Heavy overnight rains hit the western Indian city of Mumbai, disrupting relief work in monsoon floods that have already claimed more than 1 200 lives nationwide. Schools, colleges and educational institutions were closed as incessant rains since Sunday evening threw life out of gear in Mumbai.
Workers began a massive clean-up and rescuers searched for survivors under mountains of debris in western India after record monsoon rains claimed 920 lives, officials said on Saturday. Mumbai received 944,2mm of rainfall in a one-day period ending mid-morning on Wednesday.
Intense clashes between troops and Islamic militants holed up in the heart of Indian Kashmir’s summer capital of Srinagar continued into Saturday, leaving dozens of civilians trapped, police said. The fighting, which started on Friday, has left two security-force personnel dead and 20 others injured.
The number of people killed in record monsoon rains in west India climbed to almost 900 on Friday after a stampede sparked by rumours of a burst dam in a Mumbai township and a landslide in a village, police said. ”We are now confirming that the number of dead in Mumbai is 370,” said AN Roy, police chief of the western commercial hub.
At least 245 people have died in landslides and building collapses in western India following the heaviest rains recorded to date in the country, a government minister and police said on Thursday. Meanwhile, 351 workers were rescued from a blazing Indian offshore oil platform but at least 10 people died, a minister said on Thursday.
A major fire was raging on Wednesday at an offshore oil drilling platform in the Arabian Sea owned by India’s state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, the country’s oil minister said. He said as many as 200 to 300 people could have been working on the platform.
At least 99 people were reported killed and more than 100 trapped as India’s worst day of rainfall on record triggered landslides and building collapses in the western state of Maharashtra, a government official said on Wednesday. Mumbai, India’s commercial hub, was paralysed by 24 hours of pounding monsoon rains.
The strongest rain recorded to date in India shut down the financial hub Mumbai, snapped communication lines, closed airports and marooned thousands of people, officials said on Wednesday. As many as 87 people have been reported killed and another 130 are feared buried in landslides, said authorities and news reports.
At least 57 people were killed on Tuesday in one of the worst floods and landslides in the western Indian states of Maharashtra and Goa, news reports said. With the deaths, the toll from heavy monsoon rains in India since the end of June has touched 348. More than two million people have been displaced in nearly a dozen states.
After yet another huge earthquake and a tsunami scare overnight, some residents of India’s battered Andaman and Nicobar islands say they have had enough and are planning to move. On Sunday, an earthquake that the United States Geological Survey said measured seven on the Richter scale shattered the tranquillity of residents.
India’s supreme court has banned the honking of horns, playing loud music and bursting firecrackers after nightfall in the country’s expanding residential areas. Noise pollution is a growing blight in India, where limited space means flats and houses are built inches apart.
Millions of Indians may sleep easier after the Supreme Court banned loud music, firecrackers and the honking of vehicle horns at night. The court ban — issued on Monday and posted on Tuesday — prevents horns from being sounded between 10pm and 6am, and bans firecrackers, loud music and parties between the same hours.
Police in India’s eastern state of Orissa rounded up about 200 people watching a porn movie in a cinema hall and made them do 10 sit-ups in public as punishment, a report said on Monday. They were also made to take a public vow never to watch a sleazy movie again, the <i>Hindustan Times</i> daily said.
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