back in South Africa this week after speaking to more than 10,000 men at the second Mighty Men Conference (MMC) USA at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday night, November 17. A few months before he addressed a similar-sized gathering of men at the first MMMC USA at the Murphy Centre at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. He said that God sent men from every corner of the USA to Bridgestone Arena for the latest MMC USA event. "We have already started receiving very encouraging reports of changed lives and we are so grateful to the Lord Jesus for what He is doing. As John Wesley said, the definition of revival is ‘a people saturated with God'. Having experienced the MMC phenomenon in South Africa, we know this is the same Spirit, excitement and Holiness, we felt here." After hearing God tell him to mentor men, Buchan launched the MMC on his farm, Shalom, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in 2004. Forty men attended the first event but the numbers of men increased exponentially each year, and there were more than 400 000 men at the 7th and final MMC on his farm in 2010. An inspiring film, "Faith Like Potatoes," was made about Buchan's MMC journey in South Africa. US country music legend Charlie Daniels and singer Scotty McCreery, an "American Idol" winner, performed at the Nashville MMC USA, which was organized by Pastors G. Allen Jackson and Phillip Jackson from World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro. G. Allen Jackson, who also addressed the men, invited Buchan to speak at the first MMC USA after he and Buchan met as invited speakers at the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, Israel, in 2011 and realized they shared a vision of impacting men through the truth of Scripture. While the Mighty Men movement is for men only, South African women are generally big MMC fans because they see that it leads to positive change in their men. Echoing this sentiment, a US woman, Jayme Akins, posted this on the Mighty Men USA Facebook page: "I am not a mighty man but I love the mighty men organization. Because of the conference in Nashville Sunday night I have my husband back! I told him I had a feeling he'd get his breakthrough there and my intuition was right! I also told others there would be breakthrough and miracles there they smiled politely like I was crazy … My husband was the one going through the divorce or pondering it, waiting on Gods answer, well he got it. DON'T DO IT! "This organization is amazing and I'm thankful for it. It's natural to see women praise, we do it easier but to see men praise that's beautiful, it's more intimate if that makes sense. You get to see these big tough guys humble themselves to Someone greater. So from a woman I wanted to say thank you!" Buchan said that besides speaking at the MMC USA, other highlights of his latest ministry trip to the USA were speaking at the World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro on Saturday, November 27 and Sunday, November 28, and visiting the 80 000 capacity Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, Texas, where he and G. Allen Jackson prayed over the stadium. "By faith, we are believing one day to book the stadium [Cowboys] for Jesus," said Buchan. Asked about his priorities for this season, Buchan said: "To spend more time with the Lord Jesus. To spend more time with my family. To go only where the Lord Jesus directs us, namely the USA and Israel at the moment."

