-The Telegraph   Team Anna will start its campaign in the five poll-bound states from Saturday, almost two weeks ahead of the earlier plan it had announced. The group said it would not ask voters to back or oppose any particular party but make them aware of every party’s stand on the Lokpal bill. Team Anna had earlier said it would start its campaign from February 3 in Uttar Pradesh. Its tour plan now...

-The Economist   Opposition to the world’s biggest biometric identity scheme is growing FOR a country that fails to meet its most basic challenges—feeding the hungry, piping clean water, fixing roads—it seems incredible that India is rapidly building the world’s biggest, most advanced, biometric database of personal identities. Launched in 2010, under a genial ex-tycoon, Nandan Nilekani, the “unique identity” (UID) scheme is supposed to roll out trustworthy, unduplicated identity numbers based on...

-The United Nations   With no registered polio cases over the past year, India is on course to becoming free of the disease, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) reported today. If all pending samples for the virus test negative, India – once regarded as the world’s epicentre for polio – will become free of the disease for the first time in its history, reducing the number of polio-endemic countries to three:...

—PTI With Law Minister Salman Khursheed raking up a controversy over “administrative control” of the Election Commission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured the poll body that the government was committed to upholding its functional autonomy guaranteed under the Constitution. Mr. Khursheed said in a TV interview that the Law Ministry had control over the Election Commission, prompting Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi to write to the Prime Minister on December 29,...

-PTI The United Nations and leading world organizations celebrated India’s first polio free year and termed it as a major milestone in their fight against this dreaded disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan, termed it as the “greatest public health achievement” of India, the Bill Gates, of Bill and Milinda Gates Foundation described it as a major milestone in the global fight against polio. “This is a major milestone in...