• Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida,  has announced that they would invest 5 trillion Yen ($42 billion) in India over the next five years. This translates into `3.2 lakh crore. He was in India for the 14th India Japan Annual Summit, which was held after a gap of three and half years.
• Besides the major investment that Japan is making, PM Kishida raised the issue of Ukraine during his interaction with PM Modi. He said that India and Japan should work towards enabling a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict with a peaceful resolution. This can be possible through dialogue.
• This is PM Kishida’s first bilateral foreign visit after he assumed office, last year. PM Modi expressed optimism of the economic tie-up between the two countries.
• India-Japan are working as ‘One team-One Project’ on Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail,” Prime Minister Modi said.
• In 2014 after PM Modi became PM, Japan was his first official visit to a foreign country. After this India-Japan became strategic partners. This year also happens to be the 70th anniversary of the establishment of India and Japan’s diplomatic relations which began in 1952.

• Former Union Minister Sharad Yadav on March 20  merged his Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) led by fo Lalu Prasad Yadav. After announcing the merger of the two parties, Sharad Yadav said that the move is the "first step towards the formation of) a united Opposition".
• Sharad Yadav had formed the LJD in 2018 after parting his ways from Janata Dal (United) over the party's alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The LJD never fought elections since its inception while its chief Sharad Yadav lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Madhepura on the RJD ticket.
• Sharad Yadav was the Cabinet Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee led NDA government at the Centre.
• The two leaders, incidentally, have come together after a gap of 25 years. They had parted ways in 1997 when Lalu Prasad Yadav had founded the RJD and Sharad Yadav along with Nitish Kumar launched the JDU.
• Lalu Prasad Yadav was later convicted in the fodder scam. He rode the "Mandal" politics bandwagon in the 1990s to dominate Bihar politics, besides playing a key role in national politics. After the LJD-RJD merger, the RJD is likely to nominate Sharad Yadav to the Rajya Sabha during biennial polls for the Upper House slated for June.

• N Biren Singh will continue as the chief minister of Manipur. With this, the week-long suspense on who will occupy the hot seat ended. Singh's name as the CM was announced by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman after a closed-door meeting with all BJP MLAs of the state.
• Sitharaman and Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju were sent to the state as the BJP’s central observer and co-observer respectively.
• Singh and senior leader Thongam Biswajit were the frontrunners for the post.
• Their names were doing the rounds for the past one week. They visited Delhi twice on being summoned by the party’s central leadership and held discussions with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president JP Nadda and party stalwart BL Santhosh.
• The BJP had a stunning performance under Singh, winning 32 of the 60 seats in the Assembly elections

• Sri Lanka cancelled exams for millions of school students as the country ran out of printing paper with Colombo short on dollars to finance imports.
• Education authorities said the term tests, scheduled a week from March 21, were postponed indefinitely due to an acute paper shortage as Sri Lanka contends with its worst financial crisis since independence in 1948.
• Official sources said the move could effectively hold up tests for around two thirds of the country's 4.5 million students. Term tests are part of a continuous assessment process to decide if students are promoted to the next grade at the end of the year.
• A debilitating economic crisis brought on by a shortage of foreign exchange reserves to finance essential imports, has seen the country run low on food, fuel and pharmaceuticals. The cash-strapped South Asian nation of 22 million announced this week that it will seek an IMF bailout to resolve its worsening foreign debt crisis and shore up external reserves.
• The International Monetary Fund  has confirmed it was considering President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's surprise request to discuss a bailout. Around $6.9 billion of Colombo's debt needs to be serviced this year but its foreign currency reserves stood at about $2.3 billion at the end of February.
• Long queues have formed across the country for groceries and oil with the government instituting rolling electricity blackouts and rationing of milk powder, sugar, lentils and rice. Sri Lanka earlier this year asked China, one of its main creditors, to help put off debt payments but there has been no official response yet from Beijing.

The Taliban will allow girls to return to class when high schools open on March 22, ending the uncertainty over whether the Islamic group would allow full access to education for girls.

Since the Taliban took control of the country in mid-August last year, it had barred girls from going to schools across Afghanistan.

Heather Barr, former senior Afghanistan researcher, at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said opening girls' secondary schools is hugely important.

