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/ 22 October 2003
India has stunned Kashmiris with a range of surprise announcements — from agreeing to talk with separatist politicians to a proposed bus service connecting the portions of Kashmir controlled by India and Pakistan. Islamic militants have been fighting for the Indian state’s independence or merger with Pakistan since 1989.
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/ 16 October 2003
Nascent allies India and South Africa on Thursday signed five landmark pacts and in a declaration pledged to jointly fight international terrorism, religious bigotry and drug trafficking. Earlier on Thursday, President Thabo Mbeki called for means to strengthen the strategic partnership between his country and India.
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/ 15 October 2003
South African President Thabo Mbeki arrived in New Delhi on Wednesday on a state visit to open a new chapter in ties with India, which until 1994 shunned the African state because of its white minority government. Mbeki’s talks are expected to focus on trade and other multilateral issues.
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/ 7 September 2003
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is due in New Delhi on Monday, armed with three Cabinet ministers and more than two dozen influential business and defence industry executives. Not all Indians will welcome Sharon, however, and India’s neighbour and chief nuclear adversary, Pakistan, will be watching warily.
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/ 6 September 2003
At least six people have been killed and 25 injured in a powerful blast that went off as an Indian army convoy drove through a fruit market in Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar.
Nineteen children and one adult were killed on Thursday when a bridge crumbled on the western Indian coast, plunging a school bus and four other vehicles into a river.
Islamic guerrillas waged at least three attacks on Wednesday in the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, injuring three people, soon after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee arrived for a national conference, police said.
Police fired on rioters, killing one person, after so-called Hindu ”untouchables” and rich Sikh farmers clashed with swords and iron rods and set fire to vehicles, leaving 20 injured, police said on Friday.
India received its first monsoon showers on Thursday in the remote north-east region, officials said, bringing hopes of relief from a devastating heat spell that has killed at least 1 347 people.
Wildlife experts voiced relief on Tuesday that 50 000 Olive Ridley turtles crawled up an eastern Indian beach this week to lay eggs, after the endangered animals missed nesting last year.
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/ 12 December 2002
A village in the western Indian state of Maharashtra has made HIV/Aids tests compulsory for all prospective brides and grooms.
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/ 7 November 2002
The US ambassador to India warned this week that India could soon surpass SA as the country with the highest number of people with Aids in the world.
Indian commandos early on Wednesday stormed a Hindu temple in the riot-torn eastern state of Gujarat and killed three gunmen, ending a bloody siege which left 30 devotees dead.
More than 1 900 people have died in Kashmir’s vicious separatist struggle this year, including 136 people in the first half of August, official sources say.
Suspected Islamic militants on Tuesday killed nine Hindus and wounded two dozen others as devotees slept in tents along a Kashmir pilgrimage route.
Swirling floodwaters which have left 500 dead and millions homeless continue to affect vast tracts of Bangladesh, India and Nepal.
Indian security forces shot dead seven Islamic militants in three separate overnight encounters in Indian-administered Kashmir, a police representative said on Friday.
Flash floods triggered by monsoon rains in India’s northeastern state of Assam have submerged at least 30 villages, marooning up to 20 000 people.
Hundreds of thousands of flood-affected people in India’s northeastern state of Assam face starvation as food supplies dry up and roads are cut off after heavy rains, said officials.
Cross-border shelling between Indian and Pakistani soldiers in Kashmir and along the international frontier continued on Monday but at a lower intensity than in recent days.
The poaching of rare turtles and dolphins off India’s eastern coast for their aphrodisiac value in Chinese and Hong Kong markets has increased over the past two years.
At a time when e-mail threatens to banish the postman to the museum, mail-runners are still the only means of communication in remote regions of India