EVANGELIST ANDREW PALAU JOINS WITH 500 CHURCHES IN ETHIOPIA

"This festival brought everybody together. Everybody wanted to discuss the heart behind Love Ethiopia. It played a significant role in bringing unity at top leadership levels." (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) In the heart of one of Africa's most influential cities, world evangelist Andrew Palau and 500 Ethiopian churches joined together in a significant effort to foster unity and love, and reach out with the Good News through Love Ethiopia, October 26 through November 17, 2013. The campaign visited the nation's seven largest cities with the clear message of Jesus Christ. It included more than 17 partner evangelists, 120 short-term missionaries, more than 70 para-church organizations, and thousands of local volunteers in 175 events. From outreach events in local prisons to a private meeting with the newly-appointed president of the nation, the campaign reached every level of society and touched more than 250,000 people, with many thousands responding to the clear Gospel message presented by Andrew Palau and dozens of others. Andrew's Biblical messages of hope rang out to tens of thousands of people on the closing weekend of the festival, forming a potent capstone to the three-week-long campaign involving many evangelistic opportunities. Many in the crowd on Saturday were clad in Ethiopian soccer jerseys, proudly sporting the nation's colors – all in hopeful anticipation of the World Cup qualifier match set to be held later that night. Yet none of them budged from the festival site as Palau shared an impassioned message about the reality of Heaven and Hell and the possibility of a lasting and eternal hope. He told stories of men and women who had died with the assurance of Heaven, offering the same assurance to the crowd. "Our brother Andrew is a real evangelist," said Reverend Alemu Shetta, General Secretary of the Ethiopian Evangelical Churches Fellowship. "He is preaching the Gospel to the fullest, in its simplicity. Everybody could understand it." The campaign in Ethiopia was the latest for Palau – part of a 10-year campaign to join with believers throughout Africa and share the Good News of Jesus Christ. And the impact has not gone unnoticed. "I want to thank you for all that Love Ethiopia with Andrew Palau is doing in the area of social services and in presenting a positive message to the young people of Ethiopia," said Ethiopia's President Mulatu Teshome. "You have my support." The festival in Addis Ababa opened with a program for children with evangelist Doug Horley from the UK, BMX demonstrations from Dirt Brothers, Vic Murphy and Jon Andrus, and music led by Chicago-based Salem Baptist Choir, Don Moen, and Dave Lubben, as well as local musical guests Dawit Getachew, Sami Tesfamichael, Tseat Choir, and Tesfaye Gabbiso. Throughout the festival, opportunities to pray and accept the Lord were given numerous times. "This plan and shared vision will meet the great need of this generation," shared Reverend Hiruy Tsige. "The youth are bewildered." Palau has a special love for Ethiopia as he and his wife adopted their daughter from Addis Ababa five years ago. It was their experience in the city that clarified the Lord's call for them and inspired Palau's vision to serve with the Church in 10 capital cities of Africa for 10 subsequent years. Yet, Palau's specific vision for Ethiopia was greater than just the festival in Addis Ababa. After an official invitation from leaders representing 76 denominations in Addis Ababa, Palau shared a proposal that would help unify the entire country and reach every level of society with the Good News of Jesus Christ. He shared his vision with several partner evangelists from the Luis Palau Association's Next Generation Alliance, many of whom were excited to join in the effort. In the weeks prior to the festival more than 17 evangelists led outreaches in seven of the largest cities in Ethiopia. They involved the leadership of Keith Cook, Alan Greene, Blair Carlson, Richard Hamlet, and Reid Saunders. "This festival brought everybody together," said Zelalem Abebe, Love Ethiopia's Festival Director and General Secretary of the Evangelical Students' and Graduates Union of Ethiopia. "Everybody wanted to discuss the heart behind Love Ethiopia. It played a significant role in bringing unity at top leadership levels." The effort in Addis Ababa also involved the participation of more than 200 short-term missionaries from the United States, the United Kingdom, and surrounding nations. They volunteered as mission team members in the week prior to the festival, working alongside local believers, doctors, and medical professionals to serve more than 11,000 people through clinics distributing free eyeglasses, leading outreaches through soccer clinics and BMX demonstrations, and visiting schools, orphanages, and prisons. Working with the Luis Palau Association, local churches and leaders have spent several months building a follow-up and discipleship strategy for every new believer, including the vital partnership and official launch of ALPHA Africa. At present, the Palau team is finalizing preparations for a Christmas outreach in China and evangelistic festivals in Alaska with both Luis and Andrew Palau as the evangelists.

SCIENTISTS FIND MELATONIN, AMONG OTHER THINGS, CONTROLS WEIGHT

Among the health benefits of taking low doses of melatonin on a nightly basis have been improved sleep [and] better resistance to viral infections. It is clearly associated with the aging process." -Nutrition Review (Spain)—In the Journal of Pineal Research, scientists from the University of Granada Institute for Neuroscience, the Hospital Carlos III, Madrid, and the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio (USA) have revealed, for the first time, the previously unknown enigma of why melatonin has metabolic benefits in treating diabetes and hyperlipidemia. In earlier publications, the researchers analyzed the effects of melatonin on obesity, dyslipidemia, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes mellitus associated with obesity in young obese diabetic Zucker rats—an experimental model of metabolic syndrome. In view of their most recent results, it seems the key lies in the fact that chronic melatonin consumption not only induces the appearance of 'beige fat' in obese diabetic rats, but also increases its presence in thin animals used as a control group. 'Beige fat' cells are found in scattered lentil-sized deposits beneath the inguinal skin in obese diabetic Zucker rats. Melatonin is a natural hormone segregated by the human body itself and melatonin levels generally increase in the dark at night. It is also found in small quantities in fruit and vegetables like mustard, Goji berries, almonds, sunflower seeds, cardamom, fennel, coriander and cherries. These findings, together with the pharmacologically safe profile of melatonin, mean it is a potentially useful tool both in its own right and to complement the treatment of obesity. Sleeping in the dark and consuming these foodstuffs could help control weight gain and prevent cardiovascular diseases associated with obesity and dyslipidemia. The study—coordinated by University of Granada lecturer Ahmad Agil—showed that chronic administration of melatonin sensitizes the thermogenic effect of exposure to cold, heightens the thermogenic effect of exercise and, therefore, constitutes excellent therapy against obesity. The fact is that one of the key differences between 'beige fat', which appears when administering melatonin, and 'white fat', is that 'beige fat' cell mitochondria express levels of UCP1 protein, responsible for burning calories and generating heat. The study—authored by Aroa Jiménez-Aranda, Gumersindo Fernández-Vázquez, Daniel Campos, Mohamed Tassi, Lourdes Velasco-Perez, Tx Tan, Russel J. Reiter and Ahmad Agil—has been part-financed and supported by the Granada Research of Excellence Initiative on BioHealth (GREIB), the University of Granada Vice-Rectorate for Scientific Policy and Research, and the regional government of Andalusia research group CTS-109. Given the importance of this discovery, the researchers are confident they will obtain the funding needed to continue their work—says principle researcher Ahmad Agil—"and be able to achieve their final objective: to confirm these findings in humans, by administering melatonin to help combat obesity and diabetes."

