New Delhi

Former Indian president Kocheril Raman Narayanan died in an army hospital on Wednesday, after being admitted almost two weeks ago with acute pneumonia, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Narayanan had been on life support since his admission to the hospital in New Delhi on October 29.

Powerful explosions ripped through crowded markets in New Delhi just moments apart on Saturday, killing at least 55 people in an apparently coordinated attack on the eve of a major Hindu holiday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed ”terrorism”. More than 150 people were injured in the blasts.

A female Finnish tourist was charged by Indian police after bathing nude in a north-western lake considered to be holy by Hindus, newspapers reported on Tuesday. The tourist, who was not identified, swam in the lake and then walked to her hotel in the nude.

Indian cricket selectors on Thursday appointed Rahul Dravid as captain for the coming limited-over series against Sri Lanka and South Africa. The selectors did not want to take a chance with longtime skipper Sourav Ganguly following his elbow injury that forced him to skip a domestic one-day trial match this week.

Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly may be forgiven for thinking fate is against him. Dogged by bad form and a spat with his coach, he now has to overcome injury before answering his critics. Laid low with a tennis elbow, it will now be all the more difficult for him to save his captaincy as well as his place in the side, and the 33-year-old admits he has a battle on his hands.

A Finnish man and his Indian girlfriend were arrested in India after neighbours complained that they were playing pornographic movies with the volume turned up too loudly, a police officer said on Wednesday. Exhibiting pornography and possessing pornographic materials are illegal in India.

An Indian newspaper advertisement that suggested parents would be blamed if they failed to buy pepper spray to deter rape attacks on their daughters was withdrawn on Thursday after a women’s group protest. The advertisement in several daily newspapers for Knockout pepper spray asked readers: "Tomorrow if your daughter gets raped who is to be blamed? The rapist or you?" and recommended the spray as a deterrent.

A court in India’s western desert state of Rajasthan fined an Israeli couple $22 for kissing in public after their wedding ceremony at a revered Hindu pilgrimage site, reports said on Wednesday. The court in Pushkar imposed the 1 000 rupee fine on the couple, identified as Opez Alone and Selev Kermit, for "committing an act of indecency".

At least 31 people were killed and about 62 000 left homeless when heavy rains pounded coastal areas of India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal, reports said on Wednesday. All the deaths occurred in India’s southern Andhra Pradesh state, which bore the brunt of Tuesday’s storms.

An explosion and fire at a fireworks factory on Thursday killed at least 32 people in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, news reports said. The toll was expected to rise as rescue workers continued to remove bodies from the rubble and battle the blaze at the plant and three of its warehouses.

South African cricketers Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boje will not be offered an amnesty from police investigations into match-fixing if they tour India for a one-day series in November. Delhi police charged Gibbs and Boje, along with South African captain Hansie Cronje, with match-fixing during a tour of India in 2000.

An Indian national on death row in Pakistan convicted as a spy and for setting bombs that killed several people, could get mercy from the victims’ families, Pakistan’s foreign minister said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said that the fate of Sarabjit Singh could be decided by the relatives of those killed.

At least 24 security personnel were killed in a landmine blast triggered by Maoist rebels in the central Indian Chattisgarh state, police said on Sunday. Militants blew up a patrolling vehicle in the Dantewada district, 400km south of state capital Raipur, late on Saturday night, officers at district police headquarters said.

With 63 more deaths in and around the western Indian city of Mumbai, the death toll due to leptospirosis and other water-borne diseases brought on by floods has climbed to 233, a local news agency report said on Monday. A senior health official told the PTI news agency that there are signs of the outbreak abating.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.