As tears roll down her cheeks Sintamani Shankar (25) stares blankly into the picture of her six-year-old son, Pannerselvam. ”It is all that is left of him. The tsunami took him. But there is nothing, not even a picture of my daughter left for me to remember.”
The escalators proved as much a novelty as the hi-tech underground trains on Sunday as tens of thousands of joy-riders crammed Delhi’s new metro line connecting key transport hubs with the main business district. Though it officially opened on Saturday, the public had to wait a day before being allowed on the 6,3km ”yellow line”.
Over the next decade, two million children will die, 40-million people will be without safe drinking water, and five million children will be forced out of school if current trends continue in 14 countries across Asia and the Pacific that are among the world’s least developed, a United Nations report said on Friday.
SABMiller, one of the world’s largest breweries, announced on Tuesday it will invest more than -million in India’s booming beer market over the next five years.
The South African enterprise, listed on the London and Johannesburg stock markets, aims to increase its share of the Indian market from 10% to 25%.
Indian Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav is beaming after a doll in his likeness has been snapped up from toy stores in the state of Bihar where he will soon contest elections. The plump doll, called Lalooji, sports a mop of white hair and is clothed in the politician’s trademark white kurta pajamyas.
India’s outgoing cricket coach John Wright may not have renewed his contract because he was humiliated by players under his command, Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar claimed on Monday. ”He was told off and sworn at by some players”, Gavaskar wrote in his widely syndicated column.
Former Australian captain Greg Chappell was on Friday named India’s new cricket coach and entrusted with the task of masterminding the country’s campaign at the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies. ”Greg spoke his mind, but he knew what he was talking about. He bowled me over,” a member of the selection panel said.
A former politician in southern India has launched a ”rent-a-crowd” company to recruit people to cheer at party rallies and said he has been deluged by would-be recruits, a report on Friday said. Indian political parties are known for paying people to show up for rallies, often transporting them in fleets of buses.
At least 37 members of a wedding party died and another 25 were injured on Tuesday when their bus plunged down a gorge in a mountainous area of northern India, police said. The overcrowded bus skidded off a winding road and hurtled down the gorge in Rudraprayag district in the state of Uttaranchal.
An Indian company has developed a mobile personal computer that weighs 500g, uses a flexible keyboard that can be rolled up and costs just 10 000 rupees (), reports said on Wednesday. The Mobilis has all the essential features of a PC such as word processing, e-mail, web browser, spreadsheets and personal information manager.
United States PC giant Dell announced on Friday that its Indian subsidiary will employ 10 000 people by year-end and will continue to expand thanks to a cheap and skilled local talent pool. Bangalore, home to more than 1 500 technology firms, exports more than a third of India’s software.
European Aircraft giant Airbus Industrie has cried foul over state-run Air India’s decision to buy 50 Boeing jets, saying it was denied a chance to show off its new A380 superjumbo. Airbus urged the Indian government to order a new tender after Air India approved on Tuesday the purchase of up to 50 Boeing planes worth -billion.
Ace Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar on Wednesday reacted strongly to criticism that he had become a pale shadow of his former attacking self, saying his aim was to serve the team, not to please everybody. Tendulkar, the fourth-highest scorer with 10 134 runs in 123 Tests with 34 centuries, has recently been under fire for shedding much of his flamboyance, a hallmark of his batting.
Rebels demanding the introduction of a medieval script in India’s Manipur state torched a repository of hundreds and thousands of priceless books, police said on Thursday. A group of rebels stormed the federal library in the state capital on Wednesday and set it alight by pouring gasoline on racks of literature, some of it up to two centuries old.
A discharge of water from a dam swept away scores of Hindu pilgrims while they were praying on the banks of the Narmada River in central India, leaving at least 53 dead, senior officials said. About 25 000 people had gathered on the banks of the Narmada at Dharaji to offer prayers during a two-day festival that started on Thursday.
A girl in eastern India has been married to a dog in a bid to ward off tigers, a report said on Thursday. The tribal wedding took place to the beating of drums in a slum on the outskirts of Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar, the Press Trust of India news agency said quoting witnesses.
An animal rights group on Tuesday called for an investigation into the deaths of four sea lions, 10 dogs and seven cats belonging to Russia’s state circus that burned to death in a fire in India. ”We are going to court to ensure that there is an inquiry,” said Anuradha Sawhney of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
If you own an elephant and don’t know how to keep it happy, you could learn a few lessons from Parbati Barua, Asia’s only female mahout (elephant handler).
