-The Telegraph   Union law minister Salman Khurshid today said the Lokpal will be a constitutional authority and that this will not delay the bill. “Is it going to delay Lokpal’s creation? My answer is no, there will be no delay and we will work hard to ensure there’s no delay. We cannot say with absolute certainty that it will be passed in Parliament at this time, on this day,” Khurshid said, but...

Nandan Nilekani led Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has hit a Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) roadblock. The government had refused to make unique number or Aadhaar mandatory for making wage payment to people enrolled under the world’s largest social security scheme unless all residents are covered. The reason given was that MGNREGA is a universal scheme and anyone can demand work. Unless all resident in a district have...

-BBC   There has been a fall of nearly 40% in the number of deaths from malaria worldwide in the past decade, the World Health Organization says. A new report said that one-third of the 108 countries where malaria was endemic were on course to eradicate the disease within 10 years. Experts said if targets continued to be met, a further three million lives could be saved by 2015. Malaria has been eradicated from three...

-Express News Service   Two prominent members of Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption have dissociated themselves from the group in protest against its overt flirtation with politics, as seen during the Lok Sabha bypoll in Hisar.   Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh, who earned fame working on water conservation in villages in Rajasthan, and P V Rajagopal, a tribal and land rights activist, have decided to quit the core committee, the 26-member panel which...

Kashmir, which India considers as the core of its unity in diversity, is turning out to be the Great Divider of the activists. Medha Patkar, one of the flag-bearers of the activist armada in the country, today termed Kashmir an integral part of India, leaving a section of her supporters embarrassed and fuming. Patkar, who is also associated with Team Anna whose key member Prashant Bhushan was last week roughed up for...