Christians killed in attack on wedding in Egypt

Four Christians have been killed in an attack on a church as a wedding was taking place in the city of Giza in Egypt. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports that the dead were all guests at the wedding and include the mother of the groom, Camilia Attiya, 56, and two children, eight-year-old Mariam Ashraf and 12-year-old Miriam Nabil. The other victim was 45-year-old Samir Fahmy. They were killed when masked gunman opened fire as wedding guests were leaving the Coptic Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary in Warraq al-Hadar, Giza, on Sunday. The gunman was riding a motorcycle at the time and fired indiscriminately before driving away from the scene. Sources confirmed to Christian Solidarity Worldwide that 18 people were injured in the attack. According to Father Thomas Daoud Ibrahim, priest of the Warraq church, three wedding services had been taking place at the time of the attack. Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, there has been a wave of violence against the Coptic community following the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi. Copts have been victims of attacks by Muslim Brotherhood supporters who accuse them of colluding in Morsi's removal. Senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood have also called for retribution against Copts. The Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya and the Salafi Nour Party are among the Islamist groups that have condemned the attack and denied any involvement. Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said the attack was a "cowardly criminal act", while Al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb called it "a criminal attack against religion and morals". Mervyn Thomas, Chief Executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide said: "While the expressions of condolences from all sectors of Egyptian society are encouraging, we continue to urge adequate and timely protection for the Coptic community and Coptic gatherings in order to prevent such tragedies from occurring. "Moreover, the culture of hate speech and impunity in which such attacks occur must also be addressed in order to ensure the emergence of a society in which all Egyptians can flourish, regardless of their religion or political affiliation."

Bajrang Dal pressure villagers in INDIA to leave Christianity

For much of the year, Christians in the central India village of Taragaon have been enduring pressure to abandon their religion. In April, elements of Bajrang Dal demolished the church in Taragaon, a small town in the farming- and forestry-dominated region of southern Chhattisgarh state. Bajrang Dal is the militant youth wing of the Hindu nationalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or VHP. Bajrang Dal goals include preventing "fraudulent or forceful conversion" of Hindus to any other religion. Their church destroyed, the Christians of Taragaon moved their worship meetings into the homes of believers. The Bajrang Dal followed them. On September 22, Mitko Kashyap, 60, was confronted by her nephew for attending a house worship service. He hit her multiple times, she said, as she refused to deny her faith. Ultimately, he struck her on the head with a rock, causing injuries that required hospitalisation. "Kashyap's daughter-in-law was also attacked by the same man, but she managed to escape," said a staff member for Open Doors International, a ministry that provides support to Christians who are pressured because of their faith. Police initially declined to register a complaint against the attacker, calling the incident a family matter, according to Open Doors. They registered the complaint after hospital management summoned police to the hospital to see Kashyap's condition. No arrests have been made. Early this month, members of Bajrang Dal have been parading Hindu idols by the houses of Christian believers. Using loudspeakers, they ordered the Christians to come out of their homes to worship the idol, according to Open Doors. "They are threatening us that they will drag each one out of our homes, beat us and kill us if we did not come out of our homes ourselves," the ministry quoted a village resident as saying. "In this atmosphere of fear and pressure, we do not know whom to turn to for help," the resident said. "The police are biased and do nothing to protect the Christians."

