Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
Stalwarts of the Congress Party as well as the most vocal in the BJP seem to have decided that public mud-slinging is the most effective way of introspecting their drubbing. Some of the squabbling forced Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi to intervene.
The Roast heated up by a few more degrees for director Karan Johar, actors Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor and the AIB comedians after the Tardeo police on Thursday registered an FIR against them on court orders.
Rajasthan has become the 5th state to have declared a swine flu epidemic with about 100 deaths estimated since the start of this calendar year, including that of a Swedish tourist. According to the Union health ministry, swine flu or H1N1 has claimed 400 between January 1 and February 10, with the total number of cases at 5,157.
Known Narendra Modi-baiter and social activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand on Thursday moved the Supreme Court and gained a day's reprieve. They were to be arrested by the Gujarat police for allegedly misappropriating funds meant for rehabilitation of 2002 post-Godhra riot victims and were denied anticipatory bail by the Gujarat High Court.
In what will be the first big test of Delhi's relationship with the Centre, the new AAP government will, within weeks of assuming power on February 14, introduce the Lokpal Bill in the assembly and revive the 'anti corruption hotline.' The last AAP government fell when ally Congress refused to pass the Bill.
Immediately after learning of divine displeasure, BJP workers shelved the inauguration of a temple dedicated to Modi in Rajkot and also removed the Modi idol from the temple on Thursday. However Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan believes that SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav still deserves his own temple.
Off The Front Page
West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in light of upcoming by-elections and civic polls in the state, donned the mantle of Traffic-Cop-in-Chief and decreed that taxi drivers had the right to turn down commuters at night and reduced fines on recalcitrant drivers to less than a tenth.
Deepak Raut, a senior clerk at the Pune District and Sessions Court, took a bribe, forged a bail order and thus let two accused of murder to walk out of jail. He then confessed to using the bribe money to pay an outstanding loan and spent the rest in a dance bar.
The Hindu notes that 'Ishan Vikas', 'Ishan Uday', 'SWAYAM', 'SAMVAY', 'Saksham', 'GIAN' and 'Udaan' are the new 'Sanskritized' names of existing schemes run by the Human Resources Development Ministry, which under Smriti Irani has frequently run into controversy for its stand on Sanskrit and educational policies.
Partymen in 'Captain' Vijayakant's DMDK party picketed and lodged a complaint at the Police Commissioner's office in Chennai that their leader had been made the butt of jokes on Facebook and other social-media platforms and all of it was the doing of the ruling AIADMK party.
A Bangalore-based industrialist and his wife have reportedly fled the country after duping the Lakshmi Vilas Bank (LVB) of Rs. 16.15 crore. The couple ran a kind of Ponzi finance firm that took land and property papers from customers and used them to take multiple loans from the bank.
Prime Minister Modi may have trumpeted his achievements of making the United Nations declare a World Yoga Day but Montana representative David Moore, traumatized after some of his constituents rode nude on bicycles through Missoula town last summer, has moved a bill banning provocative clothing, which includes the hugely popular yoga pants, a mainstay of US's $30 billion yoga industry.
About 60 students of a government-run girls' school in Odisha have left their hostel en masse after they came to know that the school's accountant allegedly clicked their nude pictures with the help of the hostel cook. The accountant has been booked by the police.
Opinion
Satyam Vishwanathan pays tribute to US commentator Jon Stewart who announced his retirement from the iconic Daily Show by saying in The Indian Express that "...Our world, rigged as it is in favour of the rich and powerful, will be a poorer place without his beautiful mind to make sense of it..."
In The Hindu, Ramaswamy Iyer lambasts the committee set up to review environment laws for having produced a "...hasty, half-baked, inadequately thought-through report..."
Shiv Vishwanathan says in the Times of India that Delhi's election results reveals that people vote not merely for material interests but also for how parties project their moral rectitude in the run up.