Overflowing rivers have swamped villages in South Asia, leaving millions of residents stranded in their flooded homes and 272 people dead in the annual monsoon rains, officials and news reports said. More rain is forecast over the next few days in Bangladesh and India’s northeast.
The onset of the monsoon has sparked an exodus from the central Indian town of Harsud, which is facing submersion by a new dam, but thousands of families are still refusing to budge, an official said on Thursday. Residents had been warned they would have to move as long as a decade ago.
Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi has refused to become India’s next prime minister, it was reported on Tuesday. She has apparently told senior Congress Party leaders that she does not want to head the new government, television network NDTV reported.
Hindu party to boycott Gandhi ceremony
India’s oldest party, the Congress, virtually written off by political pundits and rivals, made a stunning comeback on Thursday in national polls under the leadership of its Italian-born chief, Sonia Gandhi. Results of India’s staggered polls showed the party sweeping the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party from power.
Six persons were killed and scores injured in scattered incidents of violence as India’s mammoth parliamentary election exercise drew to an end on Monday with the fifth and last round of voting. A total of about 38 people were killed and more than 200 injured in violence during the five polling days.
At least 10 people were reported killed and about 100 injured by the time polling ended on Monday in the third phase of India’s mammoth parliamentary elections. Bomb blasts, violent clashes between political parties, drive-by shootings, landmine explosions and grenade attacks were reported in six of the 11 states that voted on Monday.
Muslim separatist militants in Indian Kashmir narrowly missed a former state chief minister in a grenade attack as the revolt-hit state geared up for national elections, police said. Abdullah, whose National Conference party lost power in Kashmir in 2002, has survived at least three earlier attempts against his life.
At least 29 police officers were killed and many others injured when several landmines exploded in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, news reports said on Thursday. The blasts occurred on Wednesday night when a convoy of about 150 police officers triggered the landmines in a forest.
About 60 people were injured on Monday when suspected Islamic rebels hurled a hand grenade that exploded in a crowded market near a bus terminal in Indian Kashmir, police said. The rebels tossed the grenade at a passing security force patrol in Pulwama, 30km south of the summer capital, Srinagar, a police spokesperson said.
A retired Indian headmaster hanged himself three years after a court turned down his petition to exercise his right to die, it was reported on Friday. CV Thomas (85) hanged himself in his home in Thrissur in southern Kerala state. A note taped to his neck said: ”Bondage was worse than death. Let this fate not befall any other.”
Five people were killed and 51 injured in revolt-racked Indian Kashmir when Islamic rebels detonated a grenade to escape from a house where they had tried to abduct a civilian, police said on Wednesday. But witnesses said one of the men who entered the house west was working for Indian security forces.
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/ 17 February 2004
Software giant India is poised to become a large-scale hardware manufacturer on the back of explosive sales growth, India’s information technology minister said on Tuesday. ”We will see the large-scale manufacture of hardware in India in the next two to three years,” Arun Shourie told a telecommunications conference.
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/ 23 January 2004
A man who escaped from a fire that engulfed a wedding pavilion and killed at least 45 people in southern India on Friday, said he could hear people crying out from the flames. ”We could hear a lot of shouting from inside asking for help. We could do nothing because the fire was blazing,” he said.
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/ 21 January 2004
Prominent South African Judge Seeraj Desai, who has been accused of raping an Aids activist during the World Social Forum in Mumbai, is a victim of blackmail, his lawyer said on Wednesday. The allegation came as the media in India and South Africa cast doubt on the case against the 53-year-old Desai.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=29925">Judge Desai ‘traumatised'</a>
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/ 20 January 2004
Police in Mumbai on Tuesday said they were investigating ”all the angles” after a prominent South African judge was accused of raping a delegate to the World Social Forum in Mumbai. Activists at the anti-globalisation forum protested on Tuesday against the alleged rape.
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/ 19 January 2004
Anti-globalisation activists on Monday sought to set up alternatives to the current world economic order to benefit the poor as their annual meeting was marred by the arrest of a South African judge on rape charges. More than 100Â 000 people are taking part in the six-day World Social Forum in Mumbai, India.
SA judge on rape charge in Mumbai
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/ 8 December 2003
A group of chanting Buddhist monks is in line for a Grammy Award, and exiles from Tibet hope the nomination will raise Western awareness of Tibetan culture and their homeland’s plight under Chinese rule. "Any avenue to create more awareness is positive," a Tibetan political activist said.
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/ 5 December 2003
A foundation started by software mogul Bill Gates on Friday launched a -million programme to curb Aids in south India. The programme will include highway centres providing condoms and education about HIV. India has more HIV-positive people than any country except South Africa.
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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.
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.