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.
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.
Mohammed Ibrahim woke to Delhi’s sun and waited for his life to collapse. He had known it was inevitable from the blaring megaphone driven past his door the day before. By 6am three generations of the rickshaw driver’s family had ferried their possessions into the open. Just after 9am, six bulldozers crushed to rubble the two-room home he had built.
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.
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.
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.”
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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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/ 9 February 2004
Monsanto, the world’s largest genetically modified seed company, has been awarded patents on the wheat used for making chapatis — the flat-bread staple of northern India. The patents give the United States multinational exclusive ownership over Nap Hal, a strain of wheat whose gene sequence makes it particularly suited to producing crisp breads.
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/ 21 November 2003
A radical Hindu political party in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and a key ally of the country’s ruling party, is encouraging Hindus to have more children because of fears of a Muslim population explosion. The militant Shiv Sena Party said that couples with more than 10 children will be given gifts of gold or silver.
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/ 22 October 2003
India, Brazil and South Africa are strong candidates to become permanent members of the United Nations Security Council as all three developing countries have stable democracies, the Brazilian Foreign Minister said on Wednesday.
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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.
Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Monday extolled the virtues of music as a way to bring peace as he opened a three-day festival here of chants from the world’s different religions. Greeting the crowd of 2 000 gathered at a New Delhi park, the 68-year-old Buddhist monk said such performances of sacred music ”are useful ways to promote positive qualities”.
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/ 9 September 2003
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has hailed India as ”one of the most important countries in the world” before going into talks with his hosts aimed at expanding military and political cooperation. His visit to India has been denounced by India’s Muslim and leftwing groups.
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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.
Last week’s attacks come at a sensitive time for India, when relations between Hindu and Muslim communities are severely strained, and as India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prepares for a general election next year.
The fragile peace process between arch-rivals India and Pakistan appears to have survived the blow dealt by the Mumbai car bombings that claimed 52 lives, analysts said on Thursday. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s speech in Indian Kashmir on Wednesday had probably rescued the peace initiative.
An Indian judge recently ordered an independent scientific investigation into allegations that Pepsi drinks sold in India contain dangerously high levels of pesticides. Fresh tests are to be carried out on Pepsi products across the country this month.
A powerful bomb killed five passengers on a bus in northeastern India on Thursday as fears of more attacks put the country on high security alert on the eve of its annual Independence Day celebrations. The blast in Manipur state was the latest in a string of attacks blamed on rebels in the region.
Officials in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal are teaching sex workers the traditional Hindu treatise on sex, Kama Sutra, in an attempt to check the spread of HIV/Aids, a report said on Thursday.
India announced on Friday that some 4,58-million Indians were living with HIV/Aids at the end of 2002, a significant leap in the figure of 3,97-million the previous year.
If you buy a movie ticket in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, it is likely you will be handed a condom, it was reported on Tuesday.
India and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional grouping of 14 African nations, on Thursday decided to set up a forum to boost trade and other ties, officials said.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela could act as a ”facilitator” between India and Pakistan to resolve their dragging dispute over Kashmir, the state’s former chief minister said on Friday.
The pharmacy clerk pulls a box of skin lightening cream from a glass cabinet, places it on the counter, and says it’s obvious why he sells so much of it.
India, which has close diplomatic and political ties with South Africa, is to push this week for greater exports to rectify a widening gap in trade with its closest ally on the African continent, Indian officials said.
India’s diplomats are adding to the reputation for culture earned by their poet-prime minister by churning out a succession of novels.
Tiny, winged beetles are breeding in a 13-year-old Indian boy’s body, a doctor confirmed on Thursday, while explaining this bizarre but not a totally unknown phenomenon.
While vast tracts of India were still reeling on Tuesday under a heatwave which has claimed more than 1 500 lives, monsoon rains lashing the country’s north-east prompted authorities to put out flood warnings.
Birds can eat too many worms, paper kites can cripple them and even crows with cast-iron stomachs develop aches in the pollution-rife Indian capital.