Altar in Shiloh Found in Israel

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL (Worthy News)– A stone altar dating from the Iron Age was accidentally discovered near the remains of an ancient wall during a dig in Judea, according to the Unity Coalition for Israel.

Apparently the altar was moved from its original location in Tel Shiloh; its discovery is the first physical evidence that Shiloh had served as a religious center prior to the First Temple period. Archaeologists had thought that after the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant in battle that they went on to completely destroy Shiloh and its Jewish settlement. But the altar’s discovery now suggests that a Jewish presence there had still remained. According to the Book of Samuel, the Ark was pressed into service by Israel to help turn the tide of battle, but instead the Philistines prevailed, killing thousands of Israelites — including the sons of the high priest — and capturing the Ark as well. However, every enemy city the Ark was taken to experienced problems, so after seven months of plagues, the Philistines finally decided to return their troublesome trophy — along with a guilt offering — to the Israelites at Beth Shemesh. According to biblical commentator Hans Hertzberg, the return of the Ark revealed that the Jewish God whom the Philistines thought they had defeated was in fact the real victor: even when His people were beaten by the armies of their enemies, Yahweh still remained Lord of all.

Eritrean Government Imprisons 150 Christians for Praying Together

ASMARA, ERITREA (Worthy News)– Eritrean security forces recently raided yet another prayer meeting, arresting about 150 Christians in a suburb of Asmara, the African nation's capital, according to Religion Today. The Christians — members of an underground fellowship known as "Living God" — reportedly met to pray about Eritrea's refugee crisis and other national concerns. "Living God" is part of a network of underground fellowships that sprang up in Eritrea after 2002 when the government banned all religious groups with the exception of three state-sanctioned denominations: the Eritrean Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church and the Lutheran-affiliated Evangelical Church of Eritrea. All of the Pentecostal and independent evangelical groups that had established missions in Eritrea were excluded, according to The Christians.com. In August, Eritrean authorities also arrested 30 members of the Church of the Living God when they gathered for prayer in the Kushet suburb of Asmara.

Nigeria: Muslim Herdsmen Slaughter Christians

ABUJA, NIGERIA (Worthy News)– Muslim herdsmen are suspected to have slaughtered Christians like cattle in coordinated attacks on four Plateau state villages in central Nigeria early Tuesday morning, according to Morning Star News. In their attacks on the predominantly Christian villages, ethnic Fulani herdsmen killed 37 and injured many more, according to a press release by Special Task Force spokesman Salisu Mustapha. Mustapha also confirmed the identity of the attackers by phone to Morning Star while his forces were still fighting them. Church leaders suspect that Islamic extremists are inciting Fulani Muslims to attack Christians in Plateau state as well as in Kaduna, Bauchi, Nasarawa and Benue states. The herdsmen are working together to take Christian lands for grazing their cattle and to expand Islamic influence into predominantly Christian regions. Felicia Anselem, spokesperson for the Plateau State Command of the Nigeria Police, confirmed that the attacks were coordinated. “The attacks were carried out at about 1 a.m. this morning (Nov. 26) in the villages of Rawuru, Tasu, Foron and Gurabok. The attackers attacked the villages at the same time, having gone there in groups.” The Rev. Soja Bewarang, president of the Church of Christ in Nigeria, said Christians are acutely aware that God has the final say on the persecution the church is now facing in Nigeria. “Even as we are looking at these issues, we need not forget that God has the final say on man and his security concerns,” he said. “Therefore, we must always surrender our security concerns to the Lord, because the Watchman watches in vain if the Lord does not watch alongside with him.”

Climate Change, Extreme Weather Link Becoming More Apparent

OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are finding evidence that man-made climate change has raised the risks of individual weather events, such as floods or heatwaves, marking a big step towards pinpointing local costs and ways to adapt to freak conditions.

"We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of events," said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change.

Experts have long blamed a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions for raising worldwide temperatures and causing desertification, floods, droughts, heatwaves, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.

But until recently they have said that naturally very hot, wet, cold, dry or windy weather might explain any single extreme event, like the current drought in the United States or a rare melt of ice in Greenland in July.

But for some extremes, that is now changing.

A study this month, for instance, showed that greenhouse gas emissions had raised the chances of the severe heatwave in Texas in 2011 and unusual heat in Britain in late 2011. Other studies of extremes are under way.

