India may be frustrated and even outwitted by Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks.
The Czech Republic took first honours at the Olympics on Saturday, and China also won an early gold to cap a dazzling opening ceremony.
Doves flew and confetti rained down as the Olympic torch was carried along the ancient Great Wall on a misty Thursday morning.
This is supposed to be India’s century, but the dangers of complacency have been starkly underlined with inflation hitting a 13-year high.
Schoolchildren in Bhutan are warned — one word of disrespect against their teacher, and they will be reborn as a dog, for the next 500 lives. Respect for authority is inculcated from an early age in the secluded Himalayan kingdom, where the king is revered as a Buddha and democracy seemed almost an experiment too far.
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/ 20 February 2008
Young girls and their mothers huddle under shawls in the central reservation of one of Patna’s main streets, picking through trash for grimy metal scraps that might earn them 20 rupees (sh,50) a day. Buses and auto-rickshaws belt out black fumes beside them on the congested, muddy street and dogs pick through huge piles of garbage by the roadside as men urinate at their side.
Ranbir Rai Handa was just 14 years old when he was pitched into the madness of partition, forced to flee his hometown of Lahore on a train bound from newly independent Pakistan to India. What he saw when he arrived in Amritsar on August 14 1947 still keeps him awake at night.
In the inner sanctum of the ancient white-walled fortress, dozens of red-robed monks prayed by the light of butter lamps, as the incense swirled. A handful of Western tourists self-consciously shuffled in. With a deep throaty mumble, the older monks recited the ancient Buddhist scriptures laid out before them on the wooden floorboards, interrupted only by a blast on long trumpets.
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/ 12 January 2007
They had already been dubbed ”diabolical maniacs” by the Indian media and written off as too hot to handle by many lawyers, even before they were charged. So hardly anyone objected when wealthy businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surender Koli were injected with a controversial ”truth serum” this week by police investigating the gruesome murder of at least 17 children and women.
UGANDAN President Yoweri Museveni is headed to almost certain victory in the country’s presidential elections, but with his main challenger charging vast cheating during Monday’s poll. With provisional results in from less than one third of the 214 constituencies, Museveni had 71% of the vote with his rival Kizza Besigye on 23.5%, according to a […]