Since taking power, the Taliban have rolled back women's rights in virtually every area, including crushing women's freedom of movement.

The vast majority of girls' secondary schools are closed. Universities recently reopened, with new gender segregation rules. But many women are unable to return, in part because the career they studied for is off limits now as the Taliban banned women from most jobs.

Allowing girls into schools and other educational institutes has been one of the main demands of the international community.

The majority of countries have refused to formally recognise the Taliban amid worries over their treatment of girls and women. and other human rights issues.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres  has welcomed the plan announced by the Taliban to reopen schools for girls and boys next week.

The Taliban  has claimed that the Islamic Emirate has fulfilled commitments for international recognition.

Taliban's acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi said that the Islamic Emirate is inclusive and has fulfilled all the requirements and it should be recognized by the international community.

• Yemen’s Houthi rebels unleashed a barrage of drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia early  on March 20  that targeted a liquified natural gas plant, water desalination plant, oil facility and power station.
• The attacks did not cause casualties, the Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen said, but damaged civilian vehicles and homes in the area. The salvo marked the latest escalation in Houthi cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia as peace talks remain stalled and the conflict that over seven years has laid waste to much of Yemen rages on.
• The attacks also came as Saudi Arabia's state-backed oil giant Aramco announced that its profits surged 124% in 2021 to $110 billion, a big jump fueled by renewed anxieties about global supply shortages, soaring oil prices and a recovery in fuel demand from the pandemic.
• Aramco, also known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., released its earnings report on the heels of weeks of intense volatility in energy markets triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Punitive sanctions on Russia, among the world’s largest exporters of crude and petroleum products, have added to turmoil to an already-tight energy market.
• The international oil benchmark Brent crude hovered over $107 after nearly touching a peak of $140 earlier this month. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have so far resisted Western appeals to increase oil production to offset the loss of Russian oil as gasoline prices skyrocket.

• Despite being the second largest coal producer in the world, India in 2021-22 (till January) imported around 173.32 million tonnes of coal.
• As per the coal directory 2020-21, India is the second largest importer, and it mainly imports coal from Indonesia, Australia, South Africa and USA. The country has imported 215.25 million tonnes in 2020-21, 248.54 million tonnes in 2019-20 and 235.35 million tonnes in 2018-19.
• "India is Importing as well as Exporting coal from/ to other countries. Major countries from where the coal is being imported are Indonesia, Australia, South Africa & USA. In comparison to imports, the export of coal from India is meagre. Indian coal is mainly exported to Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan," said the coal minister Prahlad Joshi in Parliament.
• This year, the government is trying to bring down its coal imports substantially. The reason is a sharp increase in international coal prices and increase in domestic production. This fiscal 2022-23, the government expects to cut the import of coal (coking and non-coking) by around 35-40 million tonnes (mt) and it is likely to be close to 180-190 mt in FY-22, as compared with 214.99 mt in FY-21.
• In October 2021, the country faced a major coal crisis, raising concern about a possible electricity shortage in the country. The coal stock at the power plants depleted to 7.2 Million Tonnes (MT) as on 8th October, 2021.
• The government blamed it on increased demand of power, less power generation by imported coal based power plants and some interruption in supply of coal due to heavy rains. Subsequently with increased coal supplies, the coal stock has started increasing and has now reached 26.5 MT as on 9 March with respect to the plants based on domestic coal.  

• India added 1.2 GW of new solar open access capacity in 2021, marking a growth of 222% year-over-year (YoY), according to a Mercom India report.  The cumulative installed solar capacity in the open access market crossed 5 GW. The country added 298 MW of new solar open access capacity in the fourth quarter (Q4) of calendar year 2021, a 75% increase compared to the same period in 2020.
• Solar power through Open Access is an arrangement where a power producer establishes a solar power plant and signs a medium/long-term power purchase agreement with a consumer. The top five states with the highest QoQ growth are Telangana (329%), Karnataka (102%), Andhra Pradesh (88%), Maharashtra (52%), and Uttar Pradesh (4%).
• The report mentioned that the development pipeline of solar open access projects stood at 1.5 GW at the end of 2021. Of the pipeline, 75% is spread across the three states~ Karnataka, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.