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After promising a serious public debate on the sensitive issue of breach of citizen privacy and other risks associated with the Unique Identity (UID) project, the government has rushed headlong into it. There hasn't been a proper discussion of the risks even in the Cabinet, leave alone in Parliament or a larger public forum. The public has been stampeded into and delivered to the UID project through the device of the National Population Register (NPR), which itself piggybacks on the just-launched Census 2011 operation. The NPR data will be sent to the UID Authority of India (UIDAI), which after filtering it and weeding out duplication, will issue a 16-digit UID to each person.

Lenin is credited - some say erroneously - with using the phrase, “useful idiots”, to describe sympathizers of the Soviet Union in the West. If the Bolshevik leader did hold such an opinion, it was remarkably cynical. While acknowledging the publicity value of the bleeding heart liberals, he evidently regarded them as foolish because they were unaware of the real, dictatorial nature of a one-party communist regime.

New York: Delegates from 42 countries in Africa, which along with Asia is the most vulnerable continent to disasters, kicked off a United Nations-backed meeting in Nairobi to discuss ways to make their communities and citizens safer.

New York: The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said that its credit-based farming project in Niger has been so successful that the agency plans to scale it up and expand into Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal, which are also suffering food shortages.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today approved a ten-fold expansion of the Fund's New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) and the transformation of the Fund's premier standing credit arrangement into a more flexible and effective tool of crisis management. The NAB will be increased by SDR 333.5 billion (about US$500 billion) to SDR 367.5 billion (about US$550 billion), representing a major increase in the resources available for the Fund's lending to its members.

New York: A funding gap will keep food and medicine away from millions of needy people in Pakistan, a top United Nations aid worker said as he called for stepped-up support from the international community.

New York: Participants at the United Nations climate change talks in Bonn have agreed to intensify their negotiating schedule in hopes of reaching a strong outcome in Mexico later this year after world leaders were unable to agree on a binding treaty in Copenhagen last December.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy debunked some economic myths when he spoke to the Paris School of Economics on 12 April 2010. He covered the theory underpinning trade economics, what trade statistics show, how trade deficits should be tackled, the impact of trade on jobs, the “race to the bottom”, and why liberalization needs regulation.

New York: Tens of thousands of Indian women and their families will have access to quality maternal and child health-care services thanks to a partnership announced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a chain of small hospitals in India for low-income clients.

MANILA, Philippines - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has revised its loan charges on new LIBOR-based loans and local currency loans to sovereign borrowers or borrowers with sovereign guarantees negotiated, on, or after, 1 July 2010.