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.
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/ 10 November 2004
Women in India, home to the world’s second-largest HIV population after South Africa, are becoming more vulnerable to Aids.
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/ 31 October 2004
Stressed-out Indian MPs will relax at weekends with sack races and other games if a ministerial proposal is accepted, a report said on Sunday. According to a plan by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, a plethora of sporting events will be organised for the MPs at weekends during parliamentary sessions.
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/ 29 October 2004
The lizard biriani served on a Jet Airways flight in India proved just too spicy for a startled passenger who is taking the private carrier to court. The airline admitted in a statement published on Friday that it has launched an inquiry into how the two-inch lizard came to be cooked and served up to businessman Ashok Sharma.
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/ 26 October 2004
The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, will visit South Africa in November, it was announced on Tuesday. The Dalai Lama will spend a week in South Africa from November 3-7, according to an official release issued by his office in Dharmshala in the northern Indian hill state of Himachal Pradesh.
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/ 13 October 2004
Leading internet search engine Google said on Tuesday it was planning a big expansion of its India operations which are run from the southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore. ”We are committed to substantial growth in terms of both manpower and infrastructure at both these offices,” Sergey Brin, co-founder of the search engine, told reporters at a press conference.
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/ 11 October 2004
India is to send about 3 000 troops for United Nations peacekeeping operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), making it one of the largest contingents in the strife-torn African nation, a senior official said on Monday. India’s present deployment consists of a 300-strong air force contingent armed with Mi-35 utility and attack helicopters and a 100-member army team.
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/ 10 October 2004
Rescuers in India’s flood-ravaged north-east have recovered a further 37 bodies, taking the death toll in flash floods and landslides in the region to 157 in the past five days, an official said on Sunday. Weather officials said the deluge was the worst in a decade to soak the region outside of a monsoon period.
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/ 22 September 2004
Torrential rain killed at least 36 people and washed away houses and farms in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, officials said on Wednesday. Thirty-five of the people, including a number of women and children, died when flash floods submerged homes on Tuesday in Sitapur district.
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/ 20 September 2004
India on Monday was set to launch its first satellite to be used exclusively for education, which will connect classrooms in remote parts of the country, the space agency said. The satellite was built with a mission life of seven years and will transmit information that will train teachers and provide primary and university education in remote regions.
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/ 17 September 2004
New Delhi’s police chief, who snared former South Africa cricket skipper Hansie Cronje for match-fixing in 2001, faces being fined for allowing mosquitoes to breed at his offices, an official said on Friday. His office was the subject of a sting operation by health workers fighting dengue fever.
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/ 15 September 2004
An illiterate sweeper doubles as the only doctor in an eastern Indian village, highlighting the dismal state of health care in rural areas, it was reported on Wednesday. Ganesh Das is a government-appointed sweeper at Ramchandrapur in Diamond Harbour, about 90km from Calcutta city.
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/ 3 September 2004
An Indian man has tried to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by feeding a live grass snake into his right nostril and taking it out through his mouth, media reports said on Friday. Last November, the man swallowed 200 earthworms, each measuring at least 10cm, in 30 seconds.
A grenade exploded at a crowded market in the north-eastern Assam state of India on Thursday, injuring seven people hours after two bomb blasts elsewhere in the state left four dead and 39 others wounded, police said. Suspected militants from the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom hurled the grenade at the market.
A 29-year-old Muslim women in the western Indian state of Maharastra was divorced by her husband over the telephone, it was reported on Tuesday. Shabana Sayyed said her husband divorced her by saying ”talaq, talaq, talaq” thrice when she called him up from her parent’s house last week, the Asian Age newspaper reported.
Tens of thousands of Mumbai’s bar dancers and owners staged a rally on Friday to protest against alleged police harassment and a draft municipal law that aims to clean up hundreds of drinking houses. The law requires, among other specifications, bar owners to ensure that dancers do not wear ”skimpy” dresses.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Tuesday he has set up a panel to find a permanent solution to floods that annually ravage the country’s east and north-east, as officials reported another 24 people killed. The death toll due to flooding caused by monsoon rains since mid-June in India has touched 217.
Forty people, most of them commuters, were killed on Monday when a crowded bus shot off a highway in torrential rains and plunged into a rain-filled ditch in India’s West Bengal state, police said. ”The bus sank in the ditch filled up by monsoon rains,” state police inspector general Chayan Mukherjee said.
Parents cremated the already charred bodies of their children on Saturday after a devastating fire that swept through a primary school in rural India, killing at least 90 children. Some officials said teachers fled the burning thatched-roof building without helping their students escape.
A fire that may have been caused by a short circuit igniting a thatched roof killed at least 70 children and injured more than 100 others in a southern Indian school on Friday. An earlier report quoted a senior police official as saying 77 bodies had been recovered. Most of those killed and injured were four to 10 years old.