Did you know that elephants have a ”sour tooth”, with a particular liking for tamarind? Or that they enjoy a daily, hour-long massage, preferably in a circular motion with a pumice stone?
Tax authorities in southern India have found a new way to handle tax evaders: sending teams of traditional drummers to pound away noisily outside their homes or shops until they pay up. Tax officials in Andhra Pradesh state’s Rajahmundry city said on Thursday they have recovered three-quarters of the money owed by people there
Rumours that a witch has been visiting homes in parts of Delhi and is behind several deaths are creating a scare in the Indian capital, it was reported on Friday. So strong are the rumours in Sagarpur and adjoining areas of outer Delhi that a woman ringing a doorbell and asking for an onion runs the risk of being lynched.
The yellow spice turmeric has shown potential as a weapon against malaria, HIV and the virus that triggers cervical cancer, according to reports on <i>SciDev.Net</i>, the Science and Development Network website. The latest findings are of significance to developing countries where malaria and HIV are serious public health concerns.
Calls to strip Zimbabwe of Test status may finally have taken the pressure off Bangladesh, who yearn to gain respect as a cricket team. Long the wooden spooners of Test cricket, Bangladesh may have just turned the corner, leaving Zimbabwe to fill their shoes as the most pitiable team in the world.
Pakistan cricket captain Inzamam-ul-Haq may be banking on the ”passion and enthusiasm” of his young team to tame India in their own backyard, but he requires more than just that to taste success on the arduous tour. India had not lost at home in four years until Australia ruined their impressive record last season with a 2-1 victory.
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/ 24 February 2005
At least two police officers were killed on Thursday when heavily armed militants raided the administrative headquarters of Indian Kashmir, trapping about 250 civilians who were later freed by the security forces, officials said. A paramilitary officer said ”two or more” militants had sneaked into the fortified complex of government buildings.
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/ 10 February 2005
Six people, including four children, were killed in three separate avalanches in Indian Kashmir on Thursday as thousands of motorists remained stranded on a highway due to heavy snowfall, police said. The Indian air force has started dropping food packets to more than 3Â 000 people stranded on a 50km stretch of highway.
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/ 26 January 2005
Scattered garlands, strewn bangles, covered bodies and charred tea stalls and shops in western India bore mute testimony on Wednesday to a stampede that crushed at least 257 Hindu devotees on a temple pilgrimage — nearly a month after tsunamis smashed into southern Indian coastal areas, killing close to 11 000
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/ 25 January 2005
Scores of Indian pilgrims, mainly women and children, were killed in a stampede at a temple in the western state of Maharashtra on Tuesday. Conservative estimates put the death toll between 25 and 40, with another 80 to 100 injured, witnesses and officials said. Witnesses said the stampede was triggered by a fire caused by a short circuit.
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/ 22 December 2004
A poor man in eastern India who fed a flame of hay for more than five decades to mark the 1947 independence of India from the British died in his thatched hut on Tuesday, relatives said. Paduram Mahanta (83) was cremated by one of his sons in their village, Dipila Kamargaon, 75km from Guwahati, the main city of Assam state.
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/ 20 December 2004
India’s capital made tracks into the future on Sunday when its first underground trains began to run. Designed to cut pollution and improve life for 14-million people crowded into the traffic-choked capital, the Delhi metro has been running an 18-stop overground service since March.
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/ 19 December 2004
India’s textile and garment makers are cranking up capacity ahead of the lifting of global import quotas at the end of this year as they seek to cash in on a market in which the sky will be the limit. India is expected to be one of the winners of the phasing out of three-decade-old rules that have curbed exports of textiles and clothing from poor nations.
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/ 14 December 2004
At least 38 people died on Tuesday when two trains collided in northern India, officials said, revising downwards a previous death toll of 50. Rescue workers used gas-powered cutters to reach passengers trapped inside in the trains, and authorities appealed to villagers to donate blood. At least four carriages were badly damaged in the collision.
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/ 24 November 2004
The next decade will see nations scrambling to build outposts on the moon with each adapting different strategies to use it as a base to explore space, according to scientists attending a conference on lunar exploration. The United States welcomes competition while the Europeans and other national space programs favour a cooperative robotic village lunar base, they said.