Growing evidence that the dice are loaded towards ever more severe local weather may make it easier for experts to explain global warming to the public, pin down costs and guide investments in everything from roads to flood defenses.

"One of the ironies of climate change is that we have more papers published on the costs of climate change in 2100 than we have published on the costs today. I think that is ridiculous," said Myles Allen, head of climate research at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.

"We can't (work out current costs) without being able to make the link to extreme weather," he said. "And once you've worked out how much it costs that raises the question of who is going to pay."

Industrialized nations agree they should take the lead in cutting emissions since they have burnt fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases, since the Industrial Revolution. But they oppose the idea of liability for damage.

Almost 200 nations have agreed to work out a new deal by the end of 2015 to combat climate change, after repeated setbacks. China, the United States and India are now the top national emitters of greenhouse gases.

Field, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at the University of Stanford, said that the goal was to carry out studies of extreme weather events almost immediately after they happen, helping expose the risks.

"Everybody who needs to make decisions about the future - things like building codes, infrastructure planning, insurance - can take advantage of the fact that the risks are changing but we have a lot of influence over what those risks are."

FLOODS

Another report last year indicated that floods 12 years ago in Britain - among the countries most easily studied because of it has long records - were made more likely by warming. And climate shifts also reduced the risks of flooding in 2001.

Previously, the European heatwave of 2003 that killed perhaps 70,000 people was the only extreme where scientists had discerned a human fingerprint. In 2004, they said that global warming had at least doubled the risks of such unusual heat.

The new statistical reviews are difficult because they have to tease out the impact of greenhouse gases from natural variations, such as periodic El Nino warmings of the Pacific, sun-dimming volcanic dust or shifts in the sun's output.

So far, extreme heat is the easiest to link to global warming after a research initiative led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Meteorological Office.

"Heatwaves are easier to attribute than heavy rainfall, and drought is very difficult given evidence for large droughts in the past," said Gabriele Hegerl of the University of Edinburgh.

Scientists often liken climate change to loading dice to get more sixes, or a baseball player on steroids who hits more home runs. That is now going to the local from the global scale.

Field said climate science would always include doubt since weather is chaotic. It is not as certain as physics, where scientists could this month express 99.999 percent certainty they had detected the Higgs boson elementary particle.

"This new attribution science is showing the power of our understanding, but it also illustrates where the limits are," he said.

A report by Field's U.N. group last year showed that more weather extremes that can be linked to greenhouse warming, such as the number of high temperature extremes and the fact that the rising fraction of rainfall falls in downpours.

But scientists warn against going too far in blaming climate change for extreme events.

Unprecedented floods in Thailand last year, for instance, that caused $45 billion in damage according to a World Bank estimate, were caused by people hemming in rivers and raising water levels rather than by climate change, a study showed.

"We have to be a bit cautious about blaming it all on climate change," Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said of extremes in 2012.

Taken together, many extremes are a sign of overall change.

"If you look all over the world, we have a great disastrous drought in North America ... you have the same situation in the Mediterranean... If you look at all the extremes together you can say that these are indicators of global warming," said Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengabe, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Northern & Eastern Power Grid Blackout

India hit by second day of power cuts

A massive power breakdown has hit India for a second day running, leaving more than half the country without power.

Officials said the northern and eastern grids had both collapsed. All Delhi metro services have been halted and staffs are trying to evacuate trains.

Monday's power failure caused severe disruption and travel chaos across northern India.

It was unclear why the grid collapsed but reports said some states may have been using more power than authorized.

Power officials managed to restore the northern grid by Monday evening, but at 01:05pm (0735 GMT) on Tuesday, the grid collapsed again.

The eastern grid failed around the same time, officials said.

"Both the northern and eastern grids have collapsed. Please allow us to address the problem," AFP news agency quoted VK Agrawal, the general manager of the northern grid, as saying.

The two grids together serve more than half of India's 1.2bn people.

The breakdown has hit a large swathe of the country including Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan states in the north and West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand in the east.

An official in Orissa said the blackout in the eastern grid had been triggered by a fault and could take several hours to resolve.

Correspondents say India faces a chronic power deficit and unless there is a huge investment in the power sector, the country will see many more power failures.

India’s worst power-grid failure in a decade exposed the urgency behind Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s bid to attract $400 billion in investment and ease an electricity deficit that is holding back economic growth.

Seven states that are home to more than 360 million people were plunged into darkness early yesterday as power networks collapsed, possibly after too many provinces simultaneously purchased electricity beyond their scheduled allowance, Power Grid Corp.

(PWGR) of India Chairman R.N. Nayak told reporters. It took about 15 hours for 80 percent of services to be resumed.

The blackout “was a fairly large breakdown that exposed major technical faults in India’s grid system,” Subhranshu Patnaik, a Gurgaon-based senior director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt., said yesterday. “If this were a simple demand-supply problem, the grid operator would have intervened to strike a balance. Something went terribly wrong which caused the backup safety systems to fail.”

Businesses and households across much of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Rajasthan states had to turn to generators, while services on New Delhi’s metro and Indian railways were suspended for several hours.

Traffic signals failed, jamming roads for morning commuters.

“Power supply has been restored to all states and the situation is near normal now,” Power Grid’s projects director, I.S. Jha, said by phone yesterday. “We will have complete normalcy once thermal plants resume complete generation.” Jha said Power Grid, the world’s largest transmission utility by capacity, had brought electricity from the eastern and western regions to reconnect services.

$400 Billion

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is seeking to secure $400 billion of investment in the power industry in the next five years as he targets an additional 76,000 megawatts in generation by 2017. India has missed every annual target to add electricity production capacity since 1951.

Power cuts are common across swathes of India as the country battles an average 9 percent shortfall in meeting peak power demand that the government says shaves about 1.2 percentage points off annual economic growth. The affected states are responsible for about 37 percent of electricity consumption, according to the Central Electricity Authority.

“This again highlights how poor infrastructure remains the biggest drag on the Indian economy,” said D.H. Pai Panandiker, president of RPG Foundation, an economic policy group based in New Delhi. “The power sector remains too over-regulated. Unless private companies are allowed greater involvement, the problems are going to remain.”

Inflation Driver

Improving infrastructure, which the World Economic Forum says is a major obstacle to doing business in India, is among the toughest challenges facing Singh as he bids to revive expansion in Asia’s third-largest economy that slid to a nine- year low of 5.3 percent in the first quarter.

Tussles over policy making with allies in the ruling coalition, corruption allegations and defeats in regional elections have weakened Singh’s government since late 2010.

The Reserve Bank of India has blamed infrastructure bottlenecks for contributing to the nation’s price pressures. Most analysts forecast the central bank will refrain from cutting rates in today’s monetary policy decision. Indian consumer-price inflation was 10.02 percent in June, the fastest among the Group of 20 major economies, while the benchmark wholesale-price measure is more than 7 percent.

The grid failure occurred at 2:32 a.m. local time yesterday, Nayak told reporters. Nayak will lead a government committee to investigate the cause of the disruption and will report in 15 days, Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said.

Trains Halted

The failure is “a prime example of India’s infrastructure not being up to the mark,” said Mumbai-based analyst Rohit Singh at IDBI Capital Markets Services Ltd. “India needs to get to the point where one failure to the grid doesn’t take down an entire region. That should be the goal.”

About 150 trains were delayed across northern India, according to Neeraj Sharma, spokesman for the region. New Delhi’s airport didn’t have to cancel any flights as it switched to back-up power supplies, spokesman Kapil Sabharwal said.

Yesterday’s outage was India’s biggest power failure since 2001 when the same northern grid collapsed leaving homes and businesses without electricity for 12 hours. The Confederation of Indian Industry, the country’s largest association of companies, estimated that blackout cost companies $107.5 million.

Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. (IOCL)’s refineries in north India were unaffected by the outage as they have their own power stations and distribution lines, refineries director R.K. Ghosh said by telephone. Indian Oil, the nation’s biggest refiner, has crude processing plants in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh states in north India.

Reactors Trip

Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd.’s five units in Rajasthan tripped this morning after the outage, G. Nageswara Rao, director of operations, said.

It will take up to 36 hours to restore the units, Rao said in a phone interview from Gujarat, adding that the company’s two units in Narora in Uttar Pradesh were working after they faced some disturbance earlier.

“We need to find out exactly what happened so that we can make India’s grid safer and more secure,” Gopal Saxena, chief executive officer at BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd., a unit of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. (RELI) that supplies western and southern parts of the capital with electricity, said in an interview.

“When one or two states draw too much power at the same time, the grid breaches its transaction frequency, which is what may have happened,” said Power Grid’